Renaissance Woman_The Life of Vittoria Colonna

by Ramie Targoff

  Among the odd collection of documents the book contained—it was, as the title promised, truly miscellaneous—Pagano found a file of papers grouped together that still bore the marks of having been folded, as if to fit into a packet or envelope for delivery. The nearly blank page preceding the documents bore the title, written in a sixteenth-century hand, “Quinternus literrarum quondam Illustrissimae Dominae Marchionissae Piscariae et aliarum,” or “Five-sheet quire of former letters of the Most Illustrious Marchesa of Pescara, and others.” Pagano had stumbled upon an inquisitorial file for Vittoria.

  To discover a collection of documents that has been overlooked for centuries, filled with evidence of a historical event that otherwise left no traces, is one of the most thrilling experiences a scholar can have. But Vittoria was not Pagano’s subject—he was busy at work on the Galileo trial, and also became more interested in another file in the Miscelanea volume, involving a fascinating episode of heresy in the northern city of Brescia. He therefore put the Vittoria discovery aside. He might never, in fact, have returned to it had he not had a conversation several months later with a professor of Italian literature named Concetta Ranieri who was working on an edition of Vittoria’s letters. The two scholars were discussing some of the challenges they were each facing in conducting their research in the Vatican’s Secret Archive when Pagano realized some of the letters Ranieri was looking for were in the Quinternus file. After further discussion, the two scholars submitted a formal request to the Congregation to study the documents together. In October 1984, the secretary of the Congregation granted the necessary permissions, and Pagano and Ranieri began the research that would result in their publication of the entire Quinternus with the Vatican Archive press in 1989.

  The original materials in the Quinternus cover fifty-two pages of writing—there are also ten blank pages between documents, for a total of sixty-two pages—and consist of the following:

  •  Six letters from Vittoria to Pole (1541 to 1546)

  •  The letter from Vittoria to Marguerite de Navarre, in which she describes her spiritual well-being (and also talks about Pole’s delegation to Trent) (1545)

  •  The letter from Marguerite de Navarre to Georges d’Armagnac in which she recommends that d’Armagnac visit Vittoria (1545)

  •  The letter from Marguerite to Vittoria in which she expresses her joy in learning that contrary to rumor, Vittoria has not died (1545)

  •  A prose meditation on Christ’s crucifixion, mistakenly attributed to Vittoria

  •  A letter from Ferrante d’Avalos, Vittoria’s husband, to the Holy Roman Emperor, written on the day of the Battle of Pavia in 1525 (this letter had no bearing on the rest of the file, and must have been included only due to its relationship to Vittoria)

  •  Several pages of notes from an inquisitorial censor detailing the heretical beliefs found within these documents, including page and line references

  There is no indication of when the file was assembled. Although the date “1547” was scribbled just below the title of the collection, this was almost certainly not when the documents were compiled, but referred instead, as Pagano has argued, to the year of Vittoria’s death. It is also clear that the materials were not all collected at the same time: the letters and the meditation were gathered first, and the censor’s notes were added at a later date, inserted between the last letter to Pole and the first of Marguerite’s. These notes were written on smaller-sized paper than the other letters, and in a heavy ink that bled through to both sides of each sheet, making them almost impossible to decipher.

  There had long been rumors that Vittoria was put on trial by the Inquisition after her death. But until Pagano opened the Miscelanea volume in 1983, no evidence of such an event, either realized or merely planned, had ever surfaced. The rumors had largely arisen in connection to Vittoria’s close relationship to Pole, who had become a very problematic figure in the Roman church in the years following Vittoria’s death, and was ultimately regarded as one of the most dangerous heretics inside the papal curia. Before Pole fell permanently out of favor in Rome, however, he came close to enjoying his greatest success. In the papal conclave that elected Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte (Julius III) in February 1550, Pole was actually considered the favored candidate: the odds set by bankers for his election were at 95 percent, and his pontifical garments had already been made when he lost the election by a mere two votes. Happily for Pole, Julius did not hold a grudge, or at least he saw how useful the English cardinal could be: in 1553, he appointed Pole legate for England’s reconciliation to the church after Henry VIII’s fervently Catholic daughter Mary Tudor became queen.

  Before Julius allowed Pole to return to England, he made two demands: first, that he negotiate a full restoration of the Church of England’s obedience to Rome; and second, that he ensure all of the monastic properties Henry had seized when he dissolved the monasteries were returned to the mother church. Pole was also under great pressure from Rome to support Mary’s so-called Spanish match—her marriage in 1554 to Philip of Spain, the son of Charles V—which he had opposed for reasons never specified, but most likely because of the widespread fear on the part of the English that the Spanish would take over their country (however alienated Pole may have seemed at times from his country, he was at heart an English patriot).

  In 1554, Pole publicly expressed his approval of Mary’s marriage, and also settled the final terms of English “obedience” to the pope. (The restoration of the monasteries was never fully resolved to the pope’s satisfaction, although Mary did return several of them at her own expense.) With this behind him, Pole set out for England, and crossed from Calais to Dover on November 20. Ten days later, he was led by six knights of the Garter from Lambeth to Westminster Palace in order officially to reconcile England to the papacy. From this point on, he emerged as the de facto religious leader in the renewed Catholic nation, and in December 1555, he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Despite this sudden rise to great prominence in England, Pole’s relations with Rome took a very bad turn in 1557, during the papacy of his longtime enemy Carafa, who became Paul IV in 1555. Paul began his pursuit of Pole by arresting key members of the Viterbo circle, all of whom were questioned specifically about Pole’s beliefs; he then ordered the inquisitors to draw up formal charges against the English cardinal, which consisted of eighteen separate counts of heresy. Pole spent the next few years trying to defend himself on multiple fronts, and somehow managed to ward off arrest or deportation to Rome, when he became very ill. He died at Lambeth Castle in the company of Priuli on November 17, 1558—the very same day, as fate would have it, that Queen Mary herself passed away. With the crowning of Elizabeth I in 1559, the Roman church saw England resume its status as a nation of Protestants.

  Given Pole’s position as one of the most sought-after heretics in Rome, the simplest explanation for Vittoria’s file in the Holy Office is that the inquisitors were investigating her as a way of gathering information about him. Evidence supporting this account can be found in the trial records of two members of Pole’s inner circle in Viterbo—Morone and Carnesecchi—who were also, as we have seen, close to Vittoria. The prosecution of Morone, who had been named a cardinal in 1542, lasted from 1557 to 1559. There were twenty-one charges of heresy leveled against him, and he was formally questioned in ten separate sessions while detained as a prisoner in Castel Sant’Angelo. The inquisitors were interested not only in Morone’s heretical beliefs, but also in those of the others around him, including Vittoria. The evidence they had compiled against her came from letters she and Morone had exchanged, twelve of which were appended to the trial documents. Here is a summary of the key charges, as outlined in the Compendium of Morone’s interrogations written up after the proceedings had ended:

  •  The Marchesa of Pescara, spiritual daughter and disciple of Cardinal Pole, accomplice of him and other heretics, [was] drenched in false doctrine through the works of the Ca
rdinal and for this reason very attached to him.

  •  She has declared that she adhered to the opinion expressed in the text of Contarini according to which justification is by means of faith alone, which she learned from Pole.

  •  The Marchesa was to a very great degree influenced by false doctrines and close to Cardinal Pole … She was possibly also influenced by the ideas of Fra Bernardino Ochino.

  •  The nuns of the convents in which she has stayed in Rome, Florence, and Viterbo can testify against her.

  In addition to pursuing Vittoria’s role as a conduit to Pole—she was accused of being his “spiritual daughter” (not, in this case, his mother)—the inquisitors were also concerned that she had specifically corrupted the nuns in Viterbo. This accusation was based on a comment she made in the letter to Morone from 1543 in which she reassured him that the nuns were praying for Pole’s and Morone’s success at Trent. Although the Compendium suggested that the nuns might be called upon to testify against her, there is no evidence this was ever pursued.

  Following Paul IV’s death in 1559, Morone was set free. He went on to resume his very distinguished career in the church, and in 1563 became president of the Council of Trent, where he brought the last session to a successful end. But his trial by no means settled the record of either Pole or Vittoria. Seven years later, Carnesecchi was brought to trial, for the third time. He was first prosecuted in 1546 but released thanks to the intervention of both Paul III and Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, who was Carnesecchi’s lifelong friend and patron. He was tried for a second time in 1559, which resulted in his being condemned to death, but with the help once again of Cosimo I, he managed to escape to Venice. Carnesecchi stayed in Venice under protection until Paul IV’s death, after which his sentence was suspended. At this point he enjoyed some years of reprieve.

  What led to Carnesecchi’s final arrest was the death in 1566 of Giulia Gonzaga. Giulia, who, as we have seen, was Valdés’s devotee and an engaged member of the Italian reform movement, had been a close friend of Carnesecchi’s for decades; in the extensive correspondence between the two of them confiscated by the Holy Office, the inquisitors found substantial evidence to be used against him. Over a period of thirteen months, Carnesecchi was interrogated in 119 sessions, twice under torture. The outcome in this case was as horrible as could be. In September 1567 at the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, where his enemy Paul IV lay buried in the ornate Carafa chapel surrounded by frescoes of Filippino Lippi, Carnesecchi was sentenced to death. Ten days later, he was beheaded and burned at the stake in Piazza di Ponte next to Castel Sant’Angelo; the bridge in front of the castle, now famous for its magnificent angels sculpted by Bernini in the late seventeenth century, was used to display the bodies executed in the piazza. According to the letter sent to Cosimo I from one of his agents who was present at the execution, Carnesecchi walked up to the block with great decorum and dignity, wearing a tight-fitting white tunic and a pair of new gloves; he carried a white handkerchief in his hand.

  During Carnesecchi’s interrogations, which took place on and off from July 1566 to August 1567, he was asked about Vittoria on several occasions. The inquisitors wanted to know how the two of them had met; whether he knew what she and Pole discussed; whether she ever affirmed her beliefs in justification by faith and predestination; what she meant when she wrote to Giulia Gonzaga that Pole had saved her from her “superstition”; whether she was reading the works of Luther, Bucer, Melancthon, or Calvin; and why she counseled Pole to leave Trent before the final discussions on justification.

  At first, Carnesecchi avoided answering the questions directly. He had not heard Vittoria’s conversations with Pole—they always met alone. He did not know what books she was reading, but Pole always discouraged her from being too curious, and advised her to remain within the boundaries “appropriate to her sex and to her humility and modesty.” He knew she overdid her fasting, but had no idea what she meant by her “superstition.” A month or so after giving this testimony, however, he seems to have changed his mind on two different fronts. Perhaps he decided it was not worth protecting Vittoria to this degree, given the torture he was enduring—she was, after all, long dead—and that his treatment might improve if he offered at least a little evidence against her.

  The first incriminating testimony Carnesecchi provided was related to the question of Vittoria’s familiarity with Protestant texts. He claimed to have suddenly recalled a conversation in which she told him how much she admired a particular commentary on the Psalms. The commentary turned out to be Luther’s. Vittoria did not know, he hastened to add, who the author was when she praised the text. But the sheer fact that Luther’s words resonated so powerfully with her—Carnesecchi reported her having said that she had never taken such delight in a contemporary piece of writing—confirmed the inquisitors’ worst suspicions.

  The second piece of evidence Carnesecchi gave against Vittoria involved her theological beliefs. After initially denying that he knew anything about her Protestant leanings, Carnesecchi recommended that the inquisitors read her spiritual sonnets. There, he offered, they would find clear evidence of her belief in the Lutheran idea of predestination. Outside of the French constable Anne de Montmorency’s report to Francis I some twenty-five years earlier that Vittoria’s poems contained “many things that ran counter to the faith of Jesus Christ,” this was the only moment on record in which her poetry was categorized as heretical. Indeed, the many printed volumes of the Rime circulated freely throughout the period of the Council of Trent: not only were they never placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, but two further editions of the collected poems also appeared in 1559 and 1560, respectively. It is possible that Carnesecchi thought it unlikely that the Holy Office would embark on a literary analysis of more than one hundred spiritual sonnets, or maybe he imagined such an endeavor would be useful in slowing down his own prosecution. Whatever his reasons for raising the issue, it is fascinating that Carnesecchi, who almost certainly knew Vittoria’s poems well, imagined them to contain the most damning evidence of her Protestantism.

  When it came time to investigate Vittoria directly, however, the sonnets played no role in the file drawn up against her. Whether the censor who prepared the Quinternus was familiar with Carnesecchi’s testimony is unclear, but Pagano speculated that the notes were in fact compiled some years following Carnesecchi’s execution—he suggested a date after the papacy of Pope Pius V, who died in 1572. Pagano’s reasons for so late a date turned on the nature of the censor’s interests. Unlike the inquisitors during the Morone and Carnesecchi trials, who were largely asking about Vittoria as a means of gathering evidence against Pole and the others in the Viterbo circle, the inquisitor combing through Vittoria’s letters was focused strictly on the theological errors she herself had committed.

  What interested the censor above all was Vittoria’s confidence in her salvation. From his perspective, only someone who believed she was among the elect—and thus believed in predestination—could be so entirely unconcerned about her heavenly prospects. Even a confident Catholic would continue to perform good works until the bitter end, and provide for prayers or Masses to be said on behalf of her soul after death. And yet, according to the inquisitor’s assessment, Vittoria revealed no such plans in any of her letters, nor did she reveal any anxiety. When she wrote to Pole about her gratitude to God for placing her “at your right hand, like a shoot of that true vine, which alone is sweet-smelling and dear,” the inquisitor commented: “it seems that here Vittoria affirms the confirmation and certainty of grace.” Or when she affirmed to Pole that she would “go to Christ completely assured and consoled, and I seem to see Your Most Reverend Lordship together with that divine goodness, entirely one with his most righteous will,” he remarked: “Here it seems that Vittoria errs, mistaking that we can get close to God simply through faith … It seems that she advances the same argument as before, regarding the confirmation and certainty of grace.”
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  Other objections the inquisitor raised similarly fit the Lutheran pattern. Vittoria declared, for example, that she was an infinite sinner, and deserved very little from Christ: “Whatever bitterness Christ might give me,” she wrote to Pole, “such bitterness nonetheless seems altogether sweet, given my infinite lack of worth and his infinite merit.” To this, the censor demurred: “It seems that here [Vittoria] denies her own merits and affirms only her own errors” (in other words, she completely ignored the value of human works). Or in the letter to Marguerite of Navarre in which she declared that when she spoke with Pole and his company in Viterbo, she felt the true health of her spirit despite the infirmity of her flesh, the censor found fault with her “conviction of the rightness of her spiritual path.”

  There is no discussion in the Quinternus of what the Holy Office intended to do with the evidence amassed against Vittoria. Given that she had been dead for several decades, the most likely answer is that the inquisitors were considering a damnatio memoriae, the damning of Vittoria’s name. Damnatio memoriae was a traditional practice in ancient Rome, where it usually took the form of defacing stone or wax inscriptions that bore the name of the condemned, and thereby effectively erasing the visible traces of his or her life. Given the enormous change in attitudes about the afterlife between the ancient world and the Renaissance—ancient Romans did not generally believe in a meaningful afterlife, and therefore the reputation they left behind on earth was what mattered—it is puzzling that the tradition of damnatio memoriae persisted in a Christian world focused on heavenly judgment. But the Catholic Church did not limit its jurisdiction to the living. Just as charitable gifts or Masses sung on behalf of the dead were considered to shorten the deceased’s term in purgatory, so the damning of someone’s memory was considered to influence where he or she ended up for eternity.