Colonna family

“ Fra Colonna cannot be corrected; his family is all-powerful in Rome, Pray we the saints he blasphemes to enlighten him, 'Twill not be the first time they have returned good for evil, Meantime thou art forbidden to consort with him, From this day go alone through the city! Confess and absolve sinners! exorcise demons! comfort the sick! terrify the impenitent! preach wherever men are gathered and occasion serves! and hold no converse with the Fra Colonna!”
Clement bowed his head.
Then the prior, at Jerome's request, had the young friar watched. ”

“ The great house of Colonna took its name from the town and castle of Columna about the year 1156; and about the same time the noble family of Ursini derived its name from an ancestor nicknamed Ursus, or Orso, on account of his ferocity. Other noble families adopted names from the nickname given to an ancestor, as the illustrious family of Malaspina (the bad thorn) of Pavia, and the family of Malatesta (the bad head) . The family of Frangipani, so formidable to the Popes, took that name in the twelfth century. The Rangones of Rome took their name from an estate of theirs in Germany. ”

“ It is the women who interest us most, for the men of the race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain great crisis, have often shown themselves brutally cruel.
The ceilings of the Colonna palace blaze with the victory of Lepanto whose hero Marcantonio Colonna is the glory of his family; but you will find no portrait of his murdered mistress Eufrosina, or of the most famous of all the duchesses of Palliano, whose ghost might well haunt that gloomy castle. ”

“ Their goods were frequently confiscated and frequently given back, and the house was subject to many changes of fortune; during the reign of Pope Alexander VI. they were again humbled, but they always remained powerful and important, and members of the family rose to eminence as generals, prelates and statesmen in the service of the Church or other powers. ”

“ The nuisance was, the two Paolis, Giafferi and Hyacinth, had no notion whatever of making themselves kings; nor would their devoted followers have tolerated it. Yet—as sometimes happens—there was a third man, of greater descent than they, to whom at a pinch the crown might be offered, and with a far more likely chance of the Corsicans' acquiescence. This was a Count Ugo Colonna, a middle-aged man, descended from the oldest nobility of the island, and head of his family, which might more properly be called a clan ”

“ The family of Colonna was the most illustrious of Rome: they had fallen under the displeasure, and incurred the interdict, of pope Boniface VIII. who confiscated their estates and drove them into exile. The head of the family was Stefano, a man of heroic and magnanimous mind. He wandered for many years a banished man in France and Germany, and a {Pg 66} price was set on his head. On one occasion, a band of armed men, desirous of earning the ill reward attendant on delivering him up to his enemies, seized on him, and asked his name, under the belief that he would fear to acknowledge himself. ”

“ It is Colonna,--it is she
Who lived and loved so long ago.
Pescara's beautiful young wife,
The type of perfect womanhood,
Whose life was love, the life of life,
That time and change and death withstood. ”

“ Rapidly advancing, he seized the bridle of his horse, and thus addressed him:—“Barozzo! [Pg 93] the measure of thy crimes is full, and retribution is at hand! Colonna the painter is no more, but the son of Montalto has escaped thy dagger, and demands atonement for his father’s blood. Dismount, assassin! and defend thy worthless life!”
The deep and startling grandeur of Colonna’s voice, and the implacable hostility which flashed from his fierce eyeballs, shook the firm sinews of the guilty governor, and again his swarthy lineaments were blanched with terror. ”

“ Yet when I reflect on my cousin the colonel, and my own action in the matter, I am ready with gratitude to accept Mrs. Wesley's estimate of me, for if I am not good, I am not anything. Perhaps it is an instance of my lack of brilliancy that I am willing to relate certain facts which strongly tend to substantiate this. My purpose, however, is not to prove either my goodness or my dulness, but to leave some record, even if slight and imperfect, of my only relative. When a family is reduced like ours to a single relative, it is well to make the most of him. ”

“ Soon, however, his noble features brightened with a fervent look of blended filial piety and exultation. He wiped his reeking blade upon the remnants of Barozzo’s mantle, and we retraced our steps. Colonna ascended a sheep-path, and crossed the mountain to regain his boat, while I returned by a circuitous road to the villa, leaving the governor of Candia and his retinue to the vultures of the Apennine, which, with unerring ken, had espied the dead Greeks, and were already sailing in wide eddies high above the scene of blood. ”

“ For in truth Marino, little calculated, as it will be supposed, such a stronghold of the ever turbulent Colonna was at any time to afford the means and opportunity for intellectual culture, became shortly after the period of Vittoria's betrothal to the heir of the D'Avalos, wholly unfit to offer her even a safe home. Whether it continued to be the residence of Agnes, while her husband Fabrizio was fighting in Naples, and her daughter was under the care of the Duchessa di Francavilla in Ischia, has not been recorded. ”

“ Scarcely had the Colonna gone when the prince told his wife that she would accompany him into the country the next day. She protested, saying that this sudden order was only a caprice and that her honour would not allow of her obeying him. The prince, however, was very determined, and she would have been obliged to go if the cardinal had not come in and heard the story from the mouth of the innocent princess. He shewed the husband that it was to his own interests to go into the country by himself, and to let his wife remain in Rome. ”

“ MARQUIS. Two noble houses in Mirandola, Weary of jealousies and deadly feuds, Transmitted down from Guelphs and Ghibellines, Through centuries of hate, from sire to son, Resolved to ratify a lasting peace By the sweet ministry of nuptial ties. Fernando, nephew of the great Pietro, And fair Matilda, old Colonna's child, Were chosen to cement this holy bond. Nature had never for each other formed Two fairer hearts. And never had the world Approved a wiser or a happier choice. ”

“ I loved her without remembering that she was, of all aristocrats, the noblest, of all the affluent, the most affluent and that I was only Francesco Colonna, the unknown pupil of Bellini, and that all my efforts to be happy in my work would only ever lead me to the acquisition of a sterile reputation. Such is the effect of that passion that dazzles, that blinds, that kills. ”

“ It is chiefly through her close connexion with the great literary movement of the Italian Renaissance and her intimacy with its leading artists and writers, rather than through her own reputation as a poetess, that the name of Vittoria Colonna herself is remembered outside the borders of Italy. With her wealth, her culture, her virtue and her unique position in the world of rank and of letters, it is nothing marvellous that so fortunate and gifted a mortal should have become the idol of the leading persons of her day. ”

“ A bloody froth now gathered round his lips, which worked with agony and rage; the life-blood ebbed apace, and soon the trunk and limbs of the colossal chieftain were stiffened in death. But even in death the dominant passions of his soul were strongly written in his livid features. His glazed and sunken eyes still glared with fiend-like malice on his conqueror, and every lineament was inwrought with reckless and insatiable ferocity.
Colonna gazed a while in solemn and impressive silence upon the foe he had destroyed. ”

“ This I know well, that the lady Vittoria Colonna, his wife, a woman of the highest character, and abounding in all the virtues which can adorn her sex, had no sooner heard of the intrigue on foot, than, wholly untempted by the brilliant hope hung out to her, she with infinite sorrow and anxiety wrote most warmly to her husband, urging him to bethink him of his hitherto unstained character, and to weigh well what he was about, assuring him that as far as she was concerned, she had no wish to be the wife of a king, but only of a loyal and upright man. ”

“ Guido Colonna, in the consciousness that the woman belongs to him, that no man may even look, with desire, upon her dazzling beauty, resents this mortal insult. He is willing that all the other women should face danger, that the little children of pisa should be exposed to hunger and destruction, rather than that he give up his possession. ”

“ Italy produced many learned and gifted women, among whom perhaps none was more celebrated than Victoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara. She was passionately fond of poetry, and being early left to mourn the loss of a husband dearly beloved, she spent the remainder of her life amid the quiet pursuits of literature. ”

“ Her life presents the most forcible illustration of the overruling power on human life and destiny.
It was the political change of faith on the part of Fabrizio Colonna that initiated an unforeseen and undreamed-of drama of life for his infant daughter, the first act of which included the command of the King of Naples that the little Vittoria should be betrothed to Francesco d’Avalos, the son of Alphonso, Marchese di Pescara, of Ischia, one of the nobles who stood nearest to the king in those troubled days. ”

“ Leo Colonna bore the name of this uncle, his father's oldest brother, who was fond of art, and who was never married. He had always been attached to Leo, his nephew, and in his will Leo was made his sole heir. Great was Leo's surprise to learn that he was now not only the owner of a fine palace southeast of Rome, but of large possessions in Rome, Sicily, and South America. ”

“ His scheme is to get Colonna, of his own free will, to murder his sister's lover and the king. With this view he artfully persuades Vicentio, the lover, that Evadnê (the sister of Colonna) is the king's wanton. Vicentio indignantly discards Evadnê, is challanged to fight by Colonna, and is supposed to be killed. Colonna, to revenge his wrongs on the king, invites him to a banquet with intent to murder him, when the whole scheme of villainy is exposed: Ludovico is slain, and Vicentio marries Evadnê.—Shiel, Evadne, or the Statue (1820) . ”

“ Text-fig. 46. “Apocynum” [Colonna, Phytobasanos, 1592] .
Much more famous than Durante was Fabio Colonna, or, as he is more generally called, Fabius Columna (Plate IX) , who was born at Naples in 1567. His father was a well-known littérateur. Fabio Colonna’s profession was 87-88that of law, but he was also well acquainted with languages, music, mathematics and optics. He tells us in the preface to his principal work that his interest in plants was aroused by his difficulty in obtaining a remedy for epilepsy, a disease from which he suffered. ”

“ She and her husband lived at the castle of Marino in the Alban mountains, where, in 1490, she bore him Vittoria Colonna, the future ornament of her house. Elisabetta found this beautiful child already betrothed to Ferrante d'Avalos, son of Marquis Alfonso of Pescara; Ferdinand II of Naples having brought about the betrothal of the two children as early as 1495 for the purpose of winning over the Colonna, the retainers of the house of Aragon.
The Duchess of Urbino actually went to Rome for the purpose of protecting her noble kinswoman, whom she kept incognito. She remained there until Easter. ”

“ I had no relations that I knew of; there was a phenomenal old aunt who had inherited the acres and respectability of the Etchingham Grangers, but she was not the kind of person to worship a novelist. I, the poor last of the family, was without the pale, simply because I, too, was a novelist. I explained these things to Callan and he commented on them, found it strange how small or how large, I forget which, the world was. Since his own apotheosis shoals of Callans had claimed relationship. ”

“ They were off to Paris the next day. As it happened, M. Colonne and his daughter preceded Andrè and Julienne at the house of the somnambule. M. Colonne was a man of warm and quick temperament.
"My name is Colonne," said he abruptly, the moment he stood before the somnambule and her father; "this is my daughter Marie. We have made a journey from St. Cloud purposely to inform you that your clairvoyance is defective, and to warn you that, not being overskilled in the profession you now follow, you had better choose another—a more honest and safe one ”

“ Colonna did justice to his illustrious name; Requesens showed himself a worthy lieutenant of the valiant prince Don John; the prince of Parma proved that the blood of Charles V ran in his veins; the wounds he received did not check Urbino; Figueroa, Zapata, Carillo, every captain of the flag-ship worked like men well used to battle, setting little value on their lives, when the flag-ship was hard pressed, because Ali and Pertev Pasha also fought like heroes with their janissaries. ”

“ We will see whether the friendship of the great house of the Colonna will outweigh the frantic support of the rabble’s puppet.—This to Palestrina,—the rock is inaccessible!—This to John di Vico, he may be relied upon, traitor though he be!—This to Naples; the Colonna will disown the Tribune’s ambassador, if he throw not up the trust and hasten hither, not a lover but a soldier!—and may this find Walter de Montreal! ”