Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700)

Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation

For Dan Woodford

Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation

ABIGAIL BRUNDIN University of Cambridge, UK

© Abigail Brundin 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Abigail Brundin has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Brundin, Abigail Vittoria Colonna and the spiritual poetics of the Italian Reformation. – (Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700) 1. Colonna, Vittoria, 1492–1547 – Criticism and interpretation 2. Italian poetry – 16th century – History and criticism 3. Christian poetry, Italian – History and criticism 4. Petrarchism 5. Neoplatonism in literature I. Title 851.4’09 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brundin, Abigail. Vittoria Colonna and the spiritual poetics of the Italian Reformation / by Abigail Brundin. p. cm. – (Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-4049-3 (alk. paper) 1. Colonna, Vittoria, 1492-1547–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Italian poetry–15th century–History and criticism. 3. Christian poetry, Italian–History and criticism. I. Title. PQ4620.B78 2008 851’.3–dc22 2007030167

ISBN 978 0 7546 4049 3 Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.

Contents Series Editor’s Preface Preface Acknowledgements Introduction

Petrarchism, Neo-Platonism and Reform

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1

The Making of a Renaissance Publishing Phenomenon

15

2

The Influence of Reform

37

3

The Canzoniere Spirituale for Michelangelo Buonarroti

67

4

The Gift Manuscript for Marguerite de Navarre

101

5

Marian Prose Works

133

6

Colonna’s Readers: The Reception of Reformed Petrarchism

155

7

The Fate of the Canzoniere Spirituale

171

Conclusion

191

Bibliography Index

193 215

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Series Editor’s Preface The still-usual emphasis on medieval (or Catholic) and reformation (or Protestant) religious history has meant neglect of the middle ground, both chronological and ideological. As a result, continuities between the middle ages and early modern Europe have been overlooked in favor of emphasis on radical discontinuities. Further, especially in the later period, the identification of ‘reformation’ with various kinds of Protestantism means that the vitality and creativity of the established church, whether in its Roman or local manifestations, has been left out of account. In the last few years, an upsurge of interest in the history of traditional (or catholic) religion makes these inadequacies in received scholarship even more glaring and in need of systematic correction. The series will attempt this by covering all varieties of religious behavior, broadly interpreted, not just (or even especially) traditional institutional and doctrinal church history. It will to the maximum degree possible be interdisciplinary, comparative and global, as well as nonconfessional. The goal is to understand religion, primarily of the ‘Catholic’ variety, as a broadly human phenomenon, rather than as a privileged mode of access to superhuman realms, even implicitly. The period covered, 1300–1700, embraces the moment which saw an almost complete transformation of the place of religion in the life of Europeans, whether considered as a system of beliefs, as an institution, or as a set of social and cultural practices. In 1300, vast numbers of Europeans, from the pope down, fully expected Jesus’s return and the beginning of His reign on earth. By 1700, very few Europeans, of whatever level of education, would have subscribed to such chiliastic beliefs. Pierre Bayle’s notorious sarcasms about signs and portents are not idiosyncratic. Likewise, in 1300 the vast majority of Europeans probably regarded the pope as their spiritual head; the institution he headed was probably the most tightly integrated and effective bureaucracy in Europe. Most Europeans were at least nominally Christian, and the pope had at least nominal knowledge of that fact. The papacy, as an institution, played a central role in high politics, and the clergy in general formed an integral part of most governments, whether central or local. By 1700, Europe was divided into a myriad of different religious allegiances, and even those areas officially subordinate to the pope were both more nominally Catholic in belief (despite colossal efforts at imposing uniformity) and also in allegiance than they had been four hundred years earlier. The pope had become only one political factor, and not one of the first rank. The clergy, for its part, had virtually disappeared from secular governments as well as losing much of its local authority. The stage was set for the Enlightenment. Thomas F. Mayer, Augustana College

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Preface It is the particular fate of women writers of the Renaissance period across all the nations of Europe, as recent scholarship has cogently emphasised, to suffer from a ‘weak history’, that is the tendency to disappear almost completely from the canon of recognised writers after a relatively short period of fame and literary acclaim.1 No matter how great the literary status of the writer in question during their brief flowering, few seem to have been immune to this frustrating phenomenon. The reasons for the historical erasure of such writers are various and subtle, with at their heart the persistent tendency to read women’s writing in a ruthlessly biographical vein which serves to dehistoricise it and undermine its literary status, alongside the consideration of such minority voices as ‘curiosities’ to be assembled in marvellous collections that are not considered serious or lasting.2 In setting out to write a book-length study in English of Vittoria Colonna, whose fame and literary standing in her own era were unquestioned, one is confronted with precisely this situation. On the one hand, scholarly accounts of the period almost universally acknowledge Colonna’s importance as a literary figure, one of the primary means by which the linguistic and Petrarchan ideals concretised in the early decades of the sixteenth century by Pietro Bembo filtered further south, a political intermediary, a religious reformer, and also, more problematically, as a lone female voice in a male-dominated cultural arena. On the other hand, such acknowledgement has failed to translate into a serious monograph about this highly interesting and important individual, but rather she has continually been assigned a subsidiary role in the account of the lives of the powerful men she knew.3 In relation to these men Colonna’s role is a passive one: she is a muse, or else a pupil characterised as possessing an absorbent and receptive mind but little originality or intellectual acuity of her own. Due presumably to her perceived mainstream status, she has remained relatively untouched by the wave of feminist-inspired literary criticism that has in the past decades uncovered and re-appropriated so many forgotten female 1

The phrase is borrowed from the useful volume on this phenomenon, Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, ed. by Pamela J. Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005). 2 On this latter tendency, see the essay by Deana Shemek, ‘The Collector’s Cabinet: Lodovico Domenichi’s Gallery of Women’, in Benson and Kirkham, eds, Strong Voices, Weak History, pp. 239–62. 3 The most recent monograph in English devoted to Colonna is Maude Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna, Her Friends and Her Times (New York: Freeport, 1906). The persistency of this tendency into very recent history is exemplified by the title of the 1997 exhibition on Colonna that was held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna: Vittoria Colonna, Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos. The suggestion is that Colonna would not have been an interesting enough subject in her own right without the reflected lustre conferred by her famous friend.

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voices from the Renaissance period. Thus despite the clear recognition of her centrality as a role model for later women writers in Italy, Colonna’s history and contribution to the literary culture of her age have remained sadly underappreciated and under-explored. Perhaps it is a case of a mistaken impression, persisting even within the group of scholars with a direct interest in reshaping the canon to include important works by female authors, that Colonna somehow sacrificed something essential in order to be so popular among her contemporaries, that her work is, as a result, dry and unappealing.4 My aim in writing the present volume is therefore first and foremost to redirect attention to Colonna’s work itself, placed firmly in the context that informed it, in order to convey to a wider audience just how interesting and innovative a writer she really was. In order to achieve this end her context, both literary and, crucially, religious, becomes a vital factor informing a reading of the poetic and prose works and pointing us towards a new appreciation of the deeply serious intent behind Colonna’s literary production and its important ramifications for the future development of poetry-writing in Italy after the Council of Trent. It is a surprising fact that, while scholars have always acknowledged Colonna’s close involvement in a consideration of some of the most pressing religious questions of her age, few have brought this knowledge to bear upon their reading of her work. Only by taking into account the centrality of her increasingly ‘reformed’ religion in the composition of Colonna’s literary works can we have any understanding of the aims and intentions underpinning her poetic production. In addition, through such a contextualised study we may better grasp the true nature of the impact of her poetry on its many readers, both the close circle of sympathetic friends who received and responded to her poems and letters throughout her lifetime and the wider public who, through the numerous published editions of her verses produced in the sixteenth century, came to appreciate the beauty and the message of her spiritual Petrarchism. Thus while the focus of my study remains Colonna herself, the highly significant and wholly talented individual who occupied such a special and unprecedented position in the cultural arena of Renaissance Italy, through a consideration of her spiritual poetics I hope to widen the focus of this book in order to contemplate the role of poetry in the Italian reform movement more generally, and thus re-write the history of Renaissance Petrarchism as a more significant, applied and energetic phenomenon than has been allowed by previous centuries of criticism. A key element of this re-appraisal is precisely an appreciation of the outward-looking, engaged nature of Colonna’s poetic project that marks it out as particularly unusual and innovative in the context of lyric production of the period. One of the most persistent characterisations that has accompanied 4 Fiora Bassanese’s guarded praise is typical: ‘Although essentially mainstream, Colonna is nevertheless a good Petrarchan emulator, given the limitations of the code, and an astounding female voice in a male-oriented canon.’ See Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, ed. by Rinaldina Russell (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 87.

PREFACE

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the poet through the centuries is that of a dogged Petrarchist of the most conventional kind, faithfully recording her devoted love for her (cad of a) husband in a private memoir that leans heavily on Petrarch, exemplifying through its own limitations the limits of Renaissance literary imitatio when deployed by the less ‘original’ minds of the period. Of course Colonna herself asks us to collude with her in the propagation of this very image, joining in the denigration of the quality and value of her poetry: Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia ch’al cor mandar le luci al mondo sole, e non per giunger lume al mio bel Sole, al chiaro spirto e a l’onorata spoglia. Giusta cagion a lamentar m’invoglia; ch’io scemi la sua Gloria assai mi dole; per altra tromba e più sagge parole convien ch’a morte il gran nome si toglia.5

What I hope to make clear in the following chapters is the mistake we make when we choose to take such claims at face value. As becomes evident through an examination of Colonna’s involvement in the dissemination of her own work and the nature of her relationships with other writers, she was at all times intensely aware of the important connection between her religious beliefs and her poetic production, and took altogether seriously the duty that she had to ensure that the latter was a well-judged response to the former. While she was always careful not to disrupt the public image of pious female humility that allowed her to maintain such a successful presence on the literary scene, she simultaneously worked quietly to ensure that her verses were read by those who could respond in an informed manner to their particular religious messages. There are clear reasons why a pioneering woman writer in this period might choose to collude with the literary conventions and expectations of her age, but that is certainly not all that Vittoria Colonna was doing, as I hope will become clear in the following chapters. A Brief Defence of Terms When writing about religious developments in the early decades of the sixteenth century, some uncertainty arises concerning the terminology to be 5 ‘I write solely to relieve the inner anguish / which the only lights in the world send to my heart / and not to add glory to my radiant Sun, / to his splendid spirit and venerated remains. / I have good reason to lament; / for it grieves me greatly that I might diminish his glory; / another trumpet, and far wiser words than these / would be suited to deprive death of his great name’ (all translations my own unless otherwise stated). For the full text of the sonnet, see Vittoria Colonna, Rime, ed. by Alan Bullock (Rome: Laterza, 1982), p. 3. Bullock divides the sonnets into three sections, amorous, spiritual and epistolary, more or less following the categorisation imposed on the poems by sixteenth-century editors.

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used in relation to the groups of reformers active in Italy at this time. Scholars continue to debate the best choice of terms, as well as the correct periodisation of the phenomenon of Italian reform and its precise character.6 In a spirit of inclusiveness, or perhaps of sitting on the fence, I have chosen in the present study to make use of the range of terms available, including reform, evangelism and the Italian Reformation, without intending any qualitative or significant distinction between them.7 The group of reformers who gather around the English Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–1558) in Viterbo are variously the spirituals or the spirituali, the English and Italian terms are used interchangeably. I have avoided using the term ecclesia viterbiensis to refer to the evangelicals in Pole’s household and others (including Colonna) in Viterbo in the early 1540s. Thomas Mayer has provided a convincing case for the need to expand our understanding of the influence of evangelism in Italy beyond Viterbo and the close group of individuals who met there to other groups, cities and locations.8 It seems in any case clear that until the parameters of the phenomenon of Italian reform are better understood, including the presence and religious experiences of a large number of reform minded individuals in Italy until the very end of the sixteenth century, one cannot begin to decide upon the most appropriate choice of terms.9 This book aims to be a small contribution to the ongoing reassessment of sixteenth-century Italian reform, and seeks to draw vernacular poetry into the heart of the debate by demonstrating its deep engagement with issues of personal and communal spirituality from the late 1530s until the end of the century. 6

For a very useful summary of recent scholarship on this issue, see Olimpia Morata, The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic, ed. and trans. by Holt N. Parker (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 47–54. Parker’s analysis includes a synthesis of the major contributions to scholarly debates about the nature of the Italian reform movement, including those by Firpo, Gleason, Jung, McNair, Schutte et al. See also, for a discussion of the problem in relation to Reginald Pole, Thomas F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 8–11; and more generally, Mayer, ‘What to Call the Spirituali’, in Chiesa cattolica e mondo moderno: Scritti in onore di Paolo Prodi, ed. by Gianpaolo Brizzi, Adriano Prosperi and Gabriella Zarri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), pp. 11–26. 7 The term ‘evangelism’ is intended in the sense in which it was first defined by Delio Cantimori, who used the expression to categorise the very particular, Augustinian and humanistic character of the pre-Tridentine reform movement in Italy, with its strong Savonarolan echoes. See, for a concise overview of Cantimori’s definition, Paolo Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento. Questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1979), pp. vii–xxxii; also Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento e altri scritti, ed. by Adriano Prosperi (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), pp. 565–604. 8 Mayer, Reginald Pole, chapter 3, esp. pp. 103–4. 9 A number of scholars have argued for the existence of evangelism in Italy until the end of the sixteenth century and even into the seventeenth. For a summary of some of the arguments, see Elisabeth G. Gleason, ‘On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism: Scholarship, 1953–1978’, Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978), 3–26 (pp. 22–4).

PREFACE

xiii

I have provided translations (my own unless otherwise stated) of all Italian passages cited in the following chapters. In the case of prose passages, the English translation is given in the main body of the text. In the case of poetry, given the difficulties inherent in translation and the importance of the texts in question for the development of my argument, it seemed more useful to retain the Italian originals in the main body of the text and provide prose translations in footnotes. Poetic texts taken from manuscript sources have been re-punctuated in accordance with modern expectations and to aid comprehension. Biblical citations are taken from the Douay-Rheims version of the Catholic Bible, as a translation directly from Jerome’s Latin vulgate and therefore closer to Vittoria Colonna’s likely source than the King James Bible. Abigail Brundin

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Acknowledgements During the too-many years that this book has been gestating in various forms, the list of individuals and institutions deserving my heartfelt thanks has grown ever longer. First place on that list belongs rightly to Virginia Cox, who turned me on to Vittoria Colonna all those years ago, and whose expertise, advice and unwavering support over the years helped me to think in new ways and bring new insights to my work that have improved it greatly. A similar vote of thanks must go to Letizia Panizza, always interested, full of knowledge, vocal and active in her support of a younger colleague, and a joyous lunch companion. Tom Mayer deserves special thanks, firstly for inviting me to contribute to his series, and secondly for his careful and exacting editorial eye. He has helped me to tighten up numerous sections of this book with a historian’s attention to detail, and it is a much better work as a result. Warm thanks to Stephen Bowd for informed attention to drafts of my work, illuminating feedback and an ever-ready sense of humour; also to Barry Collett for his encouragement and insights. Philip Ford and Judith Bryce were both positive and supportive when they encountered this work in its very earliest form. Thanks also to all of the following: Zyg Baránski, Alan Bullock, Yasmin Haskell, Susan Haskins, Dilwyn Knox, Alex Nagel, John Palcewski, Patrick Preston, Brian Richardson, Diana Robin, Lisa Sampson, Olivia Santovetti, Cathy Shrank and Matthew Treherne. My colleagues in the Italian Department at Cambridge, and at St Catharine’s College, are always generous with their knowledge. Raphael Lyne and Miranda Griffin generously helped with translations of Latin and French texts. I am grateful to a number of publications for permission to reproduce parts of works already in print. Thanks to the British Academy and Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce sections of the Introduction, published as ‘Petrarch and the Italian Reformation’, in Petrarch in Britain: Interpreters, Imitators, and Translators over 700 years, edited by Peter Hainsworth, Martin McLaughlin and Letizia Panizza (Oxford: Oxford University Press and the British Academy, 2007), pp. 131–48. Thanks to Italian Studies and Maney Publishing for permission to reproduce sections of Chapter 3, published as ‘Vittoria Colonna and the Poetry of Reform’, Italian Studies 57 (2002), 61–74. Thanks, finally, to the Modern Language Review and the Modern Humanities Research Association for permission to reproduce sections of Chapter 4, published as ‘Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary’, Modern Language Review 96 (2001), 61–81. Warm thanks to my editor, Tom Gray, and the staff at Ashgate. A final vote of thanks, for support of the most fundamental kind, must go to my lovely family for their interest and encouragement. Thanks to all the Brundins, who are never backward in offering their various forms of expertise, especially to my mother for her genuine interest. Thanks to Jane and David Woodford for those numerous early morning trips down the A14 to provide

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emergency childcare. Special thanks to Dan Woodford. He has been, as he always is, immensely patient and understanding, feeding me late at night, parenting my children in my frequent absences, a debt too great to describe. Finally to Liddy and Saul, who make it all worthwhile, and are also the reason why it all took so long…

INTRODUCTION

Petrarchism, Neo-Platonism and Reform In his essay ‘La letteratura italiana nell’età del Concilio di Trento’, Carlo Dionisotti famously alluded to the link between the growing canon of vernacular literature in Italy in the sixteenth century and the increasingly wide reach and appeal of reformed spirituality.1 A number of scholars have subsequently traced this connection in a variety of forms and genres. Much work has been done, for example, on the primary evangelical text of the period, the Beneficio di Cristo (first published in 1542 or 1543) which, according to Pier Paolo Vergerio the Younger’s no doubt biased testimony, sold forty thousand copies in Venice alone in the first six years of its circulation before it found itself on Della Casa’s 1549 Index.2 Further evidence of the close link between literature and reform in the period is furnished by Anne Schutte’s valuable work on Renaissance letter books, demonstrating the evangelising potential of collections of lettere volgari which enjoyed wide circulation and great popularity in the 1540s, and included letters on spiritual subjects by prominent Italian reformers.3 Evidently the evangelising power of such vernacular texts was sensed and feared by the religious authorities, as is demonstrated most clearly by the vigorous suppression of the Beneficio di Cristo when the dangerous potential of its poetically charged and uplifting call to arms was quickly recognised.4 A further manifestation of the link between vernacular literature and reformed spirituality in Italy in the sixteenth century, and the potential evangelising role of the former, can be furnished by an examination of the genre of Petrarchism, long considered a ‘closed’ and insular genre, impervious to the influence of the wide world beyond the courtly environment that spawned

1 Carlo Dionisotti, ‘La letteratura italiana nell’età del concilio di Trento’, in Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), pp. 183–204. 2 Vergerio’s comments are cited in Dermot Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 74. 3 Anne Jacobson Schutte, ‘The Lettere Volgari and the Crisis of Evangelism in Italy’, Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975), 639–88. 4 For details of the suppression of the text, see Benedetto da Mantova, Il Beneficio di Cristo con le versioni del secolo XVI, documenti e testimonianze, ed. by Salvatore Caponetto (Florence: Sansoni, 1972), especially the ‘Nota critica’ (pp. 469–98), and the full text of Ambrogio Catharino’s response, the Compendio d’errori et inganni Luterani… (pp. 345–422).

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it.5 How is it that this unlikely genre, famously dismissed by Arturo Graf in the nineteenth century as ‘a chronic illness of Italian literature’, dry, repetitive and wholly lacking in soul, could come to be directly and seemingly deeply engaged with some of the most significant theological and ideological debates of the period?6 Most crucially, what particular features of the Petrarchan lyric and the canzoniere format offer themselves to this engagement? Such questions are important if we are to hope to arrive eventually at a more contextualised understanding of the poetry of Vittoria Colonna, and her role as the primary practitioner of such a reformed spiritual poetics. The fact that there were individuals in the sixteenth century who were simultaneously interested in both reform thought and the composition and critical appreciation of poetry has been noted by other scholars before now. As long ago as 1935, De Biase found intriguing currents of proto-Protestant thought in the commentaries on Dante by Trifone Gabriele (1470–1549) and his pupil Bernardino Daniello (c.1500–1565), providing a fascinating insight into the role played by the second of the ‘tre corone’ of vernacular literature in shaping currents of sixteenth-century evangelism, a role that has been insufficiently explored to date.7 More recently Stephen Bowd, in his book on the Venetian patrician and reformer Vincenzo Querini (1478–1514), alludes to the involvement in vernacular poetic production of a number of the early reformers in and around Padua and Venice, among them, crucially, Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), chief promoter of Petrarchism in the first half of the sixteenth century. Bowd questions the role played by lyric dabblings in the spiritual programme of such men.8 Thomas Mayer similarly observes the close marriage of lyricism and spirituality in his book on Reginald Pole, in referring to what he terms ‘the unstable mix of poetry and piety’ characterising the group of spirituali that formed around Pole in the late 1530s and early 1540s, 5

For a discussion of Petrarchism as a ‘closed’ genre, see Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 174–6. See in addition the comments by Lauro Martines, who sees the genre as creating ‘mini-utopias’ into which the courtier can escape from problematic realities, in Power and Imagination. City-States in Renaissance Italy, 3rd edn (London: Pimlico, 2002), pp. 323–8 (p. 325). 6 Arturo Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento (Turin: Chiantore, 1926), vol. 2, p. 3. Cited in Klaus W. Hempfer, ‘Per una definizione del Petrarchismo’, in Dynamique d’une expansion culturelle. Pétrarque en Europe XIVe–XXe siècle. Actes du XXVIe congrès international du CEFI, Turin et Chambéry, 11–15 décembre 1995, ed. by Pierre Blanc, Bibliothèque Franco Simone 30 (Paris: Champion, 2001), pp. 23–52 (p. 24). 7 A. De Biase, ‘Dante e i protestanti nel secolo XVI’, Civiltà Cattolica 86 (1935), 35–46. See also Lino Pertile, ‘Apollonio Merenda, segretario del Bembo, e ventidue lettere di Trifone Gabriele’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 34 (1987), 9–48 (pp. 35–7). 8 Stephen D. Bowd, Reform before the Reformation: Vincenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions: History, Culture, Religion, Ideas 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 32–45. See also Alessandro Gnocchi, ‘Tommaso Giustiniani, Ludovico Ariosto e la Compagnia degli Amici’, Studi di filologia italiana 57 (1999), 277–93.

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3

which included poets such as Vittoria Colonna and Marcantonio Flaminio (1498–1550) among its number.9 Mayer demonstrates the keen awareness that Pole himself shows of the potency of the literary gift if turned to the wrong ends, when he congratulates himself on ‘saving’ Marcantonio Flaminio from the heretics, ‘among whom he could have done much damage through the easy and beautiful style which he had of writing Latin and the vernacular’.10 It is notable too that the Beneficio di Cristo, the primary evangelical vernacular text of this era, is a highly lyrical work and that the poet Flaminio is now widely held to have been at least partially responsible for its authorship.11 Pietro Bembo is a significant figure in any discussion of the particular links between poetry and reform in sixteenth-century Italy. He was of course instrumental in defining the linguistic and thematic goals of the Petrarchan genre in the period and illustrated his theories on language and imitatio through the example of his own lyrics, widely circulated scribally and published in a printed collection for the first time in 1530.12 In addition, Bembo was well known by many of the key reformers in Italy before Trent, and was frequently referred to as an associate of a number of the spirituali, but also, from 1539 when he was made a cardinal, closely tied to the authorities in Rome.13 Bembo’s election as a cardinal after a less than pious secular life can be considered to represent on some level a move by Pope Paul III to embrace and absorb the new grandmasters of vernacular literature and culture, so that in the figure of Bembo we find a celebration of the vernacular language and indeed its lyric at the very heart of the religious establishment.14 The preceding brief summary seeks simply to restate and draw together what has already been amply illustrated by scholarship before now: that the movement for reform in Italy can be characterised as a vernacular movement, which seeks to harness the power of the new printing presses and the reach and appeal of vernacular literature in order to spread its message to the largest possible audience; and more crucially for my purposes, that poetry and 9 Mayer, Reginald Pole, p. 123. On Flaminio, see Carol Maddison, Marcantonio Flaminio: Poet, Humanist and Reformer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965); Alessandro Pastore, Marcantonio Flaminio: fortune e sfortune di un chierico nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Milan: Angeli, 1981). 10 Mayer, Reginald Pole, p. 118. 11 On the hypothesis concerning Flaminio’s authorship of the Beneficio, see Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, pp. 69–88. See also, on the involvement of Reginald Pole and others in the text’s genesis, Mayer, Reginald Pole, pp. 119–23. 12 Rime di M. Pietro Bembo (Venice: Giovanni Antonio Nicolini da Sabbio, 1530). On the early publication history of Bembo’s lyric poetry, see Brian Richardson, ‘From Scribal Publication to Print Publication: Pietro Bembo’s Rime, 1529–1535’, Modern Language Review 95 (2000), 684–95. 13 On Bembo’s links to Pole and his group, see Paolo Simoncelli, ‘Pietro Bembo e l’evangelismo italiano’, Critica storica 15 (1978), 1–63; also Pertile, ‘Apollonio Merenda, segretario del Bembo’, pp. 33–5. 14 On this phenomenon in relation to its influence on the literary and ecclesiastical ambitions of the poet Giovanni Della Casa, see Giovanni Della Casa, Le Rime, ed. by Roberto Fedi, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1978), vol. 1, pp. xvi–xviii.

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piety have an intimate relationship in this period. All of which is significant when one considers the role played by the Petrarchan genre in the context of the Reformation in Italy. Petrarchan anthologies and individually authored collections of Rime, much like the books of lettere volgari examined by Anne Schutte in her study, were among the vernacular bestsellers of the new printing industry in sixteenth-century Italy. Small cheap editions of Petrarchan lyrics circulated widely across the peninsula to meet the reading public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for the genre: particularly popular were the anthologies of poems by groups of authors brought together by geographical region or even on occasion by sex.15 The great appeal of the genre during the Renaissance suggests that we need to re-address the fundamental disregard for the majority of Petrarchists that was displayed by Graf and others in earlier periods and that still lingers today. More specifically for the purposes of the present study, Petrarchism’s great popularity in a printed medium can clearly be seen to contribute to its potential effectiveness as a means of evangelising a message of reformed spirituality to the largest possible audience reading vernacular literature in the period. It seems pertinent to now turn to a consideration of the formal properties of Petrarchism: which of its particular features can be held to contribute to its suitability as a forum for the transmission of a reformed spirituality? As Roland Greene has pointed out, such formal analysis must precede any attempt to understand the ideological properties of poetry: ‘reading for ideology in lyric without attending to the genre’s elementary modes of expression risks a fundamental incompleteness’.16 Two aspects of sixteenth-century Petrarchism require specific consideration here: the structure and properties of the individual sonnet, a poetic form that benefits already from a large body of criticism and study; and the properties and qualities of the canzoniere, the unified collection of sonnets into a coherent and, on occasion, authorially controlled whole, equally important as an intrinsic element of the Petrarchan project in this reformed spiritual context.17

15 An example would be the Rime diverse di alcune nobilissime et virtuosissime donne (Lucca: Vincenzo Busdrago, 1559). More generally on the circulation of books of lyric poems in the period see: Walter Ll. Bullock, ‘Some Notes on the Circulation of Lyric Poems in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in Essays and Studies in Honour of Carleton Brown (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), pp. 220–41; Roberto Fedi, La memoria della poesia: canzonieri, lirici e libri di rime nel rinascimento (Rome: Salerno, 1990); Marco Santagata and Amedeo Quondam, eds, Il libro di poesia dal copista al tipografo (Modena: Panini, 1989). 16 Roland Greene, Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 6. 17 Brian Richardson has commented on the fact that the ordering of individual sonnets into a unified canzoniere was not universally understood or appreciated as a vital facet of Petrarchan production in the sixteenth century, a misunderstanding that led to some editors of Petrarch failing to respect the poet’s original, careful ordering of his oeuvre: see ‘From Scribal Publication to Print Publication’, pp. 687–8.

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The sonnet has been aptly described as a prescribed form of poetry, that is to say, before the poet ever begins to write, certain properties of his finished product have already been decided, its duration and structure are predetermined.18 But far from inhibiting the poet, these very limitations appear to act as a positive support, a formula by which he is able to order and express his experience during composition.19 Unable to stray beyond the tight, fourteen-line limits of the sonnet and bound by its particular exigencies of rhyme and rhythm, the poet suffers the difficulties imposed by the form yet also benefits from its provision of a kind of security, a safe place from which to write. One can see, I believe, how these qualities of the sonnet, its limited space and controlled freedom, offer an ideal starting point from which to commence an exploration of new and challenging ideas.20 In the context of the present study, of course, such new and challenging ideas would be the specific doctrines of a reformed faith and the ways in which they relate to the individual writer and her own faith. The security and structure provided by the formal containment of the sonnet can fruitfully be compared to the structured nature of courtly society in which Petrarchism first took root in the early modern period. While such a context can be seen to give rise to carefully coded and stylised literary forms, it is also possible to find scope within this arena for a more unexpected mode of creativity. We could in fact argue, in direct opposition to Lauro Martines’s contention that the court acted as an escapist ‘alternate world’, a kind of ‘buffer zone of ideal forms’ protecting the courtier from uncomfortable truths, that the carefully orchestrated and wholly predictable structure of courtly society allowed its members a particular kind of constrained freedom to push beyond boundaries and move towards new realisations and identities.21 The very fact that the case of Vittoria Colonna herself presents the example of an aristocrat and a woman who, despite the constraints of status and sex, appears able to move into entirely new literary territory in her own Petrarchan endeavours, amply illustrates the surprising freedoms that such a context seems to offer. The progress that is made towards understanding and illumination within the context of any individual sonnet is necessarily circumscribed by the poem’s 18 For an initial discussion of this poetic ‘prescriptiveness’, see Michael R. G. Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 1–10. 19 See Alistair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 31. 20 An early example of the metre’s potential for experimentation would be the group of ‘comic-realist’ poets of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, who turned the sonnet to entirely new ends in both style and themes: see Christopher Kleinhenz, The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–1321) (Lecce: Milella, 1986), pp. 159–200. 21 Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 322, p. 323. A parallel could be drawn with the situation at the court of Frederick II in Sicily in the first half of the thirteenth century, where the particular courtly environment gave rise to new developments including the flourishing of the Sicilian School and the establishment of the sonnet as a poetic form: see Kleinhenz, The Early Italian Sonnet, pp. 10–16.

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tight and unforgiving structure, and thus the poet’s forward motion is gradual and cumulative, relying on the repetitive nature of the greater canzoniere into which each individual sonnet is placed. Roland Greene describes this repetitive quality, one that has frequently been compared to prayer or liturgy, as an aspect of the lyric’s ‘ritual dimension’, its status as script or performance to be vocalised and adopted by the speaker in an act almost of coercion, or submission by the auditor to the poem’s expressive power.22 The involvement of an audience in the act of repetition performs a unifying function, drawing together a congregation of auditors who are potentially changed by the lyric experience. Once again, the clear possibility presents itself for an exploration of new and challenging spiritual material in such a poetic context. As well as embodying a natural impulse towards repetition, the Petrarchan canzoniere is by its nature both cyclical and intimate, beginning and ending in the consciousness of the individual poet and a process of examining and lamenting the state of his soul. The exclusively personal focus, the unremitting interiority and univocality of much Petrarchan production, have contributed to its dismissal in the past by the critical establishment as a self-indulgent frivolity, and yet such a reading overlooks or underestimates a very important aspect of this self-reflexive tendency, especially in the context of reform. While it is in any case reductive to claim that the genre does not also fulfil a markedly social and public function that has often been ignored, through epistolary sonnet exchanges between contemporaries for example, even the seemingly personal focus of a sonnet sequence can disguise a more far-reaching project.23 By tying the process of questioning to the particular circumstances of the individual poet, the path-breaking potential of any new understanding is contained and disguised, and yet, as the comparison to liturgy makes clear, the poetry itself embodies the potential for a collective act of illumination and change. This universalising of personal experience and understanding, which was the governing principle of Petrarch’s own corpus of poems, is of course at the heart of any act of evangelism. The circularity of the canzoniere, in the context of Petrarch’s own sequence in particular, represents the poet’s frustrations and limitations as he does battle with the overpowering force of love that combats his reason and will, so that as the cycle ends it threatens to begin again, and the poet can only plead with the Virgin Mary to release him from the bonds of love that he cannot undo by himself.24 In the context of a reformed Petrarchism, however, this cyclical quality in particular takes on new meaning and can be turned to new and wholly positive ends. The entrapment of the poet in the bonds of love becomes 22

Greene, Post-Petrarchism, p. 6. Brian Richardson points out the social function of Petrarchan lyrics evident in the common practice of scribally publishing single lyric poems rather than unified collections, in ‘From Scribal Publication to Print Publication’, pp. 688–90. 24 See the closing canzone, number 366, ‘Vergine bella, che di sol vestita’, in Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere, ed. by Marco Santagata (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), pp. 1397–1416. 23

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a cause of celebration if that love is spiritual rather than earthly, and this is heightened further if one reads the cyclical quality of the sequence in the light of the reformed doctrine of sola fide or justification by faith. According to this doctrine, the individual no longer seeks to control his fate but abandons himself to the action of God’s grace on his soul, so that his acceptance of his powerlessness to instigate change provides testament to the depth of his faith in his status as one of the elect.25 The joyful embracing of a loss of autonomy that the doctrine of sola fide confers upon the Petrarchan sequence can in fact be linked to the notion of prescribed freedom that is inherent to the sonnet’s structure. The doctrine appears to embody a paradox, as the individual Christian is handed responsibility for developing an active faith through study and contemplation of the word of God, yet at the same time is deprived of the efficacy of good works and instead accepts that his faith has been preordained, his salvation already enacted before his birth. By embracing this paradox in the context of the Petrarchan canzoniere, the poet is offered the freedom to seek for understanding and yet is simultaneously liberated from the responsibility for his actions. Thus while his human limitations might frustrate the poet, they allow him at all times to point beyond his own frailties to the wonder of salvation by faith alone. Where Petrarch’s weakness affords him anguish, the reformed Petrarchist should feel only joy. A consideration of the reformed doctrine of sola fide as it affects the Petrarchan sequence leads on naturally to the next important subject for consideration, and that is the intimate marriage of Petrarchism with courtly neo-Platonism in the sixteenth century, more specifically neo-Platonism in the Bemban model as expressed in a work such as Gli Asolani (1505), for example, or in Castiglione’s Libro del cortegiano (1528), specifically in the monologue given to the character of Bembo in Book IV.26 There remains much work to be done on this important topic, but the clear indication is that the expressive qualities of the Ficinian neo-Platonism that developed in the courtly environment in Italy in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries shares numerous characteristics with the manner in which many of the key reformers expressed their spirituality. As neo-Platonism is also a governing principle of Petrarchan production, it could be considered to constitute the ‘missing link’ between Petrarchism and reformed spirituality in this period, accounting for the development of proto-reformist sentiment in this particular genre of literary work. It is perhaps not surprising, as Roy Battenhouse argued back in 1948, that there is a consonance of language and terminology in the writings of a 25 On the doctrine of justification by faith and its implications for the individual Christian, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), vol. 4, pp. 128–55; Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 26 Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, Gli Asolani, Rime, ed. by Carlo Dionisotti (Milan: Tascabili Editori Associati, 1997); Baldassare Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, ed. by Ettore Bonora (Milan: Mursia, 1972).

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reformer such as Calvin and Renaissance neo-Platonists. Calvin, like many of his contemporaries including Luther, was well schooled in the pagan classics, and although he testifies to a conversion to true piety and a rejection of pagan philosophy that is ignorant of the true God, the flavour of his early learning cannot help but colour the manner in which he synthesises and expresses his new faith even as he seeks to move away from such philosophy.27 It is of course not in question that both Luther and Calvin held themselves apart from Platonic philosophy in their teaching and writing. Indeed those reformers who were open to the employment of such pagan philosophy in expressing their views on salvation and individual illumination all too often found themselves in opposition to orthodoxy on both sides of the Reformation divide, exciting the condemnation of Protestants and Catholics alike.28 My intention is therefore by no means to deny the distance between Luther and Calvin and Platonism, but to put forward an altogether simpler proposition, that the language and flavour of Platonic philosophy coloured their works by default because it was part of the intellectual air that they were breathing along with everyone else.29 Battenhouse’s reading of Calvin, while it requires cautious treatment, affords some illuminating examples of these cross currents of form and expression. Despite the clear contrast between a neo-Platonic conception of the dignity of man and a Calvinist insistence on his irreversible depravity, there are points at which the two systems speak with similar modulations, for example in relation to a belief in salvation through progress in knowledge (‘knowledge’ as synonymous with ‘faith’), a stress on the role of choice in directing the will towards God, and an over-riding concern with man’s formlessness and his gradual progression towards a restoration of his divine image by slow ascent towards God. The gradual and slow nature of this regeneration is a feature that Calvin stresses in particular, and that can immediately be seen to ally with the quality of the Petrarchan canzoniere already discussed above, that is 27 Roy W. Battenhouse, ‘The Doctrine of Man in Calvin and in Renaissance Platonism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 9 (1948), 447–71. As testament to his Latin learning, Calvin wrote a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia in 1532: see Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s ‘De Clementia’, ed. and trans. by Ford Lewis Battles and André Malan Hugo (Leiden: Brill, 1969). 28 The fate of Michael Servetus (1511–1553), the Spanish theologian and physician, is symptomatic: condemned by the Inquisition, he was eventually put to death in Geneva by the Protestant authorities with Calvin’s approval. See Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511–1553 (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953); E. F. Hirsch, ‘Michael Servetus and the Neoplatonic Tradition: God, Christ and Man’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 42 (1980), 561–75. 29 Meredith Gill has recently argued for the importance of St Augustine as a conduit for Platonic ideas and language in the Renaissance period: Meredith J. Gill, Augustine in the Italian Renaissance: Art and Philosophy from Petrarch to Michelangelo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). See also, for an illuminating discussion of the complex relationship between language and theology in the early sixteenth century, Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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the inch-by-inch progress towards knowledge that each sonnet in a sequence allows.30 Such stress on interiority and individual responsibility for nurturing an active faith finds clear resonance in the Petrarchan programme. A more forceful argument for the strange harmony of expressive tools between two such opposing systems can be traced to Naples in the second decade of the sixteenth century, when Vittoria Colonna was passing the first years of her marriage to Francesco Ferrante D’Avalos (1490–1525), Marquis of Pescara, at court on the island of Ischia. As will be demonstrated more fully in Chapter 2, it was during this period that Colonna’s interest in reform thought began to take shape, yet not, as one might expect, through any direct contact with reformers and theologians at this stage, but rather via her links with the various members of the Accademia Pontaniana who frequented the Ischian court, bringing with them a culture of literary endeavour and Christian humanism strongly marked by neo-Platonism. It was via these Augustinian and neo-Platonic routes, through the discussion of literature and more specifically poetry with Neapolitan academicians, that Vittoria Colonna’s thought began to assume its ‘reformed’ flavour, in a fascinating sideways progression that indicates more clearly than anything else the manner in which reformed spirituality and neo-Platonic literary expression could feed one into the other and cross-fertilise. Colonna’s experience in Naples clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of contemporary attempts to categorise and demarcate patterns of dissemination of early Reformation thought in Italy: in practice, words and ideas flowed continually between groups who, in this period, were only hazily aware of the need for careful self-definitions and demarcations. Of course, it goes without saying that individuals like Colonna who over time came definitively to adopt neo-Platonic language as an effective means of expressing a reformed spirituality were misunderstanding or muddying the theology of the northern reformers. Such muddying was perhaps not surprising, in a climate in which theological certainties evaded even those highest placed in the church hierarchies.31 On a literary level, given that Platonic philosophy itself had been bastardised and adapted to suit the requirements of particular literary genres and social groupings, theological clarity becomes even more of a remote possibility. What is clear in Colonna’s case at least is that neo-Platonic modes of thought, in the particular manner in which they found literary expression in this period, could be well suited to the needs of a writer who 30 See Battenhouse, ‘The Doctrine of Man’, pp. 457–8. The slow progress in knowledge is also a feature of Cassinese Benedictine spirituality: see Barry Collett, Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation: The Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 31 The uncertainty about the status of sola fide in Italy before the first convocation of the Council of Trent is a clear illustration of the extent of this doctrinal ‘zona d’ombra’ in the early years of the sixteenth century. The phrase belongs to Concetta Ranieri, applied to doctrinal uncertainty in the thought of Vittoria Colonna: Concetta Ranieri, ‘Vittoria Colonna e la riforma: alcune osservazioni critiche’, Studi latini e italiani, 6 (1992), 87–96. More generally on pre-Tridentine doctrinal ambiguity in Italy, see Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1939), pp. 24–35.

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sought to express her understanding of the new faith, and furthermore, that the Petrarchan genre, built around an aspiration towards neo-Platonic ascent and illumination, would occupy a primary position in this endeavour.32 One final aspect of Petrarchan production must be brought briefly into play in this consideration of the particular qualities of Renaissance Petrarchism that offer themselves to a reformed spiritual programme, and that is the practice of literary imitatio, underpinning any Petrarchan endeavour but so little understood by subsequent critics of the genre.33 It was of course Bembo who won the day in the sixteenth century in advocating a rigidly Ciceronian model of imitatio, despite the criticism of worthy opponents such as Castiglione.34 In adopting this approach, in which a ‘divine’ precedent is chosen as the model for all subsequent literary production because it is unsurpassable in its beauty and integrity, Bembo is in line with Petrarch himself, who draws not only on classical texts but also on the practice of imitatio Christi so successfully disseminated by the Franciscans.35 Caroline Walker Bynum has discussed the importance in twelfth-century religious practice of imitatio in the formation of a group identity, as a means of shaping both the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ man, and the manner in which this concern for groups and models of behaviour co-existed harmoniously, perhaps more during the twelfth century than in any other historical period, with a growing awareness of selfhood and individuality.36 It is possible to turn Bynum’s analysis to the service of literary imitatio in a useful way. In the literary arena, as in the religious, the act of conforming to a carefully selected model confers moral and ethical integrity upon the text, signals its inclusion within the group or canon, yet simultaneously allows space for and indeed encourages the development of the individual voice. If we take into account the important presence of an ethical and religious dimension to the practice of imitating literary models that is conferred by imitatio Christi, then the genre of Petrarchism, so wholly faithful to the model of ‘perfect and divine’ vernacular poetic production, is afforded a gravitas that has completely eluded many modern readers. It is notable that the quality of gravitas was one 32 Significantly, Petrarch himself was read as a proto-Protestant in sixteenth-century commentaries by Fausto da Longiano, Antonio Brucioli and Ludovico Castelvetro: see William J. Kennedy, Authorizing Petrarch (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 67–81. 33 See the useful synthesis of previous criticism, including some striking misunderstandings of the practice of imitatio, in Hempfer, ‘Per una definizione del Petrarchismo’, pp. 23–52. 34 Castiglione’s humorous mocking of Bembo’s position is given in Il libro del cortegiano, Book I, xxvi, in which a fawning courtier imitates King Ferdinand II of Naples’ facial tic without realising that it was caused by illness. 35 See Dina de Rentiis, ‘Sul ruolo di Petrarca nella storia dell’imitatio auctorum’, in Blanc, ed., Dynamique d’une expansion culturelle, pp. 63–74. 36 Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?’, in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 82–109.

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that Bembo sought in particular in the Petrarchism of his contemporaries as the key to the best and most beautiful lyrics, and found in abundance in the work of Vittoria Colonna.37 By tying the production of Petrarchan lyric poetry to the development of reformed currents of thought in Italy in the early decades of the sixteenthcentury, as the preceding analysis has started to do, one can also begin to argue more forcefully that the Petrarchism of the Italian Renaissance was not, as has been claimed in the past, a pointless and facile exercise in repetition and mimicry, but rather a medium that was perfectly in tune with the wider social and religious currents of the age and well adapted to capture and reflect them back to a vernacular reading public. With a subtle force born of the slow accumulation of ideas, ennobled by the gravitas conferred by literary and religious models, harnessing the persuasive intimacy and liberating confinement of the sonnet structure, in the hands of its cleverest and most spirited practitioners Petrarchism is far from Graf’s chronic sickness of Italian literature. Rather it is transformed into a gift to the reformers, capable of carrying an important spiritual message beyond the limits of the Italian ‘Reformation’ into the wider realm of literary endeavour. Summary of the Argument It is the purpose of the following chapters to explore the manner in which Colonna’s poetry drew on the ideas set out above concerning the potential for Petrarchism to embody a reformed religious programme, and to endeavour to assess how far she was successful in creating a spiritually engaged poetry that conveyed a message to a wide audience. In the interests of careful contextualisation with a view to correcting the errors of the past, Chapter 1 reconstructs aspects of Colonna’s biography alongside the history of print production of her works in the sixteenth century, in order to illuminate the development and dissemination of a public image that protected the poet from malign attention and allowed her literary career to flourish. It is this image, so artfully constructed by the poet in collusion with her editors during her lifetime, that has proved so enduring and has in some ways impeded a clearer reassessment of the content and value of the poetry itself. Chapter 2 examines Colonna’s exposure to the Italian reform movement and its ideas, beginning with the years of her early married life in Naples and progressing to her involvement with the spirituali in the early 1540s. This discussion seeks in particular to underline the organic and essentially undogmatic nature of the poet’s exposure to ideas about religion that would come to characterise her literary production. In addition, Chapter 2 undertakes a detailed reading of some of the reformed vernacular texts in circulation 37

On Bembo’s judgement of Colonna’s verses as suitably ‘grave’, see Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’, in Miscellanea Augusto Campana, ed. by R. Avesani et al. (Padua: Antenore, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 257–86 (pp. 262–5).

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during Colonna’s lifetime to which she would have had direct access, in order to highlight the particularly lyric qualities of the evangelical language used in such texts and its relation to vernacular poetry writing. Conclusions are drawn about the nature of exchanges between members of groups of reformers, as well as concerning the status of poetry as an integral component of the process of communal religious exploration. Chapters 3 and 4 examine Colonna’s private gift manuscripts of sonnets, prepared with the author’s collusion and presented to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) in Rome and Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) in France, the only known examples of her voluntary dissemination of unpublished work.38 The gifting of these manuscripts to carefully selected individuals highlights the status of gift-giving as a reformed practice among evangelicals in the period. In addition, the particular content and organisation of each of these (very different) manuscript gifts sheds light on the shared concerns and ideas governing such important friendships. Finally, the existence of these two manuscripts indicates Colonna’s active involvement in the exchange of ideas about religion and reform, in a poetic vein, within a community of like-minded men and women. In Chapter 5 I turn to an examination of Colonna’s prose writings, works that can be considered to have developed out of her close involvement with the spirituali. The Pianto sopra la passione di Christo, a meditation on Mary’s role in the Passion drama, looks back towards earlier models of devotional writing whilst exploring Mary’s status and importance from a new and unexpected perspective. The writer’s interest in the Virgin appears to be an attempt to develop Mary’s status as a role model for female spiritual life, not according to the medieval model of a divine mediatrix far from mankind’s experience, but on a new human level that asserts her position as the primary example of the way to Christ through faith. Colonna’s interest in the figure of Mary no doubt arose from her very particular position as a high-profile woman writer and public figure, and in addition as the only woman that is known to have been present at the meetings of the spirituali in Viterbo. Further prose works, 38 A third manuscript was in fact sent to Francesco della Torre in 1541, when he was acting as secretary to Giovanni Matteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona and a close correspondent of Colonna’s. Della Torre’s manuscript is thought to be MS II.IX.30 in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence. The sending of this third manuscript, however, appears to have been agreed under different conditions from those relating to the manuscripts prepared for Michelangelo and Marguerite de Navarre, primarily because della Torre only asked to borrow a manuscript (one that was clearly already in existence), and promised to return it once he had finished copying out the sonnets. See Alan Bullock, ‘A Hitherto Unexplored Manuscript of 100 Poems by Vittoria Colonna in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence’, Italian Studies 21 (1966), 42–56; Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 325–7. Carlo Dionisotti disagrees with Bullock’s identification of the della Torre manuscript, believing that he would have been sent a collection of recently composed spiritual verse, rather than the sonnets dedicated to d’Avalos (the majority already published numerous times by the 1540s) contained in the manuscript examined by Bullock in Florence. See Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo’, pp. 282–3.

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including three letters to her cousin published in a sixteenth-century edition, confirm and further develop this significant Marian emphasis. Chapter 6 considers the important question of Colonna’s other readers, those who did not frequent the close circle of like-minded aristocrats who met in Naples, Rome and Viterbo to exchange ideas about reform. Through a reading of a highly significant commentary on Colonna’s sonnets, published twice in the sixteenth century, I obtain access to the insights of one particularly informed evangelical reader of the texts, and ask important questions about the impact of his commentary on the wider reception of Colonna’s verses in print. In addition, the reissuing of the commentary in the 1550s points towards conclusions about the durability of the phenomenon of evangelism in Italy that helps to correct earlier more limited periodisations. Chapter 7 considers the impact of Colonna’s poetic model of spiritually engaged Petrarchan production on other writers in Italy later in the century. As its principal aim is that of drawing this book to a close, the final chapter can only touch briefly on a number of salient points. It is also, of course, indicative of a new beginning, the start of another, larger project that will allow for far stronger connections to be forged in the future between the literary production and religious engagement of the first half of the sixteenth century and that of the so-called Counter Reformation. By insisting on these important connections, scholars will finally begin to chip away at the long-standing and generally unhelpful view of the later sixteenth century as a period of cultural diminishment and instead recognise its rich and illuminating continuities with earlier cultural and spiritual trends, established before Trent and surviving in modified and adapted forms well into the next century.

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CHAPTER 1

The Making of a Renaissance Publishing Phenomenon Introduction The temptation to assimilate the persona and the literary production of any writer of Petrarchan lyrics is often great, the material offering itself with ease to a reading that allies the personal experiences of the individual writer with the particular torments, or indeed joys, that he expresses through the lyric. Petrarch himself, of course, contributed much to this implicit, and explicit, sense of autobiography through his clever deployment of dates and events that organised his poetic canzoniere into an apparently coherent and progressive unit carrying him forward through the years, a temporal progression that worked against the thematically cyclical nature of the poems themselves, establishing a fruitful lyric tension. In the case of the woman writer of Petrarchan lyrics, the urge to read biographically seems to be stronger still. One imagines, in fact, that the women who first chose Petrarchism as their means of access to the cultural arena did so knowingly, well aware of the genre’s propensity to be allied with the life. Through the wholly decorous and delicate deployment of the properties and themes offered by the genre, the woman writer might be able to present herself as an acceptable and unimpeachable addition to the literary world, in other words, could deploy the self-fashioning elements of the poetic text to the ends of depicting herself as precisely the model virtuosa that the public sought. To imagine that this process was not in many ways one of careful manipulation and artfulness, however, would be naïve.1 The convergence of life and art in the lyric genre becomes particularly problematic when one turns to the sixteenth-century reception of Petrarch and Petrarchism, a period in which the desire to read Petrarch himself in a biographical vein became so dominant that scholars expended great amounts of energy in arguing over the ‘facts’ relating to the poet’s love affair with ‘Madonna Laura’, herself indubitably a ‘real’ person whose place and date of birth and rank, as well as her literary accomplishments, were all to be firmly established, despite the seemingly complete lack of concrete evidence.2 1 A fascinating example of the tendency to read Colonna’s poetic canzoniere as a record of her life is an early monograph that analyses her Petrarchan production in a psychoanalytical vein, in order to diagnose the poet’s various neurotic illnesses: see Francesco Galdi, Vittoria Colonna dal lato della neuro-psicopatologia (Portici: Spedalieri, 1898). 2 For a discussion of this tendency, see Virginia Cox, ‘Sixteenth-Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy of Laura’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005), 583–606 (pp. 585–6).

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According to this biographical mode of reading, the imitators of Petrarch themselves were required by the genre to enact, as far as possible, the love story that their verses recounted. That such passions were necessarily denied or unrequited was no doubt helpful in this regard, as the male poet was free to choose any worthy lady (one with the necessary public reputation for beauty and honour) to whom he might direct his poetic yearnings. And even if the muse was married to another man this did not generally prove problematic, as the entirely sublimated longing expressed in the lyric was equally flattering to the lady and her real-life consort.3 In the case of women Petrarchists negotiating such autobiographical terrain, the longed-for lover is necessarily a husband, one who is absent or deceased, and thus, unusually, the poetry is based on a relationship that has been reciprocated at some time in the past, injecting perhaps a greater degree of pragmatism into the lyric yearnings.4 It is tempting to wonder if the great popularity of printed Petrarchan collections and anthologies among the sixteenth-century reading public was to some extent related to the vicarious thrill of gaining insights into the supposedly ‘real’ amorous troubles of the rich and famous. In the interests of unpicking the deeply knotted strands of ‘life’ and ‘art’ that have co-existed for so many centuries in Vittoria Colonna’s case, it seems important initially to trace the salient facts of the poet’s biography, in order subsequently to highlight those areas of her experience that contributed to her own ability to ‘market’ herself (or be marketed by her editors) through her poetry in such a highly successful manner. In arguing that we must seek to move away from the biographism of sixteenth-century readings, that life and art cannot be interrelated in an automatic and thoughtless way, I am forced to confront the obvious fact that Colonna’s life did, quite conveniently and no doubt necessarily, afford her the opportunities for literary self-fashioning that were to prove so enduring and important. If her husband had not been famed for his courage and bravery in battle, allowing her to set him up as the paragon of virtue and heroism to which she was inevitably drawn… If he had not left home for long periods so that she was given the opportunity to miss him and long for his return… If he had not expired early and tragically leaving his wife with the banner of widowhood (as well as wealth and independence) on which to pin her poetic colours… It is not necessary, or fruitful, to attempt to explain away these consonances as matters of little importance: they are, of 3 A clear example of such practice is the poetry addressed to Vittoria Colonna by Girolamo Britonio, a younger nobleman who fought together with her husband in a number of battles: his collection was published as Gelosia del sole (Naples: [no pub.], 1519). The poet continually stresses his lady’s fidelity to her husband, and thus flatters D’Avalos by default, perhaps in the hope of advancement or favours. 4 The two female Petrarchists who enjoyed the greatest degree of fame in the first half of the sixteenth-century, Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara (1485–1550), were both widowed, thus provided by circumstance with the necessary context of loss and longing that the genre demanded. Far more problematic were those poets, such as Gaspara Stampa (1523–1554), who located their lyric outside the necessary confines of legitimate marriage.

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course, central to the development of Colonna as a poet and an individual, and served to create the circumstances in which she was able to write, quite simply, in which she had the time and space to do so.5 Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that there is clearly more to the development of Colonna’s poetic persona than the mere accumulation of events, and the model that she created for literary production by a secular woman would not have proved to be so enduring and effective if it had come into being by mere chance. Turning to the examination of the biography itself, it is necessary to sound a note of caution. In piecing together the trajectory of Vittoria Colonna’s life from the sparse and scattered sixteenth-century sources, and the voluminous and sometimes rather questionable nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ones, it becomes apparent that, as a figure who knew and was known by some of the most famous men of her age and has consequently lingered in their shadows over the centuries, much has been claimed about Colonna over time with seemingly little evidence to substantiate such claims. In particular, nineteenth-century biographers, who produced a great volume of studies dedicated to the poet (in a century in which a number of Renaissance women writers were reclaimed and reassessed in a manner that well reflected the anxieties of that particular age6), seemed more concerned with imagining her physical attributes and emotional upheavals than with conducting the necessary archival trawling in order to recover more concrete traces of the life as it was lived. Some attention has been directed at this important work of recovery since the first edition of Colonna’s Carteggio in 1889.7 Subsequently further letters have been unearthed, although the overall number remains small for such a well-connected and active individual and thus various biographical lacunae remain unfilled.8 To date, therefore, the picture of a life remains muddied and uncertain, the concrete facts few and far between.

5 The link between freedom from marriage and domestic duties and literary production by women is well established: see in the first instance Virginia Cox, ‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995), 513–81. 6 An interesting case is that of Gaspara Stampa. Little is actually known about her life, yet during the nineteenth century much fictional ‘evidence’ was amassed that told of her suffering and eventual tragic demise due to unrequited love. See Fiora A. Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1982). 7 Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara, ed. by Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1889). See also Supplemento al carteggio di Vittoria Colonna, ed. by Domenico Tordi (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1892) (this latter volume contains a biography of Colonna by the pseudonymous Filonico Alicarnasseo). 8 Further letters were published in Pietro Tacchi-Venturi, Nuove lettere inedite di Vittoria Colonna (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta, 1901), and Vittoria Colonna Fautrice della riforma cattolica secondo alcune sue lettere inedite (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta, 1901). See also, for more recent discoveries, Sergio Pagano and Concetta Ranieri, Nuovi Documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole (Vatican City: Archivio Vaticano, 1989).

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Having said this, a number of studies produced in the twentieth century provide us with a more objective and considered account of the facts relating to Colonna’s life. The entry by Giorgio Patrizi in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani is particularly useful for padding out the historical context, providing details of her early life (although some claims, for example relating to Colonna’s childhood education on Ischia, remain unsubstantiated) and avoiding many of the long-standing assumptions about the poet’s relations with the famous men of her age.9 Much more recently, the exhibition held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 1997 and restaged in 2005 at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence produced two weighty catalogues that, although they fail to update or substantiate much of the received wisdom already extant concerning the poet’s biography, do present a wealth of new and important contextual material relating in particular to the courtly environment in Naples and on the island of Ischia.10 Together with the large body of recent work on the group of Italian reformers with which Colonna was closely involved, these sources have helped us to add detail and nuance to the picture of a life that emerges.11 Rather than re-rehearsing here in its entirety the somewhat spare account of a life spent in almost continuous relocation from Naples to Rome and further afield, an account that can be found in other sources, it seems more useful in this context to concentrate instead only on the particular events in Colonna’s life that proved to be definitive in shaping her poetic oeuvre and the persona that the work served to promote.12 It is to be hoped that, through the process of tracing the consonances between life and art, it will also be possible to come to some interesting conclusions about the extent to which the poet’s public image was shaped and manipulated, both by Colonna herself and at the hands of the editors and publishers who brought her work into the public realm. These latter actors in the drama are of particular importance, as the agents of a quite phenomenal publishing success from which the poet herself was always careful to maintain her distance and of which she claimed to disapprove. By looking in more detail at the role played by such third parties in the promotion of the poet and her work, we will, I hope, be able to come to a better understanding of the manner in which Colonna’s image was marketed in the sixteenth century, and thus banish once and for all previous, unhelpfully 9 Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 53 vols (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–1999), vol. 27 (1982), pp. 448–57 (henceforth DBI). 10 Silvia Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, Catalogue to the exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 25 February – 25 May 1997 (Vienna: Skira, 1997); Pina Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, Catalogue to the exhibition at the Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 24 May – 12 September 2005 (Florence: Mandragora, 2005). 11 References to the major studies relating to Colonna’s involvement with the Italian reform movement are provided in Chapter 2. 12 A brief biography of the poet is provided in Vittoria Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, ed. and trans. by Abigail Brundin (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 6–13, as well as a full bibliography of biographical sources.

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over-zealous assumptions about the extent to which her poetry was limited to the recounting of the story of her life. The Life as Lived Perhaps unsurprisingly, privilege and wealth were often the necessary preconditions for the participation of women in public and cultural life in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In this regard, the case of Vittoria Colonna is no exception. The Colonna family had by the sixteenth century produced a long line of cardinals and one pope (Martin V, 1368–1431), and continued to play a central, if often problematic, role in the ever-shifting power alliances of pope, emperor and foreign rulers that governed political and religious decision-making on the Italian peninsula. The Colonna, whose family seat was in Marino, uncomfortably close to Rome, had a long-standing reputation for seeking to ally themselves with the imperial powers in an attempt to maintain a relationship of quasi-independence from the pontificate, and historically this bid for freedom had caused the family’s frequent excommunication and the confiscation by various popes of their lands and possessions.13 At the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, peaceful relations were more or less restored through the mediation of Julius II and the pax romana, and despite the Sack of Rome and the later Salt Wars, the Colonna family’s standing in Rome remained relatively stable during the years of Vittoria Colonna’s lifetime.14 It is notable, too, that even during periods of tension Vittoria Colonna appears to have been able to maintain her good relations with the pope, a sign perhaps of her diplomacy and her usefulness as an intermediary who, precisely by virtue of her political insignificance as a woman, was able to maintain a degree of autonomy from her family’s foreign policy.15 Vittoria was born in 1490 or possibly 1492, the second child of Fabrizio Colonna (d. 1520) and Agnese da Montefeltro (1470–1506), at the family’s seat at Marino. Fulfilling at a very young age her primary function as a female child, that is to act as a political pawn in the service of her family’s foreign policy, she was promised in around 1495 as future bride to Francesco Ferrante D’Avalos, Marchese di Pescara, the marriage taking place in December 1509

13 For a brief historical account of the Colonna family, see Agostino Attanasio, ‘Zur Geschichte des Hauses Colonna’, in Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelo, pp. 31–40. 14 On the Salt Wars of the early 1540s, see Domenico Tordi, ‘Vittoria Colonna in Orvieto durante la guerra del sale’, Bolletino della Società Umbra di Storia Patria 1 (1895), 473–533. See also Diana Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and Religious Reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007). I am very grateful to the author for allowing me to read her manuscript prior to publication. 15 Robin’s book provides useful detail on Colonna’s status as a political intermediary.

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on the island of Ischia.16 The union between the Colonna and the D’Avalos families was intended to concretise the loyalty of the former to the Spanish throne of Aragon, a move instigated by Fabrizio Colonna when, disillusioned with the lack of gratitude for his military prowess displayed by the French king, Charles VIII, in the wake of the conquest of Naples in 1494, he abandoned the French side the day after the victory and switched to the Aragonese camp.17 After her marriage, Colonna took up residence on Ischia, at the court of her new aunt by marriage, Costanza D’Avalos (1460–1541), where she benefited from the lively cultural life that flourished there under Costanza’s benign and erudite direction.18 Frequent visitors to Ischia included the Neapolitan poets Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530), and il Cariteo (Benedetto Gareth, 1450–1514), among others, and the young bride’s exposure to some of the greatest lyric minds of the preceding generation may well have been influential in awakening her own muse.19 Her husband, after a brief interlude of three years at home, absented himself from Ischia and his new wife’s side. Together with his father-in-law, Fabrizio Colonna, he joined the imperial league against the French and in 1512 they departed for Ravenna to fight for the emperor’s cause.20 It is to the same year of 1512 that we can date the first extant poem by Vittoria Colonna. Although there is some evidence of a body of works composed by her during her early married life that have never been traced, the date of 1512 was clearly decisive in marking the beginning of her public reputation as a poet, at least in Neapolitan circles, just as it also marked the beginning of her husband’s absence from home, an absence which was to endure more or less without interruption until his death in 1525.21 Without attempting to argue for 16 Fernando Calabrese, ed., Vittoria Colonna. Corti e paese reale al tramonto del Rinascimento. Ricerca storico-bibliografica – Aggiornamenti di Fernando Calabrese in occasione del Vo Centenario della nascita 1490–1990 (Comune di Marino: Biblioteca civica “V. Colonna”, 1990), p. 15; see also Ippolita di Majo, ‘Vittoria Colonna, il Castello d’Ischia e la cultura delle corti’, in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, pp. 19–32. 17 Majo, ‘Vittoria Colonna’, in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, p. 19. 18 On the cultural circle of Costanza D’Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla (not to be confused with Colonna’s cousin of the same name, Costanza D’Avalos Piccolomini), see Pierluigi Leone de Castris, ‘Kultur und Mäzenatentum am Hof der D’Avalos in Ischia’, in Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, pp. 67–76. 19 A Latin poem by Sannazaro in honour of Francesco Ferrante D’Avalos, Vittoria Colonna’s consort, was published in his collected Latin works in 1536: see Majo, ‘Vittoria Colonna’, in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, p. 26. 20 Francesco D’Avalos’s reputation during his lifetime as a courageous and heroic soldier is commemorated in the biography by his contemporary, Paolo Giovio, Le vite del gran Capitano e del Marchese di Pescara, trans. by Ludovico Domenichi (Bari: Laterza, 1931). 21 Bullock refers to seven early verses composed by Colonna during her husband’s lifetime that have never been traced in manuscript or print: see Colonna, Rime, ed. by

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a direct relationship between the two events, one can nevertheless see clearly how a Petrarchan programme might begin to gain currency and impetus at the moment when the poet was effectively abandoned by her consort. This early work is an Epistola addressed to her husband after his imprisonment by the French in Ravenna together with her father Fabrizio.22 The poem has been described as a ‘letter of recommendation’ from Colonna to Neapolitan society, primarily due to its clear use of canonical classical and early vernacular sources, almost as if as a means of advertising the poet’s erudition and the soundness of her literary qualifications as she made this early foray into the literary arena.23 It seems particularly significant that in this early poem, Colonna chooses to long poetically for the presence and guidance not only of her husband, but also of her father: del padre la pietà, di te l’amore, come doi angui rabidi affamati rodendo stavan sempre nel mio core.24

The dual male influence evoked in the poem reinforces the sense in which the poet encloses her voice and lyric within strictly defined limits, as a young woman still, married but unchaperoned, who calls upon the male authorities to which society demands that she submit. This is a notably safe poetic position, yet one that also allows her an active plurality of roles as she simultaneously mourns her husband and father (as well as her ‘adopted son’, Alfonso D’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, who was imprisoned with the other men).25 Significantly, even from within the safe confines of paternal and husbandly control and overt reference to the influence of canonical works by male authors, she nonetheless goes on to lay claim to considerable influence of her own as guarantor of her husband’s victory:

Bullock, p. 223. Tobia Toscano has identified one in vita sonnet from this early period in a Sienese manuscript from the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, MS V.E.52: see Tobia Toscano, Letterati corti accademie. La letteratura a Napoli nella prima metà del 500 (Naples: Loffredo, 2000), pp. 17–19. 22 Reprinted in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 53–6. The Epistola was first published in Fabrizio Luna’s Vocabulario di cinq; Mila Vocabuli Toschi (Naples: Giovanni Sultzbach, 1536). 23 This judgement was made by Johann Wyss in Vittoria Colonna und ihr Kanzoniere (Frauenfeld: Verlag Huber, 1916), p. 72. 24 ‘Pity for my father, and love for you, / like two rabid, famished serpents / were ever gnawing at my heart’: Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 53, lines 10–12. 25 On the assertive use of this plurality of roles in Colonna’s poetry, see Abigail Brundin, ‘Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary’, Modern Language Review 96 (2001), 61–81 (p. 65). This usage appears to have its roots in Petrarch’s highlighting of the three roles adopted simultaneously by the Virgin Mary: see Petrarch’s Rime sparse 366, 46–7 (also Dante, Paradiso 33, 1).

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se vittoria volevi io t’era a presso, ma tu, lasciando me, lasciasti lei.26

Frustratingly for the cause of literary history, this poetic beginning in 1512 does not generate further clear traces until much later, although Giorgio Patrizi states that Colonna met Pietro Bembo and Baldassare Castiglione in Rome in 1520, an encounter which would indicate that her literary network was by this date beginning to grow in important ways outside the Neapolitan context.27 Of a meeting with Bembo at this time no evidence remains, however, and while some correspondence with Castiglione exists beginning in 1524, including Colonna’s very flattering judgement of the linguistic and thematic merits of the Cortegiano, which she has had the great privilege of reading in manuscript, the few letters extant are primarily concerned with Castiglione’s pique at the ‘theft’ of his text by his correspondent.28 More concrete traces of an active cultural life, if not of poetic output of any significance, exist in the many references to Colonna in works by her contemporaries in Naples from this period, which cite her as one of the most beautiful and illustrious noblewomen of Naples, as well as in some cases setting her up as the desired Petrarchan lady.29 This secondary presence is significant, although we should not necessarily take the proclamations at face value, as it indicates Colonna’s importance in the cultural life of her adopted city, as well as establishing at this very early stage a quality which would become central to her self-presentation in later works. As early as 1510 she is described under the name of ‘Dona Porfida’ in a Spanish chivalric romance, the Dechado de amor by Vázquez, in the company of her husband, the author stressing in particular the strength of her wifely devotion, ‘que en estremo vos soys una.’30 It seems noteworthy that this important facet of her public persona appears so early, and is stressed 26

Lines 91–2 in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 55: ‘if you wished for victory(a) I was by your side, / but in leaving me you left her too’. The pun, of course, is entirely reliant on the dual meaning of vittoria in Italian. 27 See DBI, vol. 27, p. 448. Patrizi fails to substantiate this claim, however, one that seems to be based on the assumption that, as they were all in Rome in 1520, they must have met. Tobia Toscano surmises that Colonna must have destroyed her early in vita verses, as their tone and content would not have fitted with the particular slant of her later, mournful poetic voice: see Letterati corti accademie, p. 20. 28 This famous quarrel is documented in Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 23–7, as well as in the preface to published editions of the Libro del cortegiano. 29 Full details of these references are given in Suzanne Therault, Un Cénacle humaniste de la Renaissance autour de Vittoria Colonna châtelaine d’Ischia (Paris: Didier; Florence: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1968). Therault cites extensively from works in Spanish and Italian. The most famous example of Colonna’s role as the Petrarchan lady is in the poems of Girolamo Britonio, mentioned in note 3. See also Mirella Scala, ‘Encomi e dediche nelle prime relazioni culturali di Vittoria Colonna’, Periodico della società storica comense 54 (1990), 95–112. 30 Cited in Therault, Un Cénacle humaniste, p. 208. On the relationship between Spanish and Neapolitan cultural life in the Renaissance period, see Benedetto Croce, La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la Rinascenza (Bari: Laterza, 1922).

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time and again in the various works that mention her. Although it is probably not unusual that a married noblewoman should be praised in this way, we can see how the development of Colonna’s later public image as a univira, able to love only one man and devoted to his memory in eternis after his death, has its roots in these very early beginnings, and how the praise that she garnered as a young married woman fed into and qualified the subsequent development of her lyric voice.31 Such allusions to wifely fidelity and devotion, intensified in the poetic context of the 1512 Epistola by the fact that her husband was both absent and in some danger, were taken in a new direction, one that was fundamental to the future development of Colonna’s Petrarchism, by the next significant development in her life, the death of Francesco D’Avalos in December 1525, due to wounds received at the Battle of Pavia earlier in that year.32 Colonna, who was travelling northwards to reach him when she learned of her husband’s death, immediately retreated to the convent of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome. Her retreat into a nunnery and subsequent request to take her vows and remain there (a request that was roundly rejected by both Pope Clement VII and her brother Ascanio33) added a profound note of piety to her newly widowed status. That her desire for a contemplative life within the walls of a convent was thwarted by the more temporal ambitions of her brother and the pope, who no doubt hoped to remarry her and thus forge new political alliances, also served to increase the pathos of her image. It is noteworthy that in her poetry Colonna develops both these notes of piety and pathos, referring explicitly to her inability even to contemplate a new love (‘Né temo novo caldo, ché ’l vigore / del primo foco mio tutt’altri estinse’34), and carefully working and reworking the image of her dead husband until in her more mature verses it is transformed entirely into the image of Christ. It is by no means unexpected that Colonna’s real and poetic worlds collide at this juncture and one would not want to make unhelpful judgements about the ‘authenticity’, or lack thereof, of her poetic response to her husband’s death. In fact it seems only fair to assume that her grief and desire for seclusion were entirely authentic. More interesting than hypotheses about what she may or may not have really felt is the realisation that this sequence of events and reactions, centring on the year 1525, was to become the deciding moment 31 Colonna’s devotion to the memory of D’Avalos and her refusal to remarry is highlighted in her poetry: see, most explicitly, ‘Di così nobil fiamma Amor mi cinse’, in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 6. 32 Some biographical sources claim that D’Avalos was in fact poisoned by conspirators acting on behalf of Pope Clement VII. See Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, pp. 19–21. 33 On the pope’s letter to the nuns of San Silvestro, forbidding them from accepting a request from Colonna to take her vows, see Alfredo Reumont, Vittoria Colonna. Vita, fede e poesia nel secolo decimosesto, trans. by Giuseppe Müller and Ermanno Ferrero (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1883), p. 88. 34 ‘Nor do I fear a new fire, for the heat / of my first flame extinguished all others’: Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 6.

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in the subsequent development of Colonna’s literary career. On the most pragmatic level, widowhood brought independence, the space and time to devote to writing which, if one surveys the personal circumstances of many of the women who found their voice in early modern Italy, was a fundamental prerequisite of literary productivity. In Colonna’s case one might argue that, on this level, the transition from married life to widowhood was less stark, as her marriage had remained childless and she was already blessed with the money and status to indulge her literary aspirations should she so wish. Nonetheless, as a widow she could choose where to lodge herself, frequently returning south to Costanza D’Avalos’s court on Ischia where she enjoyed such fame and respect, or else entering various convents as a secular guest, where the tranquillity, order, and comfort no doubt contributed much to her poetic endeavour. Secondly, of course, the tragic events of 1525 provided Colonna with the ultimate confirmation of her poetic attitude and subject matter, concretising the elements that had been gestating since her earlier poetic beginnings into a clear and finely judged portrait of a mournful and pious widow. It is notable how close this portrait seems to that of a nun, despite the acknowledged fact that Colonna was prevented from taking the veil by outside interests. Even in the earlier, ‘amorous’ sonnets, in which the object of her love and mourning is undeniably human, the poet stresses the qualities of the loved one that most easily ally him with a more exalted image, constantly rehearsing certain key words (‘virtù’, ‘gloria’, ‘valor’, ‘chiaro’, ‘nobile’) that contribute to the overall ease with which D’Avalos is transformed into Christ in the later sonnets. The act of accommodating her poetic and public persona within parameters that were already in existence and offered a space for literary activity by women, albeit of a rather limited kind, proved in the long run to be of invaluable help to Colonna’s own widespread acceptance as a literary figure.35 By denying or choosing to ignore all worldly attributes, and to concentrate only on promoting those qualities that allied her with a more ethereal image, the female poet sidestepped any potential accusations of fame-seeking or lack of propriety. Instead, her pious image was seemingly absorbed and accepted whole-heartedly by her reading public, to the extent that sixteenth-century published editions of the sonnets sometimes carried woodcut images of the poet dressed in a plain habit and kneeling before a crucifix in prayer.36 It seems paradoxical that this austere image could be accommodated so seamlessly within the genre of Petrarchism, a genre that bore the reputation for frivolity

35

On the status of nuns as authors of literary works, see K. J. P. Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Craig A. Monson, ed., The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion and the Arts in Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992). 36 Details of frontispiece illustrations in all sixteenth-century editions are provided by Bullock in Colonna, Rime, pp. 258–70.

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37

even amongst Colonna’s contemporaries. One could argue that Colonna’s shifting of the focus of her Petrarchism towards an other-worldly end in fact realigns it more closely with the model found in Petrarch himself, where an aspiration towards the divine drives the canzoniere on, even if it is ultimately thwarted by the poet’s all-too-human weakness. The repercussions of the shift in Colonna’s personal and poetic status that took place in 1525 become more clearly apparent when we realise that it is in the years following her widowhood that her renown as a poet of chaste love and mourning began to enjoy a wider currency in Italy. Her increasing fame no doubt came about as a result of the circulation of her works in manuscript form to an audience far beyond Naples, and it is interesting to speculate how far Colonna herself was involved in this scribal publication, an issue that has never been satisfactorily established by scholarship. Despite her proclaimed distance from the published editions of her verses, it is clear that the poet had some hand in the scribal dissemination of individual sonnets at least, to carefully selected readers who were generally themselves Petrarchists and were called upon to supply critical feedback, as well as, in two cases, organising the preparation and presentation of an entire manuscript collection to a friend. It appears, therefore, that rather than retreating into silent contemplation in the wake of her husband’s death, as the image of the quasi-nun might suggest, Colonna’s literary activity grew more energetic, and she became increasingly involved in the networks of writers and scholars who corresponded about the new vernacular literature across the Italian peninsula, not only receiving, but also offering critical feedback to some of the foremost literary figures of the age. A clear indication of her increasing fame is Colonna’s inclusion in the third, 1532 edition of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, where she is cited as the finest example not only of poetic style in a woman writer, but also (and perhaps more importantly) of wifely devotion.38 It has been suggested that Colonna’s husband’s cousin, Alfonso D’Avalos, acted as the conduit by which her work was disseminated to a wider, if carefully selected, audience, perhaps in the interests of promoting Neapolitan lyrics at a national level, and that he made use of an encounter with Ariosto on diplomatic business at Correggio in order to present him with copies of his own verses and those of his relative by marriage.39 Certainly, Ariosto’s citation makes plain the fact that he has 37 Notably, in his scandalous Dialogo of 1536, Aretino mocks the practice of petrarchising by petty nobles who divert the composition of sonnets from the admiration of noble ladies to the courting of willing prostitutes: Dialogo di Messer Pietro Aretino: nel quale la Nanna il primo giorno insegna a la Pipa sua figliuola a essere puttana… (Turin [actually Venice]: P. M. L. Francesco Marcolini, 1536), ‘Prima Giornata’. 38 See Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. by Marcello Turchi (Milan: Garzanti, 2002), 37, 16. For a discussion of this passage, see Virginia Cox, ‘Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth-Century Italy: The Case of Vittoria Colonna’, in Strong Voices, Weak History, ed. by Benson and Kirkham, pp. 14–31. 39 See Tobia Toscano, ‘Due “allievi” di Vittoria Colonna: Luigi Tansillo e Alfonso d’Avalos’, Critica letteraria 16 (1988), 739–73.

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read Colonna’s lyrics in manuscript (the first printed edition of her collected Rime was not published until 1538), and that he expects his own readership to recognise and appreciate the reference to her work. What Ariosto’s text also makes clear is that the image of chaste widowhood outlined above was indeed as potent and successful as it needed to be in order to establish Colonna as the first mainstream secular female writer. It is particularly interesting to note how Ariosto’s praise suggests the manner in which the reception of female Petrarchists necessarily differed so radically from that of their male counterparts. While the interiority, the relentless self-examination that Petrarch carries out in his canzoniere, remains intact in Colonna’s verses, her male readers almost wilfully see this auto-contemplation as self-effacing, judging the subject of the verses, as would be appropriate given her gender, to be not the poet herself but the consort whom she continually mourns. Although no clear picture of D’Avalos in fact emerges from the poetry, aside from the repeated stock references to his valour and virtue, still the poet is able somehow to assert that it is he, rather than she, who commands our attention, and her audience appears to wish to believe her.40 One of the most important of Colonna’s new readers post-1525 was the godfather of Petrarchism in sixteenth-century Italy himself, Pietro Bembo, whose reaction to her sonnets was never less than enthusiastic, as was his response to the critique of his own poems offered by Colonna. In his letters to her, Bembo moved far beyond stock considerations of the propriety of promoting the memory of D’Avalos in the sonnets (despite praising this quality in the poems he addressed to her, as was entirely fitting). Rather, as befitted his status and skill in the practice of the same genre, he was far more interested in getting to the root of the striking and extraordinary poetic skill that he detected in his contemporary’s verses, and in a serious appraisal of their form. The first extant record of an exchange between Bembo and Colonna (conducted, in the interests of decorum, via a third party, in this case Paolo Giovio, 1483– 1552) is dated to 1530, when letters were sent by both individuals, Colonna conducting a notably confident and skilful appraisal of the sonnet Bembo had addressed to her, and Bembo responding with pleasure and admiration to the evidence of her acute poetic insight.41 As he wrote to Giovio on 16 September 1530: she seems to me to possess a sounder and more secure judgement, and to conduct a more detailed and attentive analysis of my verses, than I have

40 This is in stark contrast, of course, to the displacement and even fragmentation of the figure of Laura in Petrarch’s self-referential sonnets, a feature that has been well recognised by criticism: see, among others, Nancy J. Vickers, ‘Diana Described: Scattered Women and Scattered Rhyme’, in Lorna Hutson, ed., Feminism and Renaissance Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 233–48. 41 Bembo’s first sonnet to Colonna, according to Dionisotti, is ‘Cingi le costei tempie de l’amato’, in Pietro Bembo, Prose e rime, ed. by Carlo Dionisotti, 2nd edn (Turin: Temporelli, 1966), p. 609.

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seen produced in recent times by some of the most educated and greatest masters of this art, nor would they be capable of such.42

His understanding of the nature of the genre in which they both wrote, and its suitability to the purposes of self-fashioning, make Bembo a particularly valuable reader of Colonna, as he in a sense ignored the more ‘obvious’ qualities of her poetry (the very necessary adaptation of her voice to the expectations of a male reading public) and looked instead to its subtler arts, the careful manipulation of formal and linguistic elements to create the harmony and gravitas expected of truly great poetry. It is notable that Bembo also played a major role in introducing Colonna’s poetry to a wider public through the medium of print, by his inclusion, in the 1535 edition of his own collected Rime, of an epistolary sonnet exchange with his fellow poet.43 Knowing better than anyone the rules of the Petrarchan game and its exacting demands for careful self-presentation, Bembo ensures that his sonnet to Colonna works to distil and convey the essential elements of her image as the poetic ‘secular nun’ for his own readers, to smooth her passage into the public terrain of print. The poem, ‘Alta Colonna e ferma a le tempeste’, describes his fellow poet as the epitome of commingled Petrarchan beauty and piety: leggiadra membra, avolte in nero panno, e pensier santi e ragionar celeste.44

Despite his clear recognition of her skill and value as a poet, unconnected to issues of gender, Bembo was nonetheless well aware of the care that had to be taken in managing Colonna’s lyric persona, just as his relationship with her, although one of poetic equals concerned with more weighty matters, had to be conducted via intermediaries and artfully concealed behind the courtly mannerisms that Petrarchism demanded of its players.45

42

‘[E]lla a me pare vie piú sodo e piú fondato giudicio avere e piú particolare e minuto discorso far sopra le mie rime, di quello che io veggo a questi dí avere e saper fare gran parte de’ piú scienziati e maggior maestri di queste medesime cose.’ Cited in Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’, p. 265. 43 Delle Rime di M. Pietro Bembo, Seconda Impressione (Venice: Giovann’ Antonio de Nicolini da Sabio, 1535). A sonnet by Veronica Gambara was also included in this collection. Virginia Cox notes the important role played by Bembo, in such sonnet exchanges, in helping to establish a space within Petrarchan love discourse for the female poet, a space that was more interesting and authoritative than might appear at first glance: Cox, ‘Sixteenth-Century Women Petrarchists’, pp. 592–7. 44 ‘Lovely limbs enclosed in black robes, / holy thoughts and divine musings’: see Bembo, Prose e rime, p. 610. 45 Examples of this adoption of Petrarchan conceits in their epistolary relationship are the confessions of love expressed by both parties, along with the desire to exchange portraits: see Barbara Agosti, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena (tra Tiziano

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Leaving aside at this juncture the development of Colonna’s evangelical sympathies, which came to fruition during this same period of her life following her widowhood in 1525, and will be dealt with fully in Chapter 2, one further important biographical development needs to be documented here in the interests of tracing the impact of the life as lived on the poet’s public image. A decade or more after she was widowed, in 1536 or 1538 when she was once again resident in Rome, Colonna was introduced to Michelangelo Buonarroti by a mutual acquaintance, probably Tommaso de’ Cavalieri.46 The precise date of their first meeting is unclear, due in part to the lack of extant correspondence between them, but by late 1538 or early 1539, when Colonna took up residence in the convent of San Silvestro al Quirinale, there is no doubt that the pair were in regular contact.47 Despite the difference in status – Colonna was the more aristocratic by far – and the need to negotiate with great care a friendship between two high profile, unmarried individuals, a very real bond clearly developed, one that is documented most compellingly in the poems they addressed to one another, including the gift manuscript of sonnets that Colonna prepared for her friend in around 1540, as well as the three presentation drawings that Michelangelo made for Colonna.48 The nature of the bond between Colonna and Michelangelo will be explored in Chapter 3 in the context of their mutual interest in reform. What is of crucial e Michelangelo)’, in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, pp. 71–81 (p. 79). 46 See Deoclecio Redig de Campos, ‘Il Crocifisso di Michelangelo per Vittoria Colonna’, in Atti del Convegno di Studi Michelangioleschi (Rome: Ateneo, 1966), pp. 356–65 (p. 356). Also Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, ‘Vittoria Colonna und Michelangelo in San Silvestro al Quirinale nach den Gesprächen des Francisco de Holanda’, in Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, pp. 349–73. Deswarte-Rosa disagrees with the 1536 dating, and puts forward the hypothesis that the pair met at the beginning of 1538, when Colonna returned to Rome from the thermal baths in Lucca (p. 350). Barbara Agosti points out an earlier link between the pair, when in 1531 Colonna commissioned a Noli me tangere from Michelangelo through an intermediary, Nicolas von Schomberg, Archbishop of Capua: see Agosti, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena’, in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo. Biographical information on Michelangelo is in George Bull, Michelangelo: A Biography (London: Viking, 1995). 47 What few letters do remain are all undated. Michelangelo himself, however, testifies to a much more extensive correspondence, now lost, in a letter to his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti, in March 1551, in which he mentions that Colonna wrote to him frequently from Orvieto and Viterbo. Michelangelo’s letter to his nephew is cited in Domenico Tordi, Il codice delle Rime di Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, appartenuto a Margherita d’Angoulême, Regina di Navarra (Pistoia: Flori, 1900), p. 11 48 Michelangelo’s manuscript gift will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3. For details of the three presentation drawings for Colonna, see Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna. Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, pp. 405–15, 426–28, 445–51; for a detailed discussion of one of the three, a Pietà, in the context of Italian reform, see Alexander Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, Art Bulletin 79 (1997), 647–68.

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importance here, however, in considering the development of Colonna’s public image, is the fact that, very swiftly, knowledge of their friendship spread far and wide, and the poet’s association with the great artist in no small way qualified her public reception in the sixteenth century as today. One of the clearest records of the fame of this friendship is a book of dialogues set in Rome written by a Portuguese artist, Francisco de Holanda (c.1517–1584), who describes meetings in the church of San Silvestro that he attended, at which Colonna skilfully questioned Michelangelo on the status of art and the role of the artist.49 Holanda’s account cannot necessarily be treated as factual, nonetheless it ably documents the fact that by the late 1530s there was widespread knowledge of the friendship, and the general understanding that it constituted a meeting of minds of two of the foremost cultural protagonists of the age.50 The importance of Colonna’s friendship with Michelangelo for the development of her public image can be detected in a variety of ways. In the first place, Michelangelo’s acknowledged position as the foremost visual artist of his generation, patronised by popes and rulers, lent him a ‘star quality’ and a celebrity status that caused many of the most powerful individuals of his generation to seek him out, despite his relatively lowly beginnings. Colonna herself also enjoyed some celebrity status (although at all times, of course, carefully qualified by the limitations appropriate to her sex), as testified to by the frequency and popularity of printed editions of her works. Her close relations with Michelangelo can only have increased her celebrity, as well as the respect due to her as an artist of the first order able to commune with another such great mind. Secondly, Michelangelo, like Colonna, was well known for the strength and fervour of his religious beliefs and his conviction of the role of art in illuminating the key elements of his Christian faith. Through their association, Colonna too could be credited with the important work of turning her poetry to the service of a much larger and more valuable end than mere personal contemplation.51 In this context of religious exploration, it is significant that Michelangelo consistently deferred to his friend’s judgement, asking her in his poetry for guidance and succour, in recognition, no doubt, of

49 Francisco de Holanda, ‘Dialogos em Roma’, in Da Pintura Antigua, ed. by Joaquin de Vasconcellos, 2nd edn (Porto: Renascenza Portoguesa, 1930), pp. 175–277. The book was originally published in 1548. 50 Some critics have employed De Hollanda’s dialogues as a historical record of the friendship: see in particular, Robert J. Clements, ed. and trans., Michelangelo. A SelfPortrait. Texts and Sources (New York: New York University Press, 1968). The debate about the authenticity of the dialogues as historical record is outlined in J. B. Bury, Two Notes on Francisco de Holanda (London: Warburg Institute, 1981). 51 Colonna herself alludes to the evangelical potential of her poetry in the sonnet ‘S’in man prender non soglio unqua la lima’: see Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 136–8.

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Colonna’s status and education as well as her personal contacts with some of the foremost religious thinkers of the period.52 The poetic context of the relationship is also important. Michelangelo himself, as a poet, was somewhat out of step with the lyric sensibilities of his own age and his verses have come to be appreciated for their idiosyncratic voice and moods only relatively recently.53 In the context of sixteenth-century Petrarchism, his poetic output was never presented in public in a polished form that could be easily inserted into the Petrarchan framework, remaining seemingly unfinished and far from the kind of carefully stylised and artfully conceived poetry which was universally popular and which Colonna herself produced with such skill and apparent ease. Thus, in a poetic context, Colonna was in a position of considerable superiority to her friend (as she was also in social terms), and her association with Michelangelo served to concretise her status as a highly skilled poet of the first order, offering advice and guidance to those who sought to emulate her literary voice just as she also offered confident appraisals of the poetry of her equals, Bembo among them. Even as we note the manner in which this famous friendship enhanced Colonna’s public reputation as a fine poet and a pious soul in her own age, however, we also need to recognise the damage that her association with Michelangelo did to her image in the longer term. While a sixteenth-century audience appeared able to recognise her important contribution to the friendship and indeed her leading role in it, subsequent critics have tended, instead, to be seduced by the concept of the woman as muse to the great man, so that Colonna’s own literary and spiritual contribution has faded into the background. The ‘Life’ in Print At this point, with a sense of the public interest in Colonna and her work, it is time to turn to an appraisal of the print production of her works during her lifetime, and the impact that this printed presence inevitably had on the definition and dissemination of her poetic and public image. It would be safe to say that Colonna’s print history is astounding for a woman writer of the period. The first edition of her collected Rime was issued in 1538 and a further twelve editions were published in the intervening years before her death in 1547.54 What is more, an edition of three spiritual letters to her cousin was 52

Examples of Michelangelo’s poetic pleas for spiritual guidance are ‘Un uomo in una donna, anzi uno dio’, and ‘Ora in sul destro, ora in sul manco piede’, in Michelangelo, Rime, ed. by Giovanni Testori (Milan: Rizzoli, 1996), pp. 268, 223. 53 For an interesting account of the changing public perception of Petrarchism over the centuries, including an examination of the most frequently anthologised poets in various historical eras, see Amedeo Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato: per una critica della forma “antologia”: livelli d’uso del sistema linguistico del petrarchismo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974). 54 Full details of Colonna’s publication history, in both manuscript and print, are included in Alan Bullock’s invaluable apparatus to Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock,

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55

published twice, in 1544 and 1545. To put this into some kind of perspective it is worth noting that the work of Veronica Gambara, generally considered to occupy second place in the ranking of female Petrarchists from the period, was limited to the presence of a small number of sonnets in anthology collections issued by various publishers, as well as a single sonnet in Bembo’s 1535 Rime, and an edition of her own collected Rime did not appear in print until 1759.56 After Colonna, only Laura Terracina (c.1519–c.1577) enjoyed anything like comparable publishing success in the sixteenth century, and she was able to make close and careful use of the literary model developed by her predecessor.57 Unlike Terracina, however, who collaborated in the formulation and dissemination of her printed works together with her sponsor on the Neapolitan literary scene, Marc’Antonio Passero, Colonna, as stated above, at all times maintained her distance from the published editions of her poetry and expressed public indignation at the pirated nature of the works. When Bembo suggested that she allow preparation of an edition herself, giving access to material in manuscript in order to correct the mistakes and misattributions that were circulating in these pirated texts, she resisted until the project was eventually abandoned.58 It seems clear that Colonna perceived some fundamental difference between the acceptable and decorous dissemination of works in manuscript and the wholly unwelcome shift into print production, no doubt for reasons of aristocratic status as well as the modesty of her sex, and despite the fact that misgivings about print culture were breaking down in this period with figures such as Bembo himself leading the embracing of the new technology.59 It is perhaps due to the author’s distance from such printed works, therefore, and her refusal to collaborate on any level, that one finds a strong element of repetition in the many editions of the poems that pp. 223–462. 55 Litere [sic] della Divina Vettoria [sic] Colonna Marchesana di Pescara alla Duchessa de Amalfi, sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Catherina, Et sopra della attiva di santa Maddalena non più viste in luce (Venetia, per Alessandro de Viano Venetian. Ad instantia di Antonio detto il Cremaschino, 1544). A second Venetian edition was published in 1545. For a reading of the ‘litere’ see Maria Luisa Doglio, ‘L’occhio interiore e la scrittura nelle “Litere” di Vittoria Colonna’, in Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena, 3 vols (Padua: Editoriale Programma, 1993), vol. 2, pp. 1001–13. 56 Details of Gambara’s publication history are provided in Veronica Gambara, Le rime, ed. by Alan Bullock (Florence: Olschki, 1995), pp. 30–51. 57 On Terracina, see Benedetto Croce, ‘La casa di una poetessa (1901)’, in Storie e leggende napoletane (Milan: Adelphi, 1999); Luigi Montella, Una poetessa del rinascimento: Laura Terracina (Salerno: Edisud Salerno, 1993); Natalia CostaZalessow, Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al XX secolo. Testi e critica (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1982), pp. 79–84. 58 See Brian Richardson, ‘Print or Pen? Modes of Written Publication in SixteenthCentury Italy’, Italian Studies 59 (2004), 39–64 (pp. 42–3). 59 Brian Richardson discusses the tensions inherent in the relationship between aristocratic authors and the medium of print in Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 77–104.

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were issued after 1538. Once the model was established, and in the absence of any significant quantity of new material, editors and publishers could do little save reproduce a clearly successful formula. The only major novelty occurred in the fourth edition of 1539, published in Florence, in which sixteen ‘new’ spiritual sonnets were announced on the title page (in fact only ten of them were unedited) and placed at the beginning of the volume.60 From this point on, any such ‘new’ spiritual material was highlighted with great insistence by publishers and placed at the beginning of the volume in the position of primary importance, clearly reflecting the importance of piety to Colonna’s public image. As is illustrated by the reaction of editors to the trickle of new poems that they were able to lay their hands on, the appetite of the reading public for new works by Colonna was immense. The direction in which the printed editions of the Rime moved, beginning in a traditionally ‘amorous’ vein and swiftly developing and exploiting a more ‘spiritual’ poetic voice, clearly reflects and responds to the wider trajectory of the poet’s public image as it was presented in works about and dedicated to her, swiftly moving from the Ariostan position of wifely commemoration to a more wholly ethereal one of religious contemplation. This journey in the poet’s image and the public’s imagination is reinforced, in addition, by the religious images in woodcut, reproduced in editions from 1540, including representations of the poet herself in prayer.61 What is interesting is that, despite a notable lack of new and unedited poems which forced editors to recycle the same material again and again in subtly new formulations, as well as the paucity of mature spiritual sonnets that ever made it into the printed realm during the poet’s lifetime, the image of her growing spirituality was nevertheless established with great success and insistence through these printed editions. It would be impossible to disentangle the two elements of Colonna’s persona with any degree of accuracy; rather one is confronted with a picture of a happy and mutually rewarding collaboration. The reputation, already long established via the testimony of third parties, as outlined above, determined the nature of the early printed editions, and in return, the proliferation of this same model in print served to reinforce and re-emphasise the particular qualities of that reputation. Colonna’s personal distance from, and seeming dismay at, this publishing phenomenon only added to the picture of her piety and unworldliness, however genuine her distress and disapproval may have been. Two editions of the Rime out of the thirteen that were issued during the poet’s lifetime stand out as being in some way different from the general 60 Rime de la Diva Vettoria [sic] Colonna, de Pescara inclita Marchesana, Nuovavamente [sic] aggiuntovi .XVI. Sonetti Spirituali, & le sue stanze… (Florence: Nicolo d’Aristotile, detto il Zoppino, 1539). For a full description, see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 260. 61 The two editions of 1540 carry woodcut images of the poet praying, the second representation showing a notably younger woman than the first: see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 260–1; Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, p. 146.

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model, and therefore of particular significance. These are the 1543 edition published in Bologna that included a commentary on the sonnets by a young scholar from Correggio, Rinaldo Corso (1525–1582),62 and the second edition of 1546, issued in Venice by Vincenzo Valgrisi, that for the first time included a genuinely new and extensive selection of previously unedited spiritual sonnets.63 In both cases, it appears that the issuing of the text was aided by some greater degree of access to members of Colonna’s circle, or to her work itself, than was enjoyed by the other publications of this period. The 1543 edition with its detailed commentary grew out of Rinaldo Corso’s contact with the second female Petrarchist of the period, Veronica Gambara, and his discussions with her about the themes and form of Colonna’s verses.64 The 1546 edition, on the other hand, seems to have been based on a manuscript or manuscripts belonging to Colonna herself, that were passed on to the publisher by Donato Rullo, the family’s agent in Venice, much to the poet’s displeasure.65 Corso’s commentary, written up, as he claims, from the pencilled notes that he took in the margins of Gambara’s edition of the sonnets during their lengthy discussions, is a striking demonstration of the high esteem in which Colonna’s poetry was held by her contemporaries. Although he would no doubt have had a personal interest in praising an individual whose position was so close to that of his own patron, nonetheless Corso’s commentary performed a serious work of appraisal and validation, cementing Colonna’s status as a serious lyric poet of the highest order, whose work could be placed in a line of descent leading from its finest classical and medieval antecedents. Notably, this is the first published commentary on the collected work of a woman writer in the sixteenth century, and also constitutes the first published commentary on the collected poetry of a living writer, of either gender.66 Even the founding father of 62 Dichiaratione fatta sopra la seconda parte delle Rime della Divina Vittoria Collonna [sic] Marchesana di Pescara. Da Rinaldo Corso… (Bologna: Gian battista de Phaelli [sic], 1543). For full details, see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 262–3. This edition was reissued, edited by Girolamo Ruscelli and with a number of amendments, in 1558. 63 Le rime spirituali della illustrissima Signora Vittoria Colonna Marchesana di Pescara (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1546). See Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 263–4. 64 For secondary work on the commentary, see Monica Bianco, ‘Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso alle rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Studi di filologia italiana 56 (1998), 271–95, and ‘Rinaldo Corso e il “Canzoniere” di Vittoria Colonna’, Italique 1 (1998), 37–45; Chiara Cinquini, ‘Rinaldo Corso editore e commentatore delle Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Aevum 73 (1999), 669–96; Giovanni Moro, ‘Le commentaire de Rinaldo Corso sur les Rime de Vittoria Colonna: une encyclopédie pour les “très nobles Dames”’, in Les Commentaires et la Naissance de la Critique Littéraire, ed. by Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani and Michel Plaisance (Paris: Aux amateurs de livres, 1990), pp. 195–202. 65 On the letters concerning this action by Rullo (taken, he claimed, in the interests of the reading public), see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 225. 66 There appears to have been one other minor instance of a published Discorso on the poetry of a woman writer: by Alfonso Piccolomini, published in Bologna in

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the Petrarchan genre in the sixteenth century, Pietro Bembo, was not honoured with a commentary on his poetic works during the sixteenth century.67 In fact, only two further poetic commentaries on the work of living male poets were published in the sixteenth century, following Corso’s groundbreaking example, and then not until the 1560s.68 Of particular interest is the fact that Corso chose to publish only the second part of his commentary on the sonnets in 1543, overturning any attempt at chronology by focusing entirely on the rime spirituali (although the later 1558 edition also included his commentary on the amorous poems).69 This directing of attention at only one facet of Colonna’s poetic production, as well as the careful manner in which Corso ordered and arranged the verses in his edition, serve to create a text that develops and nuances the public image of Colonna as a ‘secular nun’ in some important ways, not least in the awareness Corso shows of the reformed nature of much of the poetry, and in the manner in which he ties the poet’s status as a bona fide member of the academy exclusively to her production of spiritual sonnets.70 This important development is then picked up on and given greater emphasis by the 1546 Valgrisi edition, which contains 145 previously unedited spiritual sonnets by Colonna (as well as thirty-five poems that had already been published in earlier editions), and thus for the first time offers up for public consumption the true extent of the poet’s dedication to an (often highly evangelical) religious muse.71 It is notable that the 1546 published edition is a far more accurate reflection of the true nature of Colonna’s poetic production in the last period of her life than any of the previous publications. In Valgrisi’s edition, thanks to Donato Rullo’s input, one finds for the first time in print the intense Christocentric contemplation that also characterises Colonna’s private gift manuscript for Michelangelo of around 1540, indicating that perhaps, one year before her death, the private and public faces of the poet were finally being united.72 The sense is that contemplation of her deceased consort had been absent from the poet’s work for some time in manuscript, and indeed that she devoted time 1541, on a single sonnet by Laodamia Forteguerri. See Moro, ‘Le commentaire de Rinaldo Corso’, p. 195. 67 Bembo’s critical reception began in the eighteenth century, when readers were generally unsympathetic to Cinquecento poetic trends: see Prose e rime, p. 61. 68 On the poets Bernardino Rota and Luca Contile: see Bianco, ‘Le due redazioni’, p. 273. 69 One of the reasons Corso gives for publishing the seconda parte alone is that his commentary on the ‘more complex’ amorous sonnets is not yet fit to be seen (Dichiaratione, fol. 05r., dedicatory letter to Veronica Gambara). 70 Corso’s reformed reading of the sonnets will be discussed more fully in Chapter 6. 71 For a discussion of the Valgrisi edition, including an appraisal of its evangelical content, see Rinaldina Russell, ‘L’ultima meditazione di Vittoria Colonna e l’Ecclesia Viterbiensis’, La Parola del Testo. Semestrale di filologia e letteratura italiana e comparata dal medioevo al rinascimento 4 (2000), 151–66. 72 An edited translation of, and full introduction to, the gift manuscript for Michelangelo from Colonna is provided in Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo.

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in the last years of her life to rewriting earlier poems in order to turn them more effectively to the service of her now exclusively religious interests. That it took her publishers some years to catch up with her in this enterprise is not surprising, when we consider how unwilling she was to share her poetic endeavours with the wider public beyond her own intimate circle. Returning to the initial impetus for the preceding discussion, that is a consideration of the relationship between ‘life’ and ‘art’ in Colonna’s case, and the fashioning of her great fame and reputation in her lifetime, it might be considered particularly fitting that, in the end, the public image managed to approximate the reality, if only for a brief period. Valgrisi’s edition and the three that followed it (two in 1548 and one in 155073) all more or less successfully reproduce the principle qualities of Colonna’s manuscript for Michelangelo, the only text that betrays without any shadow of a doubt the imprint of the poet’s extensive personal input and involvement.74 Thus, for a span of a few years only, readers were exposed to a passionately and unswervingly spiritual poetic voice, in a manner that the earlier editions of the Rime, dominated as they were by amorous sonnets (with the brief exception of Corso’s contribution), can in no way have prepared them for. Such an unapologetic departure from any trace of the earlier model of mournful widowhood, although it accurately reflects the tone of Colonna’s life in the 1540s when she lived for the most part enclosed in a nunnery as a secular guest and devoted to religious interests, seems, in the longer term, to have proved less palatable to readers. Already in 1552 a new publishing format emerges. This time, in a collection edited by Ludovico Dolce, a substantial group of amorous sonnets is placed at the beginning of the volume, and is followed by a further group of spiritual poems, thus bringing the whole in line with a more traditionally ‘Petrarchan’ development from worldly to spiritual concerns.75 Dolce’s rerendering of the Rime along more traditional lines clearly struck a chord with readers’ desires and expectations, and dominated production until the end of the century.76 Thus, after her death, Colonna was once again reclothed in widow’s weeds and recast in the role that had qualified her fame in her lifetime and was to persist for centuries to come.

73

Full details in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 264–5. For a discussion of the elements of Michelangelo’s manuscript that indicate the poet’s direct involvement in its preparation, see Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 33–5. 75 Le rime della Sig. Vittoria Colonna Marchesana Illustrissima di Pescara. Correte per M. Lodovico Dolce (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, et Fratelli, 1552): see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 266. 76 Of the five further editions published between 1552 and the end of the sixteenth century, three followed Dolce’s format: see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 266–70. 74

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Conclusion Vittoria Colonna died in Rome in February 1547, the same year as Pietro Bembo. Her reputation lived on, however, as did the interest in her work: nine further editions of the Rime were published before the end of the sixteenth century, along with four editions of collected spiritual meditations that included prose works by Colonna.77 Beyond the end of the century, as interest in the genre waned, the frequency of publications dropped off dramatically, although a small but steady stream of new editions has continued into the present day.78 The fame of her friendship with Michelangelo has never really abated, as the two recent exhibitions on that theme illustrate. We might ask ourselves, by way of conclusion, whether the tailing off of interest in a really remarkable and talented poet, who wrote in an age that has continued to benefit from a great deal of scholarly attention, can be attributed not only to the move towards a very different set of lyric conventions, particularly in the post-Romantic era, but also, at least in part, to the great success in marketing Colonna’s public image. This chapter has traced the ways in which her particular public persona was developed through a happy collaboration between life, art and canny editing. The resultant model of secular, pious widowhood and lyric spirituality not only allowed for Colonna’s swift acceptance as a leading literary figure, but also provided a clear and easily adaptable model for subsequent women writers. The problem, it seems, lies in the fact that the model was simply too persuasive, and, in subsequent centuries, such unassailable piety became less attractive as a literary selling point. By failing to contextualise the image and thus recognise its necessity and inevitability in a Renaissance context if Colonna were to have any kind of public presence as a writer, later readers have allowed it to impede their appreciation of the poetry. It is true that the model places limitations on the artistic production to which a male writer was not subjected, but this does not make Vittoria Colonna a lesser writer as a result. Quite the opposite: her unprecedented success in working with these limitations to carve out a space for herself, the first woman to do so in Italy, furnishes us with the ultimate proof of her excellence both as a poet and as a practitioner of the all-toonecessary art of self-fashioning that governed all her writing. Furthermore, the enthusiastic collaboration of editors and publishers in this process should be considered a testament to the wider recognition of her skill, and to a general desire to participate in the creation of a literary image that would allow for the continued publication of her work, to the benefit of all concerned. 77 For bibliographical details of the prose works, see Eva-Maria Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Christo: Introduzione’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pieta 10 (1997), 115–47. 78 Once again, Alan Bullock’s edition of the Rime provides full details, at least of all editions published before 1982: Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 270–80. The most recent editions are Sonetti in morte di Francesco Ferrante d’Avalos Marchese di Pescara, ed. by Tobia R. Toscano (Milan: Mondadori, 1998); and Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, both based on individual manuscripts.

CHAPTER 2

The Influence of Reform Introduction After her widowhood in 1525, as the discussion in Chapter 1 seeks to make clear, Vittoria Colonna did not retreat into silence and private contemplation, despite her initial withdrawal into the convent of San Silvestro immediately following her husband’s death. Instead her literary activity grew in scale and scope, and the network of writers and artists with whom she corresponded spread far beyond her southern context to encompass the whole of the Italian peninsula as well as other European centres.1 No doubt there is a direct correlation between this increase in literary activity, with the accompanying increase in self-confidence that it conferred upon the writer, and the related increase in Colonna’s participation in the meetings and discussions of evangelical religious groups in Naples and later in Rome. While her poetic activity grew and gained direction after 1525 as the manifestation of a uniquely spiritual muse, it is unsurprising that the poet sought companionship and communion on just such spiritual issues in wider society, and notable that she discovered an outlet, via contact with Italian reformers, that was seemingly so perfectly in tune with the tenor of her lyric sensibilities. A close examination of Colonna’s sonnets reveals to the careful reader that the influence of reform thought upon her poetic output is evident even in the earliest, ‘amorous’ poems. What she seems to be attempting, in each individual sonnet and through her own personal and poetic project of spiritual contemplation, is the realisation of a single, pre-existing text: a text defined by and embodied in the writer’s intense faith which is first expressed as love for her husband. Di così nobil fiamma Amor mi cinse ch’essendo morta in me viva l’ardore; né temo novo caldo, ché ’l vigore del primo foco io tutt’altri estinse. Ricco legame al bel giogo m’avinse sì che disdegna umil catena il core;

1 Most significant of Colonna’s foreign correspondents was Marguerite de Navarre in France: on the significance of the letters they exchanged, see Barry Collett, A Long and Troubled Pilgrimage: the Correspondence of Marguerite d’Angoulême and Vittoria Colonna, 1540–1545. Studies in Reformed Theology and History, new series, 6 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2000).

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non più speranza vuol, non più timore; un solo incendio l’arse, un nodo il strinse.2

Although every sonnet encapsulates subtle and beautiful shifts and modulations in tone and theme, each one also attempts to point beyond itself to the divine ‘text’ of Christ and our human and insufficient faith in him, so that the individual poems ask clearly to be read as a cumulative exercise, a single opus in praise of a greater work of art, in line with the Christocentric emphasis of reform thought.3 The early sonnets written in memory of Colonna’s husband d’Avalos can easily be assimilated into this spiritual project, in their awe-inspiring and quasi-divine representation of the poet’s sun, her sole, continually pointing beyond himself to Christ. A le vittorie tue, mio lume eterno, non gli die’ ’l tempo e la stagion favore; la spada, la virtù, l’invitto core fur i ministri tuoi la state e ’l verno. Prudente antiveder, divin governo vinser le forze averse in sì brev’ore che ’l modo a l’alte imprese accrebbe onore non men che l’opre al bel animo interno. Viva gente, real animi alteri, larghi fiumi, erti monti, alme cittadi da l’ardir tuo fur debellate e vinte. Salisti al mondo i più pregiati gradi; or godi in Ciel d’altri trionfi veri, d’altre frondi le tempie ornate e cinte.4

Significantly, although her project is self-perpetuating in its search for the purest expression of faith, the poet’s ultimate aim could be considered to be 2 ‘Love encircled me in such a noble flame / that the heat burns on in me though she is dead; / nor do I fear a new flame, for the heat / of that first fire of mine extinguished all others. / A rich bond ties me to the beautiful yoke / so that my heart disdains any humble chains; / it no longer seeks for hope or fear; / one fire alone burned it and one knot bound it.’ The poem is cited in full in Vittoria Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 6. 3 In an analysis of the poetry of Marguerite de Navarre, Robert Cottrell has indicated Christ’s status as text or word, ‘the Verbum in which the end as well as the beginning of every text is inscribed’. See Robert D. Cottrell, The Grammar of Silence: A Reading of Marguerite de Navarre’s Poetry (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), p. xi. 4 ‘My eternal light, to your victories / neither time nor season gave their favour; / your sword, your virtue and your unswerving heart / served as your ministers both summer and winter. / Prudent foresight, divine governance / overcame your adversaries in such a short time / that the means brought further honour to the great deeds / no less than did your deeds to your inner soul. / Spirited people, high royal souls, / wide rivers, high mountains, noble cities / were weakened and conquered by your ardour. / On earth you rose to the highest ranks; / now in Heaven you enjoy new triumphs, / your

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the end of poetry, in the movement from the physical incarnation of speech back to the spiritual silence of perfect embodiment in Christ. Perhaps, then, where previous critics have failed to uncover the core of Colonna’s lyric enterprise is in underestimating the deep commitment on the part of the poet to working out and perfecting the ultimate ‘poetry of faith’, one that would manage to embody her search for a true union with Christ in a new form of reformed, spiritual canzoniere. While some useful secondary work has been done on Colonna’s sonnets in the context of sixteenth-century Petrarchism, and a number of recent critics have produced fascinating evidence, primarily through unedited letters, of Colonna’s involvement in the Italian reform movement, what is lacking is a sustained appreciation of the vital link between these two facets of her production. An important, but brief, foretaste of the potential for this link was furnished by Carlo Ossola, who in a compelling reading of a small number of Colonna’s sonnets in the light of the theology of the Neapolitan reformer Juan de Valdés, describes her as ‘the most sensitive and faithful interpreter of the spirituality cultivated in the Viterbo circle’.5 What the quotation implies is that Colonna’s Petrarchism cannot be disassociated from her role as a key member of the group of spirituali whose meetings in Viterbo in the 1540s coincided with the production of some of her most openly evangelical poetry. In order to come to a better understanding of the nature of Vittoria Colonna’s spiritualised Petrarchism it is necessary to trace the development of her reform thought, from its very earliest genesis in Naples and on the court of Ischia to the final years of her life spent in close contact and collaboration with the circle of spirituali who gathered around Cardinal Reginald Pole in Rome and Viterbo. In particular, one should consider the role of poetry in this religious formation and try to take account of the texts to which Colonna was exposed, the language that she heard and learned to use as a member of a close and elite group of like-minded men and women. By means of this kind of careful analysis, it is possible to come to a better understanding of the role that Colonna’s poetic muse played in the exploration of her reformed faith, and far more broadly, the role that a certain kind of lyric language may have played in the development and dissemination, in an Italian context, of some of the key ideas of the Italian evangelicals. This chapter aims to initiate that process of analysis. Naples: The Early Years During the early years of her married life, when, in the absence of her husband, Colonna kept company with his aunt Costanza D’Avalos and frequented the court on the island of Ischia, she was first exposed to a particularly Neapolitan brow crowned and encircled with other laurels.’ In Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 6. 5 Juan de Valdés, Lo Evangelio di San Matteo, ed. by Carlo Ossola (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985), p. 82.

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current of religious thought that has been viewed as the direct antecedent of Italian evangelism.6 It is notable that Colonna’s interest in reform appears not to be have been engendered by groups of religious ‘reformers’ in the first instance, but rather, and most significantly for the subsequent development of her own kind of lyric spirituality, by a group of individuals united by their literary and poetic aspirations. At the court on Ischia she encountered a number of members of the Neapolitan Accademia Pontaniana – men such as Jacopo Sannazaro, Egidio da Viterbo (c.1469–1532), Scipione Capece (c.1485–1551), Teofilo Folengo (1491–1544) and his brother Giambattista Folengo (1490–1559) – and through them gained access to a particular brand of Christian humanism, coloured by strong neo-Platonic influences.7 The singular religious sensibilities of the members of the Accademia Pontaniana, and their affinities with the later developments in reform thought, underline clearly the manner in which a belief in one of the key doctrinal ideas of the Reformation, sola fide or justification by faith alone, can be arrived at via quite orthodox, Augustinian and neo-Platonic routes, and without direct contact with Protestant literature.8 The influence of Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), active at the court of Alfonso d’Aragona from 1435, upon the religious thought of the members of the Accademia Pontaniana has been well established, although his relationship with the Neapolitan Academy was often stormy.9 Valla was interested in revitalising theology through a classical, humanistic approach, returning to the biblical texts and the early church fathers in Latin and Greek. His emphasis on grace accorded by the generosity of God, irrespective of mankind’s merit, and his open criticism of the papacy, led to a heresy trial in 1444, and he can be considered to have prefigured in his own work on free will the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Specifically, in the De libero arbitrio, composed in around 1444, Valla presented a position on divine predestination, 6 Concetta Ranieri, ‘Premesse umanistiche alla religiosità di Vittoria Colonna’, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 32 (1996), 531–48. 7 Ranieri describes this group as a ‘scuola religiosa’: see ‘Premesse umanistiche’, pp. 533–4. 8 Representative of the possibility of a journey from early sixteenth-century neo-Platonic Christian humanism in Naples to justification by faith alone is Cardinal Girolamo Seripando: see A. Marranzini, ‘Il problema della giustificazione nell’evoluzione del pensiero di Seripando’, in Geronimo Seripando e la chiesa del suo tempo. Nel V centenario della nascita, ed. by A. Cestaro (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997), pp. 227–69; also more generally on these links and their connection to Colonna’s religious thought, Concetta Ranieri, ‘Imprestiti platonici nella formazione religiosa di Vittoria Colonna’, in Presenze eterodosse nel Viterbese tra Quattro e Cinquecento, ed. by Vincenzo De Caprio and Concetta Ranieri (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2000), pp. 193–212. 9 On Valla, see Salvatore I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1972); Charles Trinkaus, ‘Lorenzo Valla as Instaurator of the Theory of Humanism’, Hellas: A Journal of Poetry and the Humanities 7 (1996), 75–101; Trinkaus, ‘Lorenzo Valla on the Problem of Speaking about the Trinity’, Journal of the History of Ideas 57 (1996), 27–53.

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running counter to individual free will, which earned the explicit approval of both Luther and Calvin later in the Reformation.10 What the example of Valla illustrates most compellingly is the existence in Italy, well before the Reformation threw such a blinding light on issues of scriptural interpretation, of a form of indigenous reform-minded spirituality that was not simply a reaction to the ultra-alpine events of the early sixteenth century, nor was it explicitly aimed at tackling papal and ecclesiastical corruption. A tendency to view the Italian reform movements of the sixteenth century too narrowly in relation to the developments of the Reformation has resulted in a lack of attention to such indigenous, humanistic roots.11 The position of the members of the Accademia Pontaniana on key theological issues was no doubt less controversial than that adopted by Lorenzo Valla. An important figure in tracing the more subtle links between the Pontaniana and reform thought is the academy’s principal literary giant in this period, the Neapolitan poet Jacopo Sannazaro. Not only did Sannazaro pass on to Colonna the poetic mantel that confirmed her status as a Neapolitan Petrarchist of the highest order; he may well have also been responsible for introducing her to a particular kind of mystical, reforming spirituality that he himself was exposed to in France between 1501 and 1505. During his French sojourn Sannazaro had contact with Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (c.1450–1536) and the circle of Meaux, reformers who came to have a great influence on Marguerite de Navarre, the French king’s sister and a close correspondent of Colonna.12 An increase in the religious spirit of Sannazaro’s poetic output after this date would seem to point to the pull of the religious mysticism that he found among the group at Meaux, and it is undeniable that his religious poetry had a clear influence on Colonna’s own poetic output.13 Sannazaro’s potentially close links to the early fomentation of evangelism in Naples (via his contact 10

See Charles Trinkaus, ‘The Problem of Free Will in the Renaissance and the Reformation’, Journal of the History of Ideas 10 (1949), 51–62 (pp. 59–61). 11 On this tendency, Collett is persuasive: ‘In the past this gravitational pull of the Reformation debates has dominated and sometimes distorted the study of Catholic reform movements.’ See A Long and Troubled Pilgrimage, pp. 2–17 (at p. 4). 12 Although no letters are extant from before 1540, it seems likely that the correspondence between Colonna and Marguerite de Navarre began much earlier in their lives, possibly even deriving from Sannazaro’s French sojourn: see Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, in Ragioneri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, pp. 97–105 (p. 101). On Marguerite’s links with Lefèvre d’Etaples, see Henry Heller, ‘Marguerite de Navarre and the Reformers of Meaux’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 33 (1971), 271–310. 13 On Sannazaro’s increasing poetic spirituality, see Carlo Vecce, Iacopo Sannazaro in Francia. Scoperte di codici all’inizio del XVI secolo (Padua: Antenore, 1988), pp. 47–9; and ‘Maiora numina. La prima poesia religiosa e la Lammentatio di Sannazaro’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 43 (1991), 49–94. A copy of Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis that seemingly belonged to Colonna is now in the British Library, catalogue number G10031. Colonna expressed her admiration for the older poet in two sonnets, ‘Poi che tornata sei, anima bella’, and ‘Se a quella gloriosa e bella etate’, in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 210–12.

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with Girolamo Seripando, for example) deserve closer scholarly attention than they have been afforded to date. Perhaps one could interpret as recognition of these links among the wider community of evangelicals the fact that Paolo Manuzio, the Venetian publisher most closely concerned with the dissemination of works by Italian reformers, was responsible for the publication of the poet’s Latin works in 1535.14 There is evidence to suggest that after Sannazaro’s death in 1530 the links between academicians and evangelicals became more pronounced and established themselves closer to home on Neapolitan soil. Scipione Capece, who became the academy’s president in 1532, held meetings at his house that are recorded by Minturno in his work De poeta (1559). These meetings involved individuals who also came to be closely associated with the circle around the Spanish religious exile and mystic Juan de Valdés (c.1500–1541), resident in Naples from 1535, notably men such as Marcantonio Flaminio (1498–1550) and Pietro Vermigli (1500–1562).15 Such crossover between the two groups of academicians and evangelicals indicates the fruitful crossfertilisation of essentially Augustinian intellectual and spiritual trends in Naples at the time, an interaction that was not to last beyond 1542 when the academy was censured by the Inquisition and ceased to be active until the early nineteenth century.16 Given this context of fertile intellectual and theological traditions to which Colonna was exposed in her early married life on Ischia and in Naples, it seems highly likely that she was herself led to contemplation of some of the issues surrounding faith, works and merit through her contact with the literary figures of the Accademia Pontaniana including Sannazaro himself, and thus the crucial link between Colonna’s own literary and spiritual interests was established early in her adult life.17 It was no doubt this early contact with new spiritual ideas that led her subsequently to establish contact with the group that formed in Naples around Valdés, a group that included many men who were later to become leading lights in the movement for reform in Italy. Valdés arrived in Naples to work as an archivist for the city after being forced to leave Spain under suspicion of heresy. Although it remains in doubt whether or not Colonna ever met Valdés himself, her friendship with a key member of the group, the Capuchin preacher Bernardino Ochino (c.1487–1564), is well established, and other individuals who were in Naples at this time, men such as Marcantonio Flaminio, Pier Paolo Vergerio (1498–1565), Pietro Vermigli, 14

Gigliola Fragnito alludes to the clear potential for links between Sannazaro and early Neapolitan reform thought, and provides a full bibliography, in her article ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, in Ragioneri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo. 15 See Ranieri, ‘Premesse umanistiche’, pp. 537–8. 16 On the Augustinian ‘atmosfera culturale’ in Naples at this time, see Ranieri, ‘Vittoria Colonna e la riforma’, p. 92. 17 On the literary figures who frequented the court on Ischia, see Amalia Giordano, La dimora di Vittoria Colonna a Napoli (Naples: Tipografia Melfi e Joele, 1906); Therault, Un Cénacle humaniste de la renaissance; R. Colpapietra, Costanza d’Avalos e il mito d’Ischia (Naples: Napoli Nobilissima, 1989).

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and Pietro Carnesecchi (1508–1567), were to reappear with her in Viterbo in the 1540s.18 In essence, Valdés’s theological system is defined by its radical simplicity and its stress on interiority, in an essentially non-systematic synthesis of elements that has been aptly described as a ‘spiritualità sfumata’.19 He considered the Bible to be the sole source of Christian knowledge, and the duty of the Christian that of coming to a clear understanding of its message through prayer, contemplation and the illumination of the Holy Spirit (compared to the light of the sun which guides us).20 This basic act of ‘consideration’ (one of his best known works was published in Italian as Le cento e dieci divine considerazioni21) is a personal process, and secondary interpretations of the Bible, whether textual or oral, are seen as derivative and therefore an impediment to true faith.22 Such an exclusive focus bypassed the need for intermediaries in the form of the writers of the early church, or the complicated processes of repentance and penance that Catholicism demanded. Indeed, it is only the shortest of steps from Valdesian divina considerazione to the Lutheran doctrine of sola fide that dominated debates about the Reformation, and it was this step that many of Valdés’s acolytes from this period were later to make, a move that was to bring the unwelcome attentions of the Inquisition onto some.23

18 The general critical opinion is that Colonna knew or met Valdés in Naples in the early 1530s: see, for example, Ranieri, ‘Premesse umanistiche’, pp. 537–8. Massimo Firpo maintains, on the other hand, that Colonna’s Valdesian tone is more likely derived from exposure to the sermons of Ochino and later contact with members of the Viterbo group of spirituali: see Massimo Firpo, ‘Vittoria Colonna, Giovanni Morone e gli “spirituali”’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 24 (1988), 211–61 (p. 212). 19 The phrase is Fragnito’s, in ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, in Ragioneri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, p. 99. 20 On Valdés’s theology as the earliest manifestation of evangelism in Italy, see Philip M. J. McNair, ‘Beneficium Christi as Index to the Language of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism: Assumption and Actuality’, in The Languages of Literature in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Peter Hainsworth et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 257–70. 21 Juan de Valdés, Le cento e dieci divine considerazioni, ed. by Edmondo Cione (Milan: Fratelli Bocca, 1944). 22 See José Nieto, Juan de Valdés and the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1970), especially pp. 188–91; also Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy, trans. by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 43 (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), pp. 63–94. 23 Pietro Carnesecchi, present in Naples and later in Viterbo, was tried for heresy three times (in 1546, 1557–1559 and 1566–1567) and eventually put to death: an extract of the final trial record is cited in Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara, ed. by Ferrero and Müller, pp. 331–42. See also the complete trial records published in I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557–1567). Edizione critica, I: Il processo sotto Paolo IV e Pio IV (1557–1561); II: Il processo sotto Pio V (1566–1567), I: Guigno 1566–ottobre 1566; II: Novembre 1566–gennaio 1567; III: Gennaio 1567–agosto 1567, ed. by Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto. Collectanea

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The circle that surrounded Valdés in Naples was a devoted and select group of aristocratic individuals who met to discuss theological concepts and biblical interpretations, and also seemingly to hold religious services based on their beliefs, united in their admiration for their charismatic leader. Pietro Carnesecchi retrospectively described his involvement with this group in the most ecstatic terms: he had been ‘introduced into God’s realm’, Valdés himself acting as one of the ‘elected and blessed by God’ who through his teaching demonstrated to his followers their own status as members of God’s elect.24 Membership of this group also brought with it various responsibilities. Valdés’s theology is essentially evangelical, and maintains that the doctrine of salvation by faith in the Atonement is the essence of the gospel. The need to evangelise, to spread news of the truth and thus welcome more souls into the circle of the santi eletti, is a fundamental element of this theology. In the Diálogo de doctrina christiana (written in 1528–1529), the speaker, an archbishop who has been asked to clarify the complexities of faith for two listeners, explains that the Holy Spirit endows man with certain gifts, some of which (wisdom, science and counsel, for example) should be used specifically for the purpose of teaching the word of God. In order to evangelise effectively, however, a Christian must be in possession of a ‘developed faith’, an implicit trust in God to fulfil his word. Such faith is experienced, we are told, as a ‘living fire’ in the heart, which compels the faithful to hasten after God, drawing closer to him day by day.25 Such faith also allows the Christian to recognise the nature of love as a Godly duty, not a neo-Platonic drive towards the divine but a far more humble attempt on the part of man to obey God’s will as it is expressed in the Ten Commandments.26 The command to love one’s neighbour is interpreted on one level as the need to counsel and teach the ignorant in holy matters. On another level, in order to experience this general love for one’s fellows, the individual should experience a single, deep and profound human attachment, which will ignite within him the evangelical fire of conviction in the word of God. The impact of this tantalisingly simple theology upon the thought and writing of Colonna can be traced in a variety of ways. Most notably, Valdés’s description of the true way to knowledge of God via ‘incorporation’ into Christ’s body as a means ultimately to escape from the bonds of earthly flesh, finds clear echoes in the Christocentric emphasis of Colonna’s Petrarchism. Fido pensier, se intrar non pòi sovente entro ’l cor di Gesù, basciaLi fore

Archivi Vaticani 43 (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 1998, 2000). Other members of the group left Italy to avoid prosecution. 24 Oddone Ortolani, Pietro Carnesecchi (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1963), p. 125; p. 202. 25 Juan de Valdés, Two Catechisms, ed. by José C. Nieto, trans. by William B. and Carol D. Jones, 2nd edn (Lawrence, KS: Coronado, 1993), esp. pp. 186–91. 26 Valdés, Two Catechisms, p. 27.

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il sacro lembo, o pur senti il Su’odore; VolaLi intorno ognor vivo ed ardente.27

The poet’s sense of the evangelical impact of her poetic enterprise is also significant, indicating her awareness that, even as she edges towards an increasingly reformed understanding of the role of faith in salvation, she reserves an active role for poetry in demonstrating, to herself and others, the nature of a new kind of personal and communal illumination: ‘Sì ch’io scriva ad altrui quel ch’ei sostenne.’28 A further way in which Colonna’s poetry carries the impression of a Valdesian theology is in the treatment of doubt, privileged by Valdés as a marker of the true Christian, who is troubled by his imagination and by uncertainty and therefore comes to his faith with difficulty. Without doubt, according to Valdés, faith cannot be consolidated, and Colonna appears to adopt this position, poetically well adapted to the humility of the woman writer, in depicting herself as victim of ‘i dubbi del servile freddo timore’, and expressing envy of those ‘anime elette’ who have arrived at a more complete and optimistic faith than she can yet achieve, primary among them her close friend Reginald Pole: Tu per gli aperti spaziosi campi Del ciel camini, e non più nebbia o pietra Ritarda o ingombra il tuo spedito corso. Io, grave d’anni, aghiaccio; or tu ch’avampi D’alta fiamma celeste, umil m’impetra Dal comun padre eterno omai soccorso.29

As stated previously, it is generally accepted that, although uncertainty exists as to the exact nature of Colonna’s relationship with Valdés himself, she was closely connected to the Capuchin preacher Bernardino Ochino, who acted as one of the principal means by which such Valdesian flavours were conveyed into her poetry as well as into a wider public forum. In 1534 Colonna together with Caterina Cibo was instrumental in persuading Pope Clement VII to allow the Capuchins to remain at their convent of S. Eufamia in Rome, and she later went on to work assiduously to defend the order against accusations of heresy and restore their reputation in the eyes of the later Pope Paul III.30 Despite Colonna’s protestations, however, Ochino’s sermons can be considered to 27 ‘Faithful spirit, if you cannot often enter / within the heart of Jesus then embrace from without / his sacred hem, or else inhale his perfume; / fly near him every hour more charged with love’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 105). The full sonnet is also cited in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 115. 28 ‘So that I may write down for others all that he suffered’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 57). 29 ‘You walk upon the open spacious fields / of heaven, and no shadow or rock / can now delay or obstruct your swift progress./ I, burdened by my years, am frozen here; therefore you / who are aflame with divine fire, pray humbly on my behalf / for help from our common father’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 134–5). 30 See Tacchi-Venturi, Vittoria Colonna Fautrice della riforma cattolica.

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represent the vocalisation of a number of the key spiritual positions illuminated by Valdés in his written works, and they were in addition famed in their own right as so inspirational and compelling that he built up an eager following and was much in demand as a preacher across Italy.31 Colonna’s relationship to the monk was widely perceived to be close, to the extent that she was called on by her friends to act as an intermediary in influencing Ochino’s preaching itinerary. In 1539, for example, Bembo wrote to Colonna asking her to use her influence on Ochino in order to persuade the preacher to travel to Venice. The ploy was clearly successful, and Bembo wrote again shortly afterwards, an enthusiastic letter in which he describes the general positive reaction to the preacher in that city.32 No doubt both Bembo and Colonna responded to the particular literary and evocative register employed by Ochino in his sermons, which endowed his words with a lyric quality that profoundly moved and excited even his most educated audiences. Colonna’s close connection to the preacher continued until 1542, when Ochino chose exile over a summons to Rome to face questions regarding his suspected heresy. Although Colonna’s brother Ascanio was involved in helping Ochino to leave Italy, furnishing him with horses, servants and money for the journey, she was careful to distance herself at this point from her former friend, and went so far as to write to a member of the Holy Office, Cardinal Marcello Cervini, apparently in deep embarrassment at the receipt of a copy of Ochino’s Prediche published in Geneva.33 No doubt Ochino’s apostasy felt like a betrayal to someone whose own belief in sola fide at no time led to contemplation of a break with Rome, someone, that is, who arrived at such belief via the essentially Augustinian and neo-Platonic routes mapped out in the preceding discussion and therefore failed, or perhaps refused, to recognise the direction in which they led.34 31

On Ochino see Karl Benrath, Bernardino Ochino of Siena: A Contribution towards the History of the Reformation (London: James Nisbet, 1876), esp. pp. 287–8 on his friendship with Colonna; R. H. Bainton, Bernardino Ochino esule e riformatore senese del ’500, 1487–1563 (Florence: Sansoni, 1940). Frederic Church claims, completely without substantiation, that Valdés in fact selected the topics for Ochino’s sermons in San Giovanni Maggiore in Naples, writing them on slips of paper and sending them to the preacher the night before: see Church, The Italian Reformers 1534–1564 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 53. 32 See Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 158–9; p. 169. These letters were included in the 1552 edition of Bembo’s published correspondence, which is an interesting editorial choice given that Ochino had by this stage been officially branded a heretic: see Simoncelli, ‘Pietro Bembo e l’evangelismo italiano’, p. 4. 33 See Concetta Bianca, ‘Marcello Cervini e Vittoria Colonna’, Lettere italiane 45 (1993), 427–39; Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Gli “spirituali” e la fuga di Bernardino Ochino’, Rivista Storica Italiana 84 (1972), 777–813; Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet, pp. 132–3. 34 Benedetto Croce suggested that it was a form of denial on the part of the spirituali to refuse to recognise the essential incompatibility of doctrinal reform with the demands of the Catholic establishment: see ‘Il Beneficio di Cristo’, in Poeti e scrittori del pieno e tardo rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1945).

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Rome and Viterbo: The Spirituali and the Beneficio di Cristo The time spent in Naples in the 1520s and early 1530s, during which her increasingly evangelically flavoured spirituality was engendered and developed through contact with the intellectuals of the Accademia Pontaniana, with Bernardino Ochino and possibly with Juan de Valdés, seems to have allowed for Colonna’s firm establishment as a key member of a group that would continue to support and influence her until her death in 1547. It was through the individuals in this Neapolitan circle that she same to know Reginald Pole, the English cardinal at the centre of the so-called ecclesia viterbiensis, the group of spirituali who met in Rome and Viterbo in the years leading up to the first convocation of the Council of Trent, and the one person who had perhaps the most direct and profound influence on Colonna’s personal spiritual development.35 The group of spirituali, many of whom had been present in Naples a decade earlier, appears to have held regular meetings in Viterbo after 1541, when Pole was sent there (and Colonna herself moved to the convent of Santa Caterina in the same town), in which lay sermons were delivered, and discussions were conducted concerning the various articles of faith that reformers were in the process of questioning and repositioning. Colonna appears to have been an active and influential member of Pole’s spiritual circle, seemingly the only woman present at the meetings in Viterbo, whose participation was welcomed by her colleagues no doubt in recognition of her profound spirituality and considerable status as a woman of letters, as well as her wide and powerful contacts. Illustrative of the importance that was accorded to her participation in discussions of religion and reform is the fact that in 1536 Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542) wrote his treatise Del libero arbitrio in Italian and dedicated it to Colonna, indicating a desire to draw her and women like her to the centre of theological debates.36 Similarly, Contarini’s later controversial Epistola de iustificatione (1541) was circulated by Bembo within a group of influential reformers that included Colonna, proof of the status that she was accorded by that date.37 An illuminating study of the 35

Brief information on Reginald Pole’s life and works is contained in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 46, ed. by Sidney Lee (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1896), pp. 35–46, although the author is quick to dismiss any suggestion of Pole’s unorthodox religious views. See also Christopher Hare, Men and Women of the Italian Reformation (London: Stanley Paul, 1914), pp. 35–44; Mayer, Reginald Pole; Mayer, Cardinal Pole in European Context: A via media in the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2000); Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole; Paolo Simoncelli, Il caso Reginald Pole. Eresia e santità nelle polemiche religiose del Cinquecento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1977). Pole’s complete correspondence has recently been published as The Correspondence of Reginald Pole, ed. by Thomas F. Mayer, 3 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002–2004). 36 See Fragnito, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, in Ragioneri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, p. 98. 37 See Adriana Valerio, ‘Bibbia, ardimento, coscienza femminile: Vittoria Colonna’, in Cristianesimo al femminile. Donne protagoniste nella storia delle Chiese (Naples: M. D’Auria, 1990), pp. 151–70 (p. 163).

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exchange of letters between Colonna and Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509– 1580) reveals a good deal about the nature of her participation in evangelical activity, helping to the correct the long-held assumption that she was a passive recipient of the ideas of great men, lacking sufficient understanding to be considered a key player in the activities of the Viterbo group.38 Most significantly, Colonna’s letters to Morone reveal her intense involvement in the dissemination of texts and ideas and her enthusiastic drive to convert others (including notably her brother Ascanio) to the cause of individual spiritual renewal that she and her colleagues fervently believed was the objective of all their work. A document that furnishes us with a certain amount of information about the extent of Colonna’s conversion to a reformed spirituality that included a belief in sola fide in this period is the court record for Pietro Carnesecchi’s third trial for heresy in 1566–1567, during which he was questioned at length about her beliefs and asked to comment on the nature of the friendship between Colonna and Reginald Pole. Colonna had been dead by this time for nearly two decades, and the suggestion is that the prosecutors were collating information on her activities in order to discredit other members of the group, notably (although also posthumously) Pole himself.39 Carnesecchi equivocates about the extent of Colonna’s attachment to the doctrines of reform, stating that he never witnessed the discussions between Colonna and Pole that took place in Viterbo: ‘neither I nor anyone else could know the details of their discussions, for they spoke together without arbiters or witnesses’.40 When pushed by his inquisitors to reveal more, he mentions her attachment to the doctrine of sola fide, as might be expected, yet tempers this statement with an assertion of Colonna’s equal interest in performing good works: I do not remember that we spoke of or discussed any other dogma with that lady than that of justification by faith, and nor could I say to what extent she held to that belief, but suffice it to say that she attributed much to grace and faith in her arguments. Yet on the other hand, in her life and actions she demonstrated her high esteem for works, giving alms and offering charity to all.41

38

Firpo, ‘Vittoria Colonna, Giovanni Morone e gli “spirituali”’. See also Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti. 39 Sergio Pagano believes that a collection of letters discovered in the archives of the Sant’Uffizio, from Colonna to various recipients including Pole and Marguerite de Navarre, was another part of this same inquisitional process of collating evidence with which to condemn Pole and Cardinal Giovanni Morone for heresy: Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, pp. 33–6. 40 ‘[I] particolari di lor ragionamenti non poteva intendere nè io nè altri, perché parlavano insieme senza arbitri e senza testimoni.’ Cited in Colonna, Carteggio, p. 332. 41 ‘Non mi ricordo che si sia parlato, nè trattato tra noi et quella signora d’altro dogma che della giustificazione per la fede et nè anche questo saprei dire a punto con che circonstantie ella se tenesse, ma basta che l’attribuiva molto alla gratia et alla fede in suoi ragionamenti. Et d’altra parte nella vita e nelle attioni sue mostrava di tenere

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Significantly, Carnesecchi also mentions that he has picked up the resonance of a reformed spirituality in Colonna’s poetry: ‘I believe I have understood, on reading a number of her sonnets, that she believed absolutely in predestination, although I certainly could not state in what manner.’42 It is perhaps no coincidence that it is precisely in the period in which this trial took place that the publication of Colonna’s works began to tail off, suggesting either that the authorities moved to suppress further editions of the Rime, or perhaps more simply that publishers and editors themselves became less inclined to deal with the output of an author whose credentials were no longer above suspicion.43 Despite Carnesecchi’s equivocations, however, it is clear that, through a gradual process of accumulated exposure to the thought and works of Neapolitan academicians and reformers, and with the particular guidance provided by Reginald Pole, Colonna had by the 1540s moved well into a doctrinal grey area. Some critics have even speculated that it was only her death in early 1547, just after the doctrine of sola fide was officially condemned as heretical at Trent, which prevented her from being prosecuted by the Inquisition.44 What must at all times be born in mind, of course, is that while in retrospect the dividing line between heresy and orthodoxy may appear to be well established, in practice, for a considerable period in the sixteenth century even an outright belief in sola fide was not considered to constitute a challenge to Catholicism. It was not schism that was sought so ardently by groups such as the spirituali in Viterbo, but compromise, community, and most importantly, religious renewal and reinvigoration. As the discussion in the Introduction to this volume seeks to make clear, it is well recognised that the production and circulation of vernacular texts played a central role in the activities of reformers in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century. In order to be able more accurately to insert Colonna’s poetry and prose writings within the parameters of this phenomenon, it seems useful to undertake a closer analysis of the evangelical text most central to the Viterbo group, as indeed to the movement for reform in Italy more generally, the Beneficio di Cristo. Although not published until 1542 or 1543, there is gran conto dell’opere facendo elemosine et usando charità universalmente con tutti’: Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 332–3. 42 ‘[M]i pare havere compreso, legendo qualche suo sonetto, che ella tenesse la predestinatione assolutamente, ma non so dire a ponto in che modo’: Colonna, Carteggio, p. 333. 43 On the decrease in editions of Colonna’s Rime from the 1560s, see Bianco, ‘Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso alle Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, pp. 278–80. 44 See Carlo De Frede, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il suo processo inquisitoriale postumo’, Atti della Accademia Pontaniana 37 (1988), 251–83. It should be noted that Frede’s article rests on the assumption, for which no evidence has yet been found, that documents relating to a trial of Colonna, planned but not executed, reside in the archives of the Santo Ufficio. Gigliola Fragnito believes that it was the Colonna family’s powerful European connections that protected Vittoria Colonna from trial: Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Vittoria Colonna e l’Inquisizione’, Benedictina 37 (1990), 157–72 (p. 160).

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evidence to suggest that a manuscript of the Beneficio was in fact present in Viterbo prior to publication, in 1540 or 1541, when its editor Marcantonio Flaminio was working on the text, with the input of his colleagues in Viterbo to whom he showed the unpublished manuscript.45 Thomas Mayer has argued convincingly for an understanding of the composition of the Beneficio di Cristo as ‘a collective effort with deep and broad roots’, one that closely involved Reginald Pole as effective leader of the group in Viterbo.46 While the parallels between this outspoken evangelical tract and Colonna’s subtle and polished Petrarchan production may not be immediately apparent, there are a number of ways in which a close examination of the style and message of the Beneficio cast an interesting light on aspects of Colonna’s Rime and their evangelical content, and help us to a better understanding of the potential role of vernacular literature in disseminating access to a renewed and newly invigorated faith. First published anonymously, the Beneficio di Cristo was at the time of its publication attributed to an unknown Benedictine monk, Benedetto Fontanino or Benedetto da Mantova. Flaminio’s involvement as the text’s first editor or even co-author only came to light subsequently and was never entirely clarified, although Carnesecchi at his trial openly allied his old colleague with the text. The 1543 edition, published by Bindoni in Venice, was presented in a modest and inelegant format, intended to reflect its unworldly content.47 Authorial anonymity was maintained, the preface stated, in order to protect the reader from any influence the author’s name might have upon them (such a claim immediately raises the question of whether the implied author here is Flaminio, rather than the less influential Fontanino).48 From its very first publication, the text excited a great deal of attention and comment, appearing as it did shortly after a period of particular upheaval and a shifting of boundaries in the negotiations between the church and the reformers in Italy. Juan de Valdés died in 1541, Gasparo Contarini in 1542, shortly after his apparent failure at the Diet of Regensburg to achieve a compromise over the doctrine of justification by faith or good works.49 Cardinal Gianmatteo Giberti (1495–1543) followed in 1543, and thus a number of key advocates of conciliation within the College 45

Details of the publication and circulation of the Beneficio di Cristo are contained in ‘Nota critica’ to Da Mantova, Il Beneficio di Cristo, pp. 469–98. This edition also contains useful annotations indicating scriptural and other sources. See also Tommaso Bozza, Nuovi studi sulla Riforma in Italia. I. Il Beneficio di Cristo (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 1976); Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, particularly the chapter entitled ‘Valdés, Viterbo, and the ‘Beneficio di Cristo’’, pp. 69–88. 46 Mayer, Reginald Pole, pp. 119–22. Mayer points out, among other similarities, the large degree of overlap between Pole’s De unitate (1535–1536) and the Beneficio. 47 The 1543 edition was the second edition of the text: a first edition was published, again in Venice, in late 1542 or early 1543 (see Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, p. 76). 48 Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 469. 49 See on Contarini, Elisabeth G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). For a full and careful

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of Cardinals were removed in a brief space of time. In addition, Bernardino Ochino and Pietro Vermigli fled Italy in fear for their lives in 1542, and in the same period the Council of Trent was finally convened for the first time while the Sant’Uffizio was instituted in Rome.51 The publication of the Beneficio was thus timely in the best and worst possible ways, exciting the immediate attention and hostility of the authorities, whilst benefiting from the increased publicity that this inevitably provoked. Copies of the book seem to have sold quickly before it appeared on the first Index of Prohibited Books in 1549.52 Of course the interest generated by the work was not limited to sympathisers. In 1544 a Dominican theologian, Ambrogio Catarino Politi (c.1484–1553), published an attack on an early draft of the text that he had studied, which condemned the presumptive speculation on matters of faith by non-theologians, and undertook an exhaustive, pointby-point refutation of its central propositions as well as condemning its overly literary qualities.53 This work constitutes one of the first concerted attempts to respond to evangelical developments at the level of theological argument, a move towards recognising the dire need to define and clarify the parameters of Catholic doctrine that was taken further at the Council of Trent. What is especially interesting about Catarino’s text is the recognition that it shares a basic frame of reference with the Beneficio. It is only the writer’s emphasis (for example on the central issue of justification) that has shifted, a seemingly small shift that in fact denotes a massive gulf in ideology.54 Various contemporary

analysis of Contarini’s activities at Regensburg and their after-effects, see Mayer, Reginald Pole, pp. 103–13. 50 On Cardinal Giberti, see Adriano Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G. M. Giberti (1495–1543) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969). 51 For a summary of this sequence of changes, see Silvano Cavazza, ‘Libri in volgare e propaganda eterodossa: Venezia 1543–1547’, in Libri, idee e sentimenti religiosi nel Cinquecento italiano. Istituto di studi rinascimentali Ferrara (Ferrara: Panini, 1987), pp. 9–28 (p. 9). 52 P. P. Vergerio, Il catalogo de libri, li quali nuovamente nele mese di Maggio nel anno presente 1549 sono stati condonnati... e aggiunto... un indicio e discorso del Vergerio (n.p., 1549). Cited in Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, p. 74. 53 Mayer, Reginald Pole, pp. 121–3. The text is Ambrogio Catharino, Compendio d’errori et inganni Luterani, contenuti in un Libretto, senza nome de l’Autore, intitolato Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Cristo crocifisso (Rome: Ne la Contrada del Pellegrino, 1544) (cited in its entirety in Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, pp. 345–422). Catharino dedicated another work, the Speculum Haereticorum, to Vittoria Colonna in 1540, and it has been conjectured that it was Colonna who first gave him a copy of the text of the Beneficio. See Adriano Prosperi and Carlo Ginzburg, Giochi di Pazienza: Un seminario sul “Beneficio di Cristo” (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), pp. 69–70. 54 See Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, pp. 87–8, and Mayer, Reginald Pole, p. 122.

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sources also mention that Flaminio wrote a response to Catarino’s attack, but was dissuaded from publishing it by the ever prudent and cautious Pole.55 The immediacy and lyricism of the language of the Beneficio are doubtless two of the main factors contributing to its great popularity following publication, as well as the tightness and economy of its argument and the brisk and urgent pace at which it moves. Reginald Pole wrote a treatise on preaching (now lost) that apparently recommended just such stylistic immediacy in the adoption of a straightforward, non-scholastic language that allowed the gospel to do its own work.56 John O’Malley has explored the techniques of epideictic rhetoric employed by orators at the papal court in the early sixteenth century, in a study which sheds considerable light on the tradition of persuasive religious argumentation on which the Beneficio seemingly draws and which it channels to a new end.57 In the papal context, the ‘display’ qualities of epideictic, which rest upon an assumption of a consonance of views between audience and orator, were employed to the end of moving the listeners ‘to wonder, to love, to admiration, and to praise’.58 Rather than seeking to explain or expound the mysteries of faith, which are essentially inexplicable and should remain so, the orator through the techniques of praise and celebration of the enormity of God’s love, including broad use of exempla and comparisons (in this case, examples from the scriptures, and comparison with the Christian’s worldly experience), attempts to lead his audience to rapturous contemplation of the divine mystery. His threefold aim is to focus on the great truths in a way that will excite wonder and gratitude and that appears relevant to the lives of his listeners so as to inspire the desire for imitation.59 Thus the general emphasis of such orations is positive and life-affirming, stressing the redemption of man who, despite his lowly state, is raised to a position of dignity through Christ’s most perfect gift: ‘factus est Deus homo, ut homo fierit deus’.60 In much the same way, the author of the Beneficio presents his text vividly and with great passion and uses vibrant analogies to bring the theological message closer to the understanding of his readers, inviting them to share with him directly in the celebration of salvation through Christ: ‘let us run into his arms with the steps of living faith, as he summons us with the cry: “Come to me all you who hunger and I will renew you”’.61 The image of 55

Carnesecchi mentions this work in his trial testimony (see ‘Estratto del processo di Pietro Carnesecchi’, p. 193), as does Vergerio in his Catalogo cited above (see Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, p. 95). 56 Mayer, Reginald Pole, p. 124. 57 John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c.1450–1521 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979). 58 O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome, p. 70. 59 O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome, p. 124. 60 Cited in O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome, p. 150. 61 ‘[C]orriamo con li passi della viva fede a lui nelle braccia, il quale ci invita gridando: “Venite a me tutti voi che siete affannati e aggravati, e io vi recrearò”’: Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 19. The passage is adapted from Matthew 11:28.

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Christ triumphantly shouting his message of hope out into the world seems to epitomise evangelical optimism, the fervent belief in the possibility of a new beginning within the Catholic Church that so many reform sympathisers echo in their own writings. Thus the Beneficio too is imbued with an unshakable optimism and a belief in mankind’s essential dignity and worth. Silvana Seidel Menchi has pointed out the way in which the positive evangelical message of works such as the Beneficio is conveyed through the constant repetition of key phrases and words such as ‘grace’, ‘merit’ and ‘justification’. Such concepts are never fully explicated, in keeping with the reformers’ perceived need for coded messages, understandable only by the initiate and sympathetic, but their power is realised through the hammering insistence with which they are cited.62 A close reading of the Beneficio (which reveals the author’s knowledge of the work of Luther, Calvin and Valdés, the influence of Benedictine spirituality as well as the scriptures and the writings of the early Church) demonstrates a firm conviction of the central doctrine of justification by faith. In the first four chapters the author systematically clarifies this doctrine by exemplification and in a manner that indicates the book’s essentially didactic aims (in contrast, here, to the papal orations described by O’Malley). The possibility of any kind of ‘double justification’ in the manner proposed by Contarini at Regensburg is rejected outright: the author claims, indeed, that it is pure arrogance to imagine that God-given faith alone is not enough to lead to justification, and highlights the inevitable relationship between faith and good works. (Faith is a flame that burns away sins and simultaneously, and inevitably, emits light – the good works.)63 Throughout this exposition, the writer proudly and confidently asserts the existence of a group of like-minded individuals who share his ideology (by extension involving the reader who will absorb the message of this popular work in the vernacular and come to recognise the truth contained therein, thus fulfilling the objective of the evangelising text).64 The doctrine of justification by faith in fact presupposes a community of the blessed and enlightened, as Valdés taught in his Cento e dieci divine considerazioni (translated into Italian, significantly, by Flaminio). All Christians are from the outset granted by God a true faith, and as long as they hold fast to it and do not allow the distractions of the material world to lead them astray, they are predestined to find salvation and inherit through the benefit of Christ’s death all the riches of God’s kingdom. (Indeed, Valdés makes wide use of the phrase ‘beneficio di Cristo’ in the Considerazioni.65) The author of the Beneficio outlines the characteristics of the true Christian, whose faith fills him with 62 See Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘Italy’, in The Reformation in National Context, ed. by Bob Scribner et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 181–97 (p. 188). 63 See, most explicitly, Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, pp. 46–7. 64 Fenlon reads the assertion of a group identity at the end of chapter 4 in particular as marking a change in tone to increasing militancy, the ‘spirit of Calvin’ asserting itself over the author. See Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, p. 82. 65 Valdés, Considerazioni, pp. 128–30: ‘In che consiste il beneficio che gli uomini hanno conseguito da Dio per Christo’. See also Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 474.

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joy, energy and vigour to fulfil his vocation (in imitation of the jubilant Christ shouting out to his followers): ‘This one and only faith and trust that we have in Christ’s merits makes men into true Christians, strong, glad, joyful, in love with God, ready to perform good works, owners of God’s kingdom and his beloved sons, in whom the Holy Spirit truly dwells.’66 The idea of a community of the faithful who are predestined and born blessed is taken a step further in the Beneficio in a consideration of the manner in which this community should behave towards its individual members. Paraphrasing Luther in his De libertate christiana (1519), the author urges his readers to offer themselves and all they possess to the service of their Christian brothers, ‘serving them in all their needs and acting for them almost as another Christ’.67 All Christians are as limbs or members of Christ, so that if they hurt one another he feels the pain. By acting with love towards his fellows, however, the Christian indirectly worships Christ, ‘for all that we do to his and our own brothers, he accepts as a benefit performed for him alone’.68 The scorn and torment of the faithless must be born by the true Christian with fortitude and even with rejoicing, remembering that they too, united with Christ, bear the cross of his suffering: ‘through suffering, true Christians are clothed in the image of Christ crucified’.69 Thus united through suffering and rejoicing, a true community of Christ will triumph on earth: What greater incitement can there be to love one another than to understand that Christ, in offering himself to us, not only invites us to offer ourselves to one another, but in making himself our common inheritance he also causes us all to become one in him […]. We must strive to possess one common soul between us, one common heart, one tongue, so that we are at peace and united in our thoughts, words and deeds.70

Fortified, then, by the acknowledgement of a spiritual brotherhood, and instructed in the manner in which he must strive to strengthen and maintain this community, the text now lays down the spiritual ‘arms’ with which the Christian can fight his tormentors and his own inner doubts and 66

‘Questa sola fede e fiducia, che abbiamo nelli meriti di Cristo, fa gli uomini veri cristiani, forti, allegri, giocondi, inamorati di Dio, pronti alle buone opere, possessori del regno di Dio e suoi carissimi figliuoli, nelli quali veramente lo Spirito santo abita’ (Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 53). 67 ‘[S]ervendoli in tutti i loro bisogni et essendoli quasi un altro Cristo’ (Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, pp. 54–5). 68 ‘[C]he tutto quello, che facciamo alli fratelli suoi e nostri, egli lo accetta come beneficio fatto a lui’ (Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 55). 69 ‘[L]i veri cristiani per le tribulazioni si vestono della imagine di Cristo crocifisso’ (Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 58). 70 ‘[Q]ual stimolo maggiore ci può incitare allo amor mutuo, che vedere che Cristo, donando sé medesimo a noi, non solamente ci invita a donarci l’uno a l’altro, ma, in quanto si fa commune a tutti noi, fa ancora che tutti noi in lui siamo una medesima cosa [...] [D]obbiamo desiderare e procurare che in tutti noi sia una sola anima, un solo cuore e una sola lingua, essendo concordi e uniti nelli pensieri, nelle parole e nelle opere’ (Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, pp. 67–8).

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uncertainties. Chapter 6, ‘Alcuni remedii contra la diffidentia’ (‘Certain cures for indifferent faith’), stresses the importance of prayer, frequent communion, constant recollection of baptism and a sharp awareness of predestination.71 The Eucharist especially, as central to the act of worship, serves to revitalise the Christian’s knowledge of the Passion and faith in the reality of salvation through Christ and absolution of sins. Likewise awareness of predestination (‘but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven’, Luke 10:20) keeps each individual in a constant state of ‘spiritual joy’, eschewing doubts that are sown by the devil to lead him astray, overcoming all obstacles and rejecting earthly bonds. The treatment of doubt and insecurity in the Beneficio is interesting, in that it departs from the Valdesian notion that doubts are positive, reflecting the work and effort that the Christian is expending in maintaining his faith. Here, rather, the author adopts a more militant line, drawing on Calvin, and condemns the weak Christian for succumbing to the devil and failing to manifest absolute and complete faith.72 There is, however, a more sympathetic response to the anxiety and fear which such a radically new approach to the individual’s spirituality might elicit, the final section of the text being devoted to responses to the questions that those striving for true faith will be led to ask: How will I know if I am one of the elect? Should I not live in fear of God? The author here advocates a ‘filial fear’ (that is simply care not to offend the father) rather than the gut-wrenching, Old Testament ‘abject and servile fear’ from which Christ through his Crucifixion has delivered us, and reassures his readers once again that they are justified through the merits of Christ and not their own relative worth: You will say to me: – I believe in the remission of sins and I know God is the truth, but I doubt that I am worthy of such a gift. – I say to you that the remission of sins would not be a gift of grace, but of pity, if God offered it to you in recognition of the worth of your own acts: I answer you that God accepts you as justified and does not charge you with your sins thanks to Christ’s merits, which are given to you and become your own through faith.73

In its entirety, then, this eclectic text, combining as it does elements from so many disparate sources, acts as a consolation and a call to arms to all ‘veri cristiani’ awaiting the renewal of faith and the overturning of the old and stale traditions. Advocating unity and brotherhood, it also provides the 71

See Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, p. 83. The reference is to the Instituto religionis christiana, IV. See Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 71. 73 ‘Mi dirai: – Io credo bene la remissione de’ peccati e so che Dio è verace, ma dubito di non esser degno di tanto dono. - Ti rispondo che la remissione de’ peccati non sarebbe dono e grazia, ma mercede, se Dio te la concedesse per la dignità delle opere tue: ma ti replico che Dio ti accetta per giusto e non ti imputa il peccato per i meriti di Cristo, i quali ti sono donati e diventano tuoi per la fede’ (Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, p. 81). 72

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ultimate balm for troubled souls in its insistence on the incontrovertible fact of predestination, guaranteeing salvation for all believers. Vergerio’s claims about the text’s publication history suggest that its message was one that was eagerly received by a population seeking a reinvigorated investment in religion that seemed fresh and uncorrupted. It is perhaps at this stage less interesting to explore the responses of the population at large, however, than to examine the reactions of a specific and rather limited group. How far, it now seems pertinent to ask, did the message of the Beneficio di Cristo reflect the aims and ideals of the members of Pole’s circle in Viterbo, and by extension of Vittoria Colonna herself? Meditating among Friends: Lay Sermons in Viterbo The Beneficio di Cristo, as a printed text in the vernacular, was aimed at a large reading public and intended to have the widest possible reach and appeal, as is exemplified by its vibrant and evocative style and the approachable manner in which complex theological arguments are presented to a nonspecialist readership. In a more private context, the message of a reformed spirituality was passed on through lay sermons and discussions held between groups of like-minded individuals, and an examination of such practices casts further light on the style and mode of evangelical expression in this period. With Colonna’s own personal involvement in mind, it seems particularly illuminating to examine the kind of devotional exchanges that took place among the spirituali in Viterbo, representing the private face of the group that had such an important role to play in producing and disseminating the Beneficio to the rest of Italy. Fortunately a text exists that seems to offer precisely this possibility for analysis of the private meditations of the Viterbo group, and that is an anonymous Good Friday Meditation that was published in 1557 together with prose works by Colonna and Benedetto Varchi (1503– 1565).74 Paolo Simoncelli has convincingly hypothesised that this meditation was composed by Marcantonio Flaminio for delivery to the circle in Viterbo in the early 1540s, perhaps as part of the ongoing process of composing and editing the Beneficio.75 Thus it can be considered to represent the core ideas of that group in an unmediated format, one that is in no way tailored to meet the demands and expectations of the wider marketplace. 74

‘Meditatione fatta da un divotissimo huomo nel Venerdi santo sopra la passione di Christo’, in Colonna, Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Christo. Oratione della medesima sopra l’Ave Maria… etc. (Bologna: Manutio, 1557), pp. 17–36. 75 See Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento, pp. 218–21. Simoncelli notes in particular the lack of polemic in the oration, suggesting that it was to be read to group of like-minded thinkers and thus bypassed the need for evangelising in the real sense. Jung-Inglessis comes to the same conclusion about the likely identity of the anonymous author in her reading of the Meditatione: see Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’: Introduzione’, pp. 122–3.

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Certain striking similarities exist between the content of this private meditation and the Beneficio di Cristo, most notably the opening invitation of the Beneficio to run to Christ crucified, borrowing from Christ’s words in Matthew 11. This passage is echoed and expanded in the anonymous Good Friday meditation, in which the author exclaims: Can you not see that, brimming with love, he calls to us saying: ‘Come to me all you who are burdened with the toils of the world and thirst for eternal salvation! Come to the fountain of that grace that today rains down from the cross in great waves, and I will restore you all and satisfy you!’76

The citing of this passage immediately highlights the key quality of this private meditative work, that sets it apart from a text like the Beneficio intended from the start for a wider readership. In the meditation the author takes liberties with his biblical source text, expanding on Christ’s words as reported in the gospel and embellishing them with the striking poetic image of Christ’s grace raining down abundantly from the cross. While the message at the core of the work is the same, therefore, that is the way through faith to justification and the centrality of Christ as intermediary in a process in which the heart, not the head, is the organ of religion, in this shorter work concerns of literary style and lyricism are also clearly at the forefront of the author’s mind. The meditation begins with a definite statement of personal communion with the holy story of the Passion. The speaker, following the guidelines for contemplation of the scriptures laid down in works such as pseudoBuonaventure’s Meditationes vitae Christi, claims that it is the Passion scene ‘that fills me with the greatest amazement and most distances me from the world, from myself’.77 He also states that he is moved to contemplate in particular ‘the abundant benefits, that man has received from God’, immediately allying this work with the Beneficio in its primary aim.78 This opening avowal sets the tone for the rest of the meditation, which is intensely personal in approach and yet marked by constant emphatic repetition in order to draw the listening audience into a relationship of collaboration with the speaker. In contrast to the Beneficio, which works towards far greater objectivity and universality of tone, here the speaker’s appeal to his listeners is personal and unguarded. 76 ‘Non vedete, ch’egli, tutto pieno d’amore, c’invita, dicendo: “Venite a me tutti voi, che sete affaticati dalli travagli del mondo et assetati dell’eterna salute! Venite al fonte di quella gratia, c’hoggi con sì larghi righi piove da questa croce, ch’io vi ristorerò tutti, a tutti vi rimanderò contenti!”’ (Meditatione, p. 35). The text referred to in the remainder of this discussion, for ease of reference, is the transcription of the Meditatione from the 1563 edition of the Pianto... sopra la passione di Christo (published by Giolito and held in the Biblioteca Angelica di Roma), which Simoncelli reproduces as Appendix 3, in Evangelismo italiano, pp. 433–44. The quotation given here is on p. 433. 77 ‘[C]he m’empia di maggior maraviglia, e più m’allontani dal mondo, da me stesso...’ (Meditatione, p. 433). 78 ‘[I] benefici infiniti, che da Dio ha ricevuti l’huomo’ (Meditatione, p. 433).

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The strikingly direct opening leads the speaker to a consideration of the miracle of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, as he vividly contrasts the lowliness of mankind and the enormity of God’s gift in donating his only son, in a series of lively and compelling juxtapositions: He who is disobedient sins: yet very obedience is punished; human madness errs: God’s wisdom corrects the error; man is in debt: God pays his debts; man loses his life and grace: Christ, by dying, restores them both to him; man tastes the sweetness of the forbidden fruit and thus encounters extreme bitterness: Christ with the bitterness of the cross converts it back to sweetness.79

The highly individualistic quality of the rhetorical style is notable: the speaker’s tone is fervent and charged with emotion, as his hyperbole and constant repetitions indicate, and it is easy to imagine that his audience was intended to be equally moved as they listened. The author’s aim does not seem to be to instruct his listeners: the tone is not didactic in the way of the Beneficio, which offers clear and systematic instructions on the way to come to know the benefit of true faith. Here the underlying assumption is of an absolute consonance of views between orator and audience, so that the former can maintain a more elevated tone of spiritual rapture without risk of losing the latter’s understanding or sympathy, an approach exactly in line with the rules for successful epideictic rhetorical practice.80 The speaker, having clearly demonstrated his eloquence and skill in speaking of matters of the spirit, now proceeds in the requisite manner to dismiss his own capabilities in dealing with a subject ‘that can only be explained by silence’ (Meditatione, p. 434). It is not arrogance that compels him to treat so holy and sacrosanct a topic, but rather the example of his companions, ‘dear friends and brothers in Christ, who with such eloquence, and more importantly such spirit, have spoken of these things’.81 Trusting in God, he hopes to obtain adequate insight and language, just as God grants sight to the blind and frees the tongues of the mute. The mention of the speaker’s ‘brothers in Christ’, who have themselves openly debated religious matters, confirms the impression of an elite group of intellectuals bonded by their interest in these issues and suggests that lay sermons were probably a common element of the devotional practice of the Viterbo group.82 79 ‘Pecca il disubidiente: è punita l’istessa ubidienza; erra l’humana pazzia: ammenda l’errore la sapienza del Padre; è debitore l’huomo: Iddio paga il suo debito; l’huomo perde la vita e la grazia: Christo, morendo, l’una e l’altra gli rende; l’huomo gusta la dolcezza del frutto vietato e trova una estrema amaritudine: Christo coll’amaritudine della Croce lo converte in dolcezza’ (Meditatione, p. 433). 80 See O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome. 81 ‘[C]arissimi amici e fratelli in Christo, che con tanta eloquenza, e che più importa, con tanto spirito ne havete ragionato’ (Meditatione, p. 434). 82 Evidence that lay sermons were a common practice in Viterbo is provided by a letter from Pole, cited in Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, p. 123: ‘La sera poi Mr. Marco Antonio dà pasto a me et alla miglior parte della famiglia de

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The next section of the narrative offers the cross as salvation for the Christian who is tossed to and fro on life’s oceans, at risk always of shipwreck on the two rocks of pride and desperation.83 The allusion is knowingly poetic, deriving from a long tradition of nautical metaphors stretching from the classical period into the Middle Ages of Dante and Petrarch, and it immediately serves to heighten the literary quality of the address which will be picked up on and further enhanced later in the sermon.84 Here the metaphor is bent to a wholly moral end. If the good Christian clings on to the cross which is held out to him, and which he must employ as the mirror of his own soul and a ladder to climb towards heaven, he will come to understand the loving and forgiving nature of God: not in this case the awe-inspiring God of the Old Testament (a distinction that the author of the Beneficio is also careful to make), but a God who is ‘clement and merciful’ (Meditatione, p. 435). Moving on the speaker now states his purpose for the next part of his oration, which is to illustrate for his audience the reasons why God chose to save us through the gift of his son, and more particularly ‘from the infinite benefits that we have received, we will come to know that our love and thankfulness to God can know no bounds.’85 In other words, once again he demonstrates that his aim is absolutely consonant with that of the author of the Beneficio, although not yet developed to the extent that we find in the longer work, that is to demonstrate the benefit of the Crucifixion for mankind. In the same way that in the Beneficio the author invokes a community of people who are learning and striving together for the truth, here too the speaker involves himself in a communal process of enlightenment through repeated use of verbs in the first-person plural. His community is of course far more circumscribed, however, defined by the small number of people who witness his oration (although increased enormously by its subsequent publication). In a highly theatrical manner, the following phrases illustrate the fundamental fact that God’s choice in donating his only son was exactly that, a choice rather illo cibo qui non perit, in tal maniera che io non so quando io abbia sentito maggior consolatione né maggior edificatione.’ For more general information on the practice of lay religious sermons in the early Italian Renaissance, see Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘Lay Religious Traditions and Florentine Platonism’, in Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1956), pp. 99–122. 83 The anonymous orator’s use of this conceit links his text to an unascribed letter to Alvise Priuli (1471–1560) (a member of the Viterbo group), attributed by a number of critics to Vittoria Colonna, in which, in a highly evangelical manner, the metaphor of the storm-tossed boat is applied to the Christian’s journey through life: see Bartolommeo Fontana, ‘Nuovi documenti vaticano intorno a Vittoria Colonna’, Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria 10 (1887), 595–628 (pp. 611–17). See, for a reading of the evangelical letter, Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, p. 123. 84 The long literary history of this image is traced from its Roman origins to Dante in Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. by Willard R. Trask (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), pp. 128–30. 85 ‘[D]ai beneficij infiniti, che n’habbiamo ricevuti, conosceremo, che l’amor nostro e la carità verso Dio non ha da fermare dentro alcun termine...’ (Meditatione, p. 435).

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than a necessity: he could, in the same manner in which he created the world, have saved it ‘with the slightest nod’ (p. 435), but decided instead through his infinite grace to send Christ.86 This leads to the second important point, that the benefit of Christ’s Passion by far outweighs the sins of mankind that he was sent to cancel. As members of the church and thus ‘members’ of Christ who is the head of the church (‘incorporated with him’, p. 436), all Christians benefit from the superabundance of grace which is so acutely felt especially now, at this Good Friday celebration. (Overcome by the enormity and wonder of his subject matter, the author at this point once again laments his lack of adequate language to express his mind, a typically lyric gesture: ‘Oh most holy cross of Christ, oh undreamed of piety, oh infinite pity, why do I not possess the words or spirit adequate to celebrate you?’87) The physical quality of the description is particularly notable here: the speaker describes the Passion as a material demonstration of the boundless love of God, ‘like something that one can see with one’s eyes and touch with one’s hands’.88 He also repeatedly uses the metaphor of the flame, a notably poetic trope, as God’s love for us burns, melting even the hardest of sinful hearts, and thus the Christian learns in his turn to burn with faith and become incorporated into Christ through the Passion: ‘come brothers, if up until now we have been cold and frozen, then let us today run to that sweet, salutary fire, for it alone has the power to inflame our frozen hearts’.89 Such strikingly poetic language immediately brings to mind aspects of Colonna’s own lyric output, and could also perhaps derive from Valdés’s teaching about a ‘developed faith’ that is experienced as a living fire within the Christian’s heart.90 86

Paolo Simoncelli, in his brief look at the Meditatione, points out that this concept could derive from roots in Bernardino Ochino, more precisely the third of the Prediche Nove in which Ochino discusses the Anselman theme of salvation in strikingly similar terms. See Evangelismo italiano, pp. 219–20. 87 ‘O sacratissima croce di Christo, o inaudita pietà, o carità infinita, perché non ho io parole e spirito bastanti a celebrarvi?’ (Meditatione, p. 436). 88 ‘[C]ome cosa che con gli occhi veder si possa e con le mani palpare’ (Meditatione, p. 436).The whole meditative tradition appears, in fact, to rest precisely upon this premise, that Christ’s life and death are an incarnation, a making palpable, of abstract truths. See, for a (somewhat controversial) discussion of this tendency in Renaissance art, Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, 2nd edn (Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Also, for an interesting repositioning of a number of Steinberg’s assumptions, ‘The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg’, in Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), pp. 79–117. 89 ‘Deh, fratelli, se sin qui siamo stati freddi et agghiacciati, corriamo hoggi a questo dolce salutifero incendio, chè questo solo è possente ad infiammare i nostri agghiacciati cuori’ (Meditatione, p. 436). 90 Colonna employs the metaphor of God’s fire melting the frozen heart in her sonnet: ‘Quando dal Lume, il cui vivo splendore / rende ’l petto fedel lieto e sicuro, / si dissolve per grazia il ghiaccio duro / che sovente si gela intorno ’l core’ (Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 89, lines 1–4). On Valdés, see Two Catechisms, pp. 186–91.

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Moving from such impassioned pleas to his brothers in Christ into a more factual and low-key narrative register, the speaker now begins to retell the story of the Crucifixion, in order that his listeners may learn ‘the best examples by which to imitate our leader, Christ’ (Meditatione, p. 437). Citing Jerusalem as the most perfect location for these momentous events (‘the umbilical of the inhabited world’, p. 437), the author recounts the story of Christ’s life as it is set down in the gospels, during the days leading up to Easter. He takes care to stress Christ’s dual nature, his divine nature embracing his destiny to accept death for the sake of all mankind and his human nature simultaneously experiencing pain and fear. It is his human qualities in particular, however, which are eloquently brought to the fore, ‘for he was a true man and subject to all human passions and desires without sin’.91 In general the emotive tenor of the oration indicates how closely the speaker, and thus by extension the other members of the Viterbo group who acted as his audience and themselves pondered and wrote of Christ’s Passion, strove to empathise with Christ, considering above all his human qualities as his strength of spirit was overcome by the weakness of his wholly human flesh. Prayer in this case acted as Christ’s comfort as he poured out his pain and confusion to his father, and the author recommends prayer to all Christians as a balm to the troubled soul in times of need, reiterating the call in the Beneficio to employ prayer as a holy arm against fear and doubt. As the narrative reaches its dramatic climax the speaker indulges in increasingly theatrical and poetic interpretations of the scriptures and introduces a significantly Petrarchan quality to his imagery. He recounts an address by Christ to the cross as he bends to take it upon his back, ‘Arbore vittoriosa, e trionfale’ (p. 441), drawing on various sequences from the Good Friday liturgy that refer to the cross as tree or wood, notably Vexilla regis prodeunt and Crux fidelis. Simultaneously, however, and significantly, he affords his elite and well-read audience a resounding Petrarchan echo (deriving from the opening of Petrarch’s sonnet CCLXIII in the Rime sparse), one that they would no doubt have picked up on and appreciated not least for the flattery of an erudite audience that it implied.92 While in the Beneficio di Cristo the poetic thrust of the narrative is implicit, contained in the wide-ranging and evocative semantic choices and the elegance of the narrative progression, the author in this far more intimate context follows his poeticising drive to its natural conclusions. He is free to do this because the elite context in which he is speaking allows and perhaps encourages such lyric intertextuality. The fact that this meditation was later published, however, increases the possibilities for wider public recognition of this striking moment of symbiosis of the two movements of Petrarchism and the evangelism of Viterbo.

91

‘[C]he era vero huomo et soggetto a tutte le passioni et tutte le inclinationi humane senza peccato’ (Meditatione, p. 438). 92 Petrarch’s sonnet begins ‘Arbor victorïosa trïumphale’: see Petrarca, Canzoniere, p. 1035.

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The example of Simon taking the cross from Christ and bearing it for him (Matthew 27:32) is used as an illustration for the audience of the true way of the cross which leads to Christ: thus all Christians must learn to bear his burden for him as Simon did, in an act of brotherhood which again brings to mind the instructions in the Beneficio for establishing a community in Christ on earth. In accordance with the increasingly dramatic tenor of the oration, the level of descriptive detail also increases as Christ is described stripped naked and kneeling alone on the hard ground awaiting the end, eyes cast heavenward as he prays. It is important to note that the official gospels lack any of this dramatic build-up to the Crucifixion. Here the speaker is clearly unwilling to sacrifice any part of the dramatic potential of his story, drawing it out and embellishing it at every opportunity and taking pains to point out frequently the lessons that must be drawn from these events. As the cross is raised up with Christ upon it, in another flood of lyric inventiveness – ‘raised upon the cross, with pious arms stretched wide, burning with pity’93 – the narrative enters its most jubilant phase, the speaker calling upon his audience to join with him in running to and embracing the cross, echoing the opening of the Beneficio di Cristo. Once again the audience is enjoined to imitate Christ, the most holy example, and to give constant thanks for the double benefits of the creation and the redemption at which he was conferred upon us twice. In the closing phrases a sense of haste and urgency is underlined, in line with the narrative urgency of the Beneficio: true Christians must hurry to take up their cross and join the new army of evangelists, charged with hope and led by their saintly captain, who are rising up to reinstate the true faith: Now is the time, so let us take up our cross, and following the example of our victorious Captain, conquering the world and ourselves and strongly defeating all earthly desires, let us run to the source of all grace, and with living faith and burning pity let us carve that death upon our hearts…94

From a thematic point of view the similarities between this anonymous Meditatione and the Beneficio are numerous and undeniable, both emphasising as they do the centrality of Christ crucified to the Christian’s conception 93

‘[L]evato in croce, aperte le pietose braccia, tutto ardente di charitade’ (Meditatione, p. 442). Once again there is a clear poetic echo: this description is strikingly Michelangelesque (such imagery occurs predominantly in the poet’s late poetry of the 1550s). See for example the poem ‘Giunto è già ’l corso della vita mia’, in which Michelangelo imagines Christ reaching out to embrace him from the cross: ‘Né pinger né scolpir fie più che quieti / l’anima, volta a quell’amor divino / c’aperse, a prender noi, ’n croce le braccia’ (lines 12–14). Cited in The Poetry of Michelangelo, ed. and trans. by James M. Saslow (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), Sonnet 285, p. 476. 94 ‘Prendiamo, ch’è ben tempo ormai, la nostra croce, et ad essempio del nostro vittorioso Capitano, trionfando del mondo e noi stessi e tutti i nostri desideri terreni fortemente vincendo, corriamo al fonte di ogni gratia, e con la viva fede e con la accesa caritade scolpiamo questa morte ne’ nostri cuori...’ (Meditatione, p. 444).

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of his faith, and the importance of solidarity and community amongst the enlightened in their struggle to come to terms with the immense gift that has been bestowed upon them. The meditation, a far shorter text and therefore less theologically diverse and detailed, is however also defined by the context of its initial delivery as a Good Friday oration that necessarily takes as its central theme the events of the Passion. For this reason the author is able to indulge in dramatic hyperbole and free interpretations of the gospel story in a clear linear narrative, aiming to tell a story that will have maximum impact on the audience that sits before him. It should not be forgotten, in addition, that while this text was designed for ‘live’ oral delivery to an elite and intimate group, the other constituted a didactic work which aimed to teach and evangelise to as wide an audience as possible, over-riding differences of class or culture (and thus demonstrating the ability of the spirituali to reach beyond their own elitist internal makeup).95 A reading of this Good Friday meditation alongside the Beneficio as a second work involving Flaminio, precisely due to the differences in presentation, helps to illuminate various interesting facets of the private mode of address employed by the members of the Viterbo circle during their gatherings and especially at moments of particular religious significance such as Good Friday, demonstrating the extent to which they themselves as a group came to embody the instructions for the behaviour of the ‘community of Christ’ laid down in the Beneficio. The highly charged and theatrical presentation of the events of the Passion, the constantly reiterated call to participate directly in the story recounted (as ‘members’ ‘clothed in Christ’, who live out with him his suffering and pain), and the insistence upon examples to be drawn from the experience of Christ and applied to their own lives, all point to a direct empathic involvement in the gospels which the members of this group shared and explored during their private meetings and sought to project into a public forum in a more systematic and less intimate (and ultimately highly successful) form through the publication of the Beneficio di Cristo. The poeticising drive of this project, implicit in the rapturous language of the Beneficio, becomes explicit in the more private context of the Viterbo address, demonstrating the high level of erudition and literary awareness informing the meetings of the evangelical group in Viterbo that included Vittoria Colonna among its number. Conclusion In a recent study Constance Furey examines the relationship between piety, intellectual endeavour and friendship, directing her attention to groups of leading Catholic literati during the first half of the sixteenth century when questions about the nature of lay religious communities seemed most pressing. Furey identifies a new kind of spiritual community that was rooted in mutual 95

See Firpo, ‘Vittoria Colonna, Giovanni Morone, e gli “spirituali”’, p. 224.

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intellectual endeavour and the desire for personal and communal illumination. The role of intellectual women within such communities was particularly important, representing as they did a more untrammelled and direct spirituality (as they are inferior in intellect, so they are superior in spirit) and simultaneously, by dint of being equal in learning to their male colleagues, demonstrating the exceptional worth of the particular community to which they belonged.96 The importance of texts, both written and read, to such spiritualised communities is central, as Furey’s subtle analysis makes clear. The search for knowledge of the divine is expressed through textual study as well as textual production and dissemination within a group of like-minded individuals, that is, although the goal is also one of personal illumination it is at the same time an intensely and necessarily social process.97 It is into this context that we should insert the Good Friday meditation examined above, as a notably social and communal textual act written to be shared with the members of a group who all sought the same access to knowledge. Similarly, Colonna’s own poetic output belongs within just such a communal, spiritual context, one that was engendered first in Naples and subsequently articulated more exclusively through the spirituali who gathered in Viterbo in the 1540s. Both the texts discussed above, which derive from the context of Viterbo, although aimed at different audiences, respond directly to the compelling New Testament image of Christ opening his arms and calling the faithful to him, an image that clearly encapsulates the communal aspirations of the group. This same image is also present in Colonna’s own poetry: Le braccia aprendo in croce e l’alme e pure Piaghe largo, Signore, apristi il cielo, Il limbo, i sassi, i monumenti, il velo Posto a nostri occhi, e l’ombre e le figure. Le menti umane infino allora oscure Illuminasti, e dileguando il gelo Le riempiesti d’un ardente zelo, Ch’aperse poi le sacre tue scritture. Mostrossi il dolce imperio e la bontade, Che parve ascosa in quei tanti precetti De l’aspra e giusta legge del timore. O desiata pace, o benedetti Giorni felici, o liberal pietade, Che ne scoperse grazia, lume, amore!98 96 Constance Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 158–63. Furey’s arguments about the status of women within such religious communities are also presented in Constance Furey, ‘“Intellects inflamed in Christ”: Women and Spiritualized Scholarship in Renaissance Christianity’, Journal of Religion 84 (2004), 1–22. 97 Following Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters, esp. pp. 111–12. 98 ‘Opening wide your arms upon the cross and your blessed / and pure wounds, O Lord, you opened the heavens / and limbo, rent the rocks, monuments, and the veil /

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Colonna’s sonnet acts as the embodiment of the various strands of influence that have led her to the evangelical position that we find her expressing with such poetic grace and economy here, and that will be explored more fully in the next chapter. The literary, Neapolitan roots of her religious meditation are suggested in the poetic precedent for this image, Jacopo Sannazaro’s Lamentatio de morte Christi (composed around 1502 and first published in Italy in 1526), in which the same image of Christ upon the cross with arms open wide is employed.99 The Crucifixion acts as the moment of illumination for Christians, who are filled with an evangelical zeal that burns and melts in Valdesian fashion, and significantly they embrace the access they are now granted to sacred texts containing the word of God (‘Ch’aperse poi le sacre tue scritture’). Notably, God’s attitude in Colonna’s sonnet is one of sweetness and kindness, the ‘harsh law of fear’ having been banished just as it is in both the prose texts cited above. Finally, and most crucially, the poet’s attitude is one of joy and thanksgiving, as the closing tercet clearly indicates, suggesting that the process of incorporation into Christ’s body that she so ardently seeks has, here at least, been successful and she has joined the circle of the elect who are confident in their status and turn now to the act of evangelism in order to lead others to the truth.

that cloaked our eyes, the shadows and figures. / All human minds, until then immersed in darkness, / you enlightened, and melting the ice / you filled them with a burning fervour, / revealing the meaning of your sacred texts. / You showed them your sweet kingdom and your / kindness, which seemed to be hidden by the many rules / dictated by the harsh but just law of fear. / O welcome peace, O blessed / and happy days, O bountiful pity, / which conferred upon us grace, light, and love!’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 110–11). 99 The key passage from Sannazaro’s poem reads: ‘Cernitis, ut pronum flectat caput? ut pia pandat / Brachia? et ingratas vocet ad sua vulnera gentes? / Oblitasque viae moneat meminisse relictae, / Scilicet amplexus non rejecturus amicos?’ (‘Do you see how he turns away his bowed head? How he extends his pitying arms and summons the graceless nations to his wounds? And warns them to be mindful of what they have forgotten of the road abandoned – for surely he will not reject their friendly embraces?’) For the translation, see Ralph Nash, ed. and trans., The Major Latin Poems of Jacopo Sannazaro (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1996), pp. 67–9 (p. 69). See also Furey, Erasmus, Contarini and the Religious Republic of Letters, pp. 105–6.

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CHAPTER 3

The Canzoniere Spirituale for Michelangelo Buonarroti Introduction Having established Colonna’s membership of a group of like-minded individuals who relied on communal understanding and exchange, combined with textual study and production, in order to work towards divine illumination, I will now turn to the analysis of her own poetic production in order to assess the ways in which it encapsulates and reflects this very particular spiritual agenda. As she was notoriously unwilling to see her work go into print, Colonna’s poetic production appears in the main to have been intended for circulation among a group of readers who would understand the deeper purpose and meaning of the verses. On two notable occasions, she prepared, or else sanctioned the preparation of manuscript gifts containing collections of sonnets to be presented to close friends and members of her spiritual community. The first of these was for Michelangelo Buonarroti, prepared in around 1540, and a reading of this work helps us to come to a better understanding of the shape and qualities of Colonna’s spiritualised Petrarchan canzoniere in perhaps its purest form. The Spirituali and the Bestowal of Gifts Natalie Zemon Davis has asserted that ‘in a profound sense, the religious reformations of the sixteenth century were a quarrel about gifts, that is, about whether humans can reciprocate to God, about whether humans can put God under obligation, and about what this means for what people should give to each other’.1 The widespread and important culture of gift exchange during the sixteenth century operated at every level of society, through acts of diplomacy, the assertion or recognition of an individual’s status, commerce and the transfer of goods, and invoking a strong sense of obligation and debt on the part of the recipient. Even the Catholic Church, whilst in dogmatic terms rejecting the notion of value and exchange and asserting that God’s sacred gifts were freely given through the institution of the church, in reality involved 1

Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 167–8. The following discussion is deeply indebted to the innovative study of the relationship between gift giving and reform by Alexander Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, as well as the discussion in his Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 169–79.

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itself in such transactions through the sale of indulgences or the exhorting of donations, in other words performing trade-offs between the salvation of the individual’s soul and suitable ‘gifts’ of hard cash.2 Within the practice of worship itself a complex cycle of giving and reciprocating was also in operation. Through prayer and good works and regular attendance at confession, one could ‘buy’ the salvation of one’s own soul or of that of a loved one (living or deceased), and in the sacrifice of Mass the Catholic Christian offered the body and blood of Christ to God as a gift to appease his justified anger and to do him honour. It was this notion, that the sacrifice of Mass operated as a gift to God to reciprocate for his original gift of salvation, that was ferociously rejected by the Protestant reformers who considered it a form of bribery or obligation of God as well as a negative drain on the Christian who must needs recognise the boundless quality of God’s gift and the impossibility of reciprocation.3 In Protestant ideology, as expressed by Calvin in the Institutes for example, the notion of reciprocity is abandoned or rejected and the gift exchange becomes a one-way process, no longer an eternal cycle of debt and counter-debt but a flow leading from God down through the Christian brotherhood who in turn pass it on to the following generations of the chosen. The true Christian gives unendingly and expects no return because his return in heaven is already guaranteed.4 This notion of the importance of the ‘non-reciprocal’ gift has particular relevance within the context of the evangelical group in Viterbo, who exchanged sermons and, when absent, letters, and also significantly gifts of literature and art, all reflecting their faith in the capacity of the gift to symbolise the unmerited bounty of God’s love for his elected souls. Colonna’s relations with the other members of the group were frequently characterised by such exchanges, which appear to have had a religious significance that goes far beyond the superficial appearance of a mere gesture of friendship. An exchange of letters between Colonna and Reginald Pole (illuminating a particularly close attachment to the English cardinal on Colonna’s part that drew criticism from some other members of the group5), goes some way to illustrating the concept of reformed gift exchange adopted by the spirituali.

2

On the development of the Catholic practice of selling indulgences, and representations of Purgatory, see Michael P. Carroll, Veiled Threats. The Logic of Popular Catholicism in Italy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 125–36. Also, on the sale of indulgences as a form of ‘transferable merit’, John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 53–6. 3 On the Protestant debate concerning the institution of Mass, see Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700), pp. 158–61; pp. 189–203. 4 See Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, pp. 190–2. 5 In a letter to Giovanni Morone of December 1542, Colonna asks him to act as a shield ‘contra Ms. Luisi [Alvise Priuli] ed altri, che alcuna volta reprendono la mia servitù con Monsig.r, dicendo che è superchia, troppo maternamente carnale e simil

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The language of the letters exchanged between Colonna and Pole is often obscure and difficult to interpret, perhaps, as some critics have suggested, due to a sense of the need to disguise the reformed tenor of their content from unsympathetic eyes.6 It is no doubt significant, indicating the close interest taken by the Inquisition in their friendship, that only two letters from Pole to Colonna, and one from Colonna to Pole, were discovered by the initial editors of Colonna’s Carteggio and included in that volume, and it was not until 1989 and the discovery in the archives of the Sant’Uffizio of a collection of letters from Colonna to various recipients, including many to Pole, that more about their relationship could be discerned.7 One letter from Pole included in Colonna’s Carteggio reveals itself to be highly relevant to this discussion. In it, Pole begs forgiveness for his long period of neglect of his friend, and expresses his gratitude at the ‘more than maternal love’ that Colonna has consistently shown him over the years.8 His excuse for not reciprocating such love and attention is complex and involved, occupying the first two thirds of the letter and straying into a religious metaphor that deserves some close analysis. To begin with, Pole openly admits his culpability, ‘for neither in deeds nor words have I reciprocated even the smallest part of so much love, but have rather done the opposite’.9 There is no inference here that his distance has been for Colonna’s own good, as she herself claims in her letters. Rather Pole demonstrates that he has been incapable, because in fact prevented by God, of responding to this flow of love: For I cannot say that I have not tried to do that which I recognise I owe it to do, yet finding from experience that I cannot accomplish what I desire,

cose’. Cited in Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi Documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole, pp. 141–2. 6 See Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, p. 61. Also, for a discussion of the use of a hermetic language amongst the Viterbo group in general, and in the correspondence between Colonna and Morone in particular, Firpo, ‘Vittoria Colonna, Giovanni Morone, e gli “spirituali”’. 7 The letters from Pole to Colonna are in Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara, ed. by Ferrero and Müller, pp. 231–5 and 309–12, and the letter from Colonna to Pole is on pp. 263–5. See also for the more recent material, Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti. 8 Colonna’s letters reveal that she did not always feel able to overlook her mentor’s neglect. In one letter, sent from Viterbo in August 1543, she manages to combine gratefulness and self-abasement with a sour tone of accusation for Pole’s ignorance of his duties towards her: ‘Doi lettere di V. S. R.ma ho haute, il che par un miracolo a dire, maxime a chi non sapesse la brevità di esse, et come sono resposta de molte mie. Ma considerando chi è et chi sono, niuna cosa è sufficiente a farlo possibile se non la absoluta gratia di Dio.’ Cited in Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, p. 96. 9 ‘[C]he nè in fatti, nè in parole habbia mostrato di rispondere alla minima parte di tanto amore, ma più presto fatto dimostrattione in contrario’: Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 309–12 (p. 309) (4 October 1546).

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I let it be, as if God has deprived me of the grace to do my soul’s bidding precisely in the thing that I most desire to do.10

Pole’s excuse seems enigmatic and somewhat tenuous, until we read further and recognise the reformed slant of his argument. Gifts such as the one Colonna has bequeathed to him, that is her constant love and support regardless of merit, reflect the divine gift of salvation bequeathed by God and therefore cannot be reciprocated. To attempt to do so would be an act of folly and selfaggrandisement on Pole’s part. This is why God prevents him in his attempts and leaves him frustrated and ashamed at his unworthiness and apparent ingratitude: In truth, sometimes I am greatly ashamed by this, and seeking to console myself I can find no other form of consolation than that I persuade myself, as I have said and written to you before, that the divine will shall amply reward you, as he rewards all those who are worthy, so we should not expect reciprocation…11

The inference that Pole is making in this letter takes us back to the earlier analysis of the Beneficio di Cristo, in which the writer stresses the nonreciprocal nature of God’s gift of his son. Mankind cannot but be unworthy of such immense sacrifice, and the only way to receive the gift is humbly and in full knowledge of this inequality. By allying Colonna’s gift of love with God’s gift of grace, Pole not only raises the status of their friendship to a lofty spiritual plane but also frees himself from any obligation to respond in kind. The reference to the eventual consolation that Colonna will receive in heaven, as one of God’s chosen among ‘all those who are worthy’, again harks back to the Beneficio and its emphasis on a brotherhood of blessed and enlightened. The sort of non-reciprocated gift exchange that Pole illustrates here, featuring a gift of pure love, can only take place between those who have received the message of the reformers and live according to the doctrine of sola fide. Colonna’s outpouring of love is mirrored by Saint Paul, who presents it as the natural state of the true Christian: ‘And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved’ (II Corinthians 12:15). While Reginald Pole uses evangelical language and concepts in his letter cited above to explain his conduct towards a gift of love, Colonna herself exploits the same conceptual framework in the far more mundane context of 10 ‘[B]enchè non posso dire di non avere messo studio di fare quello, che io conosco di dovere in questa parte, ma, trovando per esperienza che non mi riesce come desidero, io lo lasso stare, come se Dio mi privasse di questa gratia di poter satisfare all’animo mio in quella cosa che tanto desidero fare’ (Colonna, Carteggio, p. 310). 11 ‘[L]a qual cosa, in vero, qualche volta mi dà gran fastidio, et cercando di consolarmi, non trovo altra sorte di consolatione, se non che ch’io [sic] mi persuado, come ho detto et scritto altre volte a V. Ecc.za, la volontà divina esser così per dar a lei la piena retributione, che promette a tutti quelli, che sono benefici, donde non si aspetta retributione’ (Colonna, Carteggio, p. 310).

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a gift of foodstuffs that she has sent to Pole from Orvieto in June 1541. Citing St Paul’s maxim that ‘giving is more blessed than receiving’, she asks that Pole will forgive her for beatifying herself in this way whilst depriving him of the opportunity, and further defends her conduct by asserting her right as a ‘mother’ to give to her ‘son’: ‘for the same Saint Paul says that parents should give gifts to children, not the other way around’.12 Whilst Colonna’s adoption of the reformed concept of gift exchange in this context is rather playful and light-hearted, nonetheless she clearly demonstrates the manner in which the giver is sanctified and legitimised through the process. Calvin may assert that the Christian expects no return from his gifts, but the implicit return is already inherent in the act of giving. Alexander Nagel points out the key role amongst reformed thinkers such as Colonna, Pole and other members of the group of spirituali played by the notion of the personal gift of art, exempt from the economy of public religious art with its iconographical requirements and currency of mass-sayings, dedications and endowments (or, in the case of literature, from the demands of patrons and the exigencies of the marketplace).13 The circulation of gifts among the spirituali indicates that the works had a special status and meaning, more privileged and subtle than texts such as the Beneficio di Cristo that were launched to a wider readership.14 The relationship between Colonna and Michelangelo Buonarroti becomes particularly significant in this context. Michelangelo made at least three presentation drawings for his friend, a Crucifixion, a Pietà, and an image of the Samaritan Woman at the Well, works that, Nagel argues, belong to an entirely new category of artwork in the mid-sixteenth century, that is drawings made as finished works and offered as gifts, but with a religious rather than secular subject matter.15 In her turn, Colonna presented Michelangelo with a 12 ‘[C]he ’l medesmo San Paulo dice che devono i parenti donare a’ figli, non li figli a’ parenti.’ Cited in Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, p. 95. See also Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 650. St Paul asserts the parental duty towards the child in II Corinthians 12:14: ‘for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children’. 13 Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 647. See also Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France. 14 Nagel qualifies such gifts as ‘interiorised’, intended for a specific recipient who would read the coded message contained in the work: ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 649. Constance Furey has taken issue with Nagel’s analysis, stressing the importance of a communal understanding of such gifts: Furey, Erasmus, Contarini and the Religious Republic of Letters, pp. 126–7. 15 See Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 647. The author points out that presentation drawings with secular subjects were a far more usual currency, but that Michelangelo’s appropriation of the genre for religious subjects perfectly fits the new reformed context of gift exchange. For details of the three presentation drawings for Colonna, see Vittoria Colonna. Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 405–15, 426–8, 445–51. A recent analysis of the works is Una Roman D’Elia, ‘Drawing Christ’s Blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the Aesthetics of Reform’, Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006), 90–125. There is evidence too, that Pole was in possession of a copy of Michelangelo’s

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gift manuscript of her spiritual sonnets in Rome in around 1540, and later sent a manuscript of further sonnets to him from Viterbo that has now been lost.16 There is much evidence to suggest the deep significance that both individuals attached to the gifts that they received, not merely artistically, but more profoundly on the religious level that has been outlined above. The Platonic definition of art confers upon the artist a godlike status, as one who is afforded a divine conception which he must then strive to execute materially in the most beautiful and high manner that his industry will allow: thus, in the context of an evangelical gift of art, the artist, acting as a mediator or translator, delivers a gift which has originally been conferred by God.17 As Reginald Pole’s complex letter to Colonna attempts to clarify, the only appropriate reaction to a divinely inspired, spiritual gift is an attitude of meek submission and grateful acceptance, avoiding wordy praise and seeking instead ‘that sacred silence, that one offers to holy things in place of praise’.18 Thus the recipient of a spiritual gift dedicates himself, not to gestures of thanks, but to quiet contemplation of the spiritual meaning of the gift. It is interesting that there is one occasion when this delicate code of giving and receiving was seemingly violated, and by Colonna herself. A letter from Michelangelo, of around 1539 or 1540, accuses his friend of having spoiled a surprise that he was preparing for her.19 Colonna appears to have commissioned the drawing of the Crucifixion from him at around this time, but was forced to wait so long for it that she despaired of ever receiving the finished copy. By way of a reminder she eventually sent Michelangelo an unfinished drawing or model that she already possessed, using Tommaso de’ Cavalieri as an intermediary, in order indirectly to express her impatience and eagerness to obtain the completed work. The subtle remonstrance inherent in Colonna’s gesture did not escape Michelangelo. He was particularly angered by the use of an intermediary: ‘It is not right, as I am in Rome, that you should resort to giving the crucifix presentation drawing of the Pietà for Colonna, which he offered to pass on to Ercole Gonzaga in around 1546, demonstrating the circulation of these personal gifts among the intimate group of spirituali, and the notion that they should be handed on as freely as they were received. See Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 650. 16 See, for details of Colonna’s first gift manuscript for Michelangelo, Enrico Carusi, ‘Un codice sconosciuto delle Rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna, appartenuto forse a Michelangelo Buonarroti’, in Atti del IV Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani 4 (Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani, 1938), pp. 231–41; also Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo. 17 For a discussion of Michelangelo’s position in relation to this theory, including his enormous frustrations and tendency to destroy works that did not adequately reflect his ‘concetto’, see David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 18 ‘[Q]uel sacro silentio, che in vece di lode s’offerisce alle cose divine’: Colonna, Carteggio, p. 185 (Colonna to Marguerite de Navarre, February 1540). See also Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 652. 19 Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 206–7.

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to Tommaso so that he has to act as an intermediary between yourself and your servant, in order that I should serve you’.20 The love between the two friends, inspired by their mutual faith, has no need of intermediaries and does not require prompting, as it operates in secret and without explanation.21 Michelangelo feels that the surprise he has been preparing has been spoilt by his friend’s impatience – ‘my plan has been ruined’ – and he remonstrates with her by citing a significant line from Petrarch: ‘He who so soon forgets such faith does much wrong.’22 The inference is that Colonna’s lack of faith in her friend’s desire to complete the work for her carries more serious intimations of a lack of faith in God’s love, which cannot be prompted to bestow gifts according to merit. Once again, then, Petrarch’s verse becomes enmeshed in the discussion of faith and grace that occupies the spirituali, and his lyrics are borrowed and re-employed in a new, reformed context, in which secular love for Laura is transmuted into divine love for God. In Michelangelo’s letter, the gift of art, the intimate exchange of the Petrarchan sonnet, and the reformer’s aspiration towards an acceptance of God’s unmerited love and Christ’s immense sacrifice, are combined and conveyed in a brief phrase that resonates with unspoken meaning. ‘Un uomo in una donna’: Colonna and Michelangelo While the dynamics of the relationship between Pole and Colonna cast the former very much in the role of guide and mentor, between Michelangelo and Colonna a very different dynamic existed. Widely read, with a certain knowledge of Latin and of classical literature as well as a close understanding of the scriptures and of a variety of interpreters (as Pietro Carnesecchi pointed out in his Inquisition trial testimony, Colonna had access to imported works by prominent reformers from abroad, including Luther in translation23), Colonna had also benefited from close contact with some of the important religious thinkers of her period in Italy, through correspondence and contacts forged in Naples and Rome. She was thus probably in a position of some authority over Michelangelo regarding questions of faith, as well of course as commanding a far higher social status than he did, and assumed the role of spiritual guide and the source for religious inspiration in the verses that Michelangelo addressed 20 ‘E’ non par, sendo io in Roma, che egli accadessi lasciar il crocifisso a messer Tommaso e farlo mezzano fra Vostra Signoria e me suo servo, acciocchè io la serva’. 21 See, for a close analysis of this letter, and the profound meaning inherent in its brief message, Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, p. 652. 22 ‘Mal fa chi tanta fè sì tosto oblia’: Petrarca, Canzoniere, ed. by Santagata, CCVI, ‘S’i’ ’l dissi mai, ch’i’ vegna in odio a quella’, p. 868. In this sonnet, Petrarch laments the fact that Laura could ever be led to doubt his love (in this case too an intermediary is to blame), and asserts that, although he can never speak of it to Laura – ‘I’ no ’l dissi già mai, né dir porìa’ – his love is manifest in his every look, word and gesture, and can be clearly seen by those who take the time to observe. 23 See Colonna, Carteggio, p. 342.

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to her.24 In one poem in particular, ‘Un uomo in una donna, anzi un dio’, Colonna’s gender is transformed, as Michelangelo transmutes her into a man or god, reflecting her strength and leadership. Un uomo in una donna, anzi un dio per la sua bocca parla, ond’io per ascoltarla son fatto tal, che ma’ più sarò mio. I’ credo ben, po’ ch’io a me da lei fu’ tolto, fuor di me stesso aver di me pietate; sì sopra ’l van desio mi sprona il suo bel volto, ch’i’ veggio morte in ogni altra beltate. O donna che passate per acque e foco l’alme a’ lieti giorni, deh, fate c’a me stesso più non torni.25

The poet is so grateful for the spiritual inspiration provided by his lady that he prays that he might never be forced to return to his previous earthbound state, for which he now feels only pity. The tone is optimistic, hopeful that salvation will prove to be near at hand. Michelangelo’s transformation of Colonna into a man or god as she instructs him in spiritual matters indicates the essentially non-gendered nature of their interaction: they meet as equals, and Colonna’s sex does not preclude her from taking a leading role in the relationship. Michelangelo’s ‘masculinised’ response to her indicates the manner in which Colonna appears able with great dexterity and skill to modulate the manner of her self-presentation.26 24

For an indication of Michelangelo’s own theological background and education, see Giorgio Spini, ‘Per una lettura teologica di Michelangelo’, Protestantesimo 44 (1989), 2–16. Romeo de Maio points out that Michelangelo would have been deprived of contact with the scriptures in Italian during the last years of his life, when the vernacular edition was banned, as he knew no Latin. See Romeo de Maio, Michelangelo e la Controriforma (Rome: Laterza, 1978), p. 416. 25 ‘A man within a woman, or rather a god / speaks through her mouth, so that I, / by having listened to her, / have been made such that I’ll never be my own again. / I do believe, since I’ve been / taken from myself by her, / that, being outside myself, I’ll take pity on myself; / her beautiful face spurs me / so far above vain desire / that I see death in every other beauty. / O lady who pass souls / through fire and water on to days of joy: / Pray, make me never turn back to myself again.’ Saslow, ed. and trans., The Poetry of Michelangelo, number 235, p. 398. Although this madrigal was not composed until 1544–1546, it deserves mention here as indicative of the very particular dynamic between the two artists. 26 The cross-gendering which Michelangelo employs may also have a religious precedent, as the evangelical experience appears to disregard gender as meaningless in a spiritual process of merging and incorporation with Christ. This process allows, for example, men to become ‘brides of Christ’ (see Michelangelo’s verse, ‘Vorrei voler, Signor, quel ch’io non voglio’, The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 208, and the reference to the poet

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Another poem composed by Michelangelo for his friend, ‘Ora in su l’uno, ora in su l’altro piede’, was inscribed on one of the extant letters to Colonna concerning the drawing of the Crucifixion that he was preparing for her, and reiterates Michelangelo’s poetic stance as dependent on his friend’s guidance.27 Once again, the poet fervently describes his belief that Colonna will be his salvation, helping to lead him out of a crisis of doubt onto the path of true faith. The painful shifting from one foot to the other, from one choice to another in a misery of spiritual blindness and uncertainty, portrays the artist’s state of mind before the generosity and virtue of his friend act upon his desperate soul. He offers himself to her as a blank sheet, ‘la carta bianca’ upon which she will ‘rewrite’ him afresh in the state of grace that he so desires: the beloved is thus accorded the visionary role of an artist who ‘sculpts’ the soul of the poet in order to uncover his inner beauty hidden within the hard outer shell.28 Ora in su l’uno, ora in su l’altro piede variando, cerco della mia salute. Fra ’l vitio e la virtute l’alma confuso mi travaglia e stanca, come chi ’l ciel non vede, che per ogni sentier si perde e manca. Ond’io la carta bianca convien ch’a pietà mostri, che qual di me si voglia tal ne scriva: ch’a ogni muover d’anca, in fra’ grandi error nostri mie picciol resto più quaggiù non viva; e ’l ver di sé mi priva, né so se minor grado in ciel si tiene l’umil pechato che ’l superchio bene.29

as ‘[il] tuo bella sposa’), and Christ himself to perform a maternal nurturing role, as in his lactating through the wound in his side. Colonna’s sonnets reflect this maternal role in images of Christ feeding and protecting his offspring in the manner of a ‘mother bird’, reflecting the image in Matthew 23:37 of Christ protecting Jerusalem as a hen guards her chicks: see Colonna, Rime, ed. By Bullock, pp. 103, 108. Also Fiora A. Bassanese, ‘Vittoria Colonna, Christ and Gender’, Rivista della Civiltà Italiana 40 (1996), 53–7. 27 The letter is in Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 206–7. The version of the poem given here is the one found on the manuscript of Michelangelo’s letter in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Codice Vaticano Latino 3211, leaf 99. Saslow gives a different version of the poem, probably a later re-working: see The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 319. 28 For an analysis of Michelangelo’s theory of ‘scultura per forza di levare’, see ‘The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo’ in Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 171–230. Poems which famously express this concept are ‘Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto’ (Saslow, p. 302), and ‘Si come per levar, donna, si pone’ (The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 305 – in which the lady once again takes on the task of ‘sculpting’ the poet’s soul). 29 ‘Now on the one foot and now on the other, / shifting back and forth, I search for my salvation. / Between virtue and vice, / my bewildered soul distresses and wearies me; /

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The poem’s closing statement is surprisingly bold, despite being clothed in an expression of doubt, constituting an assertion of the fact that Christ’s sacrifice has bought pardon for us all, humble sinners included, so that ‘superchio bene’ can even be considered ‘superfluo’ and unnecessary for salvation.30 The mood is strongly evangelical, reflecting the sweet, forgiving Christ of evangelical texts such as the Beneficio di Cristo and the same intimately loving and understanding Christ to whom Colonna appeals in her own verses. Colonna responded to this verse plea from Michelangelo with a sonnet of her own, ‘Non potrò dire, o mio dolce conforto’, which is included in the manuscript gift that she sent to him, and represents her reasoned response to his cry for help: Non potrò dire, o mio dolce conforto Che non sia destro il luogo, e i tempi et l’hore Per far chiaro con l’opre un tale ardore, Quale è il desio, che dentro acceso porto. Ma se ben questo o quel picciol diporto Sottrae dal sempre procurarvi honore I sensi; ho pur per gratia fermo il core Non mai drizzar la vela ad altro porto. M’accorgo hor che nel mondo et sterpi et spine Torcer non ponno al saggio il destro piede Dal sentier dritto, s’antivede il fine. Ma il molto amore a noi, e la poca fede De l’invisibil cose alte e divine Ne ritardano il corso a la mercede.31

Colonna’s sonnet re-evokes the painful oscillation of Michelangelo’s verse, in the repetition of litotes and negative phrases – ‘Non potro dire […] che non’, ‘torcer non ponno’ – and in the listing of connected ideas, but this poem does I’m like one who can’t see heaven, / who gets lost on every path and misses his goal. / So I must offer my blank page / to your mercy, / so that you may write what you wish of me: / that with every step, / among our grave mortal sins / the little that’s left me ceases to dwell down here; / I am deprived of truth, / nor do I know whether humbled sin / holds a lower rank in heaven than sheer good’ (my translation). 30 Michelangelo uses ‘superchio’ to imply superfluous in a number of his other poems. See ‘Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto’ (The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 302), ‘Sì come per levar, donna, si pone’ (p. 305), ‘Se ben concetto ha la divina parte’ (p. 400). See also Carlo Ossola’s comments in Valdés, Lo Evangelio di San Matteo, ed. by Ossola, p. 89. 31 ‘I cannot say, O my sweet comfort, / that the place is not opportune, the moment or the hour, / to clarify with action such a passion, / the desire that I bear brightly lit within my being. / But if this or that little pastime / distracts my senses from always honoring you, / still through your grace I have a firm heart / and never turn my bark towards another port. / I now understand that in this world pricks and thorns / cannot turn the sure foot of the wise man / from his straight path if he foresees its end; / but our great self-love, our weak faith / in those high and holy invisible things, / slow down our progress towards salvation’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 118–19).

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not display the same deep internal pain. Her advice to her friend is to look ahead to where the way is clear and straight and focus on what is to come – ‘s’antivede il fine’ – and to avoid the self-interest and weak faith that lead us astray from our spiritual vocation. In some senses this could be considered to be harsh advice, as if the poet suspected her reader of being inadequate in faith and prone to the pull of earthly ties.33 Nonetheless, the uncompromising stance also lends the poet an air of authority and strength of purpose as she reaffirms her ability to guide and instruct her less confident friend.34 Michelangelo’s drawings for Colonna, in their choice of subject matter and mode of representation, closely correspond to the evangelically inspired spiritual impulses that inform Colonna’s writing. The Crucifixion, completed some time in 1540, depicts a Christus triumphans undefeated and imbued upon the cross with a new and divine life, suggesting that Michelangelo was looking back to traditions of early Christian art in order to rediscover the simplicity and directness of earlier worship.35 Ascanio Condivi, in his description of the work in his 1553 biography of Michelangelo, emphasises Christ’s vital power and energy: Out of love for her he also did a drawing of Jesus Christ on the cross, not in death as is commonly depicted, but in a divine pose with his face lifted up to the Father, as if he were saying: ‘Heli, heli’; and his body does not droop abandoned in death, but as if given life by its bitter torment it comes to and begins to writhe.36 32 For an analysis of the sonnet, see Carlo Vecce, ‘Petrarca, Vittoria, Michelangelo: Note di commento a testi e varianti di Vittoria Colonna e di Michelangelo’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44 (1992), 101–25 (p. 114). Vecce points out that, despite the chilly tone, the extent to which this sonnet was revised and rewritten testifies to a particularly intense involvement with it on Colonna’s part. 33 Interestingly, the later version of the sonnet given by Bullock, (Colonna, Rime (1982), p. 133) tempers the harsh final tercet to an extent – ‘ma il proprio amor e la non certa fede…’ Another sonnet (Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 109 – ‘Di gioia in gioia e d’una in altra schiera’) describes the Christian’s journey in strikingly different terms, with breathless optimism as Christ leads her along the ‘via men dura’ of evangelical faith. 34 Michael Spiller has pointed out that a sense of wisdom and authority to give counsel is built into the structure of the fourteen-line sonnet, which contains internal closures after the quatrains and tercets, which give it the air of a series of ‘points’, in the manner of a proverb or maxim. See Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet, p. 12. 35 On this ‘retrospective sensibility’ in art of the period, see Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, pp. 1–22. On early images of Christ triumphant on the cross, see Joan Morris, ‘The First Portrayal’, in The Decorative Arts of the Christian Church, ed. by Gervis Frere-Cook (London: Cassell, 1972), pp. 9–28. 36 ‘Fece anco per per amor di lei un disegno d’un Gesù Cristo in croce, non in sembianza di morto, come comunemente s’usa, ma in atto divino, col volto levato al Padre, e par che dica: “Heli, heli”; dove si vede quel corpo, non come morto abbandonato cascare, ma come vivo per l’acerbo supplizio risentirsi e scontorcersi’: Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo. La vita raccolta dal suo discepolo Ascanio Condivi, ed. by Paolo d’Ancona (Milan: L. F. Cogliati del Dr. Guido Martinelli, 1928), p. 188.

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Condivi’s description of Christ triumphant at the moment of death is reminiscent of the image of Christ calling out to his followers to bathe in his blood at the foot of the cross from the anonymous Meditatione discussed in Chapter 2. The strength and twisting, upward impulse of Christ’s body in the drawing seem intended to inspire not the pity and grief of medieval lamentations but the jubilant taking up of arms of the militant evangelical, who is inspired to join the battle for true faith by the example of Christ’s indefatigable courage.37 Michelangelo’s drawing of the Pietà for Colonna portrays the same refusal to accept defeat, this time in the upraised arms of the Virgin Mary who clasps Christ between her legs. Her gesture is ambiguous, intermingling both the selfabandonment of profound mourning and jubilation at the final realisation of mankind’s salvation, and her powerful position supporting the body of Christ indicates her role as mankind’s role model and intermediary, embodying the pure faith that we must seek to imitate.38 Finally, the Samaritan Woman at the Well (the drawing has not been identified, although its existence is known of through a description by Vasari in his Vita, and a letter from Colonna in Viterbo39), is a depiction of the event recounted in John 4, in which a woman of Samaria talks with Christ and then goes back to her own people to tell of the coming of the prophet. Colonna in fact wrote a sonnet recounting the same event (‘Felice donna, a cui disse sul fonte’), which celebrates the Samaritan woman’s openness to Christ’s message, her swift conversion and ultimate dedication to the Christian truth: Ma alor fu sazio il tuo desire ardente quando ti aperse i vivi accesi raggi del Sol ch’avea a infiammar Sammaria e ’l mondo; onde in fretta n’andasti a quei più saggi che venisser col cor, l’alma e la mente ad onorar il dì festo e giocondo.40

The emphasis on the Samaritan woman seems particularly significant in the light of Colonna’s own role as seemingly the only woman involved in the 37 The Crucifixion drawing for Colonna has been identified as one in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, Catalogue number 1895–9-15-504. See Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 413–15. 38 This drawing is the one now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, catalogue number 1.2.o/16 [1.4.o/60]. See Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 426–8. 39 See Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze, 1550, ed. by Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), p. 372. (Condivi does not mention this drawing in his life of Michelangelo.) Colonna’s letter is in Carteggio, pp. 268–9. 40 ‘Then was your burning desire satisfied / when he revealed to you the blinding rays / of Sun that were to inflame Sammaria and the world; so in haste you ran to tell the wise / to come with their hearts, souls and minds / ready to honour that wondrous and joyful day.’ Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 191.

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meetings and discussions in Viterbo, and thus as someone with a personal interest in the potential evangelical role that can be played by women. Here a pagan, converted to the cause, adopts the role of teacher and disseminator of Christ’s message to her own people. The evidence provided by the various sonnets Colonna and Michelangelo wrote for one another, the letters they exchanged and the presentation drawings that the artist executed for his friend, points to a consonance of spiritual moods and ideas that has an unmistakably evangelical genesis, grounded in the practice of spiritualised gift exchange outlined above. Colonna, in her role as mentor and teacher of Michelangelo, can be credited with taking the leading role in this spiritual journey. It is possible to conjecture that she gave her friend a copy of the Beneficio di Cristo when it was circulating in manuscript form before its publication in 1542 or 1543, as Colonna herself had most certainly read this text and was deeply affected by it.41 It seems unwise to hypothesise here over the precise nature of Michelangelo’s own beliefs or his position on sola fide.42 It has been established that he was close to other members of the spirituali, including Reginald Pole, and that the influence of Savonarola during his youth in Florence may have led to a natural affinity for evangelical spirituality.43 What is undeniably significant is that Colonna saw him as the most appropriate recipient of her highly reformed gift manuscript of 1540, and trusted him to read the sonnets with sufficient understanding and appropriate humility. The Codice Vaticano Latino 11539 A letter addressed by Michelangelo to Colonna which bears no date, but is thought to have been written around 1540, thanks her in humble and awed tones for a gift which she has bestowed upon him and which he feels unworthy to receive:

41

An unsigned letter that has been attributed to Colonna, and bears the hallmark of her authoritative literary style and didactic tone as well as marginal notations in her hand, demonstrates her keenness in passing on copies of evangelical texts to friends. In the letter, the writer recommends a book she is currently reading, the evangelical message of which has had a profound influence on her. She refers to conversations she has had with the book’s author, suggesting strongly that the author is Flamino and the book the Beneficio. See Fontana, ‘Nuovi documenti vaticani intorno a Vittoria Colonna’, pp. 617–24. The letter, with the title ‘Meditazione sulla Passione di Cristo’, is also cited in Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, pp. 119–27, although Concetta Ranieri disagrees with its attribution to Colonna, suggesting that she annotated a manuscript written by a friend. 42 For a controversial but intriguing analysis of Michelangelo’s spirituality, see Leo Steinberg, Michelangelo’s Last Paintings: The Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter in the Cappella Paolina, Vatican Palace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). 43 Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet, pp. 139–41.

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I wished, Madam, before the collecting the things that you have tried many times to give me, in order to receive them as worthily as I could, to make something by my own hand for you: but recognising that the grace of God cannot be bought, and it is a grave sin to receive it with a sense of discomfort, I admit that the fault is mine and willingly accept these things: and once I have them, not through having them in my house but through myself dwelling in their house, it will seem to me that I dwell in paradise: so that I will be even more indebted to your ladyship, if it is possible to be more indebted than I already am.44

Michelangelo’s tone is consonant with the tendency to view the gift, highly personal and significant, as a reflection of divine grace, something of which the recipient does not feel worthy but which he agrees to accept with grateful simplicity. In addition he clearly refers to his initial desire to reciprocate, which he has suppressed, recognising the reformed truth that God’s grace cannot be earned, and that it is a sin to imagine that one could deserve it through merit. Nor does he allow himself to feel uncomfortable or inadequate about the magnitude of the gift.45 As he never specifies the nature of the ‘things’ that so please him, critics have assumed Colonna’s gift consisted of religious objects of some description. There is no reason, however, why this letter could not as easily relate to a gift of sonnets, a hand-written and plainly bound manuscript containing a selection of the poet’s most recent, evangelically inspired poems. There is another example of Michelangelo using the term ‘things’ or ‘cose’ to refer to poetry by Colonna, a fact that helps support the hypothesis that her manuscript was indeed the subject of the above letter. In a letter to his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti, composed four years after Colonna’s death in March 1551, Michelangelo makes mention of the manuscript which he has guarded carefully, and which he is now reluctant to pass on to any third party: About a month ago Mr Gianfrancesco asked me if I had anything by the Marchesa of Pescara. I have a little book made of parchment that she gave me about ten years ago, in which are one hundred and three sonnets, not counting the ones that she sent to me from Viterbo on paper, of which there are forty which I had bound into the same book and at the time I lent it to numerous people so that all the poems are by now in print.46 44

‘Volevo, Signora, prima che io pigliassi le cose, che Vostra Signoria m’ha più volte volute dare, per riceverle manco indegnamente che io potevo, far qualche cosa a quella di mia mano: dipoi, riconosciuto e visto che la grazia di Iddio non si può comperare, e che’l tenerla a disagio è peccato grandissimo, dico mia colpa, e volentieri dette cose accetto: e quando l’arò, non per averle in casa, ma per essere io in casa loro, mi parrà essere in paradiso: di che ne resterò più obrigato, se più posso essere di quel ch’i sono, a Vostra Signoria.’ Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 210–11. 45 For a note about various mistranslations of this passage, as well as an analysis of Michelangelo’s attempt here to ‘abstain from resisting the gift’, see Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, pp. 650–1. 46 ‘Messer Gianfrancesco mi richiese circa un mese fa di qualche cosa di quelle della Marchesa di Pescara, se io n’avevo. Io ò un libretto in carta pecora che la mi donò circa dieci anni sono, nel quale è cento tre sonetti, senza quegli che mi mandò poi da Viterbo in carta bambagina, che son quaranta; i quali feci legare nel medesimo libretto

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Clearly what has led Gianfrancesco Fattucci (named in the letter) to inquire after Colonna’s sonnets is knowledge of the friendship between two such high-profile public figures, and the suspicion that Michelangelo may be in possession of some previously unpublished work. Although Michelangelo strongly denies that his manuscript could be of any interest, nine of the sonnets contained in it were still unpublished by 1551, and we do not know what was in the extra section sent to Michelangelo from Viterbo and now lost. His jealous guarding of the gift suggests its great and personal value to him, not as his only access to Colonna’s verses (an edition of the Rime of 1558, now in the British Library, bears the artist’s signature on one of its pages, suggesting that he also purchased or received printed copies47), but as a collection whose meaning extended beyond the individual poems contained in it to attain a more universal significance. Michelangelo’s gift manuscript was first identified by Enrico Carusi in Rome in 1938.48 Carusi was led to his identification by the fact that there is clear evidence that an extra part, that is the manuscript of poems sent from Viterbo and mentioned by Michelangelo in his letter to his nephew, has been attached and then subsequently separated again. Simply bound and extremely plain, the manuscript’s title page reads only ‘Sonetti spirituali della Sig.ra Vittoria’, the lack of the poet’s last name or title suggesting the personal nature of the gift. (The addition of the name ‘Vittoria’ in fact appears almost as an afterthought, as if it were assumed that the recipient would be well aware of the provenance of this very particular collection.) All of the sonnets in the manuscript are rime spirituali from Colonna’s later period of production, and only seventeen out of the total 103 had already been published in printed editions by 1540, when the gift was probably prepared. They are written one per page and numbered chronologically, and there is no illumination, nor other decorative features of any sort. The handwriting is that of one of Colonna’s own calligraphers, suggesting that the poet herself oversaw the preparation of the work.49 This collection is not, as Carlo Vecce points out, arranged in the manner of earlier canzonieri by poets such as Pietro Bembo or Jacopo Sannazaro, which conformed to the model laid down by Petrarch, that is a development from worldly concerns through a gradual spiritual awakening to a final plea to the Virgin. Later printed editions of Colonna’s sonnets from the 1550s until the end of that century, in which a small number of the later rime spirituali were included at the end of the book after an initial group of amorous sonnets, came far closer to the prototypical Petrarchan model. In the Vatican manuscript there e in quel tempo li prestai a molte persone, in modo che per tutto ci sono in istampa’, cited in Tordi, Il codice delle Rime di Vittoria Colonna, p. 11. 47 This copy of the Rime of 1558, edited by Ruscelli, is catalogued in the British Library as c.28.a.10: the signature of ‘Michelagniolo Schultore’ appears on p. 392. 48 Carusi, ‘Un codice sconosciuto’. See, for an analysis of the manuscript, Carlo Vecce, ‘Zur Dichtung Michelangelos und Vittoria Colonnas’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 381–4. 49 On the identification of the calligrapher, see Vecce, ‘Petrarca, Vittoria, Michelangelo’, p. 104.

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is no chronological development from earthly to divine love and thus spiritual enlightenment, but a universal and continuous contemplation of the mystery of faith that leads full circle, culminating and beginning in the inevitable fact of the individual and his or her relationship with Christ.50 The opening sonnet of Michelangelo’s manuscript collection lays down the poet’s intentions: she will speak only of matters of faith, and will attempt through her writing to come closer to the ardently desired union with Christ which is the goal of prayer and worship. Poi che ‘l mio casto amor gran tempo tenne L’alma di fama accesa, ed ella un angue In sen nudriò, per cui dolente or langue Volta al Signor, onde il rimedio venne, I santi chiodi omai sian le mie penne, E puro inchiostro il prezioso sangue, Vergata carta il sacro corpo exangue, Sì ch’io scriva ad altrui quel ch’ei sostenne. Chiamar qui non convien Parnaso o Delo, Ch’ad altra acqua s’aspira, ad altro monte Si poggia, u’ piede uman per sé non sale. Quel sol, che alluma gli elementi e ’l cielo, Prego ch’aprendo il Suo lucido fonte Mi porga umor a la gran sete eguale.51

The very physical and bodily quality of the description is notable here, as the poet thirsts for pure faith and the raw ingredients of the Crucifixion are borrowed and re-employed as her writer’s tools. We are reminded of the physical quality of Michelangelo’s own poetic language, his use, in particular, of the tools of his trade such as stones, rocks and chisels to express his poetic conception, sculpting the image of his beloved in hard Alpine stone and simultaneously upon the page on which he writes. The ‘puro inchiostro’ that Colonna fashions from the blood of Christ reflects too the ‘carta bianca’ upon which Michelangelo begs his friend to write in ‘Ora in su l’uno, ora in su l’altro piede’.52 Religious understanding must be achieved, such images 50

Vecce, ‘Petrarca, Vittoria, Michelangelo’, p. 105. ‘Since my chaste love for many years / kept my soul aflame with the desire for fame, and it nourished / a serpent in my breast so that now my heart languishes / in pain turned towards God, who alone can help me, / let the holy nails from now on be my quills, / and the precious blood my pure ink, / my lined paper the sacred lifeless body, / so that I may write down for others all that he suffered. / It is not right here to invoke Parnassus or Delos, / for I aspire to cross other waters, to ascend / other mountains that human feet cannot climb unaided. / I pray to the sun, which lights up the earth and the / heavens, that letting forth his shining spring / he pours down on me a draught equal to my great thirst’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, Sonnet 1, p. 57). All subsequent references to this edition in this chapter will be in the form of sonnet and page numbers. 52 See also Saslow, ed., The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 319, where the later version of this sonnet makes the consonance with Colonna’s poem even clearer, as Michelangelo 51

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suggest, through a process of self-study and discovery, in fact precisely the ‘divine consideration’ of Valdesian theology. It is perhaps surprising, given the general tenor of Colonna’s sonnets, to find her expressing her faith with such robust physicality and sensuousness, particularly in view of the neo-Platonic tendency to erase the body from love poetry in order to rediscover the potential for a purely spiritual process of uplifting. In addition the poet frequently expresses in earlier sonnets the desire to transcend the physical altogether, to escape the ‘prison’ of her human form and the insufferable weight of this earthly life.53 What we seem to be witnessing here is a definitive shift into the evangelical language of spiritual renewal that was used in the context of Viterbo, with its vibrant and evocative terminology and insistence on Christ’s body as the locus for wonder and adoration. There is a clear resonance of the traditionally sensual language of religious mysticism deriving from such models as Catherine of Siena, but also more directly from evangelical writers who were themselves imbued with mystical influences such as Valdés and Ochino. As the opening of the manuscript, this sonnet constitutes a subtle yet unmistakable statement of the poet’s new direction, as an evangelical concerned with conveying the message of Christ’s ‘benefit’ through emphasis on his tangible, human and wounded flesh.54 One other highly significant fact about this sonnet deserves mention. In Bullock’s 1982 edition of Colonna’s Rime a slightly different version of the sonnet is given, based on Vincenzo Valgrisi’s 1546 edition of the Rime spirituali (considered by Bullock to contain the definitive versions of these later sonnets).55 Colonna claims in line eight of the version in Bullock’s edition that she will write only of Christ’s suffering for her own benefit and personal growth: ‘sì ch’io scriva per me quel ch’Ei sostenne’ (my italics).56 The difference in the manuscript version is subtle yet fundamental to our understanding of the poet’s intentions: in this case she is writing ‘ad altrui’, addressing herself to

describes the ‘sacri inchiostri’ that she will use upon his soul. 53 See for example ‘Dal vivo fonte del mio pianto eterno’ (p. 9), and ‘Penso per adolcir i giorni amari’ (p. 28), in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock. 54 Leo Steinberg, in his examination of Christ’s sexuality in Renaissance art, underlines the importance of a recognition of Christ’s humanity in incarnational theology: ‘the godhead has vested itself in the infirmity of the flesh, so as to raise that flesh to the prerogatives of immortality’. Thus the more tangible and ‘fleshly’ Christ becomes, the more the wonder of his incarnation is enhanced. See Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, p. 12. 55 See Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 359. Dennis McAuliffe disagrees with Bullock’s citing of the Valgrisi edition as the definitive and most reliable, suggesting that the search for more reliable manuscript information should be continued. See Dennis McAuliffe, ‘The Language of Spiritual Renewal in the Poetry of Pre-Tridentine Rome: The Case of Vittoria Colonna as Advocate for Reform’, Rivista della Civiltà Italiana 40 (1996), 196–9 (p. 199). 56 Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 85.

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a wider audience including among its number the recipient of her gift who will read her manuscript with close attention. The authority of the poet’s stance here reflects the dynamics of the relationship between Colonna and her reader: Colonna is in control, pointing the way and guiding her disciple on the long and painful path to recognition of the true faith. Even by her own admission she is the teacher and leader of her male counterpart. The manuscript’s status as an evangelical gift is therefore subtly confirmed in its very opening lines, as is its engagement with a wider programme of communication with other evangelicals who are members of the same spiritual community. The second sonnet in the collection reiterates the poet’s personal avowal to turn exclusively towards Christ, as she expresses the desire to participate directly in the Crucifixion in order in some way to alleviate Christ’s burden. Con la croce a gran passi ir vorrei dietro Al Signor per angusto erto sentiero, Sì ch’io in parte scorgessi il lume vero Ch’altro che ’l senso aperse al fedel Pietro; E se tanta mercede or non impetro Non è ch’ei non si mostri almo e sincero, Ma comprender non so con l’occhio intero Ogni umana speranza esser di vetro. Che s’io lo cor umil puro e mendico Appresentassi a la divina mensa, Ove con dolci e ordinate tempre L’Angel di Dio, nostro fidato amico, Se stesso in cibo per amor dispensa, Ne sarei forse un dì sazia per sempre.57

As in the first sonnet, the corporeal element of this poem is pronounced. The poet longs to drag herself bodily behind Christ and suffer with him in order to have her eyes opened to the true light. This element is then taken to far greater mystical heights in the final two tercets: where in the first sonnet the poet vows to use Christ’s body and blood as her poetic tools, here she imagines arriving at the divine table and being fed of his body directly to provide her spiritual sustenance, an image used by Dante in the Paradiso (and it should be remembered that Michelangelo himself was also intensely inspired by Dante,

57 ‘I long to stride behind my Lord / bearing his cross along the steep and narrow path, / and thus make out in part the one true light, / which opened more than just the eyes of faithful Peter; / and if I am not now granted so great a reward / it is not because God is ungenerous or insincere, / but because I fail to understand completely / that all human hope is as fragile as glass. / If I were to present my humble heart / in purest supplication before the divine table, / where with sweet and orderly constitution / the angel of God, our trusted friend, / offers himself through his love to be our food, / one day my appetite may perhaps be forever satiated’ (Sonnet 2, pp. 57–9).

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and knew his works intimately, thus the reference here would have been clear to him).58 The following poem, ‘Quel pietoso miracol grande, ond’io’, continues with the theme of what Nagel has described as ‘attendance on the body as a kind of mysterious rite’.59 The poet sets up a bipartite structure in order to emphasise the essential duality of Christ’s nature, the Hypostatic Union of human and divine qualities which occurs at the moment of the Nativity: due parti estreme, Il divino e l’uman, sì giunte inseme Ch’è Dio vero uomo e l’uomo è vero Dio.60

The two parts are ‘extreme’, divided by an abyss but brought together as one by the miracle of Christ’s coming to earth in human form, a miracle that fills the poet with the hope and joy of a ‘free and candid heart’ and frees her from fear. Christ is gentle and kind like a lover, and simultaneously places a ‘sweet’ yoke around the poet’s neck and a weight upon her shoulders, burdens that she will bear with gratitude as life giving and redemptive. Again in the manner of a lover, Christ’s relationship with his chosen ones is secretive and exclusive: A l’alme umili con secreta chiave Apre il tesoro suo, del qual è avaro Ad ogni cor d’altere voglie acceso.61

Christ’s dead body thus becomes a source for sweetness and light, and his grace is bestowed upon those who are humble of heart as his words in Matthew 11:29–30 make clear: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ The fourth sonnet in the manuscript extends the poet’s emphasis from her own state to that of all mankind, a race of crawling ants grown too worldlywise with hearts hardened against God’s grace. Once again the tone, despite the lowly and despicable state of mankind, is optimistic and infused with joy as the poet imagines Christ, in a gesture of strength and emancipation, shattering the wall of ignorance that covers men in shadow.

58 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, XXIV, 1–3. The relevant passage reads as follows: ‘O sodalizio eletto alla gran cena / del benedetto Agnello, il qual vi ciba / sì, che la vostra voglia è sempre piena’. The biblical source is John 6, in which Christ offers his flesh to the disciples as the bread of life. 59 Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, pp. 660–1. 60 ‘[T]wo opposed beings, / one divine and one human, so fused into one / that God becomes a true man and man a true God’ (Sonnet 3, p. 59). 61 ‘[T]o all humble souls with his secret key / he opens up his treasure, jealously guarded / from any heart inspired by proud ambition’ (Sonnet 3, p. 59).

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Di vero lume abisso immenso e puro, Con l’alta tua pietà le luci amiche Rivolgi a questi quasi vil formiche, Saggi del mondo, c’hanno il cor sì duro. Rompi de l’ignoranza il grosso muro Ch’ancor li copre di quelle ombre antiche Del vecchio Adamo, fredde empie nemiche Al caldo raggio tuo chiaro e sicuro, Tal che rendendo al Pastor santo onore, Vestiti sol di te con fede viva, Abbian la legge tua scritta nel core, Sì che dei propri affetti ogni alma priva Voli con l’ale del divino amore A la celeste tua beata riva.62

Like a true evangelical in the spirit of the Beneficio the poet calls out for the renewal of faith on the part of all mankind through a total fusion and ‘incorporation’ (in line with Valdesian teaching) with the body of Christ – ‘vestiti sol di Te con fede viva’, and carrying Christ’s message inscribed upon the heart.63 The cold fog of ancient ignorance and sin contrasts with Christ’s light and love, cold and damp set in opposition to warmth and light in a typically Petrarchan antithesis that once again drives home the tangible, physical reality of salvation through faith. The Dantean quality of the opening image, with its reference to the vast well of light in which God resides looking down upon the lowly race of men who crawl below him, suggests the range of poetic sources upon which Colonna is drawing as she seeks out the images that best encapsulate her evangelical mindset. What is becoming increasingly clear in this progressive analysis of the sonnets in Michelangelo’s gift manuscript is the poet’s unwavering focus on the image of Christ as the locus for understanding and salvation, an attitude fully in line with the Christocentrism advocated by the evangelicals and expressed so vibrantly in the Beneficio di Cristo. Colonna’s Christ is infinitely loving and pitying, infinitely forgiving of mankind’s trespasses:

62 ‘From within a vast pure well of the true light, / through your mercy, you turn your loving eyes / upon these lowly, crawling ants, who are so / full of worldly wisdom and hard of heart. / Break down the thick wall of ignorance / which still casts over them Adam’s / ancient shadows, chilly and persistent enemies / of the clarity and healing of your warm gaze, / so that, paying holy tribute to the Eternal Shepherd, / and clothed in you alone with living faith, / they may bear your law inscribed upon their hearts, / and every soul liberated from selfish desires / may fly upon wings of holy love / up to your blessed celestial shore’ (Sonnet 4, p. 59). 63 The Valdesian process of incorporation is described by Paul in II Corinthians 12:2, in which he mentions a man he knew who ‘inhabited’ Christ: ‘I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.’

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col lato aperto su dal santo legno ne chiama sempre, pieno il petto e ’l volto d’infinita pietà, d’immenso amore.64

The poet, in a tremulous state of anticipation, prepares herself for the moment of her union with the bridegroom, ‘con lampa ardente, / chiamata dal Signor, saggia, prudente’.65 Comparing herself to Zacchaeus (Luke 19), who climbed a tree in order to glimpse Christ above the crowds and was then called upon to host him in his house, the poet longs to raise her own ‘basso intelletto’ high enough to see him too, so that she may host him in the sanctuary of her heart, tal che lieta ed umil nel gran convito gli apparecchiassi una candida fede per mensa e poi per cibo l’alma e ’l core.66

Certain imagery recurs frequently in the sonnets. The poet strives upwards towards the light of Christ which brings warmth and security, ‘caldo’, sicuro’, ‘acceso’; on earth she is weighed down by cold shadows, ‘ombra’ and ‘nebbie’ which are ‘dense’, ‘fredde’; the poet herself is blind and weak, ‘inferma’ and unable to act or feel as she strives to; Christ’s communication with the faithful is secret, intimate and loving, as he helps them to untie the bonds around their hearts and tongues so that they may speak of their renewed faith and love. Lyric antitheses abound in juxtapositions of high and low, fire and ice, heat and cold, light and dark, as a means of highlighting the gulf that exists between the poet’s earthbound state and the divine union that she aspires to and longs for. Yet despite her feeling of being far from achieving a true state of grace, the poems are charged with optimism and hope of imminent renewal, the ‘verace speme’ conferred freely upon mankind by Christ’s love: Debile e ’nferma a la salute vera Ricorro, e cieca il sol cui solo adoro Invoco, e nuda bramo il celest’oro E vo al suo foco fredda in pura cera; E quanto in sé disfida, tanto spera L’alma in quel d’ogni ben vivo tesoro, Che la può far con largo ampio ristoro Sana, ricca, al suo caldo arder sincera. Onde con questi doni e questo ardire Lo veggia non col mio ma col suo lume, L’ami e ringratii col suo stesso amore. Non saranno alor mie l’opre e ’l desire, 64

‘Wounded in one side, he calls eternally / down from the holy cross, his breast and his face / charged with infinite pity and unending love’ (Sonnet 6, p. 61). 65 ‘With a brightly burning lamp, / summoned by my Lord, wise and prudent’ (Sonnet 6, p. 61). 66 ‘[A]nd then joyfully, humbly, at the eternal banquet / I would lay down for him my sincere faith / as the table and my soul and heart as his food’ (Sonnet 14, p. 67).

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Ma lieve andrò con le celesti piume Ove mi spinge e tira il santo ardore.67

The reference in line three to the poet unclothed, longing for a celestial shower of gold, is perhaps an allusion to the myth of Danaë, daughter of the King of Argos, who was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a shower of golden rain. As a symbol of chastity and of conception by a virgin through divine intervention, Danaë’s myth was interpreted from the Middle Ages as a prefiguration of the Annunciation, thus the reference here links the poet’s experience indirectly to that of Mary.68 The exclusivity of the emphasis on Christ is underlined in particular in one sonnet, ‘Rinasca in te il mio cor quest’almo giorno’, in which the poet subverts expectations of a sonnet in celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary, mankind’s intermediary with God. Employing a curious twist, she contrives to laud the birth of Mary as the initial event which made possible the birth of Christ, the ‘te’ confusingly referring not to Mary, but to her son: Rinasca in te il mio cor quest’almo giorno che nacque a noi colei di cui nascesti.69

This complex double manoeuvre is reiterated in the sonnet’s close, as the poet asks Christ to intercede with Mary (who intercedes with God on her behalf) to give her strength to devote herself to God: So ch’ella prega te per noi, ma, o pio Signor, prega tu lei che preghi in modo Ch’io senta oprar in me sua vital forza.70

Endowed with this force, the poet, in imitation of Christ who smashes the wall of ignorance that surrounds mankind in sonnet 4, will be able to break 67 ‘Weak and infirm I run towards true salvation, / and blindly I call out to the sun, which alone of all things / I worship, and naked I burn for his heavenly gold / and approach his flames fashioned in pure, cold wax; / and however much I distrust myself, so much more / then does my soul trust in his wondrous gift, / which has the great healing power to make me / healthy, enriched, and whole in his loving fires. / Thus, once armed with these gifts and this burning ardour, / I may behold him not through my own powers of vision but through his, / and may love and worship him through the power of his love for me. / Thus my deeds and my desires will no longer be my own, / but lightly I will move upon celestial wings / wherever the force of his holy love might fling me’ (Sonnet 21, p. 73). 68 Danaë’s myth, and its common representation in art, is outlined in James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, revised edn (London: John Murray, 1984), p. 90. 69 ‘Let my heart be reborn in you on this glorious day / on which she who bore you was herself born’ (Sonnet 9, p. 63). 70 ‘I know that she prays to you on our behalf, but, / Holy Father, pray to her that through her prayers / her vital energy will fill my being’ (Sonnet 9, p. 63, lines 9–11). The convoluted form of word-play could be considered to anticipate later

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free of the knots which bind her to her material life and devote herself to the life of the spirit exclusively. The role reversal enacted in the poem seems significant, especially when compared with a number of other sonnets that occur in the manuscript gift for Marguerite de Navarre, sonnets which celebrate the strength and autonomy of the Virgin as an independent and powerful force.71 Marguerite de Navarre’s collection, as well as three Marian letters from Colonna to her cousin which will be discussed in Chapter 5, illustrate Colonna’s abiding interest in Mary as a powerful and attractive female role model. This sonnet, by contrast, is concentrated on the figure of Christ in line with evangelical Christocentrism. Nonetheless, the notion that Christ might use Mary as an intermediary is an unusual and intriguing one that overturns the traditional celestial hierarchy. In many of the sonnets, exploration of certain doctrines of the Reformation, most obviously those of sola fide and predestination, serve to underline the evangelical genesis of the poet’s thought. At times such references to a reformed spirituality become bold and strident, constituting an evangelical ‘call to arms’ of the Christian brotherhood. Thus for example in ‘Vorrei che sempre un grido alto e possente’, employing jubilant militaristic vocabulary the poet prays for a ‘living faith and burning hope’ which will ring out within her and act as her armour in the ‘ultima guerra’, and which all the blessed and predestined are able to experience: L’anima eletta, che i bei segni sente In se medesma del celeste ardore, Giesù vede, ode e ’ntende, il cui valore Alluma, infiamma, purga, apre la mente.72

The language of struggle and combat mirrors the tone of the Beneficio, in which the Christian is also called upon to arm himself with the true faith and to follow Christ, the Captain, into battle.73 Again in ‘Parmi veder con la sua face accesa’ the atmosphere is of contained excitement and building tension before the great battle of faith will begin:

mannerist developments within the Petrarchan tradition: see, for an overview of such developments and a careful attempt to classify ‘mannerism’ as a literary concept, John M. Steadman, Redefining a Period Style. “Renaissance”, “Mannerist” and “Baroque” in Literature (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1990), pp. 83–101. 71 See the full discussion of these sonnets in Chapter 4. 72 ‘The elected soul, who feels the wondrous heat / of the celestial fire within, / sees, hears, and understands Jesus, whose virtue / lights up, inflames, purges, and opens the mind’ (Sonnet 34, p. 83, lines 5–8). 73 Da Mantova, Il Beneficio, chapter 6, pp. 59–67.

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Parmi veder con la sua face accesa Ir lo spirto divino, e ovunque trova Esca l’accende, e già purga e rinova Del vezzo antico l’alma e vera chiesa, E i saggi cavalier han or compresa La lor pace futura; a ciascun giova Che la guerra cominci e s’arma e prova Mostrarsi ardito a sì felice impresa. Già la tromba celeste intorno grida, E quei che de la gola e de le piume S’han fatto idolo in terra a morte sfida; Celar non ponno il vizio a quel gran lume Che dentro al cor penetra ov’egli annida, Ma cangiar lor convien vita e costume.74

Once again the chosen ones are singled out as ready and armed for the battle that will purge and renew the church of its ‘vezzo antico’, while all sinners must look within themselves and strive to change before it is too late.75 The poet’s faith and optimism in the possibility of a new start and a cleansing of old sins is again apparent as the celestial trumpet rings out, not only within the soul of the poet but universally to all of mankind. Another sonnet reinforces the poet’s interest in the doctrine of sola fide and her recourse to the Valdesian notion of incorporation into the body of Christ: Padre eterno del ciel, se, tua mercede, Vivo ramo son io ne l’ampia e vera Vite ch’abbraccia il mondo e chiusa intera Vuol la nostra virtù seco per fede, L’occhio divino tuo languir mi vede Per l’ombra di mie frondi intorno nera, 74 ‘It seems to me that I see the Holy Spirit / hovering with face aflame, and wherever it finds / tinder it sets it on fire, and already it purges and renews / the one true church of its ancient vices. / And the wise warriors have now foreseen / their future peace; they all anticipate the coming / battle and arm themselves and try / to show courage in fighting for this great cause. / The celestial trumpet is already sounding out, / and those who have made idols of greed and luxury, / it challenges to mortal combat; / they cannot hide their sin from that great light / that penetrates into every heart that harbours vice, / but they should strive to change their lives and ways’ (Sonnet 93, p. 131). 75 Dennis McAuliffe has pointed out that in the 1760 and 1840 editions of Colonna’s Rime, ‘vezzo’ is substituted by the much stronger ‘lezzo’ (fetid stench), and that the Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana cites Colonna’s name, along with Petrarch, as being the only authors to have employed this term. The variation causes the sonnet’s implied criticism of the church to take on a far stronger, and potentially more ‘dangerous’ aspect, and appears to be in line with the generally hyperbolic and exalted tone of the verse. See McAuliffe, ‘The Language of Spiritual Renewal’, p. 199. In addition, other Petrarchan echoes (for example line 10 – see Petrarca, Canzoniere, VII, line 1, ‘La gola e ’l somno et l’otïose piume’) reinforce the connection to the earlier poet.

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S’a la soave eterna primavera Il quasi secco umor verde non riede. Purgami, sì ch’io rimanendo teco Mi cibi ogni or de la rugiada santa E rinfreschi col pianto la radice. Verità sei; dicesti d’esser meco, Vien dunque lieto, ond’io frutto felice Faccia in te degno di sì cara pianta.76

The source of this sonnet is scriptural, namely John 15, verses 1 to 9 in which Christ presents himself as the true vine. Colonna, adopting this rich biblical metaphor, bemoans the shadow and dry earth that cause her branch to wither and fade and asks for the gift of faith that will bring her new life and fresh growth. The statement of salvation by faith alone is unequivocal in line 4 (and later versions of the sonnet make the statement yet clearer, giving the line as ‘la nostra virtù solo per fede’, my italics). In addition it is perhaps significant that the poet chooses to underline her spiritual ‘fertility’ and fruitfulness in Christ in this sonnet. In an earlier poem written in memory of d’Avalos, she indicates that her marriage, while physically sterile, was spiritually rich and fertile: sterili i corpi fur, l’alme feconde; il suo valor qui col mio nome unito mi fan pur madre di sua chiara prole.77

The use of the same metaphor in these two different contexts indicates the smooth and subtle transformation of the poet’s ‘sun’ from d’Avalos to Christ. Numerous other sonnets reinforce the impression of the poet’s reformed convictions. Thus in ‘Quando, vostra mercé, quasi presente’ she speaks of the divine grace which is revealed to those souls in possession of a ‘viva fede’, who can recognise God’s dominion over all things, ‘quanto giace qui sotto la luna, / la morte, il mondo, e buona e rea fortuna.’78 Again in ‘Cibo, del cui meraviglioso effetto’ the poet underlines the undeniable fact of salvation which is enacted despite mankind’s every attempt to remain unworthy:

76

‘Eternal heavenly Father, as, by your mercy, / I am a living branch on the broad vine of truth, / which embraces the world and enfolds in its girth / our virtue offered up through faith, / your divine eye will see me languishing / in the dark shadows that surround my leafy tendrils, / if in your sweet eternal spring / my parched sap cannot restore its fresh green colour. / Cleanse my soul, so that close by your side / I am nourished eternally by your holy dew / and my roots are refreshed with tears. / You are the truth; you promised to be with me; / come to me joyfully, so that I may grow / sweet fruits in you worthy of this blessed vine’ (Sonnet 20, pp. 71–3). 77 ‘Ours bodies were sterile, but our souls fertile; / his valour united here with my name / make me the mother to his renowned offspring’ (Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 18). 78 ‘[A]ll things that dwell here beneath the moon, / death, the world, and fortune both good and evil, / are lost from view to the enlightened mind’ (Sonnet 5, p. 61, lines 6–8).

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Tutto sol per far noi divenir tuoi Facesti, e pur da noi s’usa ogni ingegno Ed ogni poder nostro incontro a noi.79

One final sonnet deserves attention as particularly significant in reinforcing the reformed tenor of the manuscript collection. ‘Già si rinverde la gioiosa speme’ is a poem celebrating the ‘gente intrepida’ who risk their own safety in order to call others to the true faith: Già si rinverde la gioiosa speme, Che quasi secca era da me sbandita, Di veder l’alma e ben dal ciel gradita Terra che il gran sepolcro adorna e preme. Odo ch’or gente intrepida non teme Tormenti o morte, anzi vien tanto ardita A la fede, da noi quasi smarrita, Che ’l sangue loro a gli altri è vivo seme Sì fecondo che sol dodici eletti Fatto han che mille e mille ad alta voce Chiamano il buon signor già loro ignoto, Ed a scorno di noi, con vivi effetti Il segno umil de l’onorata croce Faran con maggior gloria al mondo noto.80

The poet’s hope, expressed in the opening quatrain, of seeing with her own eyes the ‘alma terra’, probably refers to her plan, never realised, to travel to the Holy Land on a personal pilgrimage to Christ’s birthplace.81 Thus the ‘gente intrepida’ of line five could themselves be pilgrims to Jerusalem whom the poet envies, or alternatively, given their role of preaching and converting, they could be missionaries working in the service of the ‘holy war’ in the recently discovered New World. It seems interesting, if we take the subject to be missionaries, that the poet’s interpretation of their role is so uplifting and idealistic, especially if we consider the bitter arguments over the role 79 ‘[A]ll this you did so that we may become yours, / and still we employ all our cunning / and all our strength against ourselves’ (Sonnet 11, p. 65, lines 12–14). 80 ‘My joyous hope renews itself already, / a hope I had relinquished and allowed to fade, / of visiting the fertile and much blessed / land that that noble grave honours and protects. / I hear that some intrepid people no longer fear / suffering or death, but rather come with such passion / to the faith that we have almost lost / that their blood acts as a potent and fertile seed / to other men; twelve alone of the elect / have caused thousands and thousands to call out / in a great voice to the Lord, who was unknown to them before, / and now, despite us, with great acclaim / they will make known the humble sign of the noble cross / more gloriously to all the world’ (Sonnet 63, p. 107). 81 See Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 131–2 (a letter from Paul III concerning Colonna’s plans for a pilgrimage). See also Peter Armour, ‘Michelangelo’s two sisters: contemplative life and active life in the final version of the monument to Julius II’, in Sguardi sull’Italia: Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari dalla Society for Italian Studies, ed. by Gino Bedani et al. (Leeds: Society for Italian Studies, 1997), pp. 55–83 (p. 72).

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of the missionaries and the status of the ‘colonised’ in the New World that raged throughout the sixteenth century and the ugly practices of enslavement and repression that took place. The sonnet’s idealism and optimism perhaps represent the poet’s reaction to what she sees as a vast evangelical project, advancing and confirming on a worldwide scale the more circumscribed activities of her own group of ‘missionaries’ in Viterbo. Vocabulary of fertility and fecundity is used in the sonnet to convey the rich potency of the message carried in the blood of these fearless few, who have heard so loud the message from the cross that they are prepared to die in order to share it with their fellow men. In the same way that the Beneficio stresses a brotherhood of the enlightened, here the poet indicates the few leaders who are able, through the strength of their burning for the faith, to lead so many onto the right path to God. The danger of missionary activity in wild and savage lands is indicated through the reference to the ‘tormenti e morte’ that these men and women refuse to fear. In addition, such ‘tormenti e morte’ could refer much closer to home, to the suspicion and repression on the part of the establishment that curb the work of evangelical groups in Italy. One can easily imagine Colonna being inspired to write such a poem by the example of Catholic ‘missionaries’ in Italy, men such as Bernardino Ochino, Juan de Valdés, and Reginald Pole, whom she personally adopted as her own spiritual guides in learning to ‘call out in a great voice to the Lord’. Michelangelo’s Manuscript: The Closing Sequence The Vatican manuscript under discussion closes with a group of sonnets which serve to re-ground the collection firmly within the context of the poet’s relationship with her sole implied reader, including specific references to the Roman society that both individuals knew and valued. In addition, the poet skilfully draws attention back to her own process of literary creation, reechoing the sentiment expressed in the manuscript’s opening sonnet, that is her desire to inscribe her search for a reformed union with Christ within her lyric poetry. Nine of the closing ten poems remained unpublished in print until the Valgrisi edition of 1546, which means that at the time of the manuscript’s preparation they represented fresh and undiscovered work for the recipient of the gift. In addition only two of these closing sonnets (‘Vergine pura, che dai raggi ardenti’ and ‘Eterna luna, alor che fra ’l Sol vero’) are included in the manuscript gift for Marguerite de Navarre that will be discussed in the following chapter. In that manuscript, what is more, they are placed as the opening two sonnets, drastically altering the emphasis accorded them. Significantly, two of the sonnets in the closing sequence of Michelangelo’s manuscript are addressed to specific individuals who were known by both the poet and the manuscript’s recipient, thus serving to locate the collection even more precisely within the poet’s evangelical Roman/Viterban experience of the late 1530s and early 1540s. ‘Diletta un’acqua viva a pie’ d’un monte’

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is addressed to Pietro Bembo, written in praise of Bembo’s poetic style which unites nature and art in perfect harmony: De la natura l’alte ultime prove Con la forza de l’arte insieme aggionte.82

There is an allusion to a change that has taken place in the life of the addressee, ‘or ch’è venuto il giorno / Ch’avete solo a Dio rivolto il core’,83 and this is no doubt a reference to Bembo’s appointment to the College of Cardinals which brought him to Rome in 1539. The mention of his new spiritual direction ties Bembo to the poet in her own choice of a new direction in the manuscript’s opening sonnet (although in her case the choice is made for less worldly and pressing reasons), and clearly she feels this connection intimately, reflected in the loving mode of address she employs, ‘Bembo mio caro’. Bembo’s status as a proclaimed master of the Petrarchan lyric and of controlled and beautiful writing in the vernacular, as well as his role as Colonna’s own poetic mentor and correspondent for many years, render his inclusion in this context particularly significant. The poet begs him, in the closing line of the sonnet, not to abandon his poetic vocation, but to turn it, as she has done, to the service of his new life: ‘rivolgete ancor la musa al vero’.84 By doing so, he can continue to act as a poetic role model for Colonna and by association for the recipient of her manuscript who also, as she well knows, strives to convey his ‘concetto’ in the form of poetry. In addition, the poet confirms through her plea the importance of poetry as a vehicle for exploring faith, not a trivial or superfluous act as she sometimes seems to fear it is, but central to the communal spiritual development of the enlightened. The following sonnet in the manuscript’s closing sequence, ‘Figlio e signor, se la tua prima e vera’, is addressed to Reginald Pole after the imprisonment of his mother by Henry VIII. The poet refers to her burgeoning years and her dire need for Pole’s help and spiritual guidance. The English cardinal embodies for her a dual role, as a ‘son’ requiring her care and protection and in turn as her own soul’s protector from the doubts and fears that beset her as she searches for divine understanding. The poet draws a comparison between Margaret Pole’s imprisonment, which cannot deprive her of her virtues, and her own pitiful bondage, ‘il cor chiuso e sepolto’ within her deep spiritual uncertainties. The inference is that perhaps it is Margaret, entrapped in a material prison, who suffers less.

82 ‘[T]he high and ultimate proofs of nature / united with the power of art’ (Sonnet 98, p. 135, lines 7–8). 83 ‘[N]ow that the day has come / when you have offered your heart to God alone’ (Sonnet 98, p. 135, lines 12–13). 84 ‘[T]urn again your muse to its true end’ (Sonnet 98, p. 135, line 14).

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Figlio e signor, se la tua prima e vera Madre vive prigion, non l’è già tolto L’anima saggia o ’l chiaro spirto sciolto, Né di tante virtù l’invitta schiera. A me, che sembro andar scarca e leggera E ’n poca terra ho il cor chiuso e sepolto, Convien ch’abbi talor l’occhio rivolto Che la seconda tua madre non pera.85

Once again, the addressee of this sonnet is a figure known well by both the poet and the recipient of her manuscript, and clearly the mention of Pole will indicate to Michelangelo as reader the very particular spiritual environment to which the poet alludes, reinforcing the reformed tenor of the manuscript. In addition the sonnet establishes the poet in her role as ‘seconda madre’ to Pole. Perhaps by association she is extending the maternal role to her relationship with Michelangelo in which, as has been shown, she took the dominant position. It could be argued that the inclusion in this closing sequence of the two sonnets in praise of the Virgin Mary (Sonnets 95 and 100) also serves to reinforce the poet’s adoption of this maternal stance, and the powerful model of the Virgin demonstrates the potential, in a maternal guise, for affirmative and independent action. Two other sonnets in the manuscript’s closing sequence deal with the imagery of stormy seas and boats, drawing upon the Petrarchan motif of the storm-tossed craft as a metaphor for the chaotic experience of life but in this context overlaying the image with strong evangelical connotations. ‘Quando il turbato mar s’alza e circonda’ describes the violent sea pummelling a rock, but the waves, unable to move the solid mass, falling back defeated. Likewise the poet, raising her eyes to heaven for help and sustenance, stands firm against the trials thrown at her by life, the ‘acqua mondana irata’ which surges against her. Developing the metaphor further, Jesus Christ acts as a living rock to which she ties herself with the bonds of faith and behind which she seeks protection from the storm. The image carries strong personal associations for Colonna: her emblem, devised by Paolo Giovio, represents an unyielding rock battered by stormy waters bearing the device Conantia frangere frangunt.86 Once again by way of a familiar image the sonnet reinforces the relationship of the closing sequence to the specific environment of the poet and her reader.

85

‘My son and master, if your first and true / mother abides in prison, yet still her wisdom / is not stolen from her, nor is her noble spirit defeated, / nor are the many virtues taken from her unconquered companions. / To me, who seem to move about unburdened and free / and to keep my heart confined and buried in a small plot, / I pray you turn your eyes from time to time / so that your second mother does not perish’ (Sonnet 99, p. 135, lines 1–8). 86 See Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell’imprese militari e amorose, ed. by Maria Luisa Doglio (Rome: Bulzoni, 1978), pp. 110–11 (first published in 1555). Giovio interprets the rock as the representation of the poet’s ‘fermissima virtù’, which withstands any assault.

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E se talor la barca del desio Vuol tentar nova Guerra, io corro al lido, E d’un laccio d’amor con fede attorto La lego prima a quella in cui mi fido Viva pietra, Giesù, sì che quand’io Voglio posso ad ogni or ritrarla in porto.87

The sea imagery harks back to earlier sonnets composed on Ischia and dedicated to d’Avalos, in which the sea which surrounds the island is a negative and destructive force tossing the poet to and fro on its stormy waters, alone and unprotected now that her consort has been stolen from her by cruel fate.88 Here the new Christological influence is marked, however. No longer alone or vulnerable the poet puts her trust in Christ, and like Peter in Matthew 14 who walks upon the water through the power of faith she remains firm and unmoved by the assaults of worldly desires. Once again in this closing sequence the poet appears to be reaffirming her authority through her positive appropriation of the message of the reformers. ‘Veggio d’alga e di fango omai sì carca’ returns once more to the ocean, this time to the image of St Peter drawing in his nets which are laden with useless and weighty algae and mud and threaten to split and overturn the boat. Veggo d’alga e di fango omai sì carca, Pietro, la rete tua, che se qualche onda Di fuor l’assale o intorno la circonda Potria spezzarsi e a rischio andar la barca, La qual, non come suol, leggiera e scarca Sovra ’l turbato mar corre a seconda, Ma in poppa e in prora, a l’una e l’altra sponda è grave sì che a gran periglio varca. Il tuo buon successor, cui la ragione Si drittamente elesse, e cor e mano Move sovente per condurla a porto; Ma contra ’l voler suo ratto s’oppone L’altrui malizia, onde ciascun s’è accorto Ch’egli senza ’l tuo aiuto adopra invano. 89

The poet is referring to the current crisis within the Catholic Church, which under Paul III was at this stage still seeking a compromise with the reformers, 87

‘And if sometimes the ship of desire / attempts a renewed attack, I hurry to the shore, / and with the bonds of love made fast by faith, / I first lash my boat to that living rock in which / I trust, Lord Jesus, so that whenever I wish / I can tow it back into his harbour’ (Sonnet 97, pp. 133–5, lines 9–14). 88 See for example ‘Provo tra duri scogli e fiero vento’ (Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 29). 89 ‘I see your net so laden with weeds and mud, / Peter, that if some wave / breaks over it or engulfs it / it may be torn and endanger your boat, / for it does not, as it should, float easily, / light and unburdened, over the turbulent sea, / but rather, in bow and stern, from one shore to the other, / is so weighed down that it sails in grave

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a fact which filled sympathisers like Colonna with a great sense of hope for potential change. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, is called upon to help Paul who is struggling in the face of ‘l’altrui malizia’ to effect the changes so direly needed. (One of the Pope’s fated attempts was the special congregation convened in Rome in 1536, which included Pole and Contarini among its numbers and produced the document entitled Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, yet ultimately failed to achieve any noticeable move towards reform.90) What the poet’s stance demonstrates clearly is her firm positioning within the Catholic establishment, recognising the dire need for reform and applauding the Pope for his, as yet unsuccessful, attempts to enact it (and it should be remembered that, at this stage, belief in certain reformed doctrines such as sola fide was not enough to provoke the flight from Italy of men such as Ochino and Vermigli). The evangelical slant of her attitude is reflected in the poet’s conviction that, without the heavenly intervention of St Peter, the Pope’s human striving will be in vain, just as grace is achieved through faith and God’s will, not through individual merit and good works. Once again, Colonna’s reader is firmly positioned through this sonnet in the context of his contemporary Rome and the tense expectation of religious renewal. The final two sonnets in Michelangelo’s manuscript return to a treatment of the poet’s vocation. Thus the manuscript as a whole comes to embody a complete cycle, leading from this same consideration in the opening poem through a broad exploration of matters of faith to return eventually to the crux of the poet’s concerns, that is her sense of the value of her art as an adequate expression of her faith. By closing in this way, Colonna succeeds in tying her endeavour intimately to the context of her friendship with Michelangelo, returning to the consideration of art and spirituality which dominates, for example, Francisco de Holanda’s account of their conversations in San Silvestro. The penultimate sonnet explains the urge to write which is born, not out of any desire for earthly fame (as the poet is careful to stress at other moments in her literary career91), but because the divine fire burning within her shows itself despite her.

danger. / Your noble successor, elected by / just reason, often turns his heart and his hand / to the task of guiding the boat to port; / but the wickedness of others / swiftly pits itself against his will, so that now all realize / that without your help he acts in vain’ (Sonnet 101, p. 137). McAuliffe also analyses this sonnet in ‘The Language of Spiritual Renewal’, p. 198. 90 See, for a discussion of the atmosphere of hope amongst the reformers during Paul III’s papacy, Fragnito, ‘Vittoria Colonna e l’Inquisizione’, pp. 157–72. 91 See for example the famous opening sonnet of the rime amorose, ‘Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia’ (Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 3).

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S’in man prender non soglio unqua la lima Del buon giudizio, e, ricercando intorno Con l’occhio disdegnoso io non adorno Né tergo la mia rozza incolta rima, Nasce perché non è mia cura prima Procacciar di ciò lode o fuggir scorno, Né che dopo il mio lieto al ciel ritorno Viva ella al mondo in più onorata stima; Ma dal foco divin, che ’l mio intelletto, Sua mercé, infiamma, convien ch’escan fore Mal mio grado talor queste faville, E s’alcuna di lor un gentile core Avien che scaldi, mille volte e mille Ringraziar debbo il mio felice errore.92

The premise is once again supremely evangelical. The sonnets arise not out of the poet’s skill or efforts but through a divine gift of grace. In the Beneficio di Cristo faith is portrayed as a divine fire burning within the chosen ones: despite themselves it will emit heat and light, the good works which all true Christians automatically carry out in imitation of Christ. Thus the poet points to the ‘faville’ which issue from her own internal fire, firmly once again situating herself within the body of the pre-ordained. Whilst the self-effacement of the quatrains can be read as a standard literary ploy, the reference to a divine fire contradicts this modesty by allying the poet not only with her spiritual brotherhood but also with a great tradition of writers, including Petrarch and Cicero, who claimed that poetry was born of a divinely conferred inspiration and could not be achieved through mere toil and application.93 In its closing moments Colonna’s manuscript gift is firmly established as divinely inspired and conferred upon its recipient. The closing tercet of this poem also highlights a link with the opening sonnet of the manuscript. There the poet demonstrated her altruistic aim in writing ‘ad altrui’ on matters of faith and sharing the fruits of her long and profound contemplation. Here she modestly claims that, if one of her verses has succeeded in touching one individual, her whole enterprise has been worthwhile. Michelangelo’s own poems, which extol his friend as his spiritual mentor, indicate the manner in which he has been touched by her 92 ‘If I often fail to take up the file / of good sense and, looking around me / with scornful eyes, refuse to embellish / or erase my rough, uncultivated verses, / this is because my primary concern is not / to garner praise for it, or avoid contempt, / or that, after my joyful return to heaven, / my poems will live on in the world more highly honoured; / but the divine fire, which through its mercy / inflames my mind, sometimes gives out / these sparks of its own accord, / and if one such spark should once warm / some gentle heart, then a thousand times / a thousand thanks I owe to that happy mistake’ (Sonnet 102, pp. 137–9). 93 Petrarch’s oration on the capitol of 1341 on the occasion of his coronation as laureate, in which he paraphrases Cicero’s praise of poets, is cited and discussed in Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, pp. 33–5.

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writing. While the humble tone is required by the genre, the inference is that the poet is aware of her influence upon her friend and her sonnet sends a message of brotherhood and love to him in their mutual spiritual journey. In addition, we might read into this humble claim an acknowledgement of the evangelizing function of Colonna’s lyrics, aimed at all times beyond their apparently interiorised contemplative domain to a wider public in need of a renewal of faith through poetry. Whilst adopting a markedly different tone of self-doubt and uncertainty, the closing sonnet in this collection reiterates the sentiment of the poet’s Godgiven vocation. Temo che ’l laccio, ov’io molt’anni presi Tenni gli spirti, ordisca or la mia rima Sol per usanza, e non per quella prima Cagion d’averli in Dio volti ed accesi. Temo che sian lacciuoli intorno tesi Da colui ch’opra mal con sorda lima, E mi faccia parer da falsa stima Utili i giorni forse indarno spesi. Di giovar poca, ma di nocer molta Ragion vi scorgo, ond’io prego ’l mio foco Ch’entro in silenzio il petto abbracci ed arda. Interrotto dal duol, dal pianger roco Esser dee il canto vèr colui ch’ascolta Dal cielo, e al cor non a lo stil riguarda.94

The opening quatrains with their repeated initial verb, ‘temo’, underline the poet’s frame of mind, expressing the fear that she has, through long habit and over-sophistication, lost touch with the visceral, gut-wrenching necessity of her faith. As in the penultimate sonnet, however, in which she excuses her ‘rozza incolta rima’, there is a sense here that she is paying lip service to this fear (reflected in the neat binary arrangement of the verbs), demonstrating by example the trap of slick predictability that a poet must avoid at all costs. In fact the confession of her fear can be seen to serve as a subtle re-affirmation of the poet’s technical competence and supreme stylistic control: her verse is so polished that the spirit invested in it may not always be apparent. Petrarchan echoes of Canzoniere LXII, ‘Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni’ (lines two and seven of Petrarch’s poem, for example, echoing lines eight and five of 94 ‘I am afraid that the knot, with which for many years / I have kept my soul bound up, now orders my verses / only through long habit, and not for the primary reason / that they are turned towards God and inflamed by him. / I am afraid that they are knots tied tightly / by one who works badly with a dull file, / so that, fired with false esteem, I believe / that my days are useful when in fact I waste them. / I perceive little reason why they should be of use, / but much evidence that they do harm, so I pray that / this internal fire may embrace and scald my heart in silence. / The song I sing to God, who listens from above, / should be interrupted by pain and hoarse cries, / for he values my heart and not my style’ (Sonnet 103, p. 139).

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Colonna’s verse), reinforce the poet’s affirmation of her poetic skill. The statement in the final line of the sonnet confirms this impression: God is her only true judge, and a judge not of style but of spirit. As the tercets make clear, the poet is quietly convinced that her own internal fire will continue to burn, silent yet powerful within her breast, and that her poetry, ‘interrotto dal duol, dal pianger fioco’, will continue to hold fast to her faith. What this sonnet constitutes, ultimately, is a bold, final shaking-off of the ties of earthly status and the judgement of her fellows: before God the poet is supremely confident that her verses will be understood, and she turns to him now in an act of absolute and unwavering faith. Conclusion In essence, the reformed faith embraced by the spirituali assigns a greater degree of responsibility to the individual who cannot seek solace for doubts and uncertainties in the comforting routine of good works but must struggle within himself to arrive at the necessary state of humility and thankfulness that sola fide asks of him. The familiar structures that protect the Christian from fear and isolation are dismantled, including the support of the saints, the promise of indulgences, and the priest’s role as interpreter and intermediary, and the worshipper is left to peruse unaided his vernacular translation of the scriptures, to look for meaning and to find a way of accepting God’s immense gift which he can never hope to merit. It is no wonder then, that an evangelical text such as the Beneficio di Cristo, the call to arms of renewed faith in Italy, must employ such strong and evocative language and terminology in order to arouse in the reader the necessary courage and ardour to embrace this aweinspiring duty. Colonna’s manuscript for Michelangelo can be considered to represent in its clearest form the poet’s personal attempt to deal with this burden of responsibility and to share the fruits of her labours, in the spirit of evangelical community, with someone close to her who is experiencing the same trepidation and uncertainties. Although couched in the language of humility and doubt as is only fitting given the responsibility she has assumed, the closing sonnet of Michelangelo’s manuscript in fact serves to assert the poet’s conviction that her efforts will be recognised by her intended reader and by association by her fellow reformers. In Michelangelo’s gift manuscript we find the model for a new kind of spiritually engaged and actively evangelical Petrarchan canzoniere.

CHAPTER 4

The Gift Manuscript for Marguerite de Navarre Introduction In around 1540 or 1541 a bound manuscript copy of a selection of Vittoria Colonna’s sonnets was sent to Marguerite d’Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, who had for some time been requesting a copy of her work via the French ambassador to Rome, Georges d’Armagnac (c.1501–1585). This second gift manuscript, although prepared and dispatched in the same period as the gift for Michelangelo, contains a markedly different selection of sonnets arranged in a very different sequence. The contrasting nature of the two collections highlights the manner in which the poet’s relationship with each recipient appears to have influenced the choice of material for inclusion and the manner of presentation of the gift. In other words, Vittoria Colonna’s gifts of sonnets allow a careful reader to trace the particular ways in which evangelical gift giving sought to respond to the currents of special friendships and to encapsulate and clarify shared spiritual aims. Colonna and Marguerite de Navarre Marguerite de Navarre’s life was close to Colonna’s in a number of ways. Both women endured first marriages that were childless (although Marguerite bore two children by her second husband, one of whom died in his first year). Both lost their husbands after the infamous battle of Pavia in 1525, although the men were fighting on opposite sides, and Marguerite’s brother, François Ier of France, was captured and imprisoned in Spain by Charles V with the aid of forces led by Colonna’s husband, Francesco d’Avalos.1 Both women became involved in circles of reformers in their respective countries and were strongly influenced by the evangelical doctrine of sola fide (Marguerite was particularly close to Guillaume Briçonnet (1472–1534), the reforming Bishop of Meaux, as well as receiving letters from John Calvin encouraging her in her reformed

1

Domenico Tordi claims, although his source is unclear, that while d’Avalos deported himself with great honour at Pavia, Charles d’Alençon, Marguerite’s first husband, was indecisive and cowardly, and was severely rebuked for this by his wife. Myth says that he in fact died, not from his battle wounds, but from a broken heart at his loss of honour. See Tordi, ‘Vittoria Colonna in Orvieto durante la guerra del sale’, p. 483.

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faith2). Both also expressed their spiritual beliefs and the path of their religious enlightenment through writing that was published and widely read during their lifetimes.3 It seems quite natural, therefore, that the two women should have known of one another, and despite a political situation that effectively made them enemies the French queen initiated a correspondence with the Italian aristocrat where they wrote of the problems of faith and expressed a fervent desire (never realised) to meet and speak face to face.4 In the exchange of letters that took place between the two women there is much display of the high esteem in which they held one another. In keeping with her role as a devout and humble widow, as well as in recognition of the other woman’s superior status, Colonna positions herself as vastly inferior to Marguerite and often speaks of the great honour which she has done her in seeking her out as a correspondent. Marguerite in turn adopts an equal tone of self-abasement, claiming that she in fact is the imperfect one of the two – ‘within I feel myself to be far from your high opinion of me’ – and expressing the hope that she will be elevated onto a higher spiritual plane through contact with Colonna: ‘your kind prayers will act as a spur to push me from the place where I dwell so that I may begin to run with you’.5 A selfconscious emphasis on the two women’s shared humility and piety, plus a deep mutual admiration, is clearly apparent in the letters. Evidently they shared an awareness of the public nature of their friendship and the care with which they must seek to define and ‘fashion’ themselves upon the page. In fact in the 1540s their exchange of letters was published numerous times in volumes of 2

See P. A. Becker, ‘Marguerite, duchesse d’Alençon, et Guillaume Briçonnet, évêque de Meaux, d’après leur correspondance manuscrite (1521–1524)’, Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français 49 (1900), 393–477; 661–67; Charmarie JenkinsBlaisdell, ‘Calvin’s Letters to Women: The Courting of Ladies in High Places’, Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982), 67–84. Calvin also wrote to Renée de France and to Marguerite’s daughter Jeanne d’Albret. 3 For a concise biography of Marguerite de Navarre, see Marie Cerati, Marguerite de Navarre (Paris: Sorbier, 1981). 4 Some critics suggest that Renée de France (1510–1575), Duchess of Ferrara, who knew both women and was herself in sympathy with the reformers, helped to establish contact between them. See for example V. L. Saulnier, ‘Marguerite de Navarre, Vittoria Colonna et quelques autres amis italiens de 1540’, in Mélanges à la mémoire de Franco Simone: France et Italie dans la culture européene. I: Moyen Age et Renaissance (Geneva: Slatkine, 1980), pp. 281–95. For information on Renée’s position on reform, see Charmarie Jenkins-Blaisdell, ‘Renée de France between reform and counter-reform’, Archive for Reformation History 63 (1972), 196–226. It is also possible that Jacopo Sannazaro, in France from 1501 to 1505, was a connecting figure between the two women’s circles: see Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Vittoria Colonna und die religiöse Heterodoxie in Italien’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by FerinoPagden, pp. 229–30. 5 ‘Per il dentro io mi sento sí contraria alla vostra buona openione […] mediante le vostre buone preghiere elle mi saranno uno sprone per uscire del luoco, ove io sono, et cominciar a correre appresso di voi’, Colonna, Carteggio, ed. by Ferrero and Müller, p. 203.

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Lettere volgari, along with letters to Colonna from Pier Paolo Vergerio the younger describing his meetings with Marguerite in 1540, a fact which verifies the extent of public interest in the communication between two such powerful noblewomen.6 One letter in particular, written by Colonna early in 1540, is central to the current discussion. In it she indicates the particular need that women have for female role models to act as moral and behavioural guides in a society in which the majority of models for imitation are male, and she further suggests, in keeping with the context of mutual flattery, that Marguerite may be able to fill just such a role in her life: In this long and difficult path through life we have need of guides, who can show us the way through their teachings and through their example can help us to overcome difficulties. I believe that examples chosen from our own sex are always more fitting and following them is always more appropriate, so I turned to the great women of Italy in order to learn from them and imitate them. But although I found many virtuous women, it did not seem to me right that other women followed such examples simply through force of habit, and in only one example from outside Italy I found the combination of perfection of the will conjoined with a perfect intellect.7

She is, Colonna claims, at the present time in a state of unhappy uncertainty with regard to questions of faith, and she hopes that through her contact with the other woman she will be ‘reborn’ spiritually: ‘I hope that later you will congratulate yourself on having given birth to me in spirit and made me as new in your eyes and the eyes of God.’8 The metaphor of giving birth seems an apt one to choose in this context, a discussion of the need for women to unite and provide one another with models for imitation, as it is an experience (albeit one which Colonna herself never had) which links all women intimately to the birth of Christ and the role of the ‘donna del cielo’, the Virgin Mother. As the 6 The first publication of the letters was in Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini et eccellentissimi ingegni scritte in diverse materie. Libro primo (Venice: Aldus, 1542). The exchange of letters between Colonna and Marguerite is on fols 125v.–127v. Vergerio’s letters to Colonna are on fols 100r., 102r., 128r. There is also a letter from Vergerio to Pietro Bembo (fols 128v.–129r.), in which he describes having seen Marguerite in the act of reading a letter from Carlo Gualteruzzi concerning Colonna’s manuscript gift (Gualteruzzi was at the time acting as Colonna’s literary agent in Rome). 7 ‘Havendo noi bisogno in questa lunga e difficil via della vita di guida, che ne mostri il camino con la dottrina, et con l’opre insieme ne inviti a superar la fatica; et parendomi che gli essempii del suo proprio sesso a ciascuno sian più proportionati, et il seguir l’un l’altro più lecito; mi rivoltavo alle donne grandi d’Italia, per imparare da loro et imitarle: et benchè ne vedessi molte vertuose, non però giudicava che giustamente l’altre tutte quasi per norma se la proponesseno, in una sola fuor d’Italia s’intendeva esser congioncte le perfettioni della volontà insieme con quelle de l’intelletto’, Colonna, Carteggio, p. 186. 8 ‘Spero che poi V.M. debbia allegrarsi d’havermi sí difficilmente partorita con lo spirito, et fattami di Dio et sua nuova creatura’, Colonna, Carteggio, p. 187.

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contents of Marguerite’s manuscript will clearly demonstrate, Mary’s special status in relation to Christ was integral to Colonna’s own self-conception as a religious female playing an active role in spiritual life. Marguerite’s response to this extraordinary assertion is swift and apt. She turns the tables by claiming that Colonna will be her spiritual guide and model, and refers specifically to the influence that the latter’s prayers and writings have upon her state of being, acting as an anchor and guide in her spiritual quest: ‘the continuation of your prayers is vital as is the frequent arrival of your most useful letters’.9 Although both women point the finger at the other, the indication is that they are undertaking a mutual process of self-assertion, subtly demonstrating their aptitude as models for imitation by other women, as writers, public figures and spiritual mentors. However what is clear from their careful self-presentation in the letters is that such an assertion must be couched in suitable socially acceptable terms that do not exceed the bounds of acceptable behaviour for aristocratic females. Some doubt lingers over the precise role that Colonna herself took in the preparation of the manuscript for Marguerite de Navarre. The correspondence relating to the matter has been attributed to Carlo Gualteruzzi, who on various occasions seems to have acted as Colonna’s literary agent or secretary, a fact that has led some critics to assume that the project was his own, Colonna merely providing access to her work.10 Elsewhere the initiative for the gift has been attributed to Pietro Bembo, working perhaps in collaboration with Gualteruzzi to organise the dispatch.11 Certainly it was the general rule for Colonna to refer matters relating to her literary endeavours to male third parties, including both of these men. A woman in her position was bound by strict rules of protocol, so that the seemingly forward act of sending her own work to a French royal was no doubt best conducted through the safer medium of other agencies. As an example of the way in which rules of correct behaviour modified and limited her actions, Colonna’s lengthy correspondence with Pietro Bembo and their exchanging of sonnets in one another’s honour was, initially at least, conducted via Paolo Giovio, who also seems to have acted at one time as her literary agent.12 The use of an intermediary was required for reasons of propriety and modesty on the woman’s part: in the case of Bembo, the gender difference and the need for the widow to maintain an appearance of 9 ‘[A]lla qual cosa è necessaria la continuanza delle vostre orationi et le frequenti visitationi delle vostre utili scritture’, Colonna, Carteggio, p. 203. 10 See for example Angela Dillon Bussi, ‘Vittoria Colonna: Rime (Sonetti)’ in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, pp. 202–4. On the role of literary agents or secretaries in the period, see Brian Richardson, ‘Print or Pen? Modes of Written Publication in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Italian Studies, 59 (2004), 39–64 (pp. 42–3). 11 This argument belongs to Tobia Toscano: see Colonna, Sonetti in morte di Francesco Ferrante d’Avalos Marchese di Pescara, pp. 24–5. 12 On Giovio’s relations with Colonna, see Carlo Vecce, ‘Vittoria Colonna und Paolo Giovio’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by FerinoPagden, pp. 172–4.

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13

strict decorum were added complications. In general, of course, aristocratic Renaissance authors often felt the need to protect themselves from the indignity of appearing to approve of the publication or dissemination of their writings, including in their prefaces some concrete reason why publication eventually became a necessity due to circumstances. An interesting contemporary example is Castiglione’s preface to the Cortegiano (first published in a printed edition in 1528), in which he blames Colonna for having allowed a manuscript copy of his work to circulate in Naples, thus forcing him into print in order to avoid bad copies being made.14 Colonna herself at all times publicly denounced the unauthorised published editions of her own verse that began to appear from 1538, and this may have been a motivation for the gift to Marguerite, a counter edition produced in a suitably decorous and non-commercial context. What is undeniable is that the letter sent to accompany the manuscript for Marguerite speaks of the matter as if of an initiative that the sender has personally undertaken, the poet alluded to only as a distant and uninvolved figure, although one who allowed copies to be made of the poems she apparently read aloud. It has recently come to our attention in Rome that Your Excellency desired a copy of the spiritual sonnets of the illustrious Marchesa of Pescara, and to that end you have sent word to us that you wish that they should be found and dispatched to you as soon as possible. I find I have collected and kept them all, having copied them out one by one as she dictated them, which was easy enough for me to do, and in view of my long-standing devotion to Your Excellency, I have decided that it would be unchristian to withhold from sending the same to you.15

Despite the nature of this correspondence, however, it seems highly unlikely that Colonna herself would have been completely uninvolved in the conception of the gift for Marguerite, given the close correspondence between the two women. Perhaps the author of this letter takes responsibility for the dispatch in order to maintain the necessary pretence of the female author’s modesty. Domenico Tordi suggests that Colonna prepared the work for Marguerite to compensate for the fact that they were unable to meet in person in Lombardy

13

See Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’, p. 264. Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, ed. by Bonora, pp. 23–4. For information on this and other examples of the tendency for Renaissance authors to offer apologies for publishing, see Virginia Cox, The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 34–46. 15 ‘Essendosi in Roma nuovamente inteso V.M. desiderar di haver copia delle rime spirituali della Ill.ma S.ra Marchesa di Peschara, et sopra ciò haver commesso et scritto qua che sieno cercate et mandatele con buona diligenza, io, il quale mi trovo haverle di mano in mano e mentre ella dettate le ha, copiate et conservate tutte, il che a me è stato assai agevole fare, per l’antica servitù, che io con S. Ex.a tengo, ho giudicato non potere senza nota di christiana impietà cessare di mandargliele. Cited in Tordi, Il codice, p. 18. 14

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in 1540, as they had been planning.16 The most convincing evidence in favour of some degree of involvement by Colonna in the preparation of the collection is revealed by a detailed examination of the contents and ordering of the manuscript that Tordi believed was the one sent to Marguerite in France. Such analysis points strongly to a conscious attempt to prepare a gift which would have direct appeal for its recipient, speaking to her on an intimate level and dealing with matters that relate in particular to a woman’s experience of spirituality, as will be demonstrated in the following discussion. The intercession of Gualteruzzi, or perhaps Bembo, as scribe and mediator was no doubt necessary and usual, but should not be cited as reason to discount Colonna’s own involvement. Both men were in any case very close to the poet, so that neither is likely to have acted without her collaboration or at the very least her consent. The story of the manuscript’s journey to its destination is not straightforward. Upon arrival in France the collection was taken and held by the Grand Constable to the French court, Anne de Montmorency (1493–1567), as is recounted by another letter, from the Ferrarese ambassador Alberto Sacrati to the Duke of Ferrara in August 1540: In recent days a gentleman friend of mine has sent me a book of sonnets written by the Marchesa of Pescara, so that I might present them to Her Highness the Queen of Navarre in his name. Since the queen herself had asked him to find these sonnets via Monsignor Rhodes and since the gentleman is in the service of the Marchesa and is someone who admires and collects poetry, I could not deny him this favour, and thus the book ended up, together with the letters, in the hands of the Grand Constable.17

When the king, François Ier, heard of the confiscation he immediately ordered that the manuscript be delivered to its rightful owner, his sister Marguerite.18 Montmorency’s concerns were presumably related to the manuscript’s connections with Ferrara, where Renée de France was garnering notoriety as a reformer. Carlo Dionisotti has argued that the involvement of Sacrati in the delivery of the manuscript suggests that Colonna was uninvolved in the gift, as it did not arrived directly from Rome.19 However, the close links between Colonna and Renée de France, wife of the Duke of Ferrara (Colonna stayed at the court in Ferrara from 1537 to 1538), and Renée’s intimacy with 16

See Tordi, ‘Vittoria Colonna in Orvieto’, pp. 483–4. ‘Alli passati [dí] essendomi stato indirizzato un libro de sonetti scritti a mano dalla S.ra Marchesa di Pescara da un gentil’huomo mio compare, acciò gli havessi da presentare alla Ser.ma Reina di Navarra in nome suo, per havere S. M.tà fatto ricercar lui de detti sonetti per Mons. di Rhodes et per essere il gentilhuomo gran servitore della Marchesa et esser persona che si diletta in questa arte e ne fa cumulo, no gli seppe negare, et il libro capitò con le lettere nelle mani di Monsieur Gran Conestabile.’ Cited in Simoncelli, ‘Pietro Bembo e l’evangelismo italiano’, p. 12. 18 See, for details of this episode, Saulnier, ‘Marguerite de Navarre’, pp. 287–8; Tordi, Il codice, pp. 19–23. 19 Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo’, pp. 284–5. 17

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Marguerite, make her in fact a likely intermediary between the two women, and a possible female conduit between the poet and the recipient of the gift casts a further interesting light on the contents of the manuscript, where a markedly female, Marian emphasis is clearly detectable. The Ashburnham Manuscript At the turn of the century Domenico Tordi identified the manuscript gift for Marguerite sent from Rome in 1540 as being a collection now held in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, catalogued as ASHB 1153 (from the Ashburnham collection). Later scholars have disagreed with Tordi’s attribution, basing their argument primarily on the ‘jumbled’ nature of the Ashburnham manuscript, which contains early rime amorose together with later spiritual sonnets as well as poems by other authors.20 Carlo Dionisotti, and later Tobia Toscano, have both pointed out an unsigned and incomplete letter in Bembo’s hand, now in the Vatican Archives, which describes the collection received by Marguerite as containing ‘one hundred most beautiful sonnets […] all of them religious and holy’.21 Both critics take this description to mean that the original manuscript must have been composed entirely of Colonna’s sonetti spirituali. Their interpretation overlooks two important factors, however. The first is the fact that the division of Colonna’s poems into ‘amorous’ and ‘spiritual’ sonnets was instigated by the editors of the early printed editions. There is no evidence that Colonna herself, or those close to her who helped manage her poetic manuscripts, ever employed the same division, one that ignores the sense of continuity and development that is a notable characteristic of the poet’s lyric oeuvre. The second important factor is the arrangement of the Ashburnham manuscript itself, which allows earlier rime amorose addressed to the memory of Francesco d’Avalos, as well as rime epistolari to various contemporaries, to feed into the general context of the poet’s act of spiritual exploration. All the sonnets in the manuscript could well be described as ‘religiosi e santi’ given the context in which they are to be read. In fact, the phrase ‘tutti religiosi e santi’ can be interpreted as a generic description of the nature of the sonnets rather than the precise categorisation by subject matter that Dionisotti appears to infer. It is my intention to argue, on the basis of evidence of a clear thematic direction to the Ashburnham manuscript which corresponds closely to issues dealt with by Colonna and Marguerite in their letters and in their own lives, that Tordi’s original attribution of the collection was in fact correct. Whether or 20

See Tordi, Il codice. Also, in support of Tordi’s hypothesis, Alan Bullock in Vittoria Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 360–7. For the principal arguments against Tordi’s attribution, see Colonna, Sonetti in morte, p. 25; Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo’, pp. 284–5. 21 ‘Cento molto belli sonetti […] tutti religiosi e santi’: cited in Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo’, p. 284; Colonna, Sonetti in morte, p. 25. The letter is Vat. Chig. L.VIII.304, fol. 239.

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not the poet was directly involved in the act of assembling and dispatching the manuscript is perhaps less important than the assertion that the poet approved of the gift and was involved in the selection of material for inclusion. The contents of the Ashburnham manuscript speak resoundingly in favour of this hypothesis. A number of sonnets treating similar and very significant themes are grouped together in a prominent position in the collection, indicating that the poet herself requested and oversaw their inclusion in a gift that she wished to endow with a particular emphasis and meaning. The few poems by other authors included in the manuscript (by writers such as Bembo, Alfonso d’Avalos and Francesco Maria Molza, among others) are mostly replies to sonnets from Colonna, or else elicit a response from her, providing an illuminating picture of the broad range of literary relationships maintained by the poet, a picture with particular resonance for the recipient of this gift. The intermingling of earlier and later work, both published and unpublished, in an eclectic mix suggests that a highly self-conscious and careful process of selection is being conducted in order to produce a work that does not merely contain new verses to add value, but strives to combine older and newer elements in a meaningful way.22 In keeping with the tone of the letters exchanged by the two women, the manuscript is unadorned and simply bound, a reflection of the poet’s own piety and aversion to publicity, as the letter accompanying the gift takes pains to point out: ‘a small volume, bare of any external adornments, which is entirely in keeping with the role and status of the aforementioned lady, who is herself turned towards the adornments of the soul and scorns those of the body as vile and fleeting’.23 The title page is plainly decorated, bearing only Marguerite’s coat of arms showing the fleur-de-lis, contrasting noticeably with the lavish and extravagant manuscripts that adorned courtly libraries during the Renaissance. The coloured decoration on the arms provides a different kind of contrast with the completely plain title page of Michelangelo’s manuscript, however, indicating a slightly more formal register to this gift for a queen. The indication of modesty and lack of affectation promoted by the title page is slightly altered by the inclusion in the title of the standard label of ‘divina’: ‘la Divina Signora Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara’. The use of this familiar epithet, together with poet’s full title, serves to render the overall effect of the gift more formal and studied than the brief and informal ‘Sonetti Spirituali 22 Alan Bullock, while agreeing with Tordi’s attribution of the Ashburnham manuscript, has pointed out that it is surprising for a gift manuscript to contain published work: the gift gained status precisely from the quantity of unpublished material it contained. See Alan Bullock, ‘A hitherto unexplored manuscript of 100 poems by Vittoria Colonna’, p. 46. It must be borne in mind, however, that Colonna never openly acknowledged any of the published editions of her sonnets: she may have chosen simply to ignore their existence. 23 ‘[U]n piccolo volumetto, nudo d’ogni esteriore ornamento, si come appunto conviene allo stato e professione della prefata S.ra, la quale volta agli ornamenti dell’anima quelli del corpo sprezza come cose vili e caduche.’ Cited in Tordi, Il codice, p. 19.

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della Sig.ra Vittoria’ which opens Michelangelo’s gift manuscript, in keeping with Marguerite’s higher rank and status. The sonnets themselves are written in an elegant and clear hand, one per page, with the first letter of every stanza picked out in gold and the remainder of the text plain. The first sonnet of the collection, ‘Vergine pura, che dai raggi ardenti’, is immediately and strikingly significant: Vergine pura, che dai raggi ardenti Del vero Sol ti godi eterno giorno, Il cui bel lume in questo vil soggiorno Tenne i begli occhi tuoi paghi e contenti, Uomo il vedesti e Dio quando i lucenti Suoi spirti fer l’albergo umile adorno Di chiari lumi e timidi d’intorno I tuoi ministri al grand’ufficio intenti.24

The sonnet is addressed to the Virgin Mary in the manner of Petrarch’s famous culminating canzone, ‘Vergine bella, che di sol vestita’, and had already been widely diffused in the seven editions of the Rime published from 1538, although in none of these published editions is it the opening poem.25 Despite being well known, however, its appeal here is very specific, corresponding precisely to the issue raised in the letter from Colonna to Marguerite cited above (and published in 1542), that is the interest in a need for female role models to which Colonna testifies. Such models were to be sought both in society and also within the religious traditions that played a major part in structuring the lives of all women. By opening the sonnet sequence in this vein, the poet has suggested that her preoccupation is with the particular concerns and difficulties of a woman approaching the Catholic faith and attempting to locate herself within it.26 The positing of the Virgin as a model is of course far from straightforward. Marina Warner, in her personal study of the cult of the Virgin throughout history, points to the dual nature of Mary’s status. On the one hand she is able to guide women through her example, yet at the same time her influence 24

‘Pure Virgin, you who in the burning rays / of the true sun bask in eternal day, / whose beautiful light, during your toilsome earthly life, / kept your lovely eyes serene and contented; / you beheld him, both man and God, when his / bright spirits adorned his humble dwelling / with a great light, and your ministers timidly / gathered round intent on their great office’, Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 131–3. Also cited in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 135. All further references to sonnets from the Ashburnham manuscript will cite the sonnet number in the main body of the text. 25 Petrarca, Rime sparse, CCCLXVI. 26 Significantly, although Colonna’s exploration of female role models in her manuscript for Marguerite appears to be directed at a female readership, in other instances she demonstrates the more general, cross-gender applicability of such models. Thus in a letter to Giovanni Morone, probably written in 1544, she compares the cardinal’s life to that of Mary Magdalene, in his intimate and loving relationship with Christ. See Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, pp. 156–7.

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is built on the foundations of a fear of the evils of the flesh, and returns to the age-old connection between woman, flesh and sin stemming from Eve.27 In a striking number of Colonna’s sonnets included in this manuscript Mary’s role as mother and nurturer of Christ is celebrated, and yet the glaring paradox remains that she was nonetheless a virgin, free from any taint of the evils of fleshly appetites. Yet for a woman like Colonna (who notably had never experienced childbirth and whose own marriage was brief and characterised by her husband’s frequent absences from the marital home) it was important to aspire to the strength and self-determination of the Virgin’s role in popular mythology, to consider her motherhood, that is, in abstract, idealised terms. Such a conception of spiritualised motherhood was a theme that united Colonna and Marguerite, and is one upon which Colonna lays particular emphasis in the poetry chosen for inclusion in this collection. She was perhaps in addition drawing upon the tradition of Renaissance defences of women that co-opted the figure of the Virgin as a model of the excellence to which all women may aspire, ignoring her very particular de-sexualised nature.28 As well as establishing her female concerns and aspirations, the opening sonnet also lays out the other major themes that recur in many of the other sonnets. The poet speaks eloquently of her pain and frustration in this earthly life, and her desire to be united with her ‘vero Sol’, surrounded by the blinding light of his rays. She returns time and again in her work to this complaint, the essential meaninglessness of life on earth and her wish to achieve peace and self-realisation through death. She envies the Virgin her various relationships

27

See Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), pp. 76–8. Also Michael P. Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2nd edn (London: Sheed and Ward, 1987); Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). Virginia Cox makes the point that, while celibacy and virginity were at the literal level ideals imposed upon women by a ‘patriarchal’ society, they could nonetheless be appropriated by women on another level as symbols of a form of ‘psychic’ and intellectual autonomy. (She points in particular to the examples of single women in Moderata Fonte’s Il Merito delle Donne, 1600.) See Cox, ‘The Single Self’. 28 See Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Joan Kelly, ‘Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes’, in Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 65–109; Stephen Kolsky, The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy. Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Marina Zancan, ed., Nel cerchio della luna: figure di donna in alcuni testi del XVI secolo (Venice: Marsilio, 1983). For a reading of the role of the figure of Mary in Renaissance defences see Francine Daenens, ‘Superiore perché inferiore: il paradosso della superiorità della donna in alcuni trattati italiani del cinquecento’, in Trasgressione tragica e norma domestica. Esemplari di tipologie femminili dalla letteratura europa, ed. by Vanna Gentili (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1983), pp. 11–50.

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with Christ, as worshipper, mother, wife and daughter, and finally asks that she act as a mother on her behalf in bringing the poet to her maker. Immortal dio nascosto in human velo L’adorasti signor, figlio ’l nodristi, L’amasti sposo, e L’onorasti padre; Priega lui dunque che i miei giorni tristi Ritornin lieti, e tu, donna del cielo, Vogli in questo desio mostrarti madre.29

The multiplicity of roles that Colonna assigns to Mary in relation to Christ seems especially significant: Mary can serve Christ simultaneously in four contrasting ways. So, by extension, the woman who is searching for a spiritual path and role is not limited in her choice, but can herself worship and know Christ in a variety of ways. This emphasis on the potential for choice and change in her self-definition is not a new one in Colonna’s poetry, of course: it is clearly expressed in the poetic Epistola addressed to her husband during his lifetime, in which the young Colonna underlines the four contrasting roles she herself plays, illustrated by the four ways in which she is forced to suffer as she awaits the release from prison of her father, husband, and ‘adopted’ brother and son, the Marchese del Vasto (her husband’s cousin). This emphasis on choice and variety appears to be a wholly self-affirming manoeuvre. The Ashburnham manuscript continues with a sequence of previously unpublished sonetti spirituali that help to reaffirm the Marian emphasis of the opening. ‘Eterna luna, all’hor che fra ’l Sol vero’ (2) addresses the moon as a mediatrix between the sun and the earth, protecting the earth from the sun’s fierce heat just as the Virgin Mother protects mankind from God’s justified anger: la serena tua luce il calor suo tempra sovente.

The connection between the ‘donna del cielo’ cited in the opening sonnet and the calm and gentle moon is underlined by the reference to nurturing:

29

‘Immortal God hidden in a human veil, / you worshipped him as Lord, nurtured him as son, / loved him as husband and honoured him as father; / therefore pray to him now that my sad days / may be transformed to joy, and may you, lady of heaven, / act as a mother to me in this my desire’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 133). Also cited in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 135. (Spelling and verse variations are taken directly from the Ashburnham manuscript, and will differ in some cases from the version in Bullock’s edition. Punctuation is standardised throughout.) This opening sonnet in fact occurs twice in the manuscript, in two distinct versions, on leaves 4r. and 23v. The second version is thought to be the earlier of the two (see Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 372–3).

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sopra il monte errante il latte puro che qui il nodrì, quasi rugiada, affrena de la giusta ira sua l’effetto ardente.30

But while the moon is gentle she is also strong and active in her role as intercessor. Some Greek thought held that the moon retained the day’s sunlight and preserved it for the next day, so that the moon was a mother, giving birth to each new morning. Greek Christians thus made the connection between the harmony of sun and moon and the ideal of the Church’s relations with Christ. Similarly the Virgin is associated with the moon in her ability to bend the beams of God’s grace into the Christian soul.31 The darkness of original sin has been rendered ‘candido e leggiero’ by the moon’s intercession, just as Mary is the second Eve whose coming serves to cancel the former’s sin and curse. Classical associations of the moon with Diana, goddess of the hunt, further emphasise her strength and autonomy. The next sonnet in the manuscript, ‘Quanta gioia, tu segno e stella ardente’ (3), remains with the theme of Mary’s motherhood and nurturing by describing the scene of joy at Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, as the poverty and simplicity of the surroundings emphasise and enhance the wonder and greatness of the event. Il luogo, gl’animali, il freddo e il fieno Davano, e i panni vili, e ’l duro letto De l’alta Sua bontà sicuro segno.32

And again the theme of motherhood is reiterated in three further sonnets in this opening section, ‘Puri Innocenti, il vostro invitto e forte’ (8) on Herod’s massacre of the innocents, ‘Un foco sol la nostra donna accese’ (10) celebrating Mary’s rightful place beside Christ in Heaven (naming her ‘nostra’, Our Lady, emphasises the personal nature of every Christian’s identification with her), and finally ‘Stella del nostro mar, chiara e sicura’ (11) which once again praises the nurturing role of the Virgin Mother, the stella maris. This preponderance of sonnets treating the role of the Virgin, and of motherhood in general, in the opening sequence of the manuscript should not be thought of as accidental, especially considering that poems treating the Virgin make up only a relatively small proportion of the poet’s overall output so that to find them grouped together in this way gives them a special emphasis. They serve here to establish a bond between the poet and her intended reader which links back to their earlier discourse and has a particular resonance for both women. Significantly, perhaps in a conscious re-enactment of the co-operation 30

‘Your calm light often tempers his heat’; ‘moving over the high mountains your pure milk, / which nurtured him on earth, like a dew dampens / the burning fire of his righteous anger’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 137). 31 See Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, pp. 257–8. 32 ‘The stable, the animals, the cold, and the hay, / and his poor rags, and his hard bed, / all were a sure sign of his celestial grace’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 95).

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enjoyed between Christ and Mary, both Marguerite and Colonna in their own lives nurtured idealised ‘maternal’ bonds, entailing close spiritual union and mutual concentration on questions of faith but beset with none of the mundanities or practicalities of a worldly maternal relationship (and equally importantly, no taint of sex or childbirth). Colonna’s friendship with Reginald Pole was often expressed in terms of ‘madre’ and ‘figlio’. Marguerite referred to Georges d’Armagnac, among others, as her ‘dear son’, and recommended him into Colonna’s care as a form of surrogate mother when he first arrived in Rome.33 In addition we find Colonna using maternal terminology in her letter to Marguerite cited above, in asking the other woman to ‘give birth’ to her spiritually through her writings and friendship. It is notable that both women early on in their friendships publicly anchored them to such terminology, thus demonstrating the practical applicability of the Marian model of maternity. A further interesting piece of evidence heightens the Marian symbolism of the relationship between Colonna and Marguerite, with its public insistence on a form of spiritual motherhood. In an anthology of Petrarchan lyrics published by Anselmo Giaccarello in 1542, a sonnet in Italian attributed to Marguerite sits opposite Colonna’s sonnet addressed to Pole. Marguerite’s sonnet is written in praise of her friend, expressing her admiration for the other’s grace and purity, and using an image, that of the woman crushing a serpent beneath her foot (a popular image in medieval iconography as well as in sixteenth-century art), which associates her subject with God’s words to the serpent in Genesis 3:15, predicting the coming of a second Eve who will stamp the sin of the first beneath her foot in a gesture of emancipation and salvation.34 Marguerite is making a highly flattering statement in allying Colonna with Mary in her most powerful and active manifestation: like the Virgin, Colonna too will rise into the heavens through her absolute faith. Voi Donna, che domate i fieri mostri Che la terra produce, e ’l gran serpente, Sopra voi stessa alzata con la mente Pura salite à gli superni chiostri.35

This bold Marian allusion is mirrored in Colonna’s sonnet on the opposite page of the collection, ‘Figlio e signor, se la tua prima e vera’, commiserating 33

Marguerite’s letter of 1544 is cited in Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 289–92. The relevant passage in Genesis 3:15 reads: ‘And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel’. For a discussion of the history of debate surrounding the interpretation, and mistranslation, of this passage, and other readings of Genesis, see Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, pp. 1–3; Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, pp. 21–4, 88–9. 35 ‘Oh lady, you who tame the fierce beasts / of the earth, and the great snake, / raising your mind beyond your mortal being, / pure, you rise to the celestial cloisters’: Libro Quarto delle rime di diversi eccellentiss. autori nella lingua volgare. Nuovamente raccolte (Bologna: Anselmo Giaccarello, 1551), p. 13. The attribution of two sonnets in Italian included in this collection to Marguerite has never really been verified, but 34

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with Pole on the imprisonment of his mother by Henry VIII. Colonna refers to her role as Pole’s second mother – ‘la novella tua madre’: Mary was in popular tradition celebrated as the second mother after Eve, who came to cancel the sin and suffering that the first women had created. Perhaps in order to temper the boldness of the claim, the poet humbly requests Pole’s spiritual help and guidance: or tu, ch’avampi D’alta fiamma celeste, umil m’impetra Dal commun Padre eterno omai soccorso.36

The fact that both women employ terminology that offers itself to a Marian interpretation in this way indicates their mutual awareness of the need to anchor active participation in public life to an appropriate and acceptable Christian model. Likewise the decision of the editor to place these two poems side by side, their juxtaposition heightening the Marian resonance of both sonnets, indicates perhaps a more general appreciation of the employment of the Marian model by noblewomen such as Colonna and Marguerite.37 Following on from the Ashburnham manuscript’s opening sequence, which clearly establishes the Marian emphasis of Marguerite’s gift manuscript, the main body of the collection contains a range of early and more mature sonnets. One sonnet appears to evoke an especially intimate link between the poet and her reader. ‘Donna, che ’n cima d’ogn’affetto umano’ (60) describes the addressee of the verse existing in a state of spiritual peace, freed from the bonds of earthly attachments that she dismisses as ‘fallace e vano’. 38 The poet, envying the other woman’s clear faith and proximity to God, ‘che d’erto v’è Vergerio states in a letter to Colonna (Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 194–7) that the queen spoke little Italian, although she could understand the language with few problems, a statement that complicates the process of attribution. At the very least, the poems are an interesting testimony to the public perception of the Marian relations between Colonna and Marguerite. 36 ‘You / who are aflame with divine fire, pray humbly on my behalf / for help from our common father.’ 37 There is much evidence in their exchange of letters that Colonna and Marguerite also resorted to male biblical models to parallel their experiences. Thus, for example, in a letter of 1544 or 1545, Marguerite, upon hearing of Colonna’s recovery from an illness, compares herself to Jacob learning that his son Joseph is alive and reigning in Egypt (Colonna, Carteggio, p. 289). See Itala T. C. Rutter, ‘La scrittura di Vittoria Colonna e Margherita di Navarra: resistenza e misticismo’, Romance Languages Annual 3 (1991), 303–8. 38 See in support of the view that Colonna composed the sonnet for Marguerite, Giuseppina Sassi, ‘Gentildonne e poeti del Cinquecento’, Il Vasari 3 (1930), 171–201 (p. 195). It is more probably that the poem refers to Mary Magdalene, however, especially given Colonna’s well-recorded interest in the Magdalene: see Marjorie Och, ‘Vittoria Colonna and the Commission for a Mary Magdalene by Titian’, in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins. Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies 54 (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), pp. 193–223.

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fatto il camin piano, / e luce avete da sì chiara face’, begs that she aid her in raising her own ‘basso […] desir’ onto a more spiritual plain.39 The positioning of the poet in a far inferior position to the woman she addresses echoes the sentiment expressed in the letters written by Colonna for Marguerite. This sonnet, positioned in the middle of Marguerite’s manuscript, emphasises the specific relationship between poet and reader that the gift embodies and represents the ideal state of grace and unworldliness that every Christian must strive to achieve. ‘Se piace a l’occhio di veder volando’ (18) is a sonnet recounting the legendary tale of St Ursula, who amassed a retinue of eleven thousand virgins and travelled on a pilgrimage to Rome, before being massacred by barbarian hordes along with her entire retinue on their return.40 The poet chooses the metaphor of falcons released by their masters to fly freely and seek their prey, representing the joyful virgins now after death released from heaven to seek their own ‘prey’ in souls ripe for conversion: Se piace a l’occhio di veder volando Venir falconi per l’aere, lasciati Da lor signori, a la rapina usati, Solo il suo cibo a se medesmi amando, Quanto gode il pensiero oggi mirando Undici mila bei guerrieri alati, Dal Ciel, di palme e di corone armati, Venir la preda lor lieti cercando.41

The virgins are ‘guerrieri’ in their willingness to give themselves up to the service of God (the masculine gender of the noun seems significant, underlining their virile strength and conviction), ‘unite in tanto amore’, and armed with heaven sent palms and crowns. They are described as ‘prudenti’, in the same way as the wise virgins in the gospel of Matthew, carefully orchestrating events in order to reach their ends yet at all times faithfully subservient to the will of God:

39 ‘[T]he true path has turned from steep to gentle, / and light is cast for you from his bright face.’ 40 For details of the legend of St Ursula, see Guerrino Pelliccia and Giancarlo Rocca, eds, Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione, 9 vols (Rome: Paoline, 1974–1997), vol. 6 (1980), pp. 834–58. Also Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, pp. 317–18. 41 ‘If the eye delights in seeing falcons / come sweeping through the air, released / by their masters and intent upon their prey, / caring only for themselves and their own nourishment, / how much then must the mind delight today in seeing / eleven thousand beautiful winged warriors, / descending from the sky, armed with palms and crowns, / hunting joyfully for their prey’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 93). Also cited in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 192.

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onde la lode e ’l frutto de la speme fu de le donne, e di quei lumi ardenti il gaudio ancor, ma sol di Dio l’onore.42

The choice of subject matter is significant, in the representation of an army of saintly women in the service of the true religion. Following this sonnet is another, ‘Scorgean gli spirti eletti sempre in Cielo’ (19), which echoes the sentiment of evangelical joy at a new beginning in armies of angels who celebrate the salvation of mankind, e in mille e mille squadre cantavan ch’era vinta l’aspra guerra, e data ai buoni al mondo eterna pace.43

Elsewhere in the collection, another group of poems displays a Marian preoccupation that echoes that of the opening sequence, helping to reinforce the general thematic direction of the manuscript. ‘Vergine e madre, il tuo figliuol su ’l petto’ (29) focuses on the emotions experienced by Mary as she clasps her dead son’s body to her breast. The poet expresses her understanding of the Virgin’s dual reaction, giving thanks at the salvation of ‘ogni spirto eletto’, yet as a human mother, carrying the grief at her son’s death with her to her own grave. Vergine e madre, il tuo figliuol su’l petto Stringesti morto, ma il fido tuo pensero Scorgea la gloria e ’l bel trionfo altero Ch’ei riportava d’ogni spirto eletto. L’aspre sue piaghe e il dolce humil’ aspetto T’accendeva il tormento acerbo e fero, Poi la vittoria grande, e l’honor vero Portava a l’alma novo alto intelletto. E so ch’in quella humanità sentisti, Che dio non la lasciava, anzi avea cura De ritornarla gloriosa e viva. Ma perche vera madre il partoristi, Credo ch’insino a la tua sepoltura Di madre havesti ’l cuor d’ogni ben priva.44

Even in the depths of her grief, Mary is strengthened and ennobled spiritually by witnessing the events of the Passion. She holds fast to her faith, and is thus 42 ‘Therefore great praise and bright rewards belonged / to these women and continued celebration to / those shining lights, but all honour belongs to God alone.’ 43 ‘[A]nd in legions of thousands / they sang that the end of the bitter war had come / and that the good people on earth had inherited eternal peace’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 95). Also cited in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 178. 44 ‘Virgin and mother, you clasped your dead son / upon your breast, but in your faithful mind / you saw the glory and the holy victory / that he brought to every elected soul. / His bitter wounds and sweet humble countenance / increased your harsh and

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granted prescience of the Resurrection directly by God. Yet her human emotion cannot be denied, and the understanding of this is what brings the poet close to her subject, not in veneration or humility, here, but in gentle sympathy. The following sonnet, ‘Quando vedeste, madre, a poco a poco’ (30), also treats the subject of Mary’s presence at the Crucifixion. As she watches in anguish, the life gradually drains from Christ’s eyes, and even her boundless love cannot halt the inexorable progression of death, ‘ma brevi ore / furon concesse al doloroso gioco’.45 As in the previous sonnet, the paradox of joy in grief is laid bare. As Christ’s eyes close in death, the way to salvation is opened for mankind, the two verbs juxtaposed in order to drive home their painful yet necessary interrelation: la morte li chiuse; onde s’aperse la strada a noi del Ciel, prima serrata mille e più lustri da la colpa antica.46

Mary’s status as the example and model for mankind is outlined in the closing tercet, which also indicates the human and personal suffering that her divinely elected position entails. She must bear the ‘mortal colpo’ of the sword of faith on behalf of mankind, in order that all worthy souls (‘ogni alma ben nata’) may rest their hopes in her. The ‘mortal colpa’ echoes the ‘colpa antica’ of line eleven, that is Eve’s original transgression, so that Mary’s action here appears to allude to her traditional role as the redeemer of women and of all mankind from the stain of sin, as the ‘second Eve’ of Genesis 3. ‘Con che pietosa carità sovente’ (31) celebrates Mary’s multiple roles in relation to Christ, and the special knowledge with which he has endowed her, in order that she may lead mankind on the path of true faith. Con che pietosa carità sovente Apria il gran figlio i bei concetti a voi, Madre divina, e con qual fe’ ne’ suoi Precetti andaste voi più sempre ardente. Il vostro santo amor prima fu in mente Di dio fermato, e in carne qui fra noi Ristretto, e ’n ciel con maggior nodo poi Rinovato più saldo e più possente. potent torment, / but the great triumph of true honour / brought to your soul a new and pure knowledge. / I know you saw that God / had not left his soul in that mortal body, but rather / would be certain to resurrect it into glorious life; / yet because you bore him as a human mother, / I believe that from that moment until death / your maternal heart was robbed of any joy’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 89–91, with one notable difference at the end of line 8). The version of this sonnet given by Bullock is significantly different from the manuscript version, suggesting that the poet worked on it extensively. See Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 139. 45 ‘But only a few brief / hours were granted you for this painful task’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 91). 46 ‘As death closed his eyes and opened wide / for us the path to heaven, which had been barred / by original sin for many thousands of years.’

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S’ei nacque, s’ei morì, s’ei salio al cielo, Per compagna, rifugio, ancella e madre Seco vi scorgo con umile affetto; Ed ora il dolce sposo e l’alto padre Col caro figlio a voi rendon perfetto Guiderdon del vostr’almo e puro zelo.47

The notion of Christ teaching and instructing his mother seems a bold and unprecedented claim that departs from the Marian tradition of post-Assumptive power. The first tercet of this sonnet, whilst stressing Mary’s ‘umile affetto’, nonetheless underlines her intrinsic and active role in the life and Passion of Christ, fulfilling every necessary duty towards him as ‘compagna, rifugio, ancella e madre’. These roles are not merely passive and subservient: ‘compagna’ denotes intellectual autonomy and ‘rifugio’ illustrates the protection that she can offer Christ from the torments and troubles of his ministry.48 The final tercet alludes to the Assumption, as Mary is now placed among the Holy Trinity in heaven as a reward for her ardent faith and ‘almo e puro zelo’. The strength of Mary’s spiritual zeal again belies her traditional humility.49 Finally, the fourth sonnet within this series, ‘Donna, dal ciel gradita a tanto amore’ (32), describes the maternal duties that Mary must perform in tending to her infant and the manner in which these practical acts take on a symbolic, spiritual significance. Beginning in the opening quatrains with a series of 47

Blessed mother, with holy charity your divine / son would often explain to you his wondrous concepts, / and you followed him, burning with ever more / passionate faith in his teachings. / Your saintly love was first born in the mind / of God and confined in flesh among us here / and then in the heavens renewed with greater bonds, / making it more secure and powerful. / At his birth, at his death, when he rose into heaven, / he found you at his side, his companion, refuge, servant, / and mother, filled with humility and love; / and now your sweet husband, the eternal father / and beloved son, bestows upon you / a perfect reward for your pure and dedicated faith’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 91). 48 Mary’s intellectual prowess is described in the apocryphal gospel of pseudoMatthew, in which, as a young child, she lectures the temple elders on the meaning of the scriptures and amazes them with her divine knowledge. See J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 51. This emphasis is picked up on by later writers in the tradition of the Vita della Vergine. A work by Antonio Cornazzano (c.1430/1432–1484), published numerous times in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, details, in the second chapter, the young Virgin’s upbringing and education in the temple, in which her particular interest in studying and learning is underlined: ‘che principalmente in letter haveva dilecto’. See Antonio Cornazzano, La Vita de la Gloriosa Vergine Maria (Venice: [n. pub.], 1518) [unpaginated]. See also, for information on Cornazzano’s life and works, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 29 (1983), pp. 123–32; Roberto Bruni and Diego Zancani, Antonio Cornazzano: la tradizione testuale (Florence: Olschki, 1992). 49 The version of this sonnet supplied by Bullock increases the zealous quality of Mary’s faith in the final line: ‘guiderdon de l’acceso vostro zelo’. See Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 137.

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questions in a mystical tenor, the poet asks how it is that Mary’s body and heart were not split open by the mouth of the suckling Christ, and how she prevented her soul from melting, and all her being from flowing out with her milk to nurture the divine child. The first tercet dismiss the questions, however, as inappropriate for one whose instructions come directly from God: non convien con li stretti humani termini misurar gli ordini vostri, troppo al nostro veder erti e lontani.50

The closing tercet recognises, with some regret, the limitations of human understanding which prevent us from grasping the true nature of Christ’s sacrifice or of our own salvation: ben corti e vani sono a saperne il modo i pensier nostri.51

Mary, in this sonnet, is more than human, occupying a privileged position far from our earthly experience. The shift in status between the first sonnet in this Marian series, where her humanity draws the poet close to her in sympathy, and this final poem in which she is more distant and exalted, indicates Mary’s ability to fulfil a range of needs and occupy various positions in her relation to the poet who explores her history and role. This short Marian sequence is significant in linking Colonna’s poetic work to various of her prose works, including her prose meditation, the Pianto sopra la passione di Christo and her various published letters to her cousin. Taken together, the prose works and poetry all demonstrate a developed interest in redefining Mary’s role according to a newly active and practical spiritual imperative, which sees her learning directly from Christ and then undertaking her own ministry during her lifetime. The scene of the Passion is chosen in particular as the moment at which Mary’s entirely human, yet exemplary and uplifting response to events is exposed, and her position as a realistic role model can be successfully underlined. Without denying the need for humble veneration of the Mother of God, as sonnet 32 makes clear, the reader is directed towards a closer understanding of Mary’s struggle, her triumph, and each Christian’s proximity to her. Colonna’s abiding interest in her is a practical and personal one that reveals itself throughout her literary undertaking. The way in which the sonnet sequence in the Ashburnham manuscript closes can be seen to complement the general emphasis on female concerns in 50

‘Yet we must not measure in our imperfect human / terms your task, which lies far beyond / and above our base understanding’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 97). 51 ‘Yet our thoughts / are too weak and frail to understand these things.’ John O’Malley points out, in his work on epideictic rhetoric, that the mysteries of the faith are not intended to be understood by the mortal man, who should not seek clarification: see O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome, p. 49.

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a strikingly positive and optimistic vein. The final poem, ‘Apra il sen Giove, e di Sue gratie tante’ (102), is a sonnet of pure celebration in which the arrival of Christ on earth in human form is greeted by a spring-like flowering of all natural elements and a corresponding flowering in the hearts and souls of mankind which fills them with virtue and grace: Apra il sen Giove, e di Sue gratie tante faccia ch ’il mondo ch’in ogni parte abonde, sí che l’anime poi ricche e feconde sian tutte qui di virtu amiche e sante.52

An immediate parallel springs to mind with the Old Testament ‘Song of Solomon’, in which the coming of the ‘lover’ also heralds fresh growth and new life. In both cases the tone is rhapsodic, and the language strongly sexualised in its references to fertility and fecundity. Mary, Christ’s mother, although not specifically named in the poem, is implicitly understood to be responsible for the divine birth, bringing about the bursting forth of this glorious new spring which Christians are called upon to celebrate. The final tercet, alluding to the descent to earth of the angel Gabriel, ‘da l’angeliche squadre il piú perfetto’, to announce the birth to Mary – ‘A cantar come in veste umana scorza / venne l’immortal Dio’53 – reconfirms the significance of the biblical stories of the Incarnation and the Nativity, and thus the Virgin Mother’s importance as an active participant in these events, in fact as the vital link which set them in motion. This celebration can be associated with incarnational theology in allowing Mary responsibility for the momentous events realised at the moment of Christ’s birth. What the poet can be seen to celebrate here, therefore, is mankind’s salvation enacted within Mary’s womb. It seems significant that a work by Marguerite displays a similar joyful tone and optimistic bent to that expressed in this closing sonnet by Colonna. The poetic work the Triomphe de l’Agneau, written probably some time in the 1530s before the struggles between Catholics and reformers in France became bloody and brutal, has been described as ‘a dream of universal renewal’.54 In the poem Marguerite invites those who have faith (the ‘élus’, the chosen ones, or Colonna’s ‘cari eletti’) to come together in a celebration of the victory of the Lamb of God over the evil of human nature: ‘Assemblez vous, pour chanter la victoire | Du seul Agneau, tout revestu de gloire.’55 Like Colonna in many of 52

‘May Jove open his heart and bring the abundance / of his many graces to all the world, / so that our souls may become enriched and fertile / with pure and holy virtues’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 79). 53 ‘Most perfect among the angelic throngs’; ‘to sing of how, disguised in human form, / immortal God descended’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 81). 54 ‘[C]e rêve d’un universel renouveau’, cited in Abel Lefranc, ‘Les idées religieuses de Marguerite de Navarre d’après son œuvre poétique’, Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français 46 (1897), 295–311 (p. 311). 55 ‘Gather to sing of the victory / of the Lamb of God, clothed in glory.’ Marguerite de Navarre, ‘Le Triomphe de l’Agneau’, in Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses,

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her sonnets, Marguerite doubts her ability to find adequate language to speak of the glory of her subject matter, and asks God for divine inspiration to aid her in her task. She then goes on to describe the fall from Paradise (although, significantly, at no time is Eve mentioned, nor her transgression, but instead the poet personifies Law, Sin and Death, and describes how they conspired to overthrow Adam), and mankind’s restitution through Christ’s sacrifice. The tone is, much like the sonnet described above, highly reminiscent of the ‘Song of Solomon’ in employing the vocabulary of sexual love between men and women, and it ends on a note of jubilant triumph as we await the ‘third coming’ which will complete our salvation. En attendant qu’une autre fois revienne, Pour acomplir la promesse ancienne En ses Esluz, lesquelz suscitera; Ainsi tousiours sur tout triomphera.56

Such similarities of tone and language in works by the two women suggest a shared feeling of optimism in the face of the very real problems manifesting themselves within a Catholic Church strongly in need of reform, and the conviction that ultimately faith (the profound faith bequeathed to us by Mary) will triumph over corruption and the evangelical message of those preaching reform will help to bring about spiritual renewal. An exchange of letters between Colonna and Pier Paolo Vergerio the younger, Bishop of Capo d’Istria, who was in France accompanying Cardinal Ippolito d’Este to the court of François Ier in 1540, takes on special significance at this point. Vergerio was a member of Reginald Pole’s circle in Viterbo and had also been involved with Juan de Valdés in Naples, where he probably first encountered Colonna.57 Whilst at the French court he requested an audience with Marguerite de Navarre and kept a careful record of their conversation that he promised in a letter to transcribe for Colonna.58 What Vergerio displays in his letters to Colonna from this period is that he clearly shares her strong evangelical faith in the potential for spiritual renewal in Europe (the faith that Marguerite also demonstrates in her work), through the influence of groups of reformers such as the one in Viterbo and the one surrounding Marguerite at the French court. He too expresses this belief in a rhapsodic prose with strongly mystical overtones that reflects the tone of the writing by the two women cited above: Tresillustre Royne de Navarre, ed. by M. A. Screech (Wakefield: S. R. Publishers, 1970), pp. 381–443 (p. 381). 56 ‘Awaiting his return once more / to fulfil the ancient promise / through his elect, whom he will create; / he will always be victorious.’ Marguerite de Navarre, ‘Le Triomphe de l’Agneau’, p. 443. 57 For details of Vergerio’s life, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio: The Making of an Italian Reformer (Geneva: Droz, 1977). 58 See Colonna, Carteggio, p. 195. It is a part of this correspondence that is published in the 1542 Aldine edition of Lettere volgari.

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The spirit of God will breathe, and those of us dispersed through the water will make haste carried in the ship of his grace out of the waves of sin towards truth and eternity; and who will be able to hold back or slow down our progress and the force of God’s spirit?59

What is especially interesting about his attitude, however, is the conviction Vergerio expresses that women like Marguerite (whom he describes as a strong spiritual teacher and leader, whose words he feels privileged to have heard) and Colonna herself will be instrumental in bringing about the necessary reforms. They are, in other words (along with other women he cites such as Renée de France and Leonora Gonzaga), united in being members of the ‘cari eletti’ who will lead the advance into a new age of religious renewal: ‘may Jesus Christ be praised, that in our turbulent times he has created such spirits in different cities and regions.’60. Whether or not there is an element of chivalrous flattery in Vergerio’s decision to single out women in particular as having a primary role in instigating religious reform, nonetheless it is interesting that Colonna and Marguerite should be represented by a third party (and a male one) as strong leaders and forces for change. Vergerio’s letter indicates a wider recognition of the potency of the form of female agency, based on a Marian model, which is promoted by Colonna in the Ashburnham manuscript. Pompeo Colonna and the Defence of Female Equality The shared evangelical leanings of Colonna and Marguerite appear to be significant as well in the choice of poem preceding the final, euphoric closing sonnet in Marguerite’s manuscript, as a specific individual is mentioned who carries a particular resonance for the poet and her reader. The penultimate poem is a lament over the death of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, the poet’s second cousin and a prominent figure in Church politics, who had passed away in Naples in 1532 (some sources claim he was poisoned due to his unpopularity). The decision to include a sonnet in memory of a long-deceased relative in such a prominent position in the manuscript might have some particular motivation that may not be immediately apparent. It seems very likely that Pompeo was also known to Marguerite during his lifetime, as he had dealings with her brother, François Ier, and is believed to have travelled to France with him after the papal inauguration of Leo X in Bologna in 1515, returning the following spring.61 He was well known as a fiery and temperamental character and a

59 ‘Sofiarà [sic] lo spirito di Dio, et noi per l’acque disgiacciate correremo in fretta portati nella nave della sua gratia fuor dell’onde degli errori alla verità et alla eternità; et chi potrà retenere et tardare il nostro corso et l’impeto dello spirito di Dio?’ Colonna, Carteggio, p. 197. 60 ‘Lodato sia Giesù Christo, che in questi nostri tempi turbulenti ha suscitati in diversi città e provincie spiriti così fatti’ (Colonna, Carteggio, p. 196). 61 Information pertaining to the life of Pompeo Colonna is contained in the entry by F. Petrucci in , Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 27 (1990), pp. 407–12.

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volatile force in Rome, inclined to use military tactics whenever he became frustrated. In fact, Cardinal Colonna’s character was a difficult and complex one, and he was severely disliked in many circles for his rash brutality and political deviousness. Most notably, when he was given the governorship of Naples, from 1529 to his death in 1532, he was so unpopular and unreasonable that the Neapolitan parliament sent an envoy to the Emperor Charles V to request that he be replaced, and Pedro de Toledo was on his way to Naples to take over his duties when Pompeo died very suddenly. He was an instrumental figure in a 1526 attack on Rome (which pre-empted the infamous sack of 1527), and it was also widely known that he enjoyed a lavish and impious lifestyle and had been disinclined to enter the ecclesiastical profession, preferring by far the military, but had ceded to pressure from his uncle Prospero Colonna. All these factors combine to portray a man who was not by any means a paragon of virtue and spirituality, yet despite the rigorously pious reputation that Colonna herself sought to maintain she was always openly sympathetic to her cousin (who, as a member of her close family, required her absolute public loyalty), attending his funeral in Naples and writing and circulating a sonnet after his death, ‘Tanti lumi, che già questa fosca ombra’, which praises him in the extreme as a strong and noble force for good and an admirable religious leader and makes the bold claim that he should have been elected pope: Costui, con l’alma sempre al ben far calda, vinse il mondo e se stesso; a lui devea darsi il governo de le sante chiavi.62

Pompeo Colonna was also himself a poet and writer and produced one particular work during his lifetime (never published) which he dedicated to his cousin, the Apologia mulierum, a defence of the equality of the female sex which took examples from classical and more current sources and was strongly influenced by Cornelius Agrippa’s work, De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus.63 Perhaps this fact alone is enough to account for the inclusion in a prominent position in the manuscript for Marguerite of the sonnet in his memory. Through the writing of his treatise Pompeo showed himself to be

62 ‘He with his heart always burning to do good, / overcame the world and himself; they should / have given him governance of the sacred keys’ (101). 63 An annotated edition of Pompeo’s treatise, including a substantial introduction, is published in Guglielmo Zappacosta, Studi e ricerche sull’umanesimo italiano (Testi inediti del XV e XVI secolo) (Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1972), pp. 159–246. Zappacosta dates the composition of the work as being after 1525 (as the author mentions the death of Francesco d’Avalos), and not after 1529. See Zappacosta, Studi e ricerche sull’umanesimo italiano, p. 164. A modern English translation of Agrippa is Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, ed. and trans. by Albert Rabil, Jr (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

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sympathetic to the notion of female equality and openly praised his cousin Vittoria in the book’s opening pages. Pompeo Colonna’s dedication to Vittoria Colonna in the opening of his treatise is evidence of a markedly powerful and virile role that was assigned to the poet by her cousin (undoubtedly, although this need not detract from the significance of his choice of imagery, because he was in need of her support in his struggle against the papacy). The dedicatory epistle is centred on an analogy between Vittoria’s name, and the myth of the goddess Victoria or Victory. The origins of the myth in fact stem from the Greek: Nike, daughter of Pallus and Styx, is brought by her parents to assist Zeus in his struggle against the Titans on Mount Olympus, where she thereafter remains to keep him company.64 She is a warlike and fearless heroine, and Pompeo uses the analogy in order to plead that his contemporary Victoria will likewise assist him in his own struggle against sixteenth-century ‘Titans’ who are ranged against him: O, that great-spirited girl, indeed, that outstanding name of the gods, which when I repeat it to myself, I see the battle I have taken on, and with which very powerful generals I have to contend. In vain I have led the resources begged from Jove into so serious and gruelling a struggle, when without the effort and authority of Victoria he could not win battles which were easier by far.65

Although Pompeo ostensibly alludes in this dedication only to the literary task which he has taken upon himself to defend the female sex against critics and detractors (a task which he acknowledges as difficult and far beyond his modest capabilities), in fact the references to the contemporary fraught political situation are clear, and his reasons for seeking his cousin’s support more urgent than purely flattering. The ‘Titans’ who oppose him went as far as to issue a Papal Bull in 1525 that urged anyone who was so able to take up arms against him, as Clement VII declared him an official outlaw and rebel.66 Colonna could greatly help him in this dangerous situation by asserting her influence and high standing with the pope, and in fact an explicit reference later in the treatise praises her role in persuading Charles V of her husband’s innocence when he was accused of conspiring against the emperor in 1521, a task which amply demonstrated her ability to bargain and negotiate successfully

64

For details of the myth of Nike, see Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, ed. by Harry Thurston Peck (London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1897), p. 1096. 65 ‘O, magnanimam illam puellam, o, vere praeclarum ac divinum nomen, quod cum mecum ipse repeto, susceptamque provinciam intueor, ac quibus cum fortissimis agendum mihi sit ducibus, frustra Jovis auxilium in tam gravi tamquam ardua lucta implorandum duxi, cum longe leviora certamina absque Victoriae industria atque autoritate conficere nequiverit’, Zappacosta, Studi e ricerche sull’umanesimo italiano, p. 200. 66 See Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol.27, p. 408.

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on another’s behalf with the highest authorities. In other words, although his overt topic is a literary one, what Pompeo also succeeds in demonstrating is his cousin’s power and influence on the contemporary scene of Italian politics. He claims that her strength and example, and also her support of the project, have inspired him to write this work in defence of women. Pompeo Colonna’s treatise is in many surprising and interesting ways a new departure from the tradition of female defences from which he was borrowing. His aim is to assert the equality of women, as opposed to their superiority, which is what Agrippa seeks to stress in his work. In fact the author is at pains throughout the text to stress his belief in the need for active participation on the part of women in public life, including holding public offices. In particular, women who are free from male control as widows or unmarried girls should have the freedom to act independently.68 Presumably basing his premise on his own experience as a man of action, the author’s solution to the question of the status of women stresses their role as active and assertive members of society, taking as his primary example his cousin Vittoria whose own decisive and influential social role perfectly fits the model he proposes of women endowed with the virtues of fortitude and magnanimity. She acts as the author’s exemplar throughout the account, together significantly with the Virgin Mary who is praised for her outstanding grace, patience and constancy and thus represents the more traditional feminine virtues. The picture that Pompeo paints of Colonna in his treatise is a particularly virile, almost military one, especially through the reference to the warlike Nike and her role in defeating Zeus’s enemies. It is interesting, then, that Marguerite too was portrayed in a similar manner in a poem dedicated to her by Girolamo Fracastoro on behalf of Cesare Fregoso, who wished to send it to accompany a gift of a bronze medal when Fregoso was hoping, in around 1533, to persuade Marguerite’s husband Valois to become his military ally.69 The poem’s political weight seems significant if we compare this case to that of Colonna cited above: in both instances virility and masculine traits become the focus of flattery of a woman when the desired end is the employment of her influence in the writer’s favour. Fracastoro’s poem represents Marguerite in two contrasting ways, as the companion to the Muses, climbing into the high heavens on the wings of poetry, and also as a military, bloody heroine, a dea bellipotens adept at planning and waging battles and glorifying in her ancestors’ victories.70 The versatility of Marguerite’s image as employed by the poet is noteworthy. 67

See Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 323–5, thought to be the only extant letter from Colonna to her husband (apart from her poetic ‘Epistola’), advising him to be careful and honest in his dealings with the Emperor. 68 See Zappacosta, Studi e ricerche sull’umanesimo italiano, p. 232. 69 Information on the poet Fracastoro is contained in the entry by E. Peruzzi in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 49 (1997), pp. 543–8. Information on Cesare Fregoso is in the entry by G. Brunelli in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 50 (1998), pp. 392–4. 70 For an analysis of this poem see Richard Cooper, ‘Marguerite de Navarre et ses poètes italiens’, in Les Visages et les voix de Marguerite de Navarre, ed. by

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It is significant that there exist representations of both women that stress their virile strength and warlike capacity, and both in the context of flattery with clearly no intention of detracting from their femininity or dignity. Such representations support the hypothesis that both Colonna and Marguerite were widely respected for their ability to act and manoeuvre in an arena dominated by powerful men, and the fact that they should be selected (or else choose to offer themselves) as role models is therefore unsurprising. What does seem remarkable, in the material examined so far, is a clearly conscious attempt on the part of both women to develop and stress Marian associations which ensure that their powerful public roles do not come to be considered subversive or threatening.71 That Mary herself can be shown to have a versatile, double-sided character seems especially significant in this context. In popular mythology Mary is represented in two contrasting ways, as the meek and submissive disciple of Christ during her lifetime, and as a powerful and assertive mediatrix on behalf of mankind after her Assumption. The two manifestations of her character stem from two separate sources, the Greek tradition that portrayed the mighty Theotokos as an awe-inspiring and powerful goddess, and the more humble Latin tradition that depicted the Mother of God as a human mother suckling her child.72 The debate about Mary’s essential divinity or humanity raged for centuries, but what the contrasting interpretations reveal is her very flexible applicability as a model. Drawing on both traditions women like Colonna and Marguerite are able to represent a range of experiences, including autonomous, outspoken or independent acts, and tie them all to the incontrovertible model of the Divine Mother. Pompeo Colonna’s treatise in defence of women helps to secure the powerful and autonomous aspect of Colonna’s public image, and the inclusion of a sonnet in his memory in the manuscript gift for Marguerite is therefore entirely appropriate.

M. Tetel (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995), pp. 181–208 (p. 190). Constance Jordan looks in detail at the feminist implications of Renaissance representations of the virile woman in Renaissance Feminism, chapter 3, pp. 134–247. See, on viragos generally, Allison Heisch, ‘Queen Elizabeth I and the Persistence of Patriarchy’, Feminist Review 4 (1980), 45–56; Margaret L. King, ‘Thwarted Ambitions: Six Learned Women of the Italian Renaissance’, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 59 (1976), 280–304, and ‘Book Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance’, in Patricia H. Labalme, ed., Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York: New York University Press, 1980), pp. 66–90. 71 See in this context, Ann Rosalind Jones’s use of the term ‘negotiation’ to refer to the various ways in which women writers insert themselves into, or else find ways of transforming, dominant (male) social and textual ideologies: Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540 – 1620 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 1–7. 72 See Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, part I.

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The Representation of the Virgin in Works by Marguerite de Navarre The impulse to redefine the role of the Virgin Mary that is reflected in Colonna’s writing is also demonstrated in work by Marguerite which focuses on religious issues and includes unexpected scriptural re-interpretations. In her collected writings there are in particular a number of little known comédies which relate the poet’s interpretation of specific incidents from the scriptures, including surprising and novel representations of Mary’s reactions to her changing circumstances. Two in particular of the comedies depict a markedly strong and vocal Mary equipped with what has been described as her ‘attitude nette e décidée’.73 In the first of these, the ‘Comedie [sic] des Innocents’, Mary displays her strength as she encourages Joseph to flee with her and the baby Christ from Herod’s bloody massacre. It is unusual that Mary herself instigates the flight, negating the established account in Matthew 1:13 of Joseph’s dream that warns him of the impending danger to his young family. Her strength derives, as does that of Colonna’s Virgin in the Pianto sopra la passione di Christo, from her absolute and unwavering faith in God and from the reciprocity of the relationship she enjoys with Christ: Dieu est ma force et mon courage, Parquoy en luy me sents sy forte, Que sans travail en ce voyage Porteray celuy qui me porte.74

The second and perhaps more significant of the comedies is the ‘Comedie du Desert’ (pp. 316–80), which describes the long desert exile of Mary, Joseph and Christ as they hide from Herod’s persecution. Here the prime position that Mary occupies is reconfirmed and developed, as God himself speaks of his love for her (she is his chef d’œuvre) and his exclusive right to her virginity, expressed in a quasi-mystical manner as an all-encompassing ‘incorporation’ with strong sexual overtones: Je ne suis pas seulement amoureux, Mais suis l’Amour; par qui le hault des Cieux S’est abbaissé jusques au profond centre: J’ayme m’ayme; et pour le dire mieux, Je m’ayme en elle, et me voy en ses yeux: Car j’ay porté mon Filz dedens son ventre.

73 Lefranc, ‘Les idées religieuses de Marguerite de Navarre’, p. 141. For further bibliography see H. P. Clive, Marguerite de Navarre: An Annotated Bibliography (London: Grant & Cutler, 1983); Colette H. Winn, ‘Marguerite de Navarre, 1492– 1549’, in French Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book, ed. by Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmermann (New York: Greenwood, 1991), pp. 313–23. 74 ‘God is my strength and courage, / in him I feel so strong, / that on this journey without effort / I will bear he who carries me.’ ‘Comedie des Innocents’, in Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, pp. 271–315 (p. 278).

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Par elle sorts, sans en bouger, et entre: La porte elle est close et fermée à tous, Fors à moy seul, qui en ressorts et entre Comme il me plaist, car je suis son Espoux.75

In order to relieve Mary from the boredom of her desert exile, God sends three angels, the personifications of Contemplation, Memory and Consolation, to bring her three holy books in which she will learn the most important secrets of earthly and spiritual life. The books will instruct her to see ‘comme un Maistre d’eschole’. She is given the Book of Nature by the angel Contemplation, in which is contained all the information on the matters of this world. Memory bestows upon her the Book of the History of the Scriptures, in which she may read of all the events from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden right up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of her own son (events which have not yet occurred in the literary present of the comedy, and act as a prophecy of the future shown to Mary much in the manner of the (secular) dynastic epic, in which the hero’s future is revealed).76 And finally the angel Consolation gives the Virgin the Book of Grace, bound in cloth made from the skin of the Holy Spirit, which demonstrates to her the love and charity of God. Mary is suitably overawed and grateful for this unique gift, and encourages Joseph to read and learn with her, so that they both might benefit from the wisdom that God has laid down in the books. In a particularly significant speech, she celebrates the gift as something which has been bestowed not only on her as her rightful receipt (because she is, as she herself recognises, first among God’s chosen ones), but on all her followers in faith (in a premonition of the cult status which she is to acquire), on all men and women who will later come to take her as their example and role model: O quel honneur d’amitié paternelle! Quelle faveur faite à ta chambriere! Non à moy seule, ja ne fault que le cele, (Bien que je suis des Esluz la premiere) Mais à tous ceux qui dessoubs ma banniere, Par vive foy suyuront l’occis Agneau.77

75

‘I am not only in love, / but I am Love: through which the highest realm / has stooped to the deepest centre: / I love myself loving; and to say it better, / I love myself in her, and see myself in her eyes: / For I have borne my Son within her belly. / From her he exits, without movement, and enters: / the door is barred to all, / except to me, and I can come and go / as I please, for I am her bridegroom’ (Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses , pp. 319–20). 76 An obvious example of such prophesying is Ariosto’s epic poem, in which Bradamante, the female heroine, is shown by Merlin the dynastic path of her future with the warrior Ruggiero. See Ariosto, Orlando furioso, III, 16–19. 77 ‘What honour of paternal friendship! / What favour shown to your handmaiden! / Not only to me, since that is only right, / (as I am first among the Elect) / but to all those who beneath my banner / through living faith revive the slain Lamb’ (Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, p. 353).

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Clearly this outspoken and erudite Virgin has much in common with Colonna’s wilful yet obedient Mary in her sonnets and prose works, pointing to the interest shared by Colonna and Marguerite in Mary’s potential which Marguerite takes a step further in her imaginative reworking of the scriptural stories. Given this tendency in her writing, it seems perplexing that she still apparently feels the need to preface the collection of her work in the Marguerites de la Marguerite with an apology that cites her female sex as the excuse for the humble nature of her literary achievement. Si vous lisez ceste oeuvre toute entiere, Arrestez vous, sans plus, à la matiere: En excusant la rhythme, et le langage, Voyant que c’est d’une femme l’ouvrage: Qui n’ha en soy science, ne sçavoir, Fors un desir, que chacun puisse voir Que fait le don de Dieu le Createur, Quand il luy plaist justifier un coeur.78

In fact, an interesting alternative reading of the above passage has been suggested, one which helps to support an assessment of Marguerite’s ‘profeminist’ leanings and her interest in the potential that the new reformed doctrines held for the development of the woman’s role. It is faith that guides the writer’s hand, the faith granted by God to his chosen ones without which nothing good can be accomplished, and clearly the sola fide of reformed doctrine that stands apart from good works and earthly abilities. Men and women are equally able to attain such faith which is ignorant of gender or individual worth, and thus hidden within her apparently humble apology for her work Marguerite asserts her status as one of the chosen ones, writing in God’s name and therefore equal to her male counterparts.79 The emphasis on the figure of Mary in the work that follows this prefatory apology serves to reconfirm such an interpretation, as Mary represents the archetypal instance of God selecting a woman to bear his pure faith and act as the vehicle for his message.

78 ‘If you read this whole work, / concentrate on the matter alone: / excuse the rhythm and the language, / since it is the work of a woman: / one who possesses neither science nor knowledge, / only a desire, that all might see / the effect of God the Creator’s gift / when it pleases him to justify a heart’ (Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, p. 13). 79 See Susan Snyder, ‘Guilty Sisters: Marguerite de Navarre, Elizabeth of England, and the Miroir de l’âme pécheresse’, Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997), 443–58. Snyder points out Marguerite’s position as inferior to her brother the king in the ‘Holy Trinity’ of their family (the third person in the Trinity is their mother, Louise de Savoie), despite her superior intellectual abilities, and sees this poem as a vehicle, whether consciously or not, for Marguerite to expurgate her resentment.

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Conclusion On the last page of Colonna’s gift manuscript for Marguerite, which had been left blank by the work’s original compilers, there is a handwritten sonnet in French dating from the sixteenth century which scholars have hazarded may have been written by Marguerite, or else by her daughter Jeanne d’Albret.80 Grand dieu tes iugements sont remplis d’equité Touiours tu prends plaisir a nous estre propice mais i ay Tant faict de mal que iamais Ta bonté ne me peut pardonner quan choquant Ta iustice. Ouy grand dieu la grandeur de mon impieté ne laisse a Ton pouvoir que le choix du suplice. Ton insterest sopose ma felicité Et Ta clemence mesme atant que je perisse. Contente Ton desire puisquil Test glorieux; offense Toy des pleurs qui coulent de mes yeux Tonne, frape, il est Temps, rends moy guerre pour guerre I’adore an perissant la raison qui Taigrit mais dessus quel endroit Tombera Ton Tonnere, qui ne soit Tout couvert du sang de Iesuschrist?81

The God represented by the poet is fair and forgiving in his judgements in the spirit of the New Testament and the poet prostrates herself before him, mournful and ashamed of her sinful soul. Her sense of personal sin is enormous, and she begs not for clemency but for what she believes she must deserve, that is torture, torment and death. Only self-sacrifice, she claims, will satisfy her soul as she gives herself up to God. The tone of this sonnet, particularly the final tercet, is ardent and unabashed, and despite the references to torture and death the final mention of Christ’s blood which bathes every place denotes a positive recognition of the undeniable fact of salvation through his sacrifice, which precedes the sacrifice that the poet makes of herself. This sense of triumph through death is significant in the context of the bloody and brutal repression of reformers in France in the reign of Henry II (1547–1559), in that it denotes an unshakable conviction on the part of the Christian martyr of the rightness of her cause.82 Perhaps 80

See Tordi, Il codice, p. 25, footnote 50. ‘Great God, your judgements are filled with equity / and you always take pleasure in showing us benevolence, / but I have done so much wrong that your goodness can only ever / pardon me by attacking your justice. / Yes Great God, the greatness of my impiety / leaves your power no choice but that of torture. / Your interest subjugates my happiness, / and your very clemency as I die. / Satisfy your desire since it glorifies you; / take offence at these tears that fall from my eyes; / rage, strike, it is time, fight me blow for blow; / in death I adore the reason for your bitterness, / yet what place can your thunder strike / which is not covered in the blood of Jesus Christ?’ 82 See, for a brief analysis of this period of religious repression under Henry II, Geoffrey Elton, Reformation Europe 1517–1559, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1999), p. 164. 81

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the sonnet is in fact by Marguerite’s daughter Jeanne, who lived through this period and was herself, like her mother, closely involved in reform activity, eventually declaring her conversion to Protestantism.83 The later attribution could explain the dark intimations of martyrdom and torment that the poet accepts as just punishment for her sinful soul. What is especially striking, in this hand-written verse, is the absolute contrast between its dark tenor and the joy and optimism woven into the closing sonnet of the manuscript into which it has been inscribed. It seems almost as if the intimations of self-abnegation and sacrifice which are periodically worked into many of Colonna’s other sonnets have here been brought to their natural conclusion in an absolute rejection of the body and a morbid celebration of blood and death. Yet while its tone is distinctly different, this final poem does not by any means negate the optimism of Colonna’s closing words. Rather the hope of a new beginning is now presented in a different way, as requiring, in these brutal times, a more violent and absolute commitment on the part of the faithful. It seems significant, if one accepts that this sonnet is by Jeanne d’Albret rather than by her mother Marguerite, that Colonna’s manuscript has been handed down the family line from mother to daughter. The particular female and Marian emphasis of the collection, asserting the model of Mary as applicable to the lives of powerful women involved in upholding the cause of religious reform, perfectly suits its transferral to Jeanne, who presented herself as a high-profile champion of the Calvinist cause against the wishes of her husband and later of her son, Henri IV.84 Colonna’s text, it appears, has been absorbed into a new aristocratic matriarchal lineage within which its profeminist message and impact will be clearly understood and appreciated.

83 Information on Jeanne d’Albret’s upbringing, relationship with her mother Marguerite, and religious development, is provided in Nancy Lyman Roelker, Queen of Navarre Jeanne d’Albret, 1528–1572 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). See also (for a less scholarly and more romanticised reading of Jeanne’s experience), Françoise Kermina, Jeanne d’Albret, la mère passionnée d’Henri IV (Mesnil-sur-l’Estrée: Perrin, 1998). 84 Jeanne in fact viewed her mother as having failed the cause of the reform by spending her life hesitating between the two religions, and cited this as one reason for her own decisive split with Catholicism. See Roelker, Queen of Navarre, p. 124.

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CHAPTER 5

Marian Prose Works Introduction The previous two chapters have made use of Colonna’s gift manuscripts of around 1540 to demonstrate the manner in which her Petrarchism came to encapsulate the themes and moods of her evangelical spirituality, influenced by her particular experience of involvement with the Viterbo group of spirituali in the last decade of her life as well as her careful development of a Marian model. A consideration of the relationship between Colonna’s spirituality and her writing is not complete, however, without some examination of the devotional prose works that she also composed and circulated during her lifetime, works that appear to have had a particularly close connection to the evangelical context in which she wrote and moved. Two prose meditations inspired by the experiences of the Virgin Mary were first published in an anthology of such writings in 1556, and a further three times later in the sixteenth century.1 Three letters on devotional subjects addressed to Colonna’s cousin, Costanza D’Avalos Piccolomini (not to be confused with her aunt by marriage, also Costanza d’Avalos), were published twice during her lifetime, in 1544 and 1545.2 In line with the themes expressed poetically in the gift manuscript for 1

Details of the four editions, as well as the manuscript version of the text held in the Vatican’s Secret Archive, are given in Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Christo: Introduzione’. See also Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. by Ragionieri, p. 140. An interesting edition of the text in the Biblioteca Corsiniana in Rome includes an edition of Colonna’s sonnets bound together in the same volume. The dedicatory epistle, to Gabriel Giolito from Thomaso Porcacchi, stresses that Porcacchi has requested the double volume so that he might carry all the writer’s most saintly works in one, cheap and portable quarto edition. See Rime della S. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana Illust. di Pescara. Con l’aggiunta delle rime spirituali. Di nuovo ricorrette, per M. Lodovico Dolce (In Vinegia appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1559), bound with Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara, sopra la Passione di Christo, con una Oratione della medesima, sopra l’Ave Maria. Oratione fatta il venerdi santo, sopra la passione di Christo (In Vinegia appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1563), Dedication, pp. 2–5. The double volume is particularly significant as it indicates an awareness of the close link between Colonna’s religious prose writings and her poetry (including here the earlier rime amorose). 2 Published as Litere [sic] della Divina Vettoria [sic] Colonna Marchesana di Pescara alla Duchessa de Amalfi. A copy is conserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples. A second Venetian edition was published in 1545: Litere della divina Vettoria Colonna... (In Vinegia per Giovan Anto. et Pietro fratelli de Nicolini da Sabio. Ad instantia di M. Sebastian Venetiano, 1545). A very rare example of this edition was discovered in New York in 1915, and mistakenly thought to be the earliest: see Giuseppe Martini, ‘L’edizione originale delle tre lettere indirizzate da Vittoria Colonna

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Marguerite de Navarre, all of these prose works demonstrate a sustained interest in the active role that can be played by women in evangelical groups, as teachers and disseminators of the new faith, and the particular status of the Virgin Mary as a model for this kind of assertive, informed engagement with religious life. Prose meditations The anonymous Good Friday meditation discussed in Chapter 2 provides us with interesting evidence of the form of spiritual address employed among the members of the select group in Viterbo, including indications of a highly sophisticated literary register adopted by the speaker in addressing his educated and well-read audience. In addition, the Beneficio di Cristo indicates the more populist register used by members of this group in order to reach a wider and less erudite public. Colonna’s two prose meditations on the Virgin Mary go some considerable way towards demonstrating the influence of this very specialised environment on her own language and style, in the composition of religious prose works which employ a self-consciously literary register and a vocabulary and tone, in line with those of the two works previously discussed, of ardent evangelical inspiration. The first of these meditations, entitled Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Cristo, was composed in the early 1540s when the author was deeply involved in the activities at Viterbo. Although presented as a prose composition, the Pianto was in fact first written as a letter, as various first person addresses in the manuscript copy, deleted from the printed editions, make clear. Paolo Simoncelli, in a brief analysis of the work, provides convincing evidence that the original recipient of the letter was Bernardino Ochino, the Capuchin preacher famed for his uplifting orations, who had such a strong influence on Colonna before his scandalous flight from Italy in 1542 caused her to distance herself from him.3 Critics have detected the influence of Ochino on the style and language of various of Colonna’s poems and letters, and she is supposed to have been particularly moved by his treatment of another biblical woman, Mary Magdalene, which Domenico Tordi believed a sua cugina Costanza d’Avalos, moglie di Alfonso Piccolomini duca di Amalfi’, in Scritti vari dedicati a Mario Armanni in occasione del suo sessantesimo compleanno (Milan: Hoepli, 1938), pp. 141–4. For a reading of the ‘litere’ see Maria Luisa Doglio, ‘L’occhio interiore e la scrittura nelle “Litere” di Vittoria Colonna’. For more general background on female epistolography in the Renaissance, see Gabriella Zarri, ed., Per lettera. La scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia, secoli XV–XVII (Rome: Viella, 1999). 3 Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento, pp. 211–15. Jung-Inglessis comes to the same conclusion in her reading of the Pianto: see ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, p. 141. Information on Ochino’s friendship with Colonna as well as Michelangelo is provided in Emidio Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna. Un dialogo artistico-teologico ispirato da Bernardino Ochino, e altri saggi di storia della Riforma (Turin: Claudiniana, 1994), p. 33.

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inspired her to write her sonnet ‘Donna accesa animosa, et da l’errante’. The epistolary nature of Colonna’s Pianto and the close relationship that the author had with its intended recipient, suggest a personal and intimate quality to the text as an expression of a deep and real empathy with the Virgin’s suffering. It contrasts with the other orations by male authors contained in some printed editions of the Pianto (one of them the anonymous Meditatione discussed in Chapter 2) which ostensibly treat the same subject matter, a contemplation of the Passion, yet direct attention, as might perhaps be more readily expected, exclusively towards the suffering of Christ on the cross ignoring Mary’s role in events. Colonna’s female emphasis is striking and confirms her abiding interest in Mary as a complex and attractive model. The connection with Ochino also indicates that the meditative process being enacted in the Pianto stems from the author’s involvement with groups of reformers, and more specifically with the Pole’s circle in Viterbo.5 Alexander Nagel has convincingly argued that the cultural practices of the reform movement in Italy incorporated in some cases a backwards-looking impulse towards the spiritual ‘purity’ of earlier modes of worship, an impulse that was reflected in the metaphor of reform as a process of restoration, the ‘cleansing’ of a system that had become dirty and defiled over time.6 Some reformers advocated a ‘restoration’ of earlier vernacular religious texts as a way of rediscovering the essential, visceral contact with the holy stories that they felt had been obscured by overly sophisticated interpretations in more recent years. A letter from one of the key figures at Viterbo, Marcantonio Flaminio, makes this impulse clear. When Carlo Gualteruzzi asks him for advice on suitable religious reading matter, he recommends the De imitatione Christi, a vernacular devotional handbook dating from the early fifteenth century, as a suitably pure and unadorned handbook of the Christian life, yet one that simultaneously incorporates one of the key doctrines that the reformers were seeking to uphold: since you wish to read, not out of curiosity, nor in order to rationalise and debate Christian matters, but in order to edify your soul and attend 4

Tordi, Il codice, p. 32. Concetta Ranieri states that Colonna’s Pianto has a ‘chiarissima coloritura valdesiana’: see Pagano and Ranieri, Nuovi documenti, p. 78. 6 For an analysis of this retrospective sensibility, see Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, pp. 13–16. See also Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 39–62 (including the use of reform terminology in Paul’s Epistles); Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 1–28. Thomas Mayer argues, in relation to Reginald Pole’s concept of reformatio, that the term carries many layers of complex meaning, ‘institutional, monastic, legal, looking both backwards and forwards’: Thomas F. Mayer, ‘Cardinal Pole’s concept of Reformatio: the Reformatio Angliae and Bartolomé Carranza’, in John Edwards and Ron Truman, eds, Reforming Catholicism in the England of Mary Tudor: The Achievement of Friar Bartolomé Carranza (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 65–80 (p. 76). 5

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to the practice of living a Christian life, in which consists the sum of our acceptance of Evangelical grace, that is justification by faith.7

This letter was written before the publication of the Beneficio di Cristo, which is presumably why Flaminio fails to mention or recommend that text, at least to someone outside the intimate circle resident in Viterbo. Colonna’s Pianto, drawing as it does on earlier models and traditions of empathetic meditation first practiced by the Franciscans, appears to advocate a similar return to older forms of worship and contemplation. She expresses the same desire for a rediscovery of a ‘lost’ simplicity and purity in a sonnet written in contemplation of one of the Saint Luke Madonnas in Rome (which is included in both her gift manuscripts for Michelangelo and for Marguerite de Navarre). The sonnet, ‘Mentre che quanto dentro avea concetto’, expresses awareness of the artistic limitations of the painting, but praises precisely this simplicity of execution as constituting a sincere reflection of the artist’s ‘immensa idea’ and ‘alto dissegno’, directly inspired by God and unimpeded by human artistic sophistication. Mentre che quanto dentro avea concetto Dei misteri di Dio ne facea degno La vergin Luca, oprava egli ogni ingegno Per formar vero il bel divino aspetto, Ma de l’immensa idea sì colmo il petto Avea, che come un vaso d’acqua pregno Che salir non può fuor, l’alto disegno A poco a poco uscì manco e imperfetto. In parte finse l’aer dolce e grave; Quel vivo no ’l mostrò, forse sdegnando De l’arte i gravi lumi e la fiera ombra. Basta che ’l modo umil, l’atto soave A Dio rivolge, accende, move, e quando Si mira il cor d’ogni atra nebbia sgombra.8

The painter, in the poet’s view, by rejecting the artistic ploys of ‘gravi lumi’ and ‘fiera ombra’, perfectly embodies an early Christian impulse towards direct and untrammelled spiritual inspiration. 7 ‘Volendo voi leggere, non per curiosità, né per saper ragionare e disputare le cose cristiane, ma per edificare l’anima vostra e attendere alla pratica del viver cristiano nella quale consiste tutta la somma come l’uomo ha accettato la grazia dell’Evangelo cioè la giustificazione per la fede.’ Letter of February 1542, cited in Paolo Simoncelli, ‘Pietro Bembo e l’evangelismo italiano’, Critica storica 15 (1978), 1–63 (p. 16). 8 ‘While his inner understanding of the / mysteries of God conferred nobility upon Luke’s virgin, / he mustered all possible skill / to render true to life that sweet holy countenance, / but his breast was so full of the immensity of / his concept that, like a vase overfilled with water / that cannot easily flow out, the great design / came forth bit by bit, partial and imperfect. / Some shade of her sweet and grave air was captured; / yet she is not lifelike, perhaps because he scorned / the polished lights and haughty shades of artifice. /It is enough that her gentle air, her humility, / when we

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The emphasis on Mary in the Pianto, which could be considered surprising given that the title of the work prepares us for a contemplation of Christ’s Passion, can be seen to have a precedent in earlier devotional literary models. After the advent of print culture in Italy a large number of vernacular works were devoted to the Virgin, works such as the best-selling Pianto della Vergine Maria by Enselmino da Montebelluna as well as the highly popular lives of the Virgin which drew on the apocryphal gospels and Jacopus de Voragine’s thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea for details of Mary’s early life.9 Colonna’s appropriation of such models, which continued to circulate in the sixteenth century and enjoyed wide popularity, emphasises her interest in a return to ‘pure’ modes of worship in line with the concerns of the spirituali. It also reflects her desire to present her female perspective on the Passion, indicating her particular position as probably the only woman within the male dominated circle in Viterbo.10 Jung-Inglessis has suggested that, given that the Pianto draws so directly on the medieval tradition of the planctus Mariae, rather than on Passion sermons, its title in printed editions may have been imposed at a later date in order to bring the work in line with the concentration on Christ and the cross reflected in other evangelical texts.11 A manuscript of the Pianto in the Vatican archives and bearing autograph corrections by Colonna has the title Sermone sopra la Vergine addolorata, more aptly reflecting the content of the work and also suggesting (in the use of the word sermone) that it may have been intended at some point for oral delivery.12 Such a hypothesis would allow for the insertion of Colonna’s Pianto into the context of lay sermons delivered in Viterbo, adding her particular Marian slant to proceedings and also hinting gaze upon it, turns our hearts to God, / inflames and moves them, cleanses them of gloomy shadows’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 91–3). For a discussion of the sonnet, see Sylvia Deswarte-Rosa, ‘Vittoria Colonna und Michelangelo in San Silvestro al Quirinale nach den Gesprächen des Francisco de Holanda’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, p. 363; Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, pp. 13–14. 9 For information on early religious ‘bestsellers’, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, ‘Printing, Piety, and the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980), 5–19. On the apocrypha, see Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament. For details of the publication and circulation of the Legenda Aurea, as well as an introduction to its contents, see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, selected and translated by Christopher Stace with an introduction and notes by Richard Hamer (London: Penguin, 1998). Lives of the Virgin were penned in the sixteenth century by a wide variety of authors, from declared cynics (Pietro Aretino, 1492– 1556) to outspoken ‘proto-feminists’ (Lucrezia Marinella, 1571–1653), indicating the numerous potential interpretations of the model. 10 A comprehensive overview of the circulation of religious printed texts in the Renaissance is given in Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. See also, for an indication of the print runs of devotional texts in the period, Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465–1550: A Finding List (Geneva: Droz, 1983). 11 See Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, p. 145. 12 See Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, pp. 134–5.

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that she may have played a more active, performative role in events there than has ever been allowed to date. Colonna’s meditation on the Passion uses as its starting point a vision of Christ lying dead in his mother’s arms beneath the cross. Although Christ is named in the title as the principal focus of the meditation, it swiftly becomes apparent that the writer is in fact far more interested in exploring the feelings and reactions of Mary at the moment of her son’s death: ‘I see the sweet mother with her breast filled with burning charity, tied with so many bonds of love to her son.’13 What follows is a highly empathetic account of the many ways in which Mary suffers and simultaneously rejoices as she holds Christ’s body (the emphasis is once again on the multiplicity of Mary’s roles in relation to Christ) and Colonna is at pains to illustrate the close bond that binds mother and son as the Virgin strives to be incorporated into the body of Christ after the Crucifixion: ‘not merely supporting his corpse, but striving to make her own half-dead body into a tomb in that hour for all that was left alive in her: for all of her resided in Christ’ (p. 3).14 The meditative process enacted here can be seen to stem from a tradition which David Freedberg, in The Power of Images, terms ‘empathic meditation’, a process which ‘turned contemplation into something useful, therapeutic, elevating, consoling, and terrifying’.15 The starting point for the meditative exercise can be material (a physical image upon which the meditator concentrates in order to focus her mind), or else a form of recollection and internal visualisation of real images that the protagonist has seen and remembered. The meditator is traditionally compared to an artist: just as the artist imitates his model, so the meditator ‘imitates’ – creates the image of – Christ in the mind’s eye. Through gazing at or else internally visualising an appropriate image, ‘we ascend with increasing intensity to the spiritual and emotional essence of that which is represented’.16 Freedberg cites in particular the thirteenth-century tract, Meditationes vitae Christi by pseudo-Buonaventure as being one of the best examples of the approach to meditative visualisation practices, a work that was still circulating widely in the sixteenth century.17 13 ‘Veggo, la dolce madre, col petto colmo di ardentissima carità, con tante catene legata nell’amore del figliuolo’: Colonna, Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara, p. 3. All further references will be to this edition, indicated by a page number following the quotation in the main body of the text. 14 ‘[N]é solamente morto sostenerlo, ma far essa del suo proprio corpo, quasi morto, sepoltura in quell’hora a quanto di vivo restava in lei: che tutto era rinchiuso in Christo.’ The language is reminiscent of the numerous occasions in her sonnets in which Colonna longs for the same process of incorporation into the body of Christ. See for example ‘Fido pensier, se intrar non pòi sovente’, and ‘Divino spirto, il cui soave ardore’, in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, pp. 115, 163. 15 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 161. 16 Freedberg, The Power of Images, p. 162. 17 A vernacular translation contemporary to Colonna is Incomincia le devote meditationi sopra la passione del nostro signor Jesu Christo cavate originalmente da

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The best images for this form of empathising, as the tradition maintains, are those that evoke the suffering of Christ and the saints. Thus the Passion is considered to be the most apt subject: ‘meditation on the Passion could engage just those emotions to which we most easily incline: sorrow, compunction, mortification, and horror at the grimness of hurt, pain, and torture’.18 In the Pianto Colonna keeps within the bounds of the instructions for successful empathising laid down in works like the pseudo-Buonaventure, by focusing closely on the physical changes and the damage that is done to Christ’s body before using this as a springboard to move on to more metaphysical contemplation. Whether or not a material image played a part in Colonna’s evoking of the Passion scene is open to debate. Certainly the slant of her meditation is intellectual rather than descriptive, and she swiftly moves from the physical detailing of Christ’s wounds onto a more complex contemplation of psychological issues. However, one particular image does come to mind when reading her account: Michelangelo’s Pietà executed for Colonna as a personal gift. Michelangelo depicts Mary as physically strong and upright, not cowed in anguish over the body of her divine Son but rather lifting her arms towards heaven in an ambiguous gesture of intermingled suffering and celebration. In the same way the Virgin’s emotions as explored by Colonna in this short meditation are confusingly double-sided, suspending her midway between grief and jubilation, and once again reiterating the theme of the variety and complexity of her roles and emotions.19 It is interesting to note, as Nagel has pointed out, that many features of Colonna’s Pietà are deliberately archaising in a manner that reflects the impulse of the Pianto. In particular, Michelangelo inscribes a quotation from Dante on the cross, and the cross itself is y-shaped in imitation of the crosses carried by twelfth-century penitents.20 The Pianto offers an interpretation of Mary’s responses in a frank and unadorned, highly personal manner: ‘I think the Queen of Heaven mourned him in various ways’ (p. 4).21 The intimate tone of such passages can be accounted for by the work’s original epistolary format: in her letter to Ochino, Colonna

Sancta Bonaventura cardinale del ordine minore & da Nicolao da Lira… (Bologna: Hieronymo di Benediiti, 1520) [unpaginated]. 18 Freedberg, The Power of Images, pp. 169–70. 19 Benedetto Niccolini makes the same connection between the Pianto and Michelangelo’s Pietà for Colonna, claiming that the two works ‘obbediscono allo stesso movente pratico, che è di dare particolare rilievo al valore satisfatorio del sacrificio di Cristo, affinchè ogni anima pia partecipi, sia pure tardivamente, alle sofferenze così di Gesù come di coloro che, a cominciare dalla Madonna, ebbero parte nel dramma della Passione’. Benedetto Niccolini, ‘Sulla religiosità di Vittoria Colonna’, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 22 (1949), 89–109 (pp. 96–7). See also Nagel’s analysis of similarities between the drawing and the Pianto in Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, pp. 179–87. 20 Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, p. 186. 21 ‘Io penso, che la Regina del cielo lo pianse in piu modi.’

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often inserted first person addresses, ‘I think, father…’22 The meditation moves progressively through the various stages of the mother’s grieving, beginning with her lamentation over the physical changes that are wrought upon her son’s body – the wounds in his side, the lacerations in his head, his closed eyes – and moving on to connect these to his divine qualities thus raising the narrative onto a higher spiritual level: ‘she contemplated his noble wounded head as a rich vase, in which was contained all divine and human wisdom’ (Pianto, p. 4).23 Colonna then indicates the pity that the Virgin must feel for all those who could and should have been present with her at the scene of the Crucifixion, and moves on to list a great number of biblical figures who had reason to be grateful to Christ (men and women feature equally in the list, which includes all the disciples and Martha and Lazarus as well as more minor figures such as the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4), and to berate them for their absence.24 Although she cites it as an emotion belonging to Mary, the author is quick to adopt the passionate remonstrance for herself, taking on Mary’s voice, as it were, and addressing the characters in a familiar tone that establishes an intimate rapport between them. This technique is reminiscent of sonnets that feature large in the manuscript for Michelangelo, such as ‘Veggio in croce il Signor nudo e disteso’, and the intensity of Colonna’s poetic vision of the Crucifixion. The Pianto displays similarly intense feelings of jealousy and compassion: ‘Oh what envy I will always feel for those who were there; and what compassion for those who could have been there, and were not’ (Pianto, p. 9).25 The only figures to escape condemnation are Mary Magdalene, who is rewarded for her devotion and constancy, the author claims, by being the first to receive the consolation of the knowledge of the resurrection, and Joseph of Arimathea, who is thanked for his gift of a tomb in which to bury Christ. Mary’s strength is emphasised in the account through references to her selflessness: even at this pitch of pain and suffering she is able to be thankful for the joyful redemption that has come to mankind, and to be grateful for her role in this as mother and nurturer of Christ. Colonna underlines her essential solitude, now that Christ has left her alone, in dealing with the aftermath of the Crucifixion and obeying her holy duties despite her pain: ‘she alone had the task of thanking Joseph, soothing John, comforting Mary Magdalene, and of sustaining herself in obedience to him whom she would so happily have

22

See Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, p. 146. ‘[R]imirava la reverenda testa perforata esser il ricco vaso, ove tutta la sapienza divina e humana era raccolta.’ This form of progression from lower to higher subject matter in fact perfectly imitates the model for ideal meditation laid down in the handbooks. See Freedberg, The Power of Images, p. 175. 24 The long list of biblical figures on whom the author calls at this point demonstrates her in-depth knowledge of the scriptures, and could be viewed as a subtle way of displaying her authority in these matters. 25 ‘O quanta invidia havrò sempre a quelli, che vi furono; e quanta compassione a chi poteva esservi, e non vi fu.’ 23

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followed if it had only been granted to her to do so’ (Pianto, p. 9). Once again her capacity to be all things to all people is brought to the fore. Yet despite this strength her overwhelming quality is still a profound and sanctified humility that leads her to desire self-sacrifice as a means of expressing her own and mankind’s gratitude for this unmerited gift that they can never reciprocate: ‘She would have wanted to liquefy herself, consume herself, annihilate herself in the fire of love and the tears of compassion; in order to relieve herself and the world of such ingratitude and render to God the thanks and worship that he was owed’ (Pianto, p. 10).27 Although Mary is undoubtedly confused and distressed by the complexity of the emotions which rush upon her as she holds her dead son, simultaneously giving thanks and experiencing intense regret and bitterness, nonetheless the author is able to close the narrative on a note of jubilation (reminiscent of the arms triumphantly held aloft by Michelangelo’s Madonna in the drawing of the Pietà), as she points out that ultimately Mary’s faith is so strong that nothing can defeat her. This is the Virgin’s legacy to mankind (and a quality which those who choose her as a role model must strive to emulate), and the reason why all Christians are eternally indebted to her (Pianto, p. 11): For, since all the treasure that the Christian may obtain is born of a true faith, and since we have received that faith from the Virgin, for without her it would have been extinguished, then we must remember how great is our obligation to her, so huge in fact that this mortal life would never be sufficient to repay even the tiniest fraction of it.28

An analysis of the Pianto by Emidio Campi, whilst dismissing the work as ‘nothing special’ either for its literary or theological content, stresses what the author considers to be ‘a drastic reappraisal of the figure of Mary’.29 In line with the reformers’ concentration on Christ as the only way to justification, Campi argues, Mary is repositioned in an entirely human and subordinate role that allows her no influence on the process of salvation. In the Pianto, this ‘ridimensionamento’ is enacted in the suppression of all details that do not derive from scriptural and authorised sources or fail to link Mary’s experience directly with that of Christ. Campi tends to view this distancing from medieval representations of Mary’s power as a mediatrix and post-Assumption advocate for mankind in a reductive light, as lessening the importance of her role in the 26 ‘[E]ssa sola havea da ringratiar Ioseph, da sodisfare Giovanni, da confortare Madalena, da sostenere se stessa per ubidire colui, che con tanta allegrezza havrebbe seguito se le fusse stato concesso.’ 27 ‘Havrebbe voluto liquefarsi, consumarsi, anzi farsi vittima nel fuoco dell’amore, e nelle lagrime della compassione; per togliere al mondo e a se stessa l’ingratitudine, e render’a Dio l’obsequio e il colto che gli conveniva.’ 28 ‘Per tanto, nascendo quanto tesoro può havere il Christiano, dalla vera fede; e havendolo ricevuta dalla vergine Maria, che senza lei sarebbe stata estinta; è da pensare, quanto sia l’obligo, che noi le habbiamo, che certamente cosí grande il troveremo, che questa vita mortale non bastarebbe per sodisfare alla millesima parte.’ 29 Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna, p. 33.

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development of the individual’s faith. Yet Campi’s reading appears to overlook the interesting weaving of Colonna’s ‘reformed Mariology’ into a meditative text that undoubtedly has its roots firmly in medieval religious traditions such as the planctus Mariae. In addition, his reductive estimation of Mary’s new status requires recasting. It seems, rather, that while Colonna’s representation of Mary in the Pianto is certainly human and earthly, this very quality in fact increases her potential as a powerful and significant model. Christ, as Ochino for one stressed in his sermons, is inimitable in his embodiment of the Hypostatic Union of earthly and divine manifestations: the medieval ‘imitation of Christ’ has therefore shifted to a new, reformed ‘imitation of Mary’, the bearer of the perfect faith and the way to Christ.30 Her role, far from being diminished, has been repositioned in a more intimate relation to the life of every Christian, as she is essentially and eternally ‘one of us’. Notably Ochino himself, whose evangelical sermons were a significant influence on Colonna’s religious thought, expressed his high estimation of the Virgin as the perfect model of faith for imitation in a sermon he delivered in Venice in 1539 (published in a collection of Prediche in 1541). ‘The Virgin Mary, the holy virgin, was the one who most perfectly and better than any other creature contemplated Christ hung upon the cross with a living faith in the manner in which we too should contemplate him.’31 Ochino expresses the fact of Mary’s universality as a role model, equally imitable by men and women. Her status as a woman, subjected to Christ’s authority, does not limit her power and importance. Colonna’s portrayal of Mary’s painful and very human mixture of emotions at the Passion draws on this notion of her significance as a realistic model and reflects in particular her appeal to women who were actively seeking to define their own roles within the new faith. In addition to the Pianto, the 1557 edition of prose meditations cited above also contains an Oratione della Marchesa di Pescara sopra l’Ave Maria, alla Madonna (pp. 12–16), which maintains the exclusive focus on Mary and complements the work which precedes it. Here the writer offers a line-byline analysis of the Ave Maria in order to explore the ways in which it sets up a personal relationship between herself and the Madonna. The essay is characterised by humility on the part of the author (in imitation of the profound humility of the Virgin which she has praised so highly in the previous account): she is hardly worthy, she maintains, to repeat the words that were first uttered by a glorious angel sent from heaven. Mary is cast as bountiful and sympathetic to the weaknesses of humankind: ‘refill my empty vase with 30 On the representation of Christ in Ochino’s sermons as ‘unique and inimitable’, due to his dual embodiment, see Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna, pp. 23–24. 31 ‘La vergine Maria, la vergine santa, fu quella, che più perfettamente e sopra ogn’altra creatura ha contemplato Christo pendente in Croce con viva fede a quel modo che ’l dobiamo [sic] contemplar noi.’ Bernardino Ochino, Prediche del Reverendo Padre Frate Bernardino Ochino Senese Generale dell’ordine di frati Capuzzini… predicate nella Inclita Citta di Vinegia del MDXXXIX (In Vinegia: A Bindoni & M. Pasini, Decembrio 1541), fol. 27v. Cited in Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, p. 143.

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your sweet grace so that, whatever you find lacking in me, I know that your pity is enflamed’ (p. 13).32 It may initially appear that Mary in this account plays her traditional, popular role of intermediary between mankind and Christ, intervening and pleading on behalf of all Christians through her infinite pity for human weakness. However a close reading swiftly reveals a far more interesting position. The author is at pains to stress the Virgin’s absolute bond with her son and the fact that they are equally fundamental to the process of divine redemption: ‘so many ties of the flesh, chains of the spirit, rays of the intellect, and flames of love make of you one single being, that one cannot imagine, nor contemplate, nor serve Christ without Mary’ (p. 14).33 In fact Mary has a controlling role in the relationship because she is able to give her son to his followers, to be ‘liberale’ in her sharing of him with others. The strange mode of expression brings to mind the language of jealous lovers, and usurps the prerogative of God to control salvation. Those who worship must not therefore simply ask Mary to intercede on their behalf, but should ask her to be generous in bestowing the grace of her son upon them: ‘although I am unworthy, still I dare to ask you for him’ (p. 14).34 In a manner that is strongly reminiscent of medieval traditions of Marian mediation, the Christian prays to Mary, not only because she is full of pity, but also because she actually controls the intervention of Christ in the lives of all worshippers.35 Clearly fearing that she is being overly presumptuous in requesting access to Christ, Colonna in her Oratione tempers her demand to the Virgin by explaining that she only requires him in his weakest moments, when he is wounded, humbled, mocked, laid low, and then slain by the cruelty of man. This is perfectly in line with empathetic traditions which assert that the Passion and all scenes evoking Christ’s suffering are the most useful for producing sympathetic states of mind in those meditating on the holy stories. One moment in his presence, even as he lies cold and dead, will serve to assuage 32 ‘[R]iempi il mio vacuo vaso della tua soave gratia che, quanto maggior necessità discopri in me, tanto piu so che la tua pietà si accende.’ This form of close reading by a woman writer of a text ostensibly authored by Mary herself was imitated by the later writer, Chiara Matraini. In her life of the Virgin she conducts a line-by-line analysis of the Magnificat, in the same manner in which Colonna analyses the Ave Maria here. See Chiara Matraini, Vita della Beatissima Vergine Maria Madre, e Sposa del Figliuol di Dio. Descritta in un discorso brevemente da M. Chiara Matraini, Gentildonna Luchese. Nuovamente Ristampata, e di belle figure adornata (In Venetia, Padova, et in Bassano, Per Gio. Antonio Remondini [no date]), pp. 32–37. 33 ‘[T]anti legami di carne, tanti vincoli di spirito, tanti lumi d’intelligenza, tanti fuochi di amore, vi fanno una medesima cosa, che non si può imaginare, né riguardare, né servir Christo senza Maria.’ 34 ‘[B]enché io sia indegna, pure ardisco dimandarlo a te.’ 35 There is a significant parallel here to Colonna’s relationship with Ochino, which is described using the same terminology. Bembo, in a letter to Colonna of 1539, thanks her for having ‘lent’ Ochino to the city of Venice, so that they might hear him preach (Colonna has used her influence on the preacher to persuade him to travel to that city): see Colonna, Carteggio, p. 169.

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all the author’s years of suffering and bring her eternal bliss. ‘Give him to me dead and he will immediately come alive for me: his holy wounds will become my own in an instant’ (p. 15).36 After she has found such healing the author promises to relinquish her prize to its rightful owner, ‘and he will be with you in all eternity’ (p. 15). The language of exchange, featuring Christ as a piece of personal property which is to be ‘lent’, as he was lent by Mary to others during his lifetime – ‘you gave him to Mary Magdalene, to Martha, you were always generous to so many sinners’ (p. 14)37 – seems at odds with the context of religious praise and thanksgiving. It serves to move the relationship between the Virgin and the author onto a very personal level and an unequivocally human one, so that Mary’s feelings towards Christ are understood as possessive, proud and proprietorial. Yet she is also generous, and will undoubtedly listen to these prayers with a sympathetic ear, controlling as she does the Christian’s access to grace: ‘it is up to you to give me the grace with which to honour him, the love with which to contemplate him, the riches with which to enjoy him’ (p. 16).38 The manner in which Colonna inflates Mary’s power and agency is unprecedented. By giving birth to Christ the Virgin has essentially become herself the co-author of mankind’s redemption, an unambiguously powerful role. Yet, in line with the concerns of evangelism, Mary’s power is ultimately directed towards the end of glorifying and inhabiting Christ: ‘grant that beneath the mantle of your humility I may acquire the grace to live in the heart of Christ through love. I desire no other riches or inheritance’ (p. 16).39 This closing quotation suggests a rather belated attempt to redirect the Oratione towards the Christian’s relationship with Christ, thus in some way remaining faithful to evangelical approaches to Mariology as defined by Campi. Nonetheless, the language of this short piece is notably vibrant and unguarded in its lauding of Mary’s power as an intermediary. In addition, her role has become far more active in promoting or impeding access to grace rather than simply providing a model for imitation in seeking it. It may be that this approach has its roots in incarnational theology, the tendency to identify the Redemption with the Incarnation rather than the Crucifixion. According to such a theology, Mary’s body becomes the locus of the salvation of mankind and she is thus afforded a great share in the responsibility for the event. In the Oratione, Mary’s role as the donor of Christ is extended even to ‘giving’ him to the Jews for Crucifixion – ‘you even gave him to the Jews upon the 36

‘Dammelo cosí morto, me tornerà viva subito: le sue sante piaghe saneranno le mie in un momento.’ The passage is reminiscent of II Corinthians 6:9, which speaks of the Christian living through death and growing rich through suffering: ‘As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed.’ 37 ‘[I]l concedesti a Madalena, a Marta, a tanti peccatori, continuo ne sei stata liberale.’ 38 ‘[A] te sta a darmi gratia di honorarlo, amore da contemplarlo, ricchezza per goderlo.’ 39 ‘[C]oncedemi che sotto il manto de la tua humiltà acquisti la gratia et viva nel cor de Christo per amore. Non voglio altra ricchezza, né altra heredità.’

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Cross’ (p. 14) – so that she becomes in a sense personally responsible for the Passion, an extraordinary gesture on Colonna’s part. This approach is in direct opposition to what has been defined above as a tendency to eradicate Mary from the process of salvation in evangelical texts. Colonna appears to be conducting a process of selection and fusion, merging elements from disparate sources both in her powerful representation of Mary and in the conscious choice to present aspects of the new theology of the reformers in the manner of earlier devotional tracts, well established by tradition. From a reading of both the Pianto and the Oratione one can come to a better understanding of the ways in which Colonna expresses a profound connection with the Madonna, recognising her potential for great strength and autonomy as well as her central role as the primary example of the way through faith to Christ. It is these same concerns which influence the arrangement of the gift manuscript intended for Marguerite de Navarre, and both these literary undertakings show a concerted effort to claim and instate the Virgin as a positive and self-affirming role model for Catholic women, a model which has the potential to assimilate the traditional characteristics of piety, chastity and humility together with a stronger and more active role. By providing her audience with such a clear model for imitation, Colonna’s reformed Mariology demonstrates the potential for action offered by evangelical spirituality. Acts of Christian charity may no longer earn salvation, as sola fide teaches, but Mary’s example provides an alternative model of positive action to follow. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some elements of Colonna’s unprecedented Marian literary and spiritual programme as outlined in the Pianto in particular incited suspicion and eventually even proscription. When the publisher Gabriele Giolito attempted to bring out a new edition of the Pianto in 1567 he was strongly advised against it and eventually prevented by the papal authorities. One reason for this suppression might have been the link between the text and Colonna’s erstwhile spiritual mentor, Bernardino Ochino, who would certainly have been tried for heresy had he not fled Italy in 1542. All traces of the epistolary format of the work have been eradicated in every printed edition, however, so that there is reason to suppose that its editors foresaw this potential hazard and carefully avoided it. The implication, therefore, is that it was the substance of the text, rather than its connection with Ochino, that concerned the authorities. The work is defended on quite different grounds by a Sienese Carmelite monk, Nicolò Aurifico de Bonfigli (1529–1601), who in 1568 wrote a defence of the practice of weeping at the Passion as expressed in the Pianto, responding to encouragement from Giolito.40 Aurifico attempts to place Colonna’s text 40

Nicolò Aurifico, Discorso del R. Padre Fra Nicolò Aurifico Senese carmelitano. Nel quale si mostra con ragioni et autorità sì delle Scritture Sacre, sì anco di molti Dottori Santi Greci e Latini, quanto sia conveniente anzi necessario piangere, meditando l’acerbissima Passione del Salvator nostro Giesù Christo. Vi si mostra ancora qual sia il vero modo di contemplar piamente tanto misterio (In Vinegia, Apresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1568). Fullest details of the circumstances surrounding the publication

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in a position of unassailable Catholic orthodoxy by defending it against the accusations of ‘modern heretics’, that is reformers and Protestants who advocate thanksgiving as the only viable response to the Passion and claim that Colonna’s text is ‘unevangelical’. The charge against Colonna on the part of these ‘heretics’, it is clear, rests on the fact that in the Pianto both Mary and the author are moved to grieve and weep at the Passion, and these distressed emotions counterbalance their thanksgiving at mankind’s salvation. They said that it was not fitting for a Christian who meditates on Good Friday, or indeed on any other day, to weep real tears upon the most holy passion of Jesus Christ our Saviour, nor to show any kind of melancholy, but rather happiness and consolation, thus condemning the many praiseworthy traditions which the Church has always practiced for inciting us in every possible way to weeping […]. Such enemies of piety, ministers of the devil and sewers of discord, make use of the opposite practice, proposing happy and joyful themes in their own sermons.41

Aurifico points out in Colonna’s defence the long tradition of precisely such meditative exercises intended to inspire weeping in the protagonist, in order to place the Pianto firmly within the boundaries of a long accepted Christian practice and dismiss the reformers’ accusations as untenable. It seems surprising that he is prepared to state the non-orthodox viewpoint so openly, especially given the context in which this defence was written, in response to negative attention from the Inquisition. The position Aurifico adopts can be viewed as a skilful double manoeuvre that serves to bring the Pianto in line with orthodox practice. Simultaneously, however, and significantly, it demonstrates the widespread knowledge and even popularity, in an atmosphere of increasing religious intolerance, of the ideas attributed to these so-called ‘modern heretics’. Letters to Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini, Duchess of Amalfi Three letters from Colonna to her cousin, Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini, explore further her relationship with and interpretation of the figure of Mary,

of this defence are in Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano, pp. 216–17. Simoncelli reads Giolito’s preface to the work as a ‘malcelata polemica antinquisitoriale’ (p. 217), and points out that Giolito himself had been tried by the Inquisition for publishing heretical works in 1565. See also Jung-Inglessis, ‘Il Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara’, pp. 133–4. 41 ‘Hanno detto non esser conveniente al Christiano, il qual medita il Venerdì santo, overo ogn’altro giorno, la santissima passione del Salvator nostro Giesù Christo pianger con lagrime esteriori, né mostrar mestitia alcuna, ma più tosto allegrezza et consolation, dannando le tante lodevoli consuetudini, le quali ha sempre usato la Chiesa, d’indur con ogni possibil modo al pianto […] [Q]uesti inimici della pietà, ministri del diavolo & seminatori di zizania, fanno e usano così tutto il contrario, proponendo ne’ loro sermoni, temi giocondi e allegri’, Aurifico, Discorso, p. 14.

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elucidated so compellingly and unusually in her prose meditations. These letters also introduce two further exemplary women who can be claimed as emancipatory models and stepping stones en route for the highest perfection of the Virgin. Published in Venice in 1544, these letters constitute one of the first instances of a volume of vernacular ‘lettere spirituali’ and moreover the first instance of a volume of letters by a woman published during her lifetime, facts which underline the ground-breaking and highly public nature of Colonna’s appropriation of female role models for use by herself and her contemporaries. The fact of their publication links these letters to the Pianto and indicates that their author was in the habit of composing ‘personal’ correspondence with a view to eventual publication and dissemination.43 It is interesting that Colonna feels able to draw her relative into what is essentially a discussion of the ‘proto-feminist’ potential of the figure of Mary in language charged with an undeniably evangelical tone. Costanza herself was probably influenced by the theology of Valdés and the sermons of Ochino during her upbringing in Naples, and sought to emulate her older cousin by writing a number of sonnets in a markedly mystical tenor in which she expresses her desire to find solace through faith for an unhappy life.44 The first of the three published letters is addressed to a ‘Most elevated spirit’, immediately establishing that it will deal with the other-worldly realm of the spirit rather than the mundanity of the material world.45 The self-consciously exalted opening no doubt indicates the foreknowledge on the part of the writer of the public nature of her enterprise, in composing a letter ultimately intended for wider consumption and reflecting the issues and concerns with which she associated herself in the public eye. The tone Colonna adopts in this letter is self-confident and imbued with a sense of her own deep knowledge of the matters she treats as she directs her cousin to meditate on certain events, although as always her advice is tinged with the appropriate humility. The language of the letter is mystical and uplifting. Costanza, Colonna believes, is without doubt one of God’s chosen ones who has been endowed with the gift of understanding: ‘for I know that the grace of Our Lord will be clear to your mind just as the high invisible light becomes visible to his chosen 42

Biographical details for Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini are in the entry by C. Mutini in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 4 (1962), pp. 622–3. This is not the same person as Colonna’s aunt by marriage, also Costanza d’Avalos, the Duchess of Francavilla: see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 4, pp. 621–2. 43 The practice of ‘public’ letter writing in the Renaissance, which led to published volumes of correspondence, is outlined in the various essays contained in Le ‘carte messaggiere’. Retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare: per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento, ed. by Amedeo Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981). 44 Five of Costanza’s sonnets were published as an appendix to the 1558 edition of Colonna’s Rime, edited by Ruscelli: Tutte le Rime della Illustriss. et Eccellentiss. Signora Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana di Pescara. Con l’Espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso, nuovamente mandate in luce da Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Giovan Battista et Melchior Sessa Fratelli, 1558). 45 The letter is in Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 292–4.

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ones’ (p. 293).46 In a spirit of humility she requests that the other woman share with her the fruits of her meditations on the divine mysteries, which have taken her on a journey out of herself, ‘I beg you, upon your much anticipated return, to share with me as you should the graces that you have received’, and she indicates the bond which unites them in their mutual burning for knowledge and insight, ‘that binds us fervently in a single desire’ (p. 293).47 Despite her claim to be unable to reach the heights to which Costanza may aspire, Colonna then goes on to list, in increasingly rhapsodic prose rich with motifs of flames and light, the realisations that she will attain on her spiritual journey, repeating the verb, ‘you will see… you will see’, with a certainty of tone which belies her modest pose. Displaying her own personal familiarity with the writings of the early church fathers, she recommends that as the cares of the world drag Costanza from her meditative rapture, ‘when you already feel that earthly weights drag you back’, she turn to the company of Paul or Augustine or the story of Mary Magdalene, all referred to with great familiarity and affection: ‘you pause a while with my most observant father Paul, or with my great luminary Augustine, or with my most ardent servant Mary Magdalene’ (p. 294).48 The inclusion of Mary Magdalene here, whose role in the scriptures is minor and involves no teaching or great learning, together with two venerable ‘doctors of theology’, demonstrates Colonna’s determination to include women in her ancestry of learned religious figures. Perhaps she was drawing on the Patristic tradition that represented the Magdalene as the apostola apostolorum and teacher of the disciples, a tradition that through the centuries came to be denied in favour of her role as a model of penitence and asceticism.49 Above all these other models for emulation resides the perfect and most significant model, the Holy Virgin, whose example is the most powerful and uplifting one to which Costanza can aspire, and who will lead her closer to God in her infinite pity: And above all of this I pray you school yourself to see how our most singular patron and queen Mary has incarnated within herself the miraculous mystery of the holy Word, and how she melts with divine desire to see her own flesh made a living eternal sun, and how she lives blessedly in the refreshing and secure peace of heaven, and how she rejoices to see that from her living fire are born the rays that make Paradise beautiful, and through her kindness they pass to the blessed to unite and pacify them in

46

‘[P]erchè so che mercè del Signor Nostro sarà chiaro alla tua mente come l’alta invisibil luce si fa visibile a’suoi eletti.’ 47 ‘[T]i prego al tuo aspettato ritorno vogli farmi, come suoli, participe delle gratie ricevute’; ‘che caldamente ci lega in un desio.’ 48 ‘[Q]uando già senti che la gravezza terrena vuol richiamarti […] ti fermi col mio osservandissimo padre Paolo, o col mio gran lume Agostino, ovvero con la ferventissima serva mia Maddalena.’ 49 See ‘Bibbia, ardimento, coscienza femminile: Vittoria Colonna’, in Adriana Valerio, Cristianesimo al femminile. Donne protagonist nella storia delle Chiese (Naples: M. D’Auria, 1990), pp. 151–70 (p. 166).

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the holy eternal light of God, towards which she guides us in her goodness. (p. 294)50

This first letter is clearly drawing on the mystical, ascetic tradition inherited from a writer such as Catherine of Siena, whose own letters had a strong influence on Colonna, in particular in the emphasis on the ‘internal eye’ and the need to free oneself of earthly bonds in order to be assimilated into God.51 The language is evocative and intimate, in keeping with the nature of the spiritual experience of meditation, and it rises through levels of intensity as Costanza is instructed to pass deeper into her vision with the aid of Paul, Augustine, and Mary Magdalene, to reach a pitch of mystical profundity in the vision of the Virgin who is at the apex of the journey. Colonna’s role here in relation to her cousin is clearly that of spiritual mentor and companion on this difficult journey, offering guidance as to the best sources for illumination and continually alluding to the shared thirst for greater proximity to God that unites the two women. In fact the next letter in the series demonstrates how effective this guidance has been as Colonna, evidently in response to word from Costanza, expresses pleasure at the thought that her letters, ‘so simply written, bring you such consolation’.52 Significantly she also voices relief at being able to express herself freely without fear of reprisals – ‘as with you I am safe from calumny and all unjust and ill-intentioned stings’ – drawing attention to the delicate nature of these communications intended for the public realm. This second letter takes as its starting point, much in the manner of the Pianto, a vision the writer has had that very morning of Mary embracing her son, and a recognition of the deep bond that unites them, ‘a thousand ties which bind them together with knots of burning charity’ (p. 295).53 Markedly more strident and dynamic in tone than the first letter, here Colonna sets out to prove, through a process of systematic argument and detailed illustration, that Mary is superior to every human institution (including the pinnacles of male hierarchy, princes and kings) and to every heavenly one, including the angels, seraphims, and cherubims. She places Mary below only one figure in the celestial order, her son, and that by only a tiny amount: ‘for the eternal

50

‘[E]t sopra tutto ti prego ti sforzi veder come la singularissima patrona e regina nostra Maria il mirabil mistero dell’altissimo Verbo [ha] incarnato in lei, et come si liquefa di divino ardore di veder la sua istessa carne fatta un vivo eterno sole, et come vive beata nella riposata et sicura pace del cielo, et quanto gode di vedere che dal suo vivo lume nascono i raggi, che fanno bello il Paradiso, et che della sua benignità passino ne i beati per unirli e acquetarli nell’alta eterna luce di Dio, alla qual per sua bontà ci conduchi.’ 51 See Doglio, ‘L’occhio interiore’, p. 1004. Also Le Lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, ed. by Piero Misciatelli, 6 vols (Florence: Marzocco, 1947); Suzanne Noffke, ‘Caterina da Siena’, in Italian Women Writers, ed. by Russell, pp. 58–66. Collections of the saint’s letters were published first in Bologna in 1492, and then a further four times in Venice in the sixteenth century. 52 The letter is in Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 295–9. 53 ‘[M]ille lacci, che con nodi di ardentissima carità li legavano insieme.’

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mother is only very slightly inferior to her infinite son’ (p. 297, my italics).54 Colonna’s tone is once again directive and confident as she guides her cousin to a correct understanding of these issues: ‘Just think… now consider… and think…’ Mary’s strength and superiority mean that she is able to enjoy a reciprocal relationship with Christ in which they are equal in nurturing and sustaining one another: the mother provides practical, material sustenance to her baby, and the son rewards her with spiritual returns (p. 298): And think how, through nourishing the Author of all life, she was herself internally nourished by him, through sustaining him she was sustained, gently raising him from the ground she was raised high into heaven, and in granting him brief moments of peaceful rest she was herself granted eternal peace.55

Colonna claims to be particularly impressed by Mary’s ability to carry out her maternal duties so calmly and efficiently. How is it, she asks, that the Virgin’s hands did not tremble as she bathed and bound her sacred child or her flow of milk dry up in awe and humility? The specific mention of the mother’s practical duties show the very human and direct quality of Colonna’s empathy with and admiration for the Virgin, as she presents her in a way to which all women will relate. The scope of Mary’s influence is broadened further and rendered incontrovertible by the assertion that the Holy Trinity, the three ultimate universal powers united in one, take delight in Mary’s achievements and celebrate her in turn (p. 297): And it seems that our Father was content to have shown us his living power through the power of his daughter, and the Son was glad to have chosen in his wisdom such a wise mother, and the Holy Spirit was consoled to see shining in this most perfect bride his own perfect kindness.56

The three adjectives employed to describe her are notable: she is, in imitation of her triple genesis, strong, learned and most perfect (potente, sapiente, perfettissima). Such qualities are a far cry from the characteristics of humility, piety and obedience which were traditionally offered to women as the exemplary qualities epitomised by the Virgin, and demonstrate how far Colonna’s interpretation of Mary’s role has moved away from such traditions. The letter closes with a highly affirmative statement, constituting what is perhaps the most significant development in Colonna’s approach to Mary 54

‘[C]hè solo all’infinito figlio è di poco inferiore l’eterna madre.’ ‘Et pensa come, nutrendo l’Auttor d’ogni vita, era internamente nodrita da lui, come sostenendolo si sosteneva, et soavemente levandolo da terra era altamente elevata in cielo, et per dargli col sonno breve riposo, le era eterna pace per ricompensa concessa.’ 56 ‘Et pare che ivi si satii il gran Padre d’haver mostrato la sua in vitta potentia nella potente figliuola, e il Figliuol gode d’haversi con la sua sapentia ordinata sí sapiente madre, si consola lo Spirito Santo di veder rilucere in questa perfettissima sposa l’ottima sua bontade.’ 55

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that moves it far beyond traditional treatments. A final role is assigned to the Virgin that asserts her superiority and significance. She is not simply a nurturer, but also in her own right a teacher and disseminator of the word of God, blessed with divine understanding and a sharp intelligence (although once again it is stressed that she never exceeds the bounds of her proper position, never attempts to uscir delle leggi). It is unusual and especially interesting that Colonna’s Virgin is allowed to speak publicly and given the role of maestra, including the capacity to create laws. In the Bible she is largely silent: the first book of Timothy asserts that women should be silent and subservient to male authority and not attempt to teach the word: ‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’ (1 Timothy 2:11–12). This clear biblical command is ignored by Colonna, who asserts the female right to a public vocal role alongside men through her championing of Mary, whose powerful position is bestowed upon her and authorised by her son, the ‘maestro primo’, and is offered as an example to all women. It is the strength with which Colonna asserts Mary’s right to teach and lead that is astonishing and appears to have no precedent in earlier traditions, in which the Virgin’s words are uttered always in a spirit of humility (p. 299):57 Just think what enlightened words she formed then, what wise and inspiring expressions issued from her saintly mouth, what bountiful and bright rays burned in those divine eyes, with what most astute advice, without contravening any law, she laid down the law for those who heard her, as a true teacher constituted by the first teacher to bring his commandments to the world, which he composed with his own blood.58

Within the context of this letter to her cousin Colonna herself draws on this assertion in order to strengthen and legitimise her own self-presentation as a teacher and spiritual guide.

57

See for example the medieval text, Vita Beatae Virginis Mariae et Salvatoris Rhythmica, ed. by Adolf Vögtlin, Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart 180 (Laupp: Tübingen, 1888), cited in Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, pp. 259–60. Graef comments that giving Mary eloquence and speech is a move that departs considerably from the Byzantine emphasis on her silence, but her speech in such medieval texts is always tempered by extreme prudence. One context in which Mary appears to have been allowed a far more active and assertive vocal role was in Medieval Passion sermons, but this trend seems to have been repressed during the sixteenth century. See Donna Spivey Ellington, ‘Impassioned Mother or Passive Icon: the Virgin’s Role in Late Medieval and Early Modern Passion Sermons’, Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995), 227–61. 58 ‘Pensa che illuminati accenti allhor formava, che sagge ignite parole uscivan dalla santa bocca, che pietosi et chiari raggi lampeggiavano da quei lumi divini, che rettissimi consigli senza uscir delle leggi davan legge a chi l’udiva, come maestra vera constituita dal maestro primo a fermare quelli ordini al mondo, che aveva egli fondati col proprio sangue.’

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The text of the third letter treats the role of Mary Magdalene and Saint Catherine of Alexandria.59 The strongly persuasive tone and style of argumentation of the previous letter is maintained here in a celebration of these two ‘glorious women’. St Catherine has been selected, the writer claims, because the day on which Colonna writes is her saint’s day, on which her life and death are celebrated. Both women inherit the active, preaching role assigned to the Virgin in the previous letter, and are inspired to their vocations, one (the Magdalene) through love, and the other through intelligence. In an interesting assertion of their importance as leaders of other women, both are cited as reaching and converting regine (or, powerful females) through their work and faith: ‘and both of them with their passionate, wise, and sweet words I see converting queens with their kingdoms and a huge number of people’ (p. 300).60 Both are also praised in particular for their forbearance through many years of persecution and martyrdom, which served to strengthen rather than weaken their faith.61 This letter is not the first indication of an interest in the two female saints on Colonna’s part. A fascinating early testimony is provided by an altarpiece painting, executed by an unknown Neapolitan artist in the early years of the sixteenth century, now housed, incomplete, in the convent of Sant’Antonio di Padova, on the island of Ischia where Colonna spent the first years of her married life.62 The fresco depicts Colonna and her aunt, the older Costanza d’Avalos, Duchessa di Francavilla (Colonna, unusually, in sumptuous secular dress, Costanza in widow’s weeds), kneeling beneath the Madonna of the Graces who offers her breast to the infant Christ.63 The positioning of the two women kneeling one on either side beneath the raised Madonna and child suggests their status as co-donors of the fresco, and thus a relationship of parity and their shared role of ‘first lady’ at the court in the absence of their 59

The letter is in Colonna, Carteggio, pp. 299–302. ‘[E]d ambedue con le ignite, saggie e dolci parole convertir vedo regine con li regni et numero grandissimo di persone.’ 61 Catherine of Alexandria, renowned for her learning, reputedly refused the advances of the Emperor Maxentius and was tied to a spiked wheel in punishment, although a thunderbolt from heaven split the wheel and saved her from harm. The emperor, in his frustration, had her executed. She later came to be venerated as the patron saint of education and eloquence, students, noblewomen and spinsters. For details of this legend see Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, pp. 58–9. 62 For more information on the altarpiece, see Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 135–6; Paola Giusti and Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Pittura del Cinquecento a Napoli, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Naples: Electa, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 74, 84; Giuliano Briganti, ed., La pittura in Italia. Il Cinquecento, 2 vols (Milan: Electa, 1988), vol. 2, p. 475. 63 This painting appears to be the only extant image of a youthful Colonna in secular dress. In later years, her insistent poetic self-presentation in mourning for d’Avalos led to her depiction clad always in widow’s weeds, or else, in keeping with her pious reputation, in religious attire. For more information on portraits of or thought to be of Colonna, see Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, ‘Vittoria Colonna im Portrait’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 109–20. 60

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menfolk. Presumably they are praying to Mary for the protection of the male members of the family, away in battle, while the women remain at home in control of the domestic, diplomatic and literary affairs that court life entailed. Perhaps, as has been suggested, they are praying with particular urgency in the wake of the 1512 defeat at Ravenna and the subsequent imprisonment of Francesco D’Avalos and Fabrizio Colonna.64 The implied assertion of female autonomy is furthered by the inclusion, in other panels of the polyptych altarpiece, of four other female saints and martyrs, among them Catherine of Alexandria and Mary Magdalene, the former grasping her wheel, a book and a quill, the latter holding the urn of embalming ointment with which she approached Christ’s tomb. Significantly the younger Costanza, recipient of the letters under discussion, would presumably have been familiar with the altarpiece as she spent her early life on Ischia, so that the mention of the two saints here may have had a particular resonance for her. To return to Colonna’s letter, after various allusions to the exemplary character of these two women’s respective lives, Colonna explicitly states that other women should use these figures as role models in their efforts to come closer to God: ‘let us now mirror ourselves in the acts of their beautiful bodies, and imitating the thoughts of their pious and noble minds let us pay the true homage that we owe to Our Father’ (p. 302).65 Such a move is a very emancipating gesture, to claim for all women the potential to define for themselves strong and active roles in religious life. The Virgin, at the letter’s close, is once again confirmed as the ultimate female spiritual authority presiding over her followers, yet by finding alternative models Colonna has succeeded in providing a more attainable goal. If one cannot hope to aspire directly to the Virgin’s role, one can move towards it by following the example set by such lesser, yet nonetheless exemplary, saintly females. The triptych arrangement of the account, in imitation of altarpiece painting on Ischia, seems quite self-conscious: on one side, the instinctive, emotional Magdalene (representing the ‘vita activa’), on the other the intellectual, rational Catherine (the ‘vita contemplativa’), and reigning supreme above them both the absolute wisdom and purity of the divine mother. Conclusion These meditative prose works and letters to her cousin provide an extraordinary testament to Colonna’s concentration on Mariology as a means of articulating the particular needs and experiences of female spirituality in a reformed context. While her manuscript gift for Michelangelo reveals a more familiar Christological framework to her piety that brought her in line with other

64

This hypothesis is advanced by Pierluigi Leone de Castris, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, p. 136. 65 ‘[H]ora specchiamosi noi ne le opere dei bellissimi lor corpi, et i pensier delle sante e chiare menti imitando, rendiamo il vero culto conveniente al Nostro Signore.’

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evangelicals, her prose works explore new and unexpected avenues, marrying earlier Marian traditions with unprecedented claims for female emancipation and action in imitation of Mary. While on the one hand they are presented as private and meditative, on the other hand all these prose texts feed into a context of collaboration and communication with others, both other reformers and other women, that is perfectly in tune with an evangelical desire for dissemination and a collective act of spiritual illumination and knowledge.66 Colonna’s status as a pioneering female voice within the arena of reform in Italy is underlined by her prose works, in which she boldly sets out to create an entirely new kind of spiritualised femininity.

66 See, on the notion of spiritual communities, Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters.

CHAPTER 6

Colonna’s Readers: The Reception of Reformed Petrarchism Introduction The discussion of the Beneficio di Christo in Chapter 2 highlights the status of that text as an evangelical product, designed to be disseminated via the medium of print to the largest possible number of readers of vernacular literature and thus impart its message of reformed faith far and wide across the Italian peninsula. By contrast, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 examine texts by Vittoria Colonna which were intended for a smaller quorum of readers from among her circle of like minded friends and colleagues, men and women who shared her concerns with developing a language and idiom with which to articulate their new religious ideology. Although such texts also perform an evangelical function, it is one that, at least initially, is necessarily circumscribed by the closed circle into which they were launched. Yet, as the discussion in Chapter 1 makes clear, Colonna’s works were also disseminated in print in the sixteenth century, and as a result had a reach and impact that took them far beyond the circle of initiated readers with whom she was in contact in Viterbo and Rome. The questions to be posed in this chapter concern the printed dissemination primarily of Colonna’s Petrarchan lyrics that had such a wide and enduring appeal spanning the sixteenth century. How far, one might wonder, did readers of these vernacular lyrics in their many printed editions have any awareness of their reformed content and of the particular evangelical circles in which their author was moving? Might one perhaps see a link between the gradual tailingoff of editions of the Rime after 1560, and the ever stronger reverberations sent through Italian cultural centres by the Council of Trent that allowed increasingly limited space for heterodox scriptural interpretations? In other words, is it plausible to claim that Colonna’s evangelical Petrarchism performed the function of disseminating ideas about reformed spirituality to an audience beyond the close circle of fellow poets and spirituali in Viterbo and Rome, and if so how was the message contained in the poetry received by its readers? Answers to questions such as these might remain purely hypothetical were it not for the existence of one text, written by a contemporary of Colonna’s, which reveals a huge amount about the manner in which her poetry was received and interpreted by readers with a particular interest in the spiritual questions that she explores. This is the commentary first published in 1543 and composed by the precociously young scholar Rinaldo Corso (1525–1582), who worked at the court of Correggio in the service of the other noted female Petrarchist

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of the period, Veronica Gambara.1 Corso’s commentary sets out to canonise Colonna’s poetry, inserting it into a lineage of great vernacular texts as well as establishing its links with important classical precedents and thus assuring its status in its own century as a work that embodied the necessary duality of being both beautiful and serious. It is notable that this kind of sustained scholarly attention was not commonly accorded to living poets: only a further two living (male) Petrarchan poets were honoured with commentaries on their collected Rime in the sixteenth century, suggesting that Colonna was accorded a special degree of attention due to her sex (and flattery by Corso of his female patron, also a poet, must of course be taken in account).2 In fact, Corso is not alone in extolling Colonna’s status as a vernacular model. In the dedication to his Cento Sonetti (Rome: Vincentio Valgrisi, 1549), Alessandro Piccolomini sets up a vernacular lyric canon of Petrarch, Bembo and Colonna. Whilst taking into account the importance of flattery (the work is addressed to Colonna’s niece), Piccolomini makes an important point about the poet’s redirecting of Petrarchan subject matter: ‘she has made the world recognise that it is not, as some reckon, the case that sonnets are apt only for amorous subject matter, but they are suitable for all kinds of honourable subjects, however holy or serious they be’.3 Aside from his work of serious scholarly analysis Corso’s commentary is particularly relevant to the current discussion because its author has been shown to have had his own links with, and interest in, currents of reform in Italy before Trent. Corso was brought into contact with a number of reformers in Venice in the 1540s through his brother, Anton Giacomo, and in 1545 he wrote the dedicatory letter to a work which was in fact a translation of Luther’s commentary on Paul’s epistle, disguised under the apparent authorship of Federico Fregoso.4 With these facts in mind it seems likely that he was aware of, 1

The first edition of the commentary was published as Dichiaratione fatta sopra la seconda parte delle Rime della Divina Vittoria Collonna [sic] Marchesana di Pescara. Da Rinaldo Corso… (Bologna: Gian Battista de Phaelli, 1543). Monica Bianco provides convincing evidence to demonstrate that this ‘seconda parte’ (analysis of the rime spirituali) was initially issued without its preceding ‘prima parte’ (analysis of the rime amorose), a decision apparently made by Corso himself. See Bianco, ‘Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso’, p. 273. 2 The two other sixteenth-century poetic commentaries were dedicated to the work of Bernardino Rota (c.1509–c.1574), and Luca Contile (1505–1574). There was only one other instance of a published Discorso on a poem by a woman writer: by Alessandro Piccolomini, published in Bologna in 1541, on a single sonnet by Laodamia Forteguerri. See Moro, ‘Le commentaire de Rinaldo Corso sur les Rime de Vittoria Colonna’, p. 195. The Bolognese publication of this work, as well as the significant interest that it excited, makes it a plausible precedent and inspiration for the subsequent commentary by Corso on Colonna’s collected Rime. 3 ‘Ha fatto conoscere al mondo che non è necessario, come stimano alcuni, che a sola materia amorosa s’accommodino i sonetti sempre, ma ad ogni altro onorato soggetto son atti ancora, per santo e grave che egli sia.’ 4 Federico Fregoso [Martin Luther], Prefatione del Reverendiss. Cardinal di santa Chiesa M. Federico Fregoso nella Pistola di san Paolo à Romani (In Venetia per Comin

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and probably very open to, the reformed tenor of many of Colonna’s spiritual sonnets, a hypothesis corroborated by a reading of the commentary that demonstrates its close engagement with the texts and doctrines of a reformed faith that influenced Colonna’s process of composition.5 In addition, certain highly significant changes are made to the later edition of the commentary, republished in 1558, which show a process of self-censorship (whether by the text’s new editor, Girolamo Ruscelli or Corso himself is debatable) being enacted in order to remove any overtly evangelical traces from the reading in a post-Tridentine environment.6 By reading Colonna’s sonnets through Corso’s eyes, therefore, one can hope to come to a better understanding of the manner in which her evangelical Petrarchism was interpreted by a contemporary who was sympathetic to such interests. Not only this, by assessing the manner in which Corso unpacks evangelical allusions in the sonnets, opening out and clarifying their meaning for a more general reader, it is possible to make interesting assumptions about the extent to which their poetic message of reform was able to draw other readers to a consideration of such questions. People who bought and read collections of Petrarchan lyrics were not knowingly seeking access to spiritual enlightenment, as those who bought copies of the Beneficio di Christo might have been. In subtle ways, however, Colonna’s reformed lyrics could perform a similar function on the mind of an unsuspecting reader, through their repeated allusions to important doctrinal ideas and repetition of key phrases, as well as through her rousing descriptions of the joyful possibilities awaiting all Christians who embrace this new and cleansed Christian faith. Corso’s commentary works to render such subtle influences explicit, so that the importance of the message contained in the sonnets cannot be missed. It seems no accident that a copy of the 1558 edition of the commentary appears to have belonged to Michelangelo Buonarroti, an evangelically informed reader of the verses who would have recognised, approved of and even benefited personally from the work done by Corso to clarify and disseminate Colonna’s message on her behalf to a wider readership.7 da Trino di Monferrato, 1545). More detailed information on Corso’s evangelical leanings is provided in Bianco, ‘Le due redazioni’, pp. 280–3. Bianco believes that fear of inquisitional attention may have been what persuaded Corso to maintain an apparent distance from the publishing of a second edition of his commentary on Colonna. See also Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘Le traduzioni italiani di Lutero nella prima metà del Cinquecento’, Rinascimento 2:17 (1977), 31–108. 5 Significantly, the patron of the work, Veronica Gambara, also demonstrated an interest in reform in a number of her poems: see for example ‘Scelse da tutta la futura gente’ (on Predestination) in Gambara, Le rime, p. 157. See also William J. Kennedy, ‘Veronica Gambara and the Gender of Rule’, in Authorizing Petrarch, pp. 134–46. 6 The second edition of the commentary was published as Tutte le Rime della Illustriss. et Eccellentiss. Signora Vittoria Colonna. This edition contains Corso’s commentary on both the amorous and spiritual sonnets. 7 Michelangelo’s copy of the 1558 Rime including Corso’s commentary (now in the British Library) has handwritten annotations on p. 426 and p. 483, correcting

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Rinaldo Corso and Veronica Gambara Apart from the career ambitions that might have influenced Corso’s choice of Colonna as the subject for his work of poetic commentary, how do we account for him as a reader of the poetry, what particular knowledge or insights might he have brought to bear on the work? Although he was only sixteen or seventeen years old when he wrote his commentary – originally composed, as Girolamo Ruscelli claims in the introduction to the 1558 edition, in the form of annotations arising out of conversations with Veronica Gambara on the meaning of the sonnets8 – Corso had already come to the attention of his patron as something of a prodigy. According to Corso’s biographers, Gambara was highly impressed by the level of erudition displayed by the young man when he attended literary meetings at the court at Correggio, and appointed him as her court auditor in 1546.9 Trained in law, Corso was also a composer of love lyrics in the Petrarchan vein for which he gained a modest reputation during his lifetime, publishing sonnets in a number of sixteenth-century anthologies. He also published works on a wide range of other subjects, including a treatise on linguistics, a stage tragedy, works on the educative virtues of dance, a treatise on the best manner in which to irrigate the lands belonging to the principality of Correggio, and a biography of Gambara that was published in 1556, six years after her death. Sources also cite an unpublished work entitled Annotazioni sopra le Rime di Petrarca, indicating Corso’s enduring interest in Petrarchism as well as his continuing practice of the commentary mode.10 As Corso’s reading of Colonna’s sonnets demonstrates, the chief concern of a commentator of a literary work in the sixteenth century was the need to ‘explain the beauty’ of the text through a grounding of the author’s achievements in a context of specific ‘technical’ (linguistic and literary) devices which allow her to achieve a certain effect on the reader.11 Such an approach is no doubt a product of its time – a modern reader will generally seek for originality and ‘inexplicability’ as a sign of real artistic merit – and it misprints and thus bringing the sonnets in line with the versions given in his manuscript from Colonna. 8 ‘[H]avendolo per aventura il detto Signor Rinaldo così esposto a contemplatione di lei, & a lei donatolo scritto a penna’: Colonna, Tutte le Rime, Dedicatory Letter [unpaginated]. 9 For details of Corso’s relationship with Gambara, see Quirino Bigi, Sulla vita e sulle opere di Rinaldo Corso e di Pietro Bisi da Correggio. Discorsi storici (Modena: G. T. Vincenzi e nipoti, 1880); Riccardo Finzi, Un Correggese del Rinascimento: Rinaldo Corso, 1525–1582 (Modena: Aedes Muratoriana, 1959). 10 See Bigi, Sulla vita e sulle opere di Rinaldo Corso, p. 24; also the entry on Corso by Giovanna Romei in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 29 (1983), pp. 687–90. 11 The phrase belongs to Giovambattista Pigna, writing in praise of Girolamo Ruscelli’s 1566 commentary on the Orlando furioso, ‘nel quale va minutamente spiegando le bellezze di questo poema’. See Orlando Furioso, di M. Lodovico Ariosto, tutto ricorretto, et di nuove figure adornato. Con le Annotationi, gli Avvertimenti, e le Dichiarationi di Girolamo Ruscelli… (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1566), p. 547.

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underlines the primary importance of attempting to place the sonnets in their original context and to reconstruct the point of view and expectations of their intended readers.12 The activity of explaining and locating devices that help to establish the artistic beauty of the work must presumably arise from a deep estimation of its value on the part of the commentator (who links it to its most venerable predecessors, including great works from classical antiquity and Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the vernacular). In addition, the status of the commentator is itself raised, as he establishes himself as an authority on the genre, and displays his broad knowledge of Latin and Italian sources. Ruscelli in his edition emphasises Corso’s expert status: the commentary displays ‘good order and doctrine’, and establishes the writer in a high-profile role: ‘with so many of his own worthy works he is already himself in the position of being held up as a model for observation and imitation.’13 An interesting feature of Corso’s commentary is its insistence, in both editions, on a specific readership of ‘amorose donne’ who will benefit directly from the poet’s example of conjugal and spiritual faith and devotion.14 Such an assertion helps to emphasise the moral seriousness of the sonnets, an essential task of the commentator who wished to demonstrate his subject’s suitability for inclusion in the established literary canon.15 In addition, and bearing in mind the specific ‘amorosa donna’ for whom the work was originally penned, directing it at women, despite the high level of erudition and classical reference 12

Amedeo Quondam, in his book on anthology collections of Petrarchan lyrics through the centuries, indicates clearly the way in which public conceptions of what constitutes ‘good’ poetry have altered since the sixteenth century, so that later editors have discounted ‘perfect imitators’ like Colonna and Pietro Bembo, in favour of writers with a freer and more idiosyncratic style like Michelangelo and Gaspara Stampa, writers who were certainly less highly esteemed as poets during the Renaissance. See Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato, esp. p. 67. 13 ‘[C]on tanti dignissimi scritti suoi è già in istato d’esser egli tolto ad osservare e ad imitare’ (from the unpaginated dedicatory latter). On the commentary tradition as a means of raising the status of the commentator’s own literary output, see G. G. Ferrero, ‘Dante e i grammatici della prima metà del Cinquecento’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 105 (1935), 1–59. 14 Corso’s dedication forms an interesting contrast with, almost a conscious corrective of, Boccaccio’s dedication of the Decameron to an audience of amorous ladies, who are there considered to be in need of distraction (from the trauma of plague) rather than instruction. See Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. by Cesare Segre (Milan: Mursia, 1966), ‘Proemio’, pp. 25–7. Juliet Flemming has pointed out, in the context of Elizabethan England, that ‘ladies’ texts’, following Boccaccio’s example, tended to be represented as trifles or toys, fulfilling a dream of male potency: see Juliet Flemming, ‘The ladies’ man and the age of Elizabeth’, in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. by James Grantham Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 158–81. 15 See, on the attempts by commentators to establish the serious Christian moral content of Ariosto’s epic poem, and iron out any troubling discrepancies, Daniel Javitch, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 37–43.

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required by the genre, could be construed as a compliment to the female sex in general (as the writer refuses to patronise his readership by reducing the quantity of erudite reference, and even quotes from sources in the original Greek), and to Corso’s illustrious patron in particular, who was herself very well educated, including in the classics.16 In fact Corso extends his flattery of his patron’s serious status as scholar in her own right to a citation of her poetry as a model for imitation by other writers alongside the vernacular greats, Petrarch and Boccaccio.17 Of course, one need not assume that by employing the moral framework of a readership of women the writer was intending to exclude a male readership, but the ploy does allow him very effectively to draw his argument back to the edifying and didactic content of Colonna’s verses. One way in which Corso demonstrates the serious thought and consideration that he has given to his reading of the Rime is in the concerted effort he makes at all times to read the collection as a whole, that is to bear in mind important questions of ordering and arrangement, and to ensure that interpretations of individual sonnets feed into one another in order ultimately to provide a more general impression of the poet’s achievement. Bernard Weinberg, in his substantial history of Renaissance Italian literary criticism, has pointed out that there is a tendency for sixteenth-century commentaries to fragment and fracture the work under discussion through repeated reference to disparate and unconnected sources which ‘promoted the habit of regarding texts as collections of fragments and hence as collections of isolated precepts’.18 Corso clearly follows the tradition closely in seeking to endow his reading of Colonna with a certain authority through reference to classical sources, but nonetheless he is very careful not to allow his commentary to fragment. He refers frequently to the care he has taken in deciding the order of sonnets in his collection, which differs from that of the (unspecified) text he originally annotated for Gambara and from the order of the first printed editions, and through which he hopes to maintain a sense of the development of the poet’s thought, reflecting the narrative concerns apparent in Petrarchan commentary: ‘it is even more satisfying for the reader to find them arranged in this collection

16

While Gambara composed lyrics in Latin, Colonna’s knowledge of that language is uncertain, although she did have access to a variety of classical works in the library on Ischia during her early literary development. See, for details of the library (which was greatly extended by Costanza D’Avalos di Francavilla during her married life on Ischia), Pierluigi Leone de Castris, ‘Kultur und Mäzenatentum am Hof d D’Avalos in Ischia’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. by Ferino-Pagden, pp. 67–73. 17 See Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 399. Other vernacular writers, names such as Ariosto, Alamanni, Bembo and Sannazaro, are also included in Corso’s new canon of sixteenth-century vernacular ‘greats’. 18 Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 47. Although Weinberg is primarily discussing commentaries on classical texts in Latin, his comments apply equally well to analyses of vernacular works, including collections of poetry.

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19

in an order that is clearly explained’. In addition, Corso makes evident his awareness of the intertextuality of the collection of individual sonnets, constructing a text in which they develop one from another and are intimately related in their themes and preoccupations: For just as from one moment to the next new thoughts are born, and with the passing of time sometimes certain thoughts recur, so too with different compositions sometimes after a long space of time the same phrases crop up again in a different guise. Thus it is rare for any composition to remain entirely separate without in some way depending on another, and we can almost claim that it is pointless to take the trouble to try to establish these links.20

All of the above testifies to Corso’s sensitivity to the structure and nature of Petrarchan collections generally and to the seriousness with which he devoted himself to the task of analysing Colonna’s Rime in an enlightened and informed manner. Before moving on to examples of this kind of sensitivity to be found in the text, it seems important briefly to turn to the other reader who is implicated in an analysis of Corso’s commentary, that is his patron Veronica Gambara for whom the text was originally composed. Like Colonna, Gambara too was a poet known for her accomplished sonnets in the Petrarchan vein. She first came to public attention via the mediation of Pietro Bembo, who included a sonnet exchange in the second (1535) edition of his own collected poetry, thus greatly aiding in the careful process of legitimising and ennobling the female poet’s lyric enterprise. Like Colonna, Gambara was widowed relatively young and thus afforded by her own life the circumstances of loss which carry forward the Petrarchan project, as well as benefiting from the independence conferred by widowhood. In addition Gambara appears to have shared Colonna’s interest in a reformed faith and sought to express this interest through her poetry.21 Gambara too, then, in the same way as Corso, was no doubt an informed and sensitive reader of the sonnets, alive to their evangelical nuances. She would also have responded to the verses in another way, of course, as a woman and a writer who herself looked for legitimate avenues for self-expression by 19 ‘È tuttavia quasi maggior sodisfacimento di chi legge, poi che raccolte sono, trovarle per ordine poste, e continouamente dichiarate’, Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 394. See, on the narrative drive of Petrarchan commentary in the sixteenth century, Amedeo Quondam, Il naso di Laura. Lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del Classicismo (Ferrara: Panini, 1991), pp. 99–121. 20 ‘Che sì come d’hora in hora nascono pensier nuovi, e dopo lungo tempo alcuna volta quelli medesimi tornano, così diverse compositioni, e doppo lungo spatio di tempo talhora le medesime sentenze sotto differente velo di parole si dipingono, talmente che di rado aviene, che ciascuna compositione per se non istia senza havere da altra dipendenza, e vana quasi dir possiamo la fatica di voler quelle conciugnere [sic]’: Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 394. 21 For further information on Gambara’s life and works, including her relationships with Colonna and Pietro Bembo, see the various essays in Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Ghibellini and Ennio Sandal, eds., Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell’Italia settentrionale (Florence: Olschki, 1989).

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powerful women in a literary vein. The work that Corso’s commentary does to shore up Gambara’s own poetic status and reputation is considerable, and her role as its patron can therefore be considered in large degree self-reflexive. The relationship between Gambara and Colonna in their own lifetimes was, if not close, certainly cordial, but more importantly it included an element of public flattery similar to that employed by Colonna and Marguerite de Navarre in their letters. Gambara addressed sonnets to Colonna in praise of her poetic skill in which she lauds her as the model of artistic achievement and personal morality, and two of these sonnets are included in the 1558 edition of Corso’s commentary. The first of these, ‘O de la nostra etade unica gloria’, echoes Colonna’s own preoccupation with female role models in holding her up as a model for other women deserving of a temple of gratitude erected in her honour: Il sesso nostro un sacro, e nobil tempio Dovria, come già à Palla, e à Febo, farvi Di’ricchi marmi, e di finissimo oro.22

What is notable about such laudatory poetic exchanges is the mutual benefit that is derived from them by both poet and addressee. The practice of building esteem through reference to another woman in a strikingly similar position to your own, as was the case with Colonna and Gambara and also with Colonna and Marguerite de Navarre, appears to have been one that was well established among the few women poets of the first half of the sixteenth century in Italy.23 Marguerite’s participation in the process from the other side of the Alps highlights the wide scope of the practice, no doubt (as Colonna herself indicates) due to the paucity of available role models. Such a practice demonstrates a keen awareness on the part of these aristocratic women of the complexities inherent in the act of publicising a literary voice in a maledominated arena. Thus Gambara’s patronage of the commentary on Colonna’s verses points beyond the serious appraisal of a single poet to a concerted attempt to lay claim to more general status and prestige for works by women writers. In assessing the roles of Corso and Gambara as informed and particularly adept readers of Colonna’s verses, it is also important to take into account 22 ‘Our sex should build for you a sacred / noble temple, as they did for Pallas and Phoebus, / of richest marble and finest gold.’ This sonnet, and the other one by Gambara, are cited in Colonna, Tutte le Rime, pp. 389–90. Colonna wrote an equally flattering reply to Gambara, ‘Di nuovo il Cielo de l’antica gloria’ (cited in Colonna, Rime, ed. by Bullock, p. 209). On the tendency of later scholars to confuse the poetry of Gambara and Colonna, and an attempt to resolve various problems of attribution, see Alan Bullock, ‘Veronica o Vittoria? Problemi di attribuzione per alcuni sonetti del Cinquecento’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 6 (1973), 115–31. 23 On this see Abigail Brundin, ‘“Presto fia ’l mio potere in farvi onore”: Renaissance Women Poets and the Importance of Praise’, in Caro Vitto: Essays in Memory of Vittore Branca, ed. by Jill Kraye and A. L. Lepschy with assistance from Nicola Jones, Special Supplement 2, The Italianist 27 (2007).

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the relationship between the two of them which evolved through their mutual study of the sonnets. Corso’s long-standing and devoted attachment to the court in Correggio suggests a bond that arose from the warm friendship that he developed with his female patron so early in his career as a scholar. Ruscelli’s description of the genesis of the commentary implies an established practice of shared reading and contemplation, of both lyric and spiritual material, that united Corso with Gambara over the text of Colonna’s Rime. Despite his youth and relative inexperience Corso seems to have been accorded the role of teacher, helping Gambara to come to a clearer recognition of the truths contained in the poetry. Conversely Gambara was able to make use of her status and her contacts to obtain employment for Corso and to advance his career. Thus in many ways the relations between the precocious university student and the widowed noblewoman reflect the erasmian edict, expressed in the Enchiridion and explored by Constance Furey in her recent study, that a direct relationship between learning and piety can be established on the basis of friendship, and thus a student must always seek a teacher who is also a friend in order that conversation may form a direct part of the process of learning.24 Conversation, it appears, was at the root of Corso’s reading of Colonna, and thus establishes his text as the product of the fruitful union of poetic and spiritual endeavour on the part of the author and his patron. The Dichiaratione sopra le rime In many ways faithful to the standard practice of scholarly commentary in the period, Corso’s work is particularly influenced by his interest in linguistics and his pursuit of unusual etymology and lexicology, an interest that links the author to the editor of the second edition of the text, Girolamo Ruscelli. Ruscelli underlines in his dedicatory letter the text’s dual function, to comfort women who are suffering after the death of a loved one (the text’s dedicatee is Isabella Gonzaga, who is mourning her uncle’s untimely death) and simultaneously to raise the Italian language to new heights of excellence.25 Yet such linguistic content does not obscure an equally pressing drive in the commentary towards thematic analysis that is able to take account of the many scriptural sources informing the poetic texts and unravel their message in a notably evocative language enriched with New Testament imagery. Thus for example in his commentary on the sonnet which opens Michelangelo’s manuscript gift, ‘Poi che ’l mio casto amor gran tempo tenne’, a poem that is key to an understanding of Colonna’s reformed lyric process, Corso employs just such evangelical terminology in explaining the poet’s desire to rise above earthly concerns ‘by way of his [Christ’s] grace’, and to inscribe her faith upon her heart in a spirit of reformed interiority: ‘to sculpt his passion upon her heart

24

On this aspect of Erasmus’s advice, see the full discussion in Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters, esp. pp. 48–53. 25 See on this aspect, Moro, ‘Le commentaire de Rinaldo Corso’.

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and carry it hidden within her without revealing any trace on the outside.’26 The allusion to a form of Nicodemism is intriguing, suggesting awareness by Corso of the care to be taken with such scriptural interpretations. Notably, in his commentary on this important sonnet (placed third in his ordering of the verses and in a significantly different version from that found in Michelangelo’s manuscript), Corso also seems to recognise its status as a turning point in Colonna’s conception of her own poetic journey and links it to other such turning points earlier in the poetic process, indicating his ‘holistic’ approach to reading that seeks to take account of connections between sonnets in a sequence. As he points out, the poems ‘Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia’ and ‘Sperai che ’l tempo i caldi alti desiri’ both deal with the poet’s inability to curb the outpouring of her anguish which forms itself into her lyrics, and both thus mark a moment of increased self-awareness. In ‘Scrivo sol…’ the poet first establishes herself as the writer celebrated by Ariosto in cantos 37 and 46 of the Orlando Furioso, that is as the faithful widow who cannot refrain from extolling her dead husband’s virtues and immortalising him on earth.27 In ‘Sperai che ’l tempo…’ she commemorates seven years since the death of d’Avalos, and bemoans the fact that even the passage of time cannot lessen her grief or mute her cry. Neatly Corso ties these earlier amorous sonnets to the later spiritual verse, indicating the new turning point reached by the poet now that she has chosen to dedicate herself to Christ and direct her verses to a new end. This sense of a development and an interconnection between early and later sonnets is typical of Corso’s reading of the Rime throughout his commentary, indicating his particularly sensitive and intelligent response to the processes of lyric development, albeit according to a traditional Petrarchan developmental framework that Colonna herself, in her private manuscripts, had long since abandoned. Although he does not open his collection with the sonnet chosen by Colonna to begin her manuscript of verses for Michelangelo (and of course he could not have known, as he prepared his commentary on the spiritual sonnets for publication in the early 1540s, of the nature or even the existence of the Vatican manuscript), Corso remains notably close to the general Christocentric tenor of that manuscript in his own choice of opening poem, ‘Con la croce a gran passi ir vorrei dietro’, suggesting that he had come very close in his understanding and analysis to the true nature of the poet’s muse: Con la croce a gran passi ir vorrei dietro Al Signor per angusto erto sentiero, Sì ch’io in parte scorgessi il lume vero Ch’altro che ’l senso aperse al fedel Pietro.28 26

‘[S]colpire la passion di quello nel suo core, e portarvela chiusa senza palearla fuori’: Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 399. 27 See Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XXXVII, 16–21; XLVI, 9. 28 ‘I long to stride behind my Lord / bearing his cross along the steep and narrow path, / and thus make out in part the one true light, / which opened more than just the eyes of faithful Peter’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 57).

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Commentating this sonnet, he stresses above all the connection with the gospel of Saint Matthew. Thus the opening reference to the cross is linked to Christ’s words in Matthew 16:24, in which he calls upon his followers to take up their crosses with him, a gesture which the poet is clearly echoing in the verse and which Corso cites in Latin, in deference to the great learning of his readership of amorous ladies: ‘Siquis vult venire post me, abneget semetipsum, & tollat crucem suam, & sequatur me.’29 Equally, the reference to the ‘angusto erto sentero’ along which the poet will pursue her saviour is linked to the ‘strait gate’ cited in Matthew 7:13–14, which few will find and manage to enter. The poet’s insistence on her own presence upon the ‘narrow path’, once the link is established with Christ’s words in Matthew, seems to indicate a belief in her personal status as one of the chosen, the few who are able to discover and follow the narrow and difficult way. Finally, the reference to ‘faithful Peter’ in line four of the sonnet derives from Christ’s words to Peter in Matthew 16:17: ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven’. Like the saint, as Corso points out to his readers, the poet seeks the revelation of the ‘true light’ not through the power of her own senses, but through the action of God’s grace upon her, a notably evangelical position. An open reference to the context of Italian evangelism occurs in Corso’s reading of the sonnet ‘Da Dio mandata, angelica mia scorta’, placed towards the end of his ordering of the verses. The sonnet alludes to the parable of the wise virgins in Matthew 25, all of whom prepare themselves for their wedding night by buying in extra oil and thus are able to keep their lamps burning through the night in expectation of the bridegroom: Da Dio mandata, angelica mia scorta, Volgi per dritto calle al ciel la mente, E quando l’alma al suo cader consente Riprendi ’l freno e ’l pie’ lasso conforta, Sì che a le nozze eterne non sia morta Ogni mia luce, ma con lampa ardente, Chiamata dal Signor, saggia, prudente, Aperta al giunger mio trovi la porta.30

Corso picks up on Colonna’s use of this parable elsewhere in her verses, in the sonnet ‘Tempo è pur ch’io, con la precinta vesta’, and allies the rays of light from the lamps to the rays of divine understanding afforded by the words of preachers, ‘among others, those of our Reverend Father, Friar Bernardino

29

‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ Cited in Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p,394. 30 ‘My angelic escort, sent to me by God, / guide my mind along the straight path to heaven, / and whenever my spirit allows itself to stumble / then restrain me and restore my weary feet, / so that at the eternal marriage / my light is not extinguished, but with a brightly burning lamp, / summoned by my Lord, wise and prudent, / I find the door open, awaiting my arrival’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 61).

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Ochino of Siena, and others like him’.31 In the 1558 edition of the commentary, this overt reference to the disgraced Capuchin preacher has been replaced with the more generic ‘the prayers of saintly men’ (Tutte le Rime, p. 398). The reference to Ochino indicates how closely the commentator understood the evangelical tenor of the work he was presenting and the importance of Ochino for the development of Colonna’s spirituality. This is not the only reference to the preacher in the text of the commentary: another poem, ‘Donna accesa animosa, e da l’errante’, placed as the penultimate sonnet in Corso’s ordering of the verses, shows the poet selecting a highly significant role model in this rejection of the physical world in turning to Christ. In the poem she praises Mary Magdalene, the apostola apostolorum, who remained in her ‘solitario albergo’, ‘da l’errante vulgo lontano’, awaiting her divine lover. Corso, in his reading of the sonnet, makes the important connection between Colonna’s interest in the Magdalene and the influence of Bernardino Ochino: As well as this the Reverend Father Friar Bernardino of Siena in some of his sermons cites a place near Marseilles, where he has been, called Baumes. It was in that place Mary Magdalene practiced penitence for so long, and now they have there an image of her nude and with her loose hair flowing down over the ground beneath her. It is on this topic that I believe the poet composed the sonnet under discussion.32

Once again, in the later edition the reference is suppressed, and the preacher named as Fra Benedetto da Roma (Tutte le Rime, p. 469). The third and final reference to Ochino occurs in the sonnet that Corso chooses to place last in his ordering of the verses, just before the closing canzone called the ‘Triumph of the Cross’ (‘Poi che ’l mio sol, d’eterni raggi cinto’). In his reading of this sonnet, ‘Quando, vostra mercé, quasi presente’, he picks up on the links already established between Ochino, Mary Magdalene, and Colonna herself, emphasising that the poet’s relations to the preacher are as devoted as the Magdalene’s were to Christ: ‘I believe that in this sonnet the poet is addressing the most holy father, Friar Bernardino of Siena of the noble order of the Capuchins of Saint Francis, to whom she is a disciple as devoted as Mary Magdalene was to Christ.’33 Once again in the later edition of the commentary the reference has been expunged and replaced with a neutral mention of ‘some holy father’, although significantly he is still ‘of the noble 31 ‘[C]ome intra gli altri del Reverendo Padre F. Bernardino da Siena, e simili altri,’ This reference occurs in the 1543 edition of Corso’s commentary (unpaginated). 32 ‘Oltre di questo il R. Padre Frà Bernardino da Siena in alcuna delle sue prediche dice essere un luogo appresso Marsiglia, là dove egli è stato, detto Bauma: nel qual luogo fece Maddalena penitentia sì lungamente, & hor v’è la sua imagine finta, ignuda, co capegli disciolti fino sopra le piante. Et io sopra questo istesso penso V. N. havere composto il presente Son.’ From the 1543 edition of Corso’s commentary (unpaginated). 33 ‘Giudico io V. N. in questo son. col divotiss. Padre D. Bernardino da Siena del Venerabile ordine de poveri Cappuccini di San Francesco, di cui ella non men, che Maddalena già di Christo, si mostra discepola, ragionare.’

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order of the Capuchins’, so that any reader with a historical awareness of the poet’s past will be well placed to guess his identity (Tutte le Rime, p. 471). What remains in the later edition, however, is the notably evangelical flavour to Corso’s reading of the rest of this sonnet. Picking up on the poem’s exploration of the search by the evangelical for a complete faith, Corso underlines some interesting biblical parallels that will help his reader to grasp the complicated concept to which the poet is alluding. Thus in Matthew 14, through the power of faith alone Peter walks to Christ across the water, and begins to sink only when his faith deserts him and he starts to doubt. Likewise in Luke 5, the fishermen catch a multitude of fish and leave their nets to follow Christ, the sick are healed and publicans leave their trade to follow and feast with him, all through the power of faith. And finally in Matthew 17:20, Jesus chides his disciples for their lack of faith, which should be strong enough to enact the miracles that he himself performs: ‘for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ This is a notably practical and effective response to the sonnet’s rather allusive and veiled message: by highlighting biblical parallels the commentator succeeds in unpacking the poem’s spiritual content for a reader who is less advanced in the process of assimilation of these new ideas. Who is responsible for stage-managing the process of censorship taking place in the 1558 edition of Corso’s commentary, which involves the removal of overt references to individuals implicated in the Italian reform movement who have now been officially disgraced?34 It is possible that Corso distanced himself from the preparation of the later edition, unwilling to see a work with such a strong evangelical flavour go into print in the post-Tridentine context. Certainly Girolamo Ruscelli, in his dedicatory letter to the 1558 edition, indicates that he has come by a text of the complete commentary via Giovanni Battista Brembato, who received it from Veronica Gambara herself, rather than because he has had any direct communication with Corso (and indeed he has been unable to contact Corso in order to clear up an uncertainty over the birthplace of Francesco D’Avalos). Ruscelli’s motivation for reissuing the commentary appears to be grounded in his interest in linguistics and his admiration for Corso’s treatise on the subject, the Fondamenti del parlar toscano, first published in Venice in 1549.35 He extols Corso’s expertise as a linguist and a scholar on a number of occasions in his dedication, seemingly determined to establish his text’s credentials in the new field of vernacular writing. Corso is, Ruscelli claims, ‘very able in all three major languages [Greek,

34

Ochino fled Italy in 1542, and wrote to Colonna on his departure in an attempt to explain himself. On the effects of his flight on his friends in Viterbo and elsewhere, see Bianca, ‘Marcello Cervini e Vittoria Colonna’; and Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Gli ‘Spirituali’ e la fuga di Bernardino Ochino’. 35 Rinaldo Corso, Fondamenti del parlar thoscano (Venice: Comin da Trino, 1549).

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Latin and Italian], in poetry, in rhetoric, in mathematics, in law, in philosophy, in holy scripture, and in all other worthy and noble professions.’36 It is notable that Ruscelli makes little direct mention of the text’s overtly spiritual content, except in relation to the consolation that the sonnets will bring to those who have suffered bereavement. Certainly the first section of the 1558 edition, in which amorous sonnets are analysed, is far longer than the second section dealing with the spiritual sonnets (118 amorous sonnets to only thirty-seven spiritual ones), itself a reflection of the texts by Colonna that were available to publishers in the 1540s. Thus a concentration by the editor of the second edition on the linguistic content might seem less a wilful act of ignoring the work’s true flavour, and more a realistic reflection of the redirected aims of the later version of the text. Nonetheless, even after the process of censorship has been carried out, the strongly evangelical tone to Corso’s analysis of the spiritual sonnets remains in the 1558 edition, and would have been obvious to any sensitive reader. So, for example, Corso analyses the sonnet ‘Cibo, del cui meraviglioso effetto’ as an expression of the poet’s total abandonment of the self, which is the only way to achieve true knowledge of God: ‘for whoever wishes to become worthy of divine grace must first be prepared and ready like wax to receive the heat of the fire. And he must (as she does) place all his hope in God’s kindness and not trust in himself.’37 In a significant assertion, which appears in fact to be an overt statement of the doctrine of sola fide, he goes on to indicate the superfluousness of good works in this process: ‘for our works are no longer our own, nor our desires, but we live (as Saint Paul said of himself) entirely in Jesus Christ.’38 The reference to Paul is revealing, indicating Corso’s awareness of the centrality of the Pauline texts to the reform movement in Italy. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul succinctly states the crucial reformed notion of faith lived through Christ that Corso refers to above: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20). Finally, Corso’s explanation of the consequences of a reformed faith for the pious Christian culminates in a strikingly open reference to the doctrine of sola fide, ‘because we achieve [salvation] by means of his grace, and not through our own works’.39

36 ‘[I]ntendentissimo nelle tre lingue principali, nella poesia, nell’arte del dire, nelle matematiche, nelle leggi, nella filosofia, nelle sacre lettere, e in ogn’altra degna e lodevolissima professione.’ 37 ‘[C]he à chi vuole della gratia divina farsi degno, convien prima essere disposto, & apparecchiato, come la cera à ricevere il calore del fuoco. Et bisogna (come ella fà) sperar solo nella bontà di Dio, non in se stesso fidarsi’: Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 409. 38 ‘[N]e più nostre sono l’opere, o i desiderii nostri, mà tutti viviamo (come di sè diceva San Pauolo [sic]) in Giesù Christo’: Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 410. 39 ‘[P]erche col mezzo della gratia sua, non delle opere nostre lo acquistiamo’: Colonna, Tutte le Rime, p. 445.

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Conclusion Although Bernardino Ochino’s name has been excised from the text, the 1558 edition of Corso’s commentary continues to offer to readers of Colonna’s lyrics a sensitive and evocative analysis of the reformed content of the spiritual sonnets, one that seeks to draw out evangelical messages and spell them out for readers who may still be in doubt about their true meaning. Thus despite Ruscelli’s protestations about the text’s primarily linguistic interest, this later edition was still performing a notably evangelical function for its readers. It may well be that Ruscelli’s edition of the commentary was instrumental in drawing the attention of the authorities to the content of Colonna’s sonnets, so that later editors and publishers were less inclined to promote the spiritual sonnets in anything other than a strictly Petrarchan format (that is, as the culmination of a spiritual journey that began with earthly love for her husband). In a recent work Holt Parker has made a good case for the need for a reassessment of our understanding of the nominal period during which evangelism flourished on the Italian peninsula, traditionally limited to a brief flowering over about a decade that was abruptly brought to a close in 1542, with the founding of the Roman Inquisition and the flight of Ochino.40 Parker argues, based on examples such as the life of the writer Olimpia Morata (1526/7–1555) and the activities of reform sympathisers such as Renée de France (1510–1575) in Ferrara, that these limited parameters are essentially false, and indeed that there are serious difficulties inherent in any attempt at clear periodisation of the phenomenon of evangelism.41 At the very least, the examples of Morata and Renée demonstrate that those who allied themselves openly with reform were still active in Italy into the 1550s (Morata left for Germany in 1550 and Renée de France was forced to recant her Protestant beliefs in 1554). Similarly, Anne Schutte has demonstrated that the printed circulation of evangelical vernacular letters in anthology collections became widespread after 1542 and constituted a potent source of information on the responses of reform-minded individuals to religious developments.42 It is perfectly plausible, therefore, that in other contexts than the Ferrarese one, which was renowned as a haven for French Calvinists thanks to Renée, a subtler and less combative form of reform sympathy continued to flourish into the late 1550s and beyond, encouraged by the examples found in the vernacular letter books and in other sources of evangelical inspiration. Such undercurrents of belief are notoriously difficult to illuminate through scholarship, because they are beliefs that through necessity leave no clear or unambiguous textual trace.

40 On this traditional periodisation, see Eva-Maria Jung, ‘On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (1953), 511–27. 41 See Morata, The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic, esp. pp. 47–54. 42 Schutte, ‘The Lettere Volgari and the Crisis of Evangelism in Italy’.

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Taking account of the convincing arguments for the phenomenon of Italian evangelism persisting into the later sixteenth century, therefore, the context of reception of the second edition of Corso’s commentary becomes more complex and interesting. While the Beneficio di Cristo clearly responded to a mood of optimism and hopefulness among reformers in the early 1540s, and presented itself as a loud and open clarion call to the faithful, by the late 1550s those reformers who had not left Italy (the great majority, presumably) had need of a different, subtler and more careful mode of disseminating their ideas about a renewal of faith and an interiorised reform. Colonna’s sonnets, for all their evangelical content, had always been inserted, in the public context of their print circulation, into the mainstream, essentially secular genre of courtly Petrarchism in a manner that had served to divorce them in large part in the public eye from the concerns that occupied their author. In this context they could continue to circulate more or less without opprobrium for a period after Trent, offering readers a low-key, quiet, personalised exploration of a reformed faith, backed up and reinforced by Corso’s explanations. Such a text would meet the needs of the no doubt large number of ‘silent evangelicals’ who remained in Italy in the latter half of the sixteenth century, silent but still avid for textual encounters that spoke to them of matters of reform.

CHAPTER 7

The Fate of the Canzoniere Spirituale On three occasions between 1542 and 1550, members of the Florentine Academy chose sonnets by Vittoria Colonna as the subject of their public lectures. The first occasion was in January 1542, when Bernardo Canigiani spoke on the sonnet ‘D’ogni sua Gloria fu largo al mio sole’.1 Subsequently, in November 1545, Francesco di Niccolò Bottegari offered a reading of the sonnet ‘Perché dal tauro l’infiammato corno’; and finally, in July 1550 Pierfrancesco di Tommaso Ginori spoke on an unspecified poem.2 These occasions are highly significant as an indication of Colonna’s status as a member of the cohort of vernacular ‘greats’ whose work came under discussion at the Florentine gatherings alongside the poetry of its members themselves. In addition it was precisely during this period that copies of the Beneficio di Cristo were circulating in Florence, members of the Academy involving themselves directly in its dissemination and discussion, so that it is possible to see a connection between the choice of Colonna as the subject for a public lecture and the interest in evangelical material in the city at that time.3 Two of the three public speakers, Bottegari and Ginori, had been proposed for membership of the Florentine Academy by a certain Nicolò Martelli (1498– 1555), notably an individual who had himself established direct relations with Colonna through their mutual interest in the composition of spiritual lyrics. In 1544, Martelli sent her a manuscript of around fifty sonnets ‘in praise of Christ’ and asked for her comments and response.4 Martelli, who appears to have modelled himself on his idol Pietro Aretino in seeking financial gain and fame from his literary endeavours through the widest possible campaign of 1

The text of Canigiani’s lecture on Colonna is reproduced by Domenico Tordi in Bricciche letterarie (Rome: Tip. Pallotta, 1889), although I have not yet been able to consult this volume. 2 Michel Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo principe. Cultura e politica a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I e di Francesco de’ Medici (Manziana [Rome]: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2004), pp. 286–9. See also, on Bottegari’s lecture, Judith Bryce, ‘The Oral World of the Early Accademia Fiorentina’, Renaissance Studies 9 (1995), 77–103 (p. 81). On the tradition of public lectures on vernacular poetry in the Florentine Academy initiated by Benedetto Varchi, see Richard S. Samuels, ‘Benedetto Varchi, the Accademia degli Infiammati, and the Origins of the Italian Academic Movement’, Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976), 599–634. 3 On the diffusion of the Beneficio in Florence, see Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento. Also, more generally on the culture of reform in Florence in this period, Massimo Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo a San Lorenzo. Eresia, politica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I (Turin: Einaudi, 1997). 4 Martelli’s letter to Colonna, dated 22 June 1544, is cited in Supplemento al carteggio di Vittoria Colonna, ed. by Tordi, pp. 87–90.

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self-promotion, also corresponded with Marguerite de Navarre, Pietro Bembo, Michelangelo Buonarroti and others in Colonna’s circle, in each case supplying numerous unsolicited examples of his poetry on religious topics, and asking repeatedly for responses and support.5 What is particularly notable about Martelli’s letter to Colonna is the fact that he stage-manages his approach to the noblewoman through careful references both to poetry and to piety. Firstly he alludes to Colonna’s cordial relations with his cousin Lodovico di Lorenzo Martelli, whose sonnets to Colonna on the death of her husband were published in Venice in 1533.6 Secondly he recalls the memory of an earlier meeting in Florence in 1538, when Colonna was in that city in order to hear Ochino preach: The affection and service that my poor cousin Lodovico Martelli bore for your singular goodness and unique virtue (with good reason), most humane lady, together with the fact that you graciously received me when I visited you on the occasion when that rare and more than human friar Bernardino of Siena was preaching in this land, give me the courage, since you already know of my devotion to you, to write you these twenty-five words and beg you to accept the enclosed sonnets in praise of Christ, limited to only around fifty in total, since they treat of a subject which the grace of your goodness has spread and diffused throughout your whole beauteous being, and not according to the merit of their rough form.7

Martelli is careful to refer to Ochino in the most flattering terms, an interesting choice given the friar’s apostasy over two years previously and Colonna’s subsequent public embarrassment at her link to him. One wonders, in fact, if Martelli is deliberately using Ochino’s name in order to establish a subtext to his letter, one that links him to Colonna through his shared interest in evangelical ideas, and the remainder of the letter supports this hypothesis in its deliberately obscure language and apparently cloaked references to reformed concepts. Martelli expresses confidence that Colonna will read the verses he has sent her, not because of their own merit but through her grace, and he

5 A snapshot of Martelli’s concerted programme of self-promotion is provided by his first, self-published book of letters (the ‘secondo libro’ never made it to press): Il primo libro delle lettere di Nicolo Martelli (Florence: Nicolo Martelli, 1546). The letter to Colonna was included in this volume, at fol. 47r. 6 ‘Stanze di Lodovico Martelli a la Illustriss. Sig. la S. Vittoria Marchesa di Pescara in morte de lo Illustriss. Marchese suo Consorte’, in Lodovico Martelli, Rime volgari (Venice: Marchio Sessa, 1533), pp. 96–116. 7 ‘L’affettione et la servitù (a gran ragione) che portava quel poverin di Lodovico Martelli mio cugino, alla singular bontà et unica virtù vostra, humanissima Signora, insieme con l’havermi dato grata udienza, nel visitare quella nel tempo che il raro et più c’huomo fra Bernardino da Siena predicava in questa Terra, mi danno ardire, poi che l’hà della servitù mia anchor conoscenza, di scriverle queste XXV parole et pregarla, che li presenti Sonetti in lode di Christo, scemati à un numero di forse cinquanta, gli accetti, per ragionar di quell soggetto, di che la gratia della bontà sua, vi ha sparso et difuso tutto il bello dell’anima vostra, et non pei meriti del loro rozzo fabbro…’

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refers to his state of unhappy oscillation between two opposing ‘styles’ and his desire to choose the right one with guidance from God: If your humanity causes you to offer me any praise it will be due to your pity alone, for offering you a treatment in one style and the other, I derive comfort from following this one and not the other one, for God wished that I should do so, so that I might no longer be so unsettled and confused.8

Martelli’s courting of Colonna in 1544, as well as the other examples of a Florentine engagement with her poetry in the 1540s, demonstrate with particular clarity the wider influence of Colonna’s lyric output on writers outside her immediate circle as well as a more general recognition of its spiritual content. Her model of spiritualised Petrarchism was not only being disseminated in academic circles in this period, through public lectures like those at the Florentine Academy, but was also being adopted and imitated by other writers who recognised its particular adaptability and appeal. Nicolò Martelli was clearly a highly ambitious man, keen to establish a successful literary career for himself and gain from it financially, and it seems notable that, alongside a potential concern with reformed ideas that he shared with Colonna, he seems to have believed in the marketability of the poetic model she established. Perhaps he perceived the general need among Italians for a literary genre that expressed their internalised concerns with the current religious crisis at home and abroad and saw the potential of rime spirituali to meet that need. In this he was prescient, anticipating the huge increase in published collections of spiritual lyrics later in the sixteenth century. Certainly Martelli makes little attempt, despite the ‘cloaked’ nature of his letter to Colonna cited above, to insist upon the private and interiorised quality of his own spiritual poetry, tirelessly promoting it far and wide in a bid to garner patronage and readers. While the case of Martelli, only eight years her junior, is indicative of an appreciation of the strength of Colonna’s lyric model among poets of her own generation, a further example illustrates the manner in which her spiritualised Petrarchism was adopted by a younger generation of writers looking for the means to express their poetic and spiritual sensibilities. Luca Contile (1505– 1574), a Sienese writer, papal secretary and member of the Accademia degli Affidati in Pavia, paid a visit to Colonna in Rome in 1541 that he recounts in detail in a letter to a friend, Count Ettore di Carpegna: I have been to visit the Marchesa of Pescara, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her side for some four hours: she was so pleasingly modest and seemed so keen to have me linger, so that with reason I became presumptuous and decided never again to part from her. […] She sighed, and asked me for news of Brother Bernardino da Siena, and I told her that he had departed and that in Milan he had left behind great fame and universal contrition

8

‘[E]t se lode alcuna nel cospetto dell’humanità vostra me n’averrà, sera solo per mercè di quella, che presentandole un saggio de l’uno stile et de l’altro, mi confortaste a seguitar questo, et non quellom che Dio il volesse che io l’avesse fatto, ch’io non viveria hora si inquieto, et in stato si confuso.’

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and everyone believes him to be a truly Christian man. May it please God, she added, that he persevere. […] And since her Excellency knew me already from past visits with Abbot Giulio, she began to ask me if I had finished writing the Spiritual Banquets. I answered that I could not complete those banquets, as I had not deserved to taste such food. And in order not to waste time in idle chat, I said that God would soon help me to lay those tables. She asked me to talk with her of the first one, which asks how it can be that God is three in one. In telling her what I could, even though I was the one answering her questions, I learned from her all that I needed to know. Now I believe absolutely that the spirit revives and the letter kills, and I see how easily a Christian mind equipped with sound good sense can lead others along the path to salvation. If you yourself wish to write to her, as I understand you have a great desire to do, could you do me the favour of addressing your letters via me, so that I may by these means have reason to enjoy again that honoured Queen of Sheba, as I call her, full of the reverence and doctrine which is infused in her, as I believe it to be, rather than studied.9

Contile’s letter is highly significant for a number of reasons. Like Martelli, who refers to a meeting with Colonna on the occasion of a sermon by Ochino in Florence as a means of establishing an intimate link with her, Contile too shares news of Ochino during their meeting and expresses admiration for the friar, who at the time of their conversation in 1541 had not yet left Italy. A hint of Colonna’s concern about her friend is conveyed by her remark, carefully recorded by Contile, ‘Piaccia a Dio che perseveri’: presumably Colonna is concerned that Ochino should remain in Italy and continue preaching despite the forces that are uniting in opposition to silence him. It is notable that both Martelli and Contile recognise that expressing admiration of Ochino is a means of establishing a good rapport with Colonna, even in the turbulent period surrounding the friar’s apostasy. Their shared tactic is highly suggestive 9

‘Sono stato a visitar la Signora Marchesa di Pescara, e non mi sono potuto partir da lei per quattro hore, ella piacevolmente modesta, dismostra haver à grato il mio indugio, io ragionevolmente prosuntuoso non mi curavo da lei partirmi giammai. […] Sospirò, e domandommi di fra Bernardin da Siena, Io le risposi che si era partito e che nella Cictà [sic] di Milano haveva lasciato si buon nome, e si universal contritione, che tutti lo stimavano huomo veramente Christiano. Piacca à Dio, soggionse ella, che perseveri. […] E perche sua Eccell. mi conobbe già non so che volte ch’io la visitai, con l’Abbate Giulio, m’incominciò ad interrogare s’havevo compiti i conviti spirituali, io risposi che non potevo far quei conviti, de quali io non ho meritato di gustar i cibi. Tuttavia, per non stare su le chiacchiare, dissi che presto mi havrebbe aiutato Iddio a fornirli. Volle che io ragionassi seco del primo, dove si tratta se Dio è, e come è in trino, e uno. Io in dir ciò che sapevo, imperò se ben toccava à me di rispondere, imparavo da lei quel che mi bisognava. Tengo in soma per cosa certissima, che lo spirito vivifica, e la lettera ammazza, veggo quanto una christiana mente che habbia per istrumento un buon giuditio, sappia far caminar altrui per la strada de la salute. Se V.S. vorrà scriverle, come pareva che ne havesse gran volontà; mi faccia favor de indrizzar le lettere à me, à fine che per cosi fatti mezi vada a godermi questa si honorata, questa dico Regina Sabba, piena di riverenza e di dottrina, piutosto infusa, mi crederò io, che con arte acquistata’: Delle lettere di Luca Contile. Primo volume, diviso in due libri (Pavia: Girolamo Bartoli, 1564), fols 23v.–24v.

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of the fame that accompanied the friendship in the period and the particular aura of spirituality that Ochino’s name conferred upon Colonna. The ‘Spiritual Banquets’ upon which Contile is quizzed at some length during the encounter refers to an unfinished religious work, a dialogue between a group of men and women who meet for a Lenten meal, published in 1543 as the Dialogi spirituali.10 Colonna enacts her role as mentor to the younger writer in talking with him about his work, and through skilful questioning she turns him from the spiritual uncertainty that has blocked his progress with his writing to a newfound confidence in intuitive spiritual understanding (‘I now believe absolutely that the spirit revives and the letter kills’, from II Corinthians 3:6). The manner in which she achieves this transformation is significant, involving no lecturing but rather a series of questions via which she succeeds in imparting her own views and knowledge on the religious subject matter, a process that Contile notes with admiration (‘even though I was the one answering her questions, I learned from her all that I needed to know’). One might imagine that this is a skill particular to learned women of this period, that is the ability to teach others without abandoning the humble demeanour required of women and without ever seeming overly assertive or dominating (without ‘breaking the rules’, as Colonna asserts in her letter to her cousin in relation to Mary’s didactic role). Significantly, in the finished Dialogi spirituali it is the women present who pose the questions and the male members of the company who answer them, mirroring Contile’s encounter with Colonna and allowing us to reassess the status of the female interrogators in a more positive and authoritative manner.11 It is interesting that Contile also affirms that Colonna’s wisdom is ‘infused… rather than studied’, in a manner that is once again entirely appropriate to her sex, reflecting the general perception of female spirituality as instinctual and unmediated.12 One might in fact justifiably wonder if there is a reformed flavour to this closing remark, evoking as it does the anti-intellectualism that coloured the evangelical movement more generally. Contile’s assertion makes clear that Colonna’s wisdom and her spiritual understanding have not been earned or acquired through study; 10 Dialogi spirituali divisi in banchetti di Luca Contile (Rome: Baldassarre de’ Cartolari, 1543). See also Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters, pp. 160–1. Furey discusses the styling of Colonna as the Queen of Sheba, arguing that, unlike the biblical queen, Contile recognises Colonna’s own knowledge and wisdom alongside her ability to recognise wisdom in others. 11 Amedeo Quondam asserts that the women in the Dialogi spirituali play the role of disciples to the male teachers: see ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, in Il naso di Laura, pp. 263–82 (p. 276). The model of Colonna’s ‘instructive questioning’ recounted by Contile in his letter, however, appears to allow for a slightly different framing of this relationship. In addition, in the Dialogi spirituali one of the female interlocutors, Camilla de’ Rossi, asserts the right of women to read and learn of religious matters alongside men (cited in Il naso di Laura, p. 278). The following discussion is deeply indebted to Quondam’s illuminating study. 12 This idea is explored at length in Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters, esp. pp. 158–9.

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rather they are infused by faith in a manner entirely in line with a reformed approach to issues of grace and merit. It is Colonna’s faith, confirming her status as one of God’s elect, which endows her with the ability to teach others and thus lead them onto the path to salvation. The meeting with Colonna in Rome in 1541 was clearly important for the young Luca Contile who was newly invigorated with spiritual and literary fervour as a result of their conversation, and he expresses at the end of the letter his ardent desire to find an excuse for further meetings with Carpegna’s collusion. Although he records no discussion with Colonna on the subject of his spiritual poetry during this encounter (and no letters are extant recording further meetings), it is in this area of Contile’s literary endeavour that her influence was perhaps most significant, specifically in the attempt to produce an authorially ordered and conceived edition of ‘Christian poems’ that draws closely on Colonna’s own mature lyric model. It seems, in fact, that precisely during the early 1540s, in the period after his meeting with Colonna took place, Contile was in the process of preparing for publication an edition of his own spiritual poetry, and that the project was more or less ready but was put on hold after the death in 1546 of Alfonso d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, who acted as Contile’s literary and professional sponsor.13 Contile returned to the work of preparing the ‘Christian’ collection in around 1560, shortly after an edition of his Rime was first printed, and began once again to edit the manuscript which by that stage contained some 140 rime cristiane as well as a few sonnets addressed to Contile by other writers.14 The manuscript collection of spiritual poems departs radically and seemingly very deliberately from the poetic model disseminated in the printed edition of Contile’s work of 1560, seeking instead a different mode of lyric and religious expression. The influence of Vittoria Colonna on this spiritualised poetic project is confirmed by the positioning of a poem in praise of her in the opening series of invocations in the collection, a sonnet which clearly alludes to Colonna’s status as Contile’s lyric and religious guide and mentor, the sun to his faithful star: Donna, ch’avete aperto a’ vani ingegni la tenebrosa vista e sparso il suono che ’l tristo placa e stabilisce il buono, deh, soccorrete agli alti miei disegni; Sol la vostra mercè mi scorga e insegni, e faccia parte del suo sacro dono, ch’al sol fissando gli occhi, m’abbondono, debili troppo e di lui troppo indegni. Sotto speranza de la vostra luce, che lodò de’miei canti il primo volo, pigliai l’impresa fatigosa e bella. Però dinanzi a Dio siatemi duce,

13

See Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, pp. 266–7. On the manuscript’s contents, see Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, pp. 263–5. 14

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ch’a salir sopra l’uno e l’altro polo sceglier non so di voi più fida stella.15

The influence of a reformed religious programme upon this sonnet seems clear. Particularly ‘Colonnaesque’ is Contile’s reference to self-abandonment: in a highly evangelical vein, he makes no attempt to deny his sinfulness and unworthy state, yet abandons himself to God’s grace that is brought to him with Colonna’s mediation. It is notable, too, that Contile refers to the fact that Colonna has read and approved of an earlier draft of his Christian rhymes: ‘lodò de’ miei canti il primo volo’. This allusion raises once again the suspicion that the two poets must have met to discuss his poetry on other occasions while Contile was in Rome, and Colonna has clearly impressed upon the younger poet the duty that he has to disseminate a religious message in his work, a duty that he has shouldered despite his feelings of unworthiness: ‘pigliai l’impresa fatigosa e bella’. An awareness of this serious duty that poets have to turn their art to the service of their faith appears to have spurred Colonna to offer similar advice to other friends, in fact, so that in her sonnet addressed to Bembo, ‘Diletta un’acqua viva a pie’ d’un monte’, she calls upon Bembo directly to use his verse as she does to express the true nature of faith (lines 12–14): Bembo mio chiaro, or ch’è venuto il giorno ch’avete solo a Dio rivolto il core volgete ancor la bella musa al vero.16

The reference to Bembo’s new state of being, his heart turned to only to God, is an allusion to his election to a cardinalship in 1539. His friend writes to impress upon him the central role that poetry must play in his new duties, as a lyrical godly duty that he must embrace more fervently than ever in his new life. In contrast to his manuscript of rime cristiane, Contile’s printed collection of Rime of 1560, which includes a number of accompanying commentaries and ‘argomenti’ by Francesco Patrizi and Antonio Borghesi alongside the poems, avoids overtly religious subject matter in the main. Instead the text is divided into three sections containing amorous sonnets, poems in praise of the Marchese del Vasto (composed in the 1540s), and finally a selection

15 ‘My Lady, you who have opened up to lowly minds / the shadowy way and spread abroad the music / that sooths misery and establishes good, / help me now in my high designs; / May your mercy alone illuminate and teach me, / as part of his holy gift, / so that fixing my eyes on the sun, I abandon myself, / too weak and too unworthy of him. / In longing for your light, / which praised that first flight of my song, / I took on the difficult and beautiful task. / So before God be my leader, / for climbing from one pole to the other / I do not hope to find a more faithful star.’ Cited in Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, pp. 275–6. 16 ‘My sweet Bembo, now that the day has come / when you have offered your heart to God alone, / then turn again your muse to its true end’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 135).

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of epistolary verses.17 When the author turned back to the preparation of a manuscript of Rime cristiane shortly after the publication of this text, he made the choice to leave out any poems already published in the printed edition as well as any that did not fit with the overtly spiritual subject matter. In addition, Contile began work on the text of a commentary to accompany the Christian poems, a work that exists only in an early, rough draft that the author clearly intended to edit and rewrite before it saw publication or dissemination.18 With the occasional slip into the first person, the commentary is presented as the work of a third party and a deliberate charade is played out in which the commentator offers his own opinions without seeking to know of the author’s intentions concerning his work: ‘Nonetheless I have not desired to seek clarification from the most learned author, preferring to follow my own interpretation.’19 What is most significant about Contile’s auto-commentary, despite his concerted attempt to remove all traces of his authorship, is that precisely as a self-authored response to his own poems directed at a wider readership, this text disrupts once and for all assumptions about the ‘private’ nature of spiritual lyricism and authorises and proclaims its status as a social text, designed for dissemination and interaction.20 Vittoria Colonna’s own spiritualised Petrarchism has frequently been read and interpreted as an interiorised response to personal concerns, one that the author rarely if ever sought to share with others, yet, as the reading of the manuscript collections of sonnets in earlier chapters has established, Colonna’s poetry too embodied a public, evangelical and social function that lay at its core and was a fundamental aspect of its genesis and development. Contile had clearly been influence by Colonna in his personal literary and religious journey, so that one can assume that the younger writer recognised and responded to the ‘social’ quality of Colonna’s work, albeit cloaked in the necessary garb of female decorum and modesty. In his own auto-commentary, Contile highlights his dedication to the spiritual subject matter and sets out a concise and clear interpretation of each poem that offers general guidance for the Christian in avoiding sin and establishing a firm faith. At the centre of his project, as it is also at the centre of Colonna’s, is the compelling image of Christ crucified, the focus and crux of

17 Le Rime di Messer Luca Contile, divise in tre parti, con discorsi, et argomenti di M. Francesco Patritio et M. Antonio Borghesi. Nuovamente stampate. Con le sei canzoni dette le Sei Sorelle di Marte. Con privilegi (Venice: Francesco Sansovino, 1560). 18 Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, p. 265 (including the author’s convincing arguments for attribution of the anonymous commentary to Contile himself). 19 ‘Nondimeno dal dotto Autore io non ho voluto sapere né intendere la chiarezza, deliberatomi di procedere secondo l’intenzion mia’: cited in Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, p. 270. 20 Quondam discusses this aspect of Contile’s production in Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, p. 273.

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the individual’s faith and the place where he takes shelter from the competing demands of the material world, in a notably evangelical vein: A la dolce ombra del piatoso legno che sostiene un bel frutto senza fronde corro, schifando, che m’accieca, un lume. Sotto quella starommi, se la voglia non si rivolge a l’ombra d’altri rami, dove abbonda di morte orribil esca.21

It is not insignificant, as Amedeo Quondam makes clear in his study of Contile’s manuscript, that the intended printed edition of the Rime cristiane never went to press and work on the commentary was aborted only around two thirds of the way through the collection. After a hiatus of some fifteen years, when the author returned to his manuscript in the 1560s and began once again to edit and arrange it, the religious environment in which he hoped to launch the work had become increasingly less ambiguous and more uncompromising, and one can see the addition of a commentary to the text of the sonnets as one way in which Contile sought to pin down and clarify the meaning of his poems in line with developments in theological clarification at Trent.22 Perhaps in the end he never saw the project through to completion because there was in fact no effective way in which to disguise or expunge the fundamentally Christocentric, evangelical tenor to many of the poems in the collection, and the time was no longer ripe for such a work. Published or not, however, Luca Contile’s manuscript of Rime cristiane marks an important connective point between Colonna’s spiritualised lyric agenda of the 1540s and the later explosion of rime spirituali in the second half of the sixteenth century, a phenomenon that has generally been explained as a straightforward response to Tridentine reforms and the desire to pursue more ‘appropriate’ subject matter in literary works.23 As avenues for religious dissent and debate became more limited in the 1560s, the role of spiritual poetry in offering a forum to the individual in which to explore and share with others ideas and concerns about the practical, daily duties and doubts of ordinary Christians can be considered to become ever more crucial. Although perhaps no longer openly embracing the reformed evangelical function that Colonna deemed so important and impressed upon her own friends and acquaintances, rime spirituali nonetheless remain – as the suggestive and exhaustive rollcall of names on Quondam’s list makes clear – well-established in the latter part of the sixteenth century, thanks primarily to Colonna’s example, as an 21

‘To the sweet shade of the merciful cross / which supports a beautiful fruit with no leafy branches / I run, spurning a light which blinds me. / I will stay beneath it, if my desire / does not return to the shade of other branches, / where dreadful death-filled temptations abound’: cited in Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, p. 275. 22 Quondam, ‘Le Rime cristiane di Luca Contile’, pp. 278–9. 23 Quondam includes a useful list of later rime spirituali in Il naso di Laura, pp. 283–9.

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appropriate and effective means by which to explore religious issues. The strong relationship between poetry writing and vernacular print production remains in place, even as the poetic subject matter shifts irreversibly from amorous Petrarchan to overtly spiritual from the mid-century. In other words there continues to be a demand among the book-buying public for precisely this spiritually motivated material that no longer needs the imposition of a neo-Platonic framework, such as was imposed on Colonna’s spiritual lyrics by her editors, in order to make it attractive or marketable. Thus, ironically, even as her own works went out of print and fell from favour, Colonna’s spiritually engaged lyric model lived on into the next half-century. Luca Contile was not the only poet who seemingly responded directly to Colonna’s call for spiritually engaged and authorially managed lyric collections as a means of addressing some of the most pressing religious and existential problems of the age. Michelangelo, himself the privileged recipient of Colonna’s most highly spiritualised and evangelical canzoniere, was also at work on a carefully constructed canzoniere of his own with an eye to publication in the 1540s, and like Contile he too abandoned the project in a state of incompleteness and never saw it go to press.24 In Michelangelo’s case, the abandonment was precipitated by the untimely death in 1546 of his friend and editor Luigi del Riccio, followed in 1547 by that of his spiritual and poetic mentor, Colonna herself. A close study of the two autograph manuscripts that contain the preparatory drafts of this canzoniere serves to alter radically the common perception of Michelangelo as a poet, from the image of a maverick working outside the framework of conventional Petrarchan norms to that of a careful, professional writer who was in the process of preparing his work to meet a wider public, seeking thereby to disseminate his poetic vision to a larger audience.25 Michelangelo’s canzoniere, a collection by 1546 of some eighty-nine poems although potentially more would have been added over time, is unusual in that it contains a greater number of madrigals than it does sonnets, indicating perhaps his particularly Florentine poetic roots which set Michelangelo apart from many of his Roman counterparts in this period.26 The collection is not overtly autobiographical, nor is it openly historical through references to the poet’s immediate context, suggesting that what he is aiming for is rather a sense of poetic universality and durability through time, a collection capable of transferring to numerous other contexts without losing its thematic and poetic essence or meaning. At the same time, despite the lack of autobiographical rooting the collection is clearly personal and individualised, imparting a strong 24

The following discussion is once again deeply indebted to an earlier illuminating study, that of Roberto Fedi, ‘Il canzoniere (1546) di Michelangelo Buonarroti’, in Il libro di poesia dal copista al tipografo, ed. by Santagata and Quondam, pp. 193–213. 25 The manuscripts in question are MS Vaticano Latino 3211 and MS XIV in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana: see Fedi, ‘Il canzoniere (1546) di Michelangelo Buonarroti’, pp. 195–6. 26 Fedi, ‘Il canzoniere (1546) di Michelangelo Buonarroti’, p. 202.

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sense of ‘voice’ and presence through the verses. In this way the collection can be considered to be very similar to Colonna’s own gift manuscript for Michelangelo. Although in Colonna’s manuscript collection there are infrequent references, particularly in the closing sequence, to the poet’s Roman context and the individuals who populate it, in general the register is more detached and universalised, the spiritual considerations deeply intimate yet simultaneously relevant to a readership beyond the poet herself, as she underlines in her declaration in the opening sonnet that she writes to show others the true path to God. More overtly Petrarchan in its subject matter than Colonna’s manuscript gift collection for him, Michelangelo’s canzoniere nonetheless shares other clear characteristics in common with the work of his friend. It is cyclical and selfreferential, setting up a clear line of development between individual poems that works towards establishing an organic tone and a sense of a broader meaning. Ideas and antitheses are repeated and revisited throughout the collection, in the manner of a series of small, incremental shifts in the process of building up a whole picture. The poet’s themes point beyond the consideration of love for a lady to larger questions that hang upon the repeated use of contrasts and antitheses, as he explores the relationship between love and death, time, sin, eternal peace and the brief passage of earthly life. The oscillation between opposing states of being, a stance that characterises Michelangelo’s poetic exchanges with Colonna, is not resolved in the course of the manuscript, thus creating a sense of circularity and enclosure within a drama of uncertainty and human suffering that will not be ended except by death. This suspended state of being is announced from the very opening poem: Il mio refugio e ’l mio ultimo scampo qual piú sicuro è, che non sia men forte che ’l pianger e ’l pregar? e non m’aita. Amore e crudeltà m’han posto il campo: l’un s’arma di pieta, l’altro di morte; questa m’ancide, e l’altra tien in vita. Cosí l’alma impedita del mio morir, che sol poria giovarne, piú volte per andarne s’è mossa là dov’esser sempre spera, dov’è beltà sol fuor di donna altiera; ma l’imagine vera, della qual vivo, allor risorge al core perché da morte non sia vinto amore.27

It seems, in fact, as if the poet is celebrating, rather than bemoaning, the stasis and immobility that his state of constant oscillation and uncertainty 27

‘What ultimate refuge or escape for me / is there that’s more secure, and no less strong / than weeping and praying? Yet they’re no help to me. / For love and cruelty have pitched their camp against me: / the one is armed with mercy, the other with death; / the latter kills me, the other keeps me alive. / And thus my soul, prevented /

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imposes upon his poetic journey, illuminating the helplessness of the individual to break from the cycle of pain and hope that life entails.28 Once again the parallels with Colonna’s gift manuscript are striking. We might well ask ourselves if Michelangelo’s aborted attempt to prepare his own spiritually and socially engaged canzoniere, an attempt that he was unable to see through to completion once he had lost the support of those who most clearly understood the terms of the project he was undertaking, was inspired by Colonna herself who considered it a universal aim of pious Christians to turn their talents to the service of their faith in a public, rather than a private forum. Contile and Buonarroti both abandoned their attempts to launch a socially and spiritually engaged canzoniere into the printed-book market to accompany and respond to Colonna’s own verses and to her personal, poetic call to arms, perhaps because the times were too turbulent, the project too personal, the questions that they wished to pose and to which they sought answers still too pressing and uncertain in the murky doctrinal fog of the 1540s. By the time Contile began his second attempt at launching his Rime cristiane in 1560 the flavour of his approach was too much of that earlier time to be accommodated comfortably to the more stringent demands of the post-Tridentine period. Others were more successful. A perusal of Quondam’s lengthy list of practitioners of spiritual lyric-writing (which will no doubt increase as other scholars recognise the value and importance of this literary genre and begin to give it long-overdue serious attention) reveals a plethora of new names: some ninety-six new works by named authors were published between 1550 and 1600, and many of these works went through a number of editions. Alongside these are a number of cases where the work of an earlier generation of writers was reissued in the later sixteenth century, including the examples of Benedetto Varchi (in 1573) and Luigi Tansillo (in 1587).29 A large number of other works were issued anonymously, suggesting perhaps a distinction between authorially controlled collections of spiritual lyrics and more generic devotional works in poetic form. In addition, Quondam lists ten works published by 1600 that are collections of spiritual poems by various authors, highlighting the collaborative and communal possibilities of the genre and the continuation of the Petrarchan habit of anthologising into this new literary terrain. Few of the writers listed by Quondam are women. Colonna is succeeded by Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati (1523–1589), who published her Sette salmi

from dying – which alone could benefit me - / has many times felt moved / to go up there where it hopes to be forever, / where beauty stands alone, outside any proud lady; / But then the true image / on which I live revives within my heart, / so that love might not be defeated by death’ (The Poetry of Michelangelo, ed. and trans. by Saslow, p. 247). 28 Fedi, ‘Il canzoniere (1546) di Michelangelo Buonarroti’, pp. 203–6. 29 Benedetto Varchi, Sonetti spirituali (Florence: Giunti, 1573); Luigi Tansillo, Le lagrime di san Pietro e altre rime spirituali (Genoa: Bartoli, 1587) (a further six editions of Tansillo’s work were issued before the end of the century).

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30

penitenziali in 1564 with reprints in 1566 and 1570. Although Quondam does not mention the work in his list, Battiferra’s first book of verse, published in 1560, also contains many meditative, spiritual sonnets within the generally secular and socially oriented collection.31 In 1574 is listed an anonymous work entitled Cantici spirituali composti da una religiosa (Naples: Salviani), and in 1595 a collection of spiritual poems on the rosary by Francesca Turini Bufalini.32 While other women were writing lyric and occasional poetry in this period (much of which was spiritual in subject matter), surprisingly few seem to have turned their hand to collections of rime spirituali, although a number composed works on the Virgin Mary that can be considered to take Colonna’s Pianto sopra la passione as their literary model.33 Ironically, it appears that precisely during the period of Tridentine reforms when spiritual poetry took hold as an important and flourishing genre, women writers were for the first time moving away from devotional subject matter in order to explore a wide range of exciting genres to which they had never before laid claim.34 Perhaps, then, Colonna’s model of spiritually and socially engaged poetry, rigorously controlled and carefully coded according to very strict expectations for female public self-presentation, was simply too restricting for a new generation of female writers tasting the unexpected freedom for literary self-expression that the Counter Reformation, contrary to received wisdom about the period, seems indeed to have offered them.35 30

Laura Battiferri Ammannati, I sette salmi penitenziali di David con alcuni sonetti spirituali (Florence: Giunti, 1564). See also the recent scholarly edition with translations, Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra and her Literary Circle, ed. and trans. by Victoria Kirkham (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 31 Laura Battiferri Ammannati, Il primo libro delle opere toscane di Madonna Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati (Florence: Giunti, 1560). 32 Francesca Turini Bufalini, Rime spirituali sopra il rosario (Rome: Gigliotti, 1595). 33 Examples of works by later women writers that follow the model of Colonna’s Pianto are Chiara Matraini, Breve discorso sulla Vita della Beatissima Vergine Maria, Madre e sposa del Figlio di Dio (Lucca: Vincenzo Busdraghi, 1590); and Lucrezia Marinella, La Vita di Maria Vergine imperatrice dell’universo… (Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1602). 34 Notable examples are the chivalric romances by Tullia D’Aragona (Il Meschino, 1560) and Moderata Fonte (Tredici canti del Floridoro, 1581); pastoral plays composed by Maddalena Campiglia (Flori, 1588) and Isabella Andreini (Mirtilla, 1588); and the polemical prose works by Moderata Fonte (Il merito delle donne, 1600) and Lucrezia Marinella (La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne, 1600). Virginia Cox discusses the reasons for the huge increase in number and range of works by women being published in the latter half of the sixteenth century, in ‘Gender and the Art of Book Dedication in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, unpublished paper delivered at the Renaissance Society of America conference, Toronto, 29 March 2003 (I am grateful to the author for permission to refer to this as yet unpublished work). 35 The statistics make the point well: in Italy 201 works by women were published in the sixteenth century, the majority after 1550, compared with only thirty in France:

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Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati Laura Battiferra provides a final significant example of the development of spiritualised lyric writing according to Colonna’s model in the later sixteenth century. It is notable that contemporaries recognised the link between Battiferra and her older colleague Colonna. In his Historia monastica of 1561, Pietro Calzolari has one of his interlocutors place the younger poet in a line of women lyricists first established by Colonna and Veronica Gambara. Giorgio Vasari creates the same link in the second edition of his Lives of the Artists (1568), citing six famous women of the age, beginning with Colonna and concluding with Battiferra ‘and others’.36 Battiferra herself recognises the debt in the many references to the work of the older poet that litter her Rime. She was a prolific writer: after her death she left a corpus of nearly 550 poems, published and unpublished, including more than 100 epistolary sonnets that indicate the broad reach of her literary relationships.37 She was widely lauded in her day, operating at the centre of elite cultural life in Florence under Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici together with her second husband, the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511–1592). Battiferra’s poetry shows clear evidence of an interest in a reformed spirituality that bears comparison to Colonna’s own. In a sonnet addressed to a certain Vincenzo Grotti, included in the 1560 Primo libro delle opere toscane, she writes of her longing to be back in the company of a group presided over by the reformer Caterina Cibo (1501–1557), where it is not the beautiful natural setting but the uplifting talk of Christ that has nourished her soul. GROTTI, né ’l temperato aer sereno, né le vaghe campagne e i verdi prati, né le fresch’erbe e i dolci colli amati, né della loggia il ricco albergo ameno, ma il parlar saggio e d’eloquenza pieno, il dir di Cristo in stili alti e ornate, sgombrare il cor de’ van pensier gelati, e d’amor caldo e fede empiere il seno, son la cagion perch’io sospiro e bramo esser dell’onorata vostra schiera, ov’alberga onestate e cortesia, e dove la gran donna, ch’io tant’amo, di dolce Cibo, anzi di manna vera, l’alma nodre e al ciel la scorge e ’nvia.38

see Axel Erdmann, My Gracious Silence: Women in the Mirror of Sixteenth-Century Printing in Western Europe (Lucerne: Gilhofer and Rauschberg, 1999), pp. 201–23. 36 Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, p. 27. 37 See Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, pp. 4–5. 38 ‘GROTTI, neither the temperate air serene, / nor winsome countryside and green meadows, nor /fresh grasses and sweet beloved hills, nor the rich / delightful abode beside the loggia, / but wise conversing, filled with eloquence, / speaking of Christ in styles lofty and embellished, / disencumbering my heart of vain frozen thoughts, and /

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The pun on Cibo’s name is a clever touch, which alludes to biblical references to the nourishment of Christians through the body and blood of Christ in, for example, John 6. The reference to the spiritual cibo that Caterina provides is also reminiscent of a number of sonnets by Colonna devoted to the theme of spiritual nourishment, including most notably ‘Cibo, del cui meraviglioso effetto’.39 Colonna’s spiritual food, unlike Battiferra’s here, is provided directly by Christ, but the end result is the same, an aspiration to cast off this-worldly preoccupations, ‘pensier gelati’, and embrace the longed for ‘amor caldo e fede’. It is notable that Battiferra makes mention of the style and eloquence with which ‘il dir di Cristo’ is conducted among Caterina Cibo’s group of friends, alluding to the link between reformed spirituality and vernacular elegance, whether in poetry or prose. The mention of the ‘stili alti e ornate’ that characterise the interlocutors’ discussions is a clever double manoeuvre by the poet. While detailing in the most elegant manner the locus amoenus of Petrarchan versifying, demonstrating her supreme poetic skill, she simultaneously rejects this context and longs instead to turn her high style to the service of Christ. Cibo’s ‘onorata schiera’, her in-crowd of like-minded companions that the poet longs to join, seems very close to Colonna’s ‘santi eletti’, the group to which at times she belongs, at times she regards with the envy of the outsider.40 It is also notable that Battiferra’s spiritual inspiration in this poem is provided by another woman, an aristocrat and reformer.41 Battiferra merits close comparison with Colonna not only at the level of her spiritual verses, but also because her literary output in general exhibits a marked concern with locating an active space for women within worship and religious contemplation. Notably, many of her epistolary sonnets are addressed to women, and she dedicated all the published editions of her verses to female dedicatees. The Primo libro delle opere toscane is dedicated, quite appropriately, to the first lady of Florence, Eleonora di Toledo (1522–1562), the first edition of the Sette salmi penitentiali to the duchess of Battiferra’s native city of Urbino, Vittoria Farnese della Rovere (1519–1602). More significantly still, each Psalm has an individual prefatory letter dedicating it to a specific nun replenishing my breast with warm love and faith / are the reason why I sigh and long to be in / your honoured troop, where abide honesty and courtesy, / and where the great lady, whom I so love, / with sweet Food, nay with true manna, nourishes / the soul and guides and sends it heavenward’ (Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, pp. 130–1, this translation is by Victoria Kirkham, as are all others cited from this edition). 39 Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, p. 64. 40 On the ‘santi eletti’ see for example the sonnets ‘Anime elette, in cui da l’ampie e chiare’, and ‘Beati voi, cui tempo né fatica’ in Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 62, 82–4. 41 A further four sonnets in the Primo libro delle opere toscane are dedicated to Caterina Cibo, lamenting her death. On this see Laura Battiferri [sic] degli Ammannati, Il primo libro delle opere toscane, ed. by Enrico Maria Guidi (Urbino: Accademia Raffaello, 2000), pp. 18–20. The editor of this volume is convinced of Battiferra’s links to reform thought via the influence of figures such as Valdés and Ochino.

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in convents in Florence and Urbino. Two of the nuns representing Urbino are from families that have intermarried with the Battiferri; another is Laura’s aunt, Cassandra de’ Battiferri. One of the Florentine nuns, Faustina Vitelli, is natural daughter of Chiappino Vitelli who owned Laura’s husband’s workshop.42 These women have temporal links with the poet’s life, but simultaneously represent a sustained interest in a quieter and more contemplative mode of female spirituality that Battiferra explores herself in her spiritual sonnets. Like Vittoria Colonna before her, who frequently retreated into convents as a secular guest, she is clearly drawn on some level to the cloistered life, and presents the community of nuns as a receptive and sympathetic audience for her poetry. The publication of I sette salmi penitentiali in 1564 witnesses Battiferra moving her poetry beyond the Petrarchan and epistolary framework of her Primo libro into more overtly spiritual territory, although Petrarchan language and imagery remain the basis for her translation of the Psalms. Once again it is possible to detect a reformed flavour to the work, for example through isolated references to the unmerited gift of God’s grace. Thus in the preface to the first Psalm, addressed to Sister Faustina Vitelli of Florence, Battiferra writes of her feelings of doubt and uncertainty that have been assuaged by the composition of the Psalm in the vernacular, and her hope ‘that through his goodness, and not my own merit, he [God] will pardon my many sins and free me from such long-standing afflictions’.43 In addition, nine spiritual sonnets by Battiferra appended to the end of the published edition enhance the reformed tone of the work. In the first of these sonnets, ‘Ecco Signore, e n’è ben tempo omai’, the poet writes of her ‘cangiato stile’ (citing Petrarch’s Rime sparse 67) that has led her to turn from the concerns of this world to God. The declaration of a new spiritualised poetic intent is strikingly similar to Colonna’s own avowal of a new kind of Petrarchism in the opening sonnet to her manuscript for Michelangelo, ‘Poi che ’l mio casto amor gran tempo tenne’. In addition, of course, Battiferra is making an allusion to Petrarch’s promise of his changed nature in the opening sonnet of his Rime sparse, ‘Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono’. The debt to Petrarch is highlighted in the final line of Battiferra’s sonnet, ‘che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno’ (Rime sparse 1, line 14), yet the assumption must be that, like Colonna and unlike Petrarch, she will succeed in her bid to cast off the things of this world. Other sonnets in the closing sequence of the Sette salmi evoke a significant Colonna-esque resonance. In sonnet V, ‘Quando fia, Signor mio, che sciolta e

42

See Kirkham’s discussion in Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, pp. 45–7. 43 ‘[C]he per sua bontà, senza alcuno mio merito, mi debbia i miei commessi falli perdonare, a da sì lunghe afflizioni liberare’: Laura Battiferri degli Ammannati, I sette salmi penitenziali di David con alcuni sonetti spirituali, ed. by Enrico Maria Guidi (Urbino: Accademia Raffaello, 2005), p. 36. See also the editor’s discussion of the work’s reformed flavour on pp. 5–27.

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sgombra’, the poet asks God to untie her soul from its mortal bonds so that she may fly to him: Quando fia, Signor mio, che sciolta e sgombra da tanti stretti lacci e sì mortali, quest’alma spieghi in ver tua luce l’ali, il cui bel lume ogn’altro lume adombra? Ben veggio omai che tutto è fumo ed ombra, il cieco vaneggiar di noi mortali: ma che poss’io, se così lasse e frali, son queste forze, ch’uman peso ingombra? Sollevami, Signor, porgimi aiuto, che senza te non ch’innalzarmi al Cielo; ma poter desiarlo ancor m’è tolto poscia ch’ogni mio spirto a te s’è volto devoto e pio, leva dagl’occhi ’l velo, che m’ha lungi al mio Sol cieca tenuto.44

The tight bonds derive once again from Petrarch, who frequently bemoans the bonds of love that have ensnared him and pleads with the Virgin Mary, in Rime sparse 366, who is the only one with the power to untie them. Colonna also employs frequent imagery of bonds and knots, for example in her sonnet ‘Rinasca in te il mio cor quest’almo giorno’, in which she asks for Mary’s prayers to help her find the strength to loosen the bonds that tie her to the mortal world: sciogliendo anzi spezzando ’l nodo che qui mi lega.45

Battiferra’s desire, once unbound, to spread her wings towards the light of heaven, ‘quest’alma spieghi in ver tua luce l’ali’, is strikingly close to Colonna’s sonnet, ‘Spiego vèr voi mia luce indarno l’ale’, both poets recognising that their upward flight cannot begin without God’s assistance. The closing line of Battiferra’s sonnet, in its evocation of Christ as the poet’s Sun, is a further resonant echo of Colonna’s verse, suggesting that the proximity of Battiferra’s poetic imagery in these spiritual sonnets to that of her predecessor cannot be thought of as accidental. 44 ‘My Lord, when will it be that, freed and unbound / from so many tight and mortal bonds, / this soul spreads its wings towards your light, / whose beautiful rays overshadow all others? / I see now that all is mist and shade, / the blind wandering of us mortals: / yet what can I do, if my forces are / so weak and frail, hindered by human weight? / Lord, lift me up, help me, / for without you not only rising to heaven, / but even desiring it is denied me. / So that all my spirits are turned to you / devoted and pious, take from my eyes the veil, / that has long kept me blind to my Sun.’ Battiferri degli Ammannati, I sette salmi penitenziali di David con alcuni sonetti spirituali., p. 111 (the translation is my own, and has been re-punctuated to convey the sense). 45 ‘I may untie or even break apart the knots / that bind me to this place’ (Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 62–3).

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The composition of vernacular translations of sacred texts was a problematic genre in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and some attempts were made at Trent to codify and limit this potentially risky practice, with an outright ban of vernacular translations in 1559 that was subsequently lifted in 1564, the year of publication of Battiferra’s Sette salmi.46 A verse translation with initial prose explanations was a particularly concerning format for the authorities: verse translations and paraphrases allowed for a freedom of interpretation that was not considered desirable. What is more, Battiferra explicitly dedicates her work, as well as each individual psalm translation, to women, those who most need to be protected from heterodoxy. It is no doubt for this combination of reasons that in the early seventeenth century, after the outright ban in the Clementine index of 1596 of vernacular texts containing the words of the Scripture in any form, copies of Battiferra’s Sette salmi were handed in to the church authorities as suspect texts in Rome, Perugia, Foligno and Spoleto.47 Although at the time of publication her text was not illegal (and notably it was reissued twice in the following few years), the decision to compose such a work nonetheless looks like a bold move on Battiferra’s part, allying her with a group of forward-thinking, reform-minded writers who refused to relinquish precious access to vernacular biblical texts until the Clementine index effectively rendered such access impossible. Later in her life, from around the beginning of the 1570s, Laura Battiferra and her husband both became closely linked to the Society of Jesus. It was seemingly through this association that Battiferra was inspired to compose a prose meditation on the subject of Christ’s Nativity that is entirely in line with Loyola’s instructions in the Spiritual Exercises (1548) on the composition of devotional meditations. While she arrives at this prose work via the Jesuits, the tone and flavour of Battiferra’s Orazione sopra il Natale di Nostro Signore, in particular its rich poetic qualities, bear comparison with Colonna’s own prose meditation, the Pianto sopra la passione di Cristo, evidence of a shared interest in the important function of devotional prose as a tool for worship and devout contemplation.48 Like Colonna in her Pianto who chides a long list of individuals who failed to attend the Crucifixion, Battiferra pauses in her meditation to concentrate on the individual responses of each member of the Holy Family to the miraculous event, lending a particularly personal and intimate flavour to her narrative. Her address to Mary is especially resonant as she expresses the same awe and wonder at Mary’s ability to nurture the Christ child that we find in Colonna’s earlier work: 46 See for details of the Tridentine decrees, Battiferri degli Ammannati, I sette salmi penitenziali, p. 13. 47 See Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura, 1471–1605 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), p. 305. 48 The Orazione is in the Biblioteca Comunale ‘Mozzi-Borgetti’ di Macerata, MS 5.B.10, fols 137–41. Kirkham provides a translation in Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, pp. 311–18. See also Victoria Kirkham, ‘La Poetessa al Presepio: Una meditazione inedita di Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati’, Filologia e critica 27 (2002), 258–76.

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Tell me now how tender was your care for him, how reverent the zeal with which you adored and blessed him, how sweet and maternal your love as you pressed him to your breast and nursed him and kissed him! I well know that if God had not then concentrated within himself all his power and his ardour, that your breast would not have suffered it, or rather for excess of sweetness and love, it would have spread wide open and burned and set fire to your lips.49

Battiferra’s Orazione offers a clear insight into the writer’s deep faith as well as the great erudition with which she informed her work, littered with complex biblical, literary and classical allusions. That such an individual ended her life as a devoted Jesuit patron, leaving her entire estate to the Society of Jesus in her will, suggests that in that society she found an outlet for a reform-minded, poetically charged spirituality that the previous era of Catholic reform had failed to provide.50 As an intensely social individual who knew and was known by a wide circle of influential contemporaries in Florence and further afield, Battiferra’s published works testify to the public nature of her expressions of faith, launched into an appreciative marketplace and widely read and admired. The reformed flavour of many of these works should not surprise us, and adds weight to the arguments for the persistence of reformed lyric poetry in the second half of the century, its popularity and appeal for readers as well as its particular draw for high profile women with much to offer intellectually and emotionally to religious life. It cannot be considered accidental, what is more, that Battiferra’s poetic flowering occurred in a city in which the sonnets of her predecessor Colonna were discussed and debated in the very highest of academic circles.

49

Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, p. 316. A transcription of Battiferra’s final will is included in Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Battiferra, pp. 337–40. See also Victoria Kirkham, ‘Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati benefattrice dei Gesuiti fiorentini’, in Commitenza artistica femminile, ed. by Sara F. Matthews Grieco and Gabriella Zarri, Quaderni storici 104 (2000), 331–54. 50

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Conclusion This book has tried to fulfil two distinct but related aims. The first and more straightforward aim is to redirect attention to the literary achievements of Vittoria Colonna as a corrective to many centuries of critical under-appreciation. I hope that through the preceding chapters it has become clear, not only that Colonna was a highly skilled Petrarchista in her own right, an impeccable stylist in complete control of her sources and her genre, but also that she took that genre in new and uncharted directions. Her greatest achievement lay in imbuing her Petrarchism with a relevance that rendered it passionate, energetic and vital, a complete corrective to the ahistoricity and idealisation of Bembo’s lyric model.1 Colonna’s poetic legacy is therefore great, consisting in the tying of vernacular poetry writing to currents of Italian reform through a search for religious understanding and illumination in lyric form. This search, at once intimate and at the same time social, practical, communal and engaged, was the spark that helped to ignite the explosion of rime spirituali later in the sixteenth century. Part of Colonna’s interest as a literary figure stems from her clearly expressed understanding of the need to define her position differently to that of her male colleagues and contemporaries. She relates her experience to the narratives of biblical and saintly women in a concerted attempt to build up a genealogy of pious and active females and then adds her own name to the roll call as the representative of a new generation. The figure of the Virgin Mary presides over this pro-feminist ‘family’ in a carefully modulated form, human, attainable as a model for imitation by other women, but undeniably feisty and independent in her power sharing with Christ. As a crucial element of her literary programme, Colonna’s reformed Mariology defines her position within evangelical circles, allowing her a real voice and presence that were recognised and admired by her peers. The second, broader and more ambitious aim of this book has been to demonstrate the manner in which vernacular poetry played a crucial role in the spread of reform in Italy in the sixteenth century. Colonna’s example demonstrates the complete success with which Petrarchism and evangelism can meet and merge, and the beautiful and compelling literature that results from this happy marriage. The final chapter, all too briefly and inadequately, points forward to the reverberations of this model later in the sixteenth century, plucking a few salient examples from the many that offer themselves for future study. Crucially, the example of a reformed Petrarchism offered by Colonna’s lyrics remains relevant into the late century: editions of her poetry were issued in the 1580s despite evident doctrinal infelicities.2 Thus, as has already been 1 See, for a discussion of Bembo’s ‘thematic formalism’ in his Petrarchan production, Greene, The Light in Troy, pp. 174–6. 2 Two editions of Colonna’s poetry were published in the 1580s: Quattordeci sonetti spirituali della illustrissima et eccellentissima divina Vittoria Colonna D’Avalos

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stated elsewhere, a new periodisation of Italian reform in the widest sense of the word offers itself, one that pushes well beyond Trent and touches, not theologians or ecclesiastics, but simply readers of vernacular poetry. A book has perforce to end somewhere (for which we are all thankful!), but I draw this one to a close with a pressing sense of the need to explore further the production of rime spirituali after Trent with an eye to its roots in earlier practices. It seems fitting to end in celebration of the triumph of Colonna’s achievement and to allow her the last word. The literary model bequeathed by the poet to succeeding generations is reflected in her most evangelical sonnets, the sonnets in which she conveys with limpid joy the certainty of her special knowledge and privileged position as a member of God’s elect. As an elected soul she is afforded the special responsibility to teach and lead others, a position of leadership that the poet occupies despite her gender or perhaps thanks to the particular understanding that her Marian perspective affords her. The poet’s privilege infuses her verse with evangelical joy even as she rejects responsibility for the act of writing and defers to the ultimate literary authority of God, who has selected her for this important role and endowed her with the potential to fulfil it in an unmerited and gratuitous gift of grace. Quand’io riguardo il nobil raggio ardente de la grazia divina, e quel valore ch’illustra l’intelletto, infiamma il core con virtù sovra umana, alta e possente, l’alma le voglie alor fisse ed intente raccoglie tutte insieme a farli onore, ma tanto ha di poter quant’è ’l favore che dal lume e dal foco intende e sente. Ond’ella può ben far certa efficace l’alta sua elezion, ma infino al segno ch’a l’Auttor d’ogni ben, Sua mercé, piace. Non sprona il corso nostro industria o ingegno; quel corre più sicuro e più vivace ch’ha dal favor del Ciel maggior sostegno.3

de Aquino Marchesa di Pescara (Venice: Scotto, 1580) (this one a musical setting for five voices); and Rime spirituali della S. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana Illustrissima di Pescara (Verona: Discepoli, 1586). 3 ‘When I look upon the noble burning ray / of divine grace, and that valour / which lights up the mind, inflames the heart / with superhuman virtue, high and mighty, / my soul gathers together all my desires / fixed and intent on honouring them, / yet its strength is only as great as the favour / which it sees and feels bestowed by the light and fire. / My soul can render sure and worthy / its high election, but only to that point / chosen by the Author of all good, in his mercy. / Industry and intellect cannot spur us on our way; / he runs more sure-footed and joyous / who takes most comfort from heaven’s favour.’

Bibliography Primary Sources a. Works by Vittoria Colonna i. Manuscripts Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome

ASHB 1153 MS.II.IX.30 V.E.52 Codice Vaticano Latino 3211 Codice Vaticano Latino 11539

ii. Books Colonna, Vittoria, Rime de la Divina Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara. Nuovamente stampato con privilegio (Parma: Al Dottissimo Messer Alessandro Vercelli Philippo Pirogallo, 1538). ———, Rime de la Diva Vettoria [sic] Colonna, De Pescara inclita Marchesana, Nuovavamente [sic] aggiuntovi .XVI. Sonetti Spirituali, & le sue stanze (Florence: Nicolo d’Aristotile, detto il Zoppino, da Ferrara, 1539). ———, Rime de la Divina Vettoria [sic] Colonna de pescara inclita Marchesana nuovamente aggiuntovi XXIIII. sonetti Spirituali, & le sue stanze, & uno triompho de la croce di Christo non piu stampato con la sua tavola (Venice: Per Comin de Trino ad instantia de Nicolo d’Aristotile detto Zoppino, 1540). ———, Dichiaratione fatta sopra la seconda parte delle Rime della Divina Vittoria Collonna [sic] Marchesana di Pescara. Da Rinaldo Corso… (Bologna: Gian battista de Phaelli, 1543). ———, Litere [sic] della Divina Vettoria [sic] Colonna Marchesana di Pescara alla Duchessa de Amalfi, sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Catherina, Et sopra della attiva santa Maddalena non più viste in luce (Venice: Alessandro de Viano, Ad instantia di Antonio detto il Cremaschino, 1544). ———, Litere della divina Vettoria [sic] Colonna Marchesana di Pescara alla Duchessa de Amalfi, sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Catherina, Et sopra della attiva santa Maddalena non più viste in luce (Venice: Giovan Anton. et Pietro fratelli de Nicolini da Sabio, Ad instantia di M. Sebastian Venetiano, 1545). ———, Le rime spirituali della illustrissima Signora Vittoria Colonna Marchesana di Pescara (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1546). ———, Le rime della Sig. Vittoria Colonna Marchesana Illustrissima di Pescara. Correte per M. Lodovico Dolce (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, et Fratelli, 1552).

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———, Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Christo. Oratione della medesima sopra l’Ave Maria… etc (Bologna: Manutio, 1557). ———, Tutte le Rime della Illustriss. et Eccellentiss. Signora Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana di Pescara. Con l’Espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso, nuovamente mandate in luce da Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Giovan Battista et Melchior Sessa Fratelli, 1558). ———, Rime della S. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana Illust. di Pescara. Con l’aggiunta delle rime spirituali. Di nuovo ricorrette, per M. Lodovico Dolce (In Vinegia appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1559). ———, Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara, sopra la Passione di Christo, con una Oratione della medesima, sopra l’Ave Maria. Oratione fatta il venerdi santo, sopra la passione di Christo (In Vinegia appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1563). ———, Quattordeci sonetti spirituali della illustrissima et eccellentissima divina Vittoria Colonna D’Avalos de Aquino Marchesa di Pescara (Venice: Scotto, 1580). ———, Rime spirituali della S. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana Illustrissima di Pescara (Verona: Discepoli, 1586). ———, Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara, ed. by Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1889). ———, Supplemento al carteggio di Vittoria Colonna, ed. by Domenico Tordi (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1892) ———, Carteggio. 2nd edition. Edited by Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller with a supplement by Domenico Tordi (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1892). ———, Rime, ed. by Alan Bullock (Rome: Laterza, 1982). ———, Sonetti in morte di Francesco Ferrante d’Avalos, marchese di Pescara: edizione del ms. XIII.G.43 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, ed. Tobia R. Toscano (Milan: Mondadori, 1998). ———, Sonnets for Michelangelo, ed. and trans. by Abigail Brundin (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). b. Works by other authors i. Images British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, Catalogue number 18959-15-504. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, catalogue number 1.2.o/16 [1.4.o/60]. ii. Manuscripts Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence Biblioteca Comunale “Mozzi-Borgetti”, Macerata

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Index

Accademia Pontaniana 9, 40–42, 47 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius 123, 125 Albret, Jeanne d’, sonnet by 130–131 Aretino, Pietro 171 Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando furioso 25–6, 164 Augustine, Saint 148–9

friendship with Colonna 28–30, 36, 172 poetry 30, 73–6, 180–182 religious thought of 79, 157 Buonaventure, Saint Meditationes vitae Christi 57, 138–9; see also empathic meditation

Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura 182–3, 184–9 Bembo, Pietro as Colonna’s mentor 22, 31, 36, 104, 106–7 in Colonna’s sonnets 94, 177 critical commentary on 34, 156 as linguist ix, 10–11 as reader of Vittoria Colonna 26–7 and reform 2–3, 46–7 works of asolani, Gli 7 Rime 31, 81, 108, 161, 191 Beneficio di Cristo, Il (Mantova) 1, 3, 49–59, 61–3, 70–71, 76, 79, 86, 89, 93, 98, 100, 134, 136, 155, 157, 170–171 Boccaccio, Giovanni 159–60 Bonfigli, Nicolò Aurifico de 145–6 Buonarroti, Michelangelo Colonna’s manuscript for 12, 34–5, 67, 72, 79–100, 101, 108–9, 136, 140, 153, 163–4 drawings for Colonna 71 Crucifixion 72–3, 77–8 Pietà 78, 139, 141 Samaritan Woman at the Well 78–9

Calvin, Jean 8, 41, 55, 68, 71, 101, 131, 169 canzoniere, properties of 2, 4–7, 8, 15 Capece, Scipione 40, 42 Capuchins 45, 166–7 Carnesecchi, Pietro 43, 44, 48–50, 73 Castiglione, Baldassare 10, 22 libro del cortegiano, Il 7, 105 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint 152–3 Catherine of Siena, Saint 83, 149 Cavalieri, Tommaso de’ 28, 72 Charles V (emperor) 101, 123–4 Cibo, Caterina 45, 184–5 Clement VII (pope) 23, 45, 124 Colonna, Ascanio 23, 46, 48 Colonna, Fabrizio 19–20, 153 Colonna, Pompeo 122–3 Apologia mulierum 123–6 Colonna, Vittoria biography of 15–30 publication history 30–36 works of Epistola 21–3, 111 letters to Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini 133, 146–53 letters to Reginald Pole 68–72 manuscript for Marguerite de Navarre 12, 89, 93, 101, 104–20, 133–4, 136, 145

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manuscript for Michelangelo Buonarroti 12, 34–5, 67, 72, 79–100, 101, 108–9, 136, 140, 153, 163–4 Oratione della Marchesa di Pescara sopra l’Ave Maria 142–5 Pianto sopra la passione di Cristo 12, 119, 127, 134–42, 145–7, 183, 188 Rime 26, 30–36, 81, 155–7, 163–70 Consilium de emendanda ecclesia 97 Contarini, Gasparo 47, 50, 53, 97 Contile, Luca 173–5, 180, 182 auto-commentary 178–9 Dialogi spirituali 175 Rime 177 Rime cristiane 176–7 Corso, Rinaldo, commentary on Colonna’s Rime 155–70 Council of Trent x, 47, 51, 155

Flaminio, Marcantonio 3, 42, 50, 52–3, 56, 63, 135–6; see also ‘Meditatione fatta da un divotissimo huomo’ Florentine Academy 171, 173 Fontanino, Benedetto, see Mantova, Benedetto da Fracastoro, Girolamo 125 France, Renée de 106, 122, 169 Fregoso, Cesare 125 Furey, Constance 63–4, 163

Danaë, myth of 88 Dante Alighieri 2, 59, 84–5, 86, 139, 159 D’Avalos, Alfonso 21, 25, 176 D’Avalos, Costanza (Colonna’s aunt) 20, 24, 39, 152–3 D’Avalos, Costanza (Piccolomini, Colonna’s cousin), letters to 133, 146–53 D’Avalos, Francesco Ferrante 9, 19, 23, 101, 107, 153, 167 Dolce, Ludovico, edition of Colonna’s Rime (1552) 35

Imitatio xi, 3, 10–11 Index of Prohibited Books (1549) 1, 51 Inquisition, Roman 42, 43, 49, 69, 73, 146, 169 Ischia, island of 9, 18, 20, 24, 39–40, 42, 96, 152, 153

ecclesia viterbiensis xii, 47; see also spirituali (Spirituals) empathic meditation 138–9; see also Buonaventure, Saint Epistola (Colonna) 21–2, 23, 111 Erasmus, Desiderius, Enchiridion 163 Ferrara, Court of 106–7, 169

Gambara, Veronica 31, 33, 156, 158, 160, 161–3, 167, 184 Giberti, Giovanni Matteo 50 gifts, religious significance of 12, 67–73, 79–80 Giolito, Gabriele 145 Giovio, Paolo 26, 95, 104 Gualteruzzi, Carlo 104, 106, 135 Holanda, Francisco de 29, 97

Jesuits 188–9 Justification by faith alone, see sola fide lay sermons 47, 56–63, 137 Leo X (pope) 122 letters to Costanza (Colonna) 133, 146–53 libro del cortegiano, Il (Castiglione) 7, 105 Luther, Martin 8, 40, 41, 43, 53, 54, 73, 156 Mantova, Benedetto da 50; see also Beneficio di Cristo

INDEX

Manuzio, Paolo 42 Marchesa di Pescara, see Colonna, Vittoria Marchese di Pescara, see D’Avalos, Francesco Ferrante Marguerite de Navarre 41, 125–6, 130–131, 172 Colonna’s manuscript for 12, 89, 93, 101, 104–20, 133–4, 136, 145 friendship with Colonna 101–4, 162 works by ‘Comedie des Innocents’ 127 ‘Comedie du Desert’ 127–9 Triomphe de l’Agneau 120–121 Martelli, Nicolò 171–4 Mary Magdalene, Saint 134, 140, 144, 148, 149, 152, 153, 166 Mary, Virgin 6, 78, 104, 125, 126, 152–3, 183, 187, 188, 191 in Colonna’s poetry 88–9, 95, 109–14, 116–20 in Colonna’s prose works 12, 133–45, 146–51, 153–4, 175 in Marguerite de Navarre’s writings 127–30 Matthew, Saint, gospel of 57, 62, 85, 96, 115, 127, 165, 167 Mayer, Thomas xii, 2–3, 50 ‘Meditatione fatta da un divotissimo huomo’ [Flaminio] 56–65 Meditationes vitae Christi [pseudoBuonaventure] 57, 138; see also Buonaventure, Saint; empathic meditation Michelangelo, see Buonarroti, Michelangelo Montefeltro, Agnese da 19 Montmorency, Anne de 106 Morata, Olimpia 169 Morone, Giovanni 48

217

Nagel, Alexander 71, 85, 135, 139 Naples and reform 39–46 neo-Platonism and reform 7–10, 40, 46 Nicodemism 164 Ochino, Bernardino 42, 45–6, 47, 51, 83, 93, 97, 134–5, 139, 142, 145, 147, 166–7, 169, 172, 174–5 O’Malley, John 52–3 Oratione della Marchesa di Pescara sopra l’Ave Maria (Colonna) 142–5 Orlando furioso (Ariosto) 25–6, 164 Ossola, Carlo 39 Paul, Saint, gospel of 70, 71, 148, 149, 156, 168 Paul III (pope) 3, 45, 96–7 Petrarch, Francesco xi, 6–7, 10, 15–16, 25, 26, 59, 61, 73, 81, 98, 99, 109, 156, 160, 186–7 Pianto sopra la passione di Cristo (Colonna) 12, 119, 127, 134–42, 145–7, 183, 188 Piccolomini, Alessandro 156 Pole, Reginald xii, 2–3, 39, 47–9, 50, 52, 56, 73, 79, 93, 97, 121, 135 in Colonna’s sonnets 45, 94–5, 113–4 correspondence with Colonna 68–71, 72 Politi, Ambrogio Catarino 51–2 predestination 40, 49, 55, 56, 89; see also Calvin, Jean Quondam, Amedeo 179, 182–3 reform, periodisation of xii, 13, 169, 192 Regensburg, Diet of 50, 53 Rime (Bembo) 31, 81, 108, 161, 191 Rime (Colonna) 26, 30–6, 81, 155–7, 163–70

218

VITTORIA COLONNA

Rime sparse, see Petrarch, Francesco Ruscelli, Girolamo 157–9, 163, 167–8, 169

Terracina, Laura 31 Trent, Council of x, 47, 51, 155 Ursula, Saint 115

Sack of Rome 19, 123 Sacrati, Alberto 106 Salvation by faith alone, see sola fide San Silvestro, Convent of 23, 28, 29, 37, 97 Sannazaro, Jacopo 20, 40, 41–2, 65, 81 Santa Caterina, Convent of 47 Society of Jesus, see Jesuits sola fide 7, 40, 43, 46, 48–9, 53, 70, 79, 89, 90, 97, 100, 101, 129, 145, 168 sonnet, properties of 4–6 spirituali (Spirituals) xii, 2, 3, 11, 12, 39, 47–9, 56, 63–4, 68, 71, 73, 100, 133, 137; see also ecclesia viterbiensis

Valdés, Juan de 39, 42–7, 50, 53, 55, 60, 65, 83, 86, 90, 93, 121, 147 Valgrisi, Vincenzo, edition of Colonna’s Rime (1546) 33–5, 83, 93 Valla, Lorenzo 40–41 Varchi, Benedetto 56, 182 Vasari, Giorgio 78, 184 Vergerio, Pier Paolo (the younger) 1, 42, 56, 103, 121–2 Vermigli, Pietro 42, 51, 97 Virgin Mary, see Mary, Virgin Voragine, Jacobus de, Golden Legend 137