VITTORIA COLONNA
AUTHENTICITY of the
POETESS of RENAISSANCE HUMANISM
and of REFORMED THEOLOGY
RIME SPIRITUALI

Michelangelo: Vittoria Colonna as a young widow (1525)
The author thanks the British Museum London, as Trustee for the rendition of the drawing (written licence!)

 

Understanding zeitgeist intuitively
Creating the Spiritual creative Sonnet
as the Commandment of the Hour
Secret of the Publicist Success of her
Rime Spirituali

Vittoria Colonna scored greater success with her Rime Spirituali than with her Rime Amorose. Intuitively, she understood that the Reformed Theologians she befriended internalized faith, which demanded lyrical transfer. Vittoria Colonna was aware of the Petrarchan Sonnet as the suitable literary form for a lyrical transfer of religious feelings, more so, because, poetising amorous poetry, she had already cultivated the sonnet as poetical form for refined feelings. However, poetising the internalization of faith by Reformed theologians in antinomic contrast to the Hardened Dogmatism of the Official Church, does not offer a satisfactory explanation for the sensational success of her Rime Spirituali, because the Reformed Theologians distributed their program il Beneficio di Cristo as pamphlet in mass circulation. Therefore, the themes: Sola Fide and Theologia Crucis were no novelties, although Vittoria Colonna presented them innovatively in sonnet form. Furthermore Bernardino Occhino, the charismatic preacher. imparted both doctrines to hosts of enthusiastic Christians in overcrowded churches in Florence, Venice, Rome, Siena. Probably, the success of her spiritual poetry was due to another, but elusive phenomenon rooted in Renaissance Humanism rather than in Reformed Theology, to which the poetess responded sensitively. Vittoria Colonna developed a fine instinct for the inner drive of the Renaissance Individual to Religious Self-Definition demanded for herself. On the one hand, the poetess thematized the Doctrines of Reformed Theology she endeavoured to internalize in her Rime Spirituali. On the other hand, seeing herself as a Self-Defined Individual according to Renaissance Individualism, she, daringly, gave utterance to her heretical female resistance to the Official Church as well as to Reformed Theology. Never did she compose pious prayers nor songs. Never did she approach God on her knees. Vittoria confronted HIM as an intellectual, self-defined, Female Humanist. She poetised her personal female resistance to theological male doctrines in sonnets, a suitable poetical form for dialectic content (two quatrains, two tercets) 

VITTORIA COLONNA
Religious Female Authenticity
Subjective Female Spirituality
Creative heretical Theology

Vittoria Colonna, far from being a faithful alumna, who abandoned herself to the Leading Reform Theologians, also profiled herself as a self-reliant interpreter of their Doctrine of Salvation. She dared to scrutinize the core issues of male-created Reformed Theology and complemented them creatively from her female-authentic point of view. The Spanish Mystic Juan de Valdès , who exerted shaping influence on the so-called Ecclesia Viterbiensis, an exclusive religious circle of so-called Spirituali under the intellectual and personal leadership of Reginald Pole with Vittoria Colonna as the only female member, restricted Inner Faith as a Divine Gift of grace to Chosen Souls, plunging Vittoria Colonna into religious crises, because she experienced absence of God in her soul much more frequently than presence of the Holy Ghost, fervently longed for by the Poetess as the fountain of inspiration of her spiritual poetry. Presumably, the sincerity of the poetess, who revealed the painful absence of the Holy Spirit in her soul, may have added to her unprecedented success as a female poet during her lifetime, because she struck a responsive chord to other sensitive souls with similar religious problems.
The Petrarchan Sonnet, owing to its inherent dialectical structure, offers the poet the adequate literary form for giving utterance to religious ambivalences. In high spirits, she affirmed the doctrines of reformed theology and the mysticism of Valdés and the Spirituali from the bottom of her heart. In depressive moods she was overcome by doubts. Then, faith appeared to her as a mere makeshift for lack of knowledge withheld to humanity by God.
While the Reformed Theologians regarded Inner Faith as the absolute fundament of Christian Life, Vittoria Colonna, as an educated Humanist, compared insecure faith to absolute knowledge, which dispelled any doubts. Despite her basically faithful attitude, she also admitted to her scepticism and pleased her like-minded intellectual male readership. The Humanist Poetess took extreme risks. She even dared to give utterance to her aversion to sinister Theologia Crucis in her Rime Spirituali and to compensate the crucified Godson with a brighter image of God. The creative Theologian and Humanist complemented the ignominiously crucified Son of God with the glorious, painless Greek God Apollo in his divine elevation above human misery. “Be my Apollo,” she calls out to Jesus Christ in a sonnet.
Vittoria Colonna, the Proud Aristocrat, Daughter and Wife of victorious warriors, made no pretence of her reluctance against the Godson dying disgracefully on the cross like a masochist without resistance and self-defence The poetess even struck a mocking tone: ”I only see you tormented, from all sides insulted, and heavily hanging down from three nails.” Vittoria sowed heretic seeds that fell on fertile soil. Michelangelo drew the Crucified for Vittoria Colonna with the muscular body of a Greek God. And Vittoria triumphed:” Never have I seen a livelier image of Christ on the cross. I have been looking at it in the light, in the mirror, and I have never seen anything amore accomplished. Jesus Christ is still alive in Michelangelo´s drawing. The artist gave the Crucified the dignity of the self-aware individual. He makes the Godson scrutinize the sense of his crucifixion. Separated from his godfather, deserted by Him, self-reliant at the moment of dying, lonely, nailed on the cross, Michelangelo’s Crucified remains the self-assured Individual of the Renaissance, who opposes his godfather. For certain, Vittoria Colonna encouraged Michelangelo to maintain the human dignity of the Crucified by making the godson refuse the acceptance of his humiliating death on the cross. Godfather, who, judged by the poetess from the point of view of a Humanist, was guilty of a crime, imposing this ignominious death on his only son, remained for Vittoria Colonna an incomprehensible God, to whom she gave a wide berth. Only once she confronted him: The Exhibition in Vienna Vittoria Colonna Muse Michelangelos(1997) made the visitors known with a drawing by Michelangelo, in which a thoughtful Madonna with Vittoria Colonna’s features, has a strangely lifeless infant Jesus, sunk in leaden deathlike sleep, on her crossed legs. Michelangelo, in his habitual hood, is staging himself as a helpless Joseph, fixating his perplexed eyes on the boy, while, Vittoria Colonna, figuring as god-mother, is holding an empty sheet of paper in her right hand, stretched out backwards towards the invisible Heavenly Father, to make him explain, why he let his and her son die on the cross. Of course, the paper remains empty.
In her meditation on Good Friday, the awe-inspiring poetess, identifying herself with Pietà, dares to instil into the godmother humanly understandable but strictly tabooed doubts about the divinity of her dead godson on her lap: “The kindness of her son was now painful for the godmother, because he humiliated himself and she had to experience the humiliated greatness of God.” In the London Exhibition of Michelangelo´s drawings (2006) a hitherto unknown drawing of Pietà turned up, visualising the ambivalent feelings Vittoria had projected into the godmother about her dead godson. Michelangelo drove a wedge between the dead godson and his mother, again embodied by Vittoria Colonna. The artist isolated the corpse of Jesus from his mother by turning her away from her son and joining Pietà with the other mourners.
The public attention aroused by such daringly scrutinizing poetry, from the pen of an intellectualized female Humanist can be measured by the fact that as early as 1540, the reputation of Vittoria Colonna as a heretic had also been spreading in France. Anne de Montmorency, Gran Connetable of France, powerful minister of the French King Francis I in August 1540, confiscated the edition of the sonnets by Vittoria Colonna asked as a gift by Marguerite d’Angouleme, the King’s sister, because the Canzoniere contained “ a lot of things against the faith in Jesus Christ

 

VITTORIA COLONNA
Theological Discourse on eye-level with the leading Reformed Theologians of Italy:
Juan de Valdés, Gasparo Contarini, Bernardino Ochino, 
Reginald Pole

Vittoria Colonna and Juan de Valdés

Her Rime Spirituali are revealing both: Enthusiastic Identification with the Italian Reformation and distinction from Reformed Theology generated by her theological authenticity. As Reformed Theology is an exclusively male creation, Vittoria Colonna’s female religious sensibility turned against the abstraction, static, and rigidity of this male theology, but only seldom led to religious contention, because theological disputes with male theologians did not befit a woman in Patriarchal Italy. Vittoria Colonna only suggested her criticism by poetical means on the meta- level of her sonnets. Yet she cherished and propagated the idea of a feminist movement within the church, under the leadership of influential Marguerite d’Angouleme, because “to my mind the role models of our own sex are more adequate for women, because they make it easier to follow their example.” (her letter to Marguerite in 1540)
Carlo Ossola points out how intensively Vittoria Colonna, in his view, “the most sensitive, faithful, and loyal interpreter of Valdés, gives utterance to his new spirituality in her sonnets. According to the Spanish Mystic, no prolonged atonement but only the feeling of repentance is necessary to make God forgive. “With short crying he washed away rather lengthy guilt, which he handed over to forgetfulness,” readsVittoria’s joyful comment. But when Valdés aimed at abolishing any punishment, because Christ had atoned for our sins on the cross, Vittoria Colonna, a feudal lady of defiant gentry, the daughter and wife of great military leaders, was immediately aware that Theologia Crucis, as presented by Valdés, glossed over the inextricable wickedness of men, which screamed after retaliation and did not deserve forgiving. Passionately, she gives vent to her holy wrath about the malicious world and rages against the corrupted church, hoping for a mercilessly punishing God of the Old Testament: “I hope, the wise, eternal lord, in his justified anger at us, will hurl his holy bolt of lightning from the agitated sky into this blind tearful winter and hit the rock, on which he founded his holy temple for the governance of the world, so that all round, on each side, the pure inner fire spreads divine flames, and I hope that, from this great bolt, those, who have no hold, will fall into the icy cold sea of their desires.”

Vittoria Colonna and Cardinal Gasparo Contarini

Intellectual brilliance of Vittoria Colonna, her female charm, but also her self-fashioning as a woman in the Roman Society (in favour of the young Capuchin Order), burgeoned in her friendship with Cardinal Gasparo Contarini. She missed him painfully after his death, and, so she said, would have missed him even more intensively, had he not made himself scarce in his lifetime due to his travels. At least in1536, Vittoria Colonna had no reason to feel hurt by Contarini’s lack of attention. Although being concerned with no less assignment than the reform of the Curia and of the Roman Catholic Church, self-willed Vittoria Colonna wrested from the Cardinal a personal letter of thirteen pages, containing a treatise about the freedom of will, demanded by Renaissance Individuals as a corollary of Renaissance Individualism. What a deference of a Cardinal, holding the second most important office in the Roman Catholic Church, towards a woman!

Contarini begins his letter as follows:
As Your Excellency entreated me, in your letters, to explain to you my opinion of the subject of free will, which is now disputed in many places, I want to oblige your will, error on my part reserved, even though I cannot answer your question in a gratifying way, because I know the matter is difficult, surpassing my weak intellectual powers by far, and  I cannot reach your sublime mind. But to satisfy you I will try to discuss the issue as well as I can do so at the moment.

And he ends his letter with a personal lecture for persistent Vittoria:
For the moment I have talked enough about this difficult matter. Perhaps I have become tedious. Obedience often makes man do more than his duty, this rather being the fault of the person, who gave the order than the fault of the dialogue partner, who obeyed, behaving in an obliging manner.”

Bernardino Ochino and Vittoria Colonna
Bernardino of Siena, the charismatic preacher of Reformed Theology,

In 1536 chosen Vice-General of the new Order of the Capuccins, which owed its papal acknowledgement to the intensive personal commitment of Vittoria Colonna, was invited as preacher by all great Italian cities. His Lent sermons in San Giovanni Mggiore at Naples were also visited by Emperor Charles V. Giovanni Guidiccione, who listened to him at Lucca, wrote sonnets in honour of “God’s messenger in the grey habit, who infixed his sermons into hard hearts and warmed up cold thinking.” In 1537, Vittoria Colonna, together with Ochino, opened a house for female Capuchins in Ferrara. On 22^nd February, 1538 she arrived at Bologna, while Ochino preached there. She betook herself to Pisa to enjoy his sermon. In the years 1536-1538, Vittoria Colonna followed Ochino to towns, where he held sermons, obviously enthralled with his charisma, which is palpable in her sonnets. Vittoria Colonna’s friendship with Ochino reached such publicity that Bembo requested the mediation of the famous preacher from her: “I have been asked by rather a number of illustrious personalities here in Venice to apply to Your Magnificence, you may have the kindness to ask your friar from Siena to hold his next sermons in the Church Santi Apostoli. Ochino is said to have borrowed his topics from Valdés However, it was his great merit to have taken Reformed Faith out of private circles to spread Sola Fide and Theologia Crucis among the broad public of Italy.

Jesus and the adulteress (Joh.7,53-8,11), Mariology and Theologia Crucis: Bones of Contention between Vittoria Colonna and Ochino:

Vittoria Colonna dedicated two prose texts about women of the New Tetament to Ochino, her “Reverendo Osservandissimo Padre Mio”:In an emphatic meditation  about the encounter of Jesus with the adulteress, Vittoria draws Ochino’s attention to Jesus damning moral double-standard to restore the dignity of the humiliated woman. While Jesus of the Gospel distributes guilt equally on the male announcers and the female victim, also requesting the adulteress. “Leave and do not sin again”, Vittoria Colonna, according to the Christology of Valdés, pleads for a milder approach of Jesus towards the woman: “With the question, where are your accusers now, Jesus intended to strengthen her self-confidence. By asking her “Where are they, he suggested that they are mere shadows and that their malicious charges do not mean anything, though they may be true. There the woman took courage. Filled with love and lively faith, she answered: “I am standing in front of you. I am throwing myself into your arms. Do with me what you like.” In her Meditation on Good Friday the poetess does not focus Christ on the Cross but Pietà, who is holding her dead godson on her lap. In contrast to Ochino,who minimized the Holy Virgin to a humble handmaid of the Lord, excluding her immediate participation in Christ’s Work of Redemption, Vittoria Colonna, after the death of the Godson, makes his mother the representative of Jesus on Earth, and at the same time, the advocate of mankind with her divine son. The Godmother maintained the faith in Jesus Christ for mankind. Vittoria Colonna concludes her meditation with an admonition to Ochino:” From the Holy Virgin, the world has received their true faith, which would have expired without her. Therefore, Venerable Father, consider whether we are not obliged to her.

Theologia Crucis

On the one hand, the poetess, inspired by Ochino, internalizes Theologia Crucis. On the other hand, Vittoria Colonna cannot help feeling repelled by the creaturely suffering of the Godson on the cross, impairing his divinity. Therefore, putting emphasis of representing the unharmed divinity of the Crucified, she makes Michelangelo draw the Crucified with the ideal body of a Greek God without the crown of thorns and stigmata of his wounds. Vittoria Colonna may also have borne in mind the divine masochism in late medieval paintings of the flagellated Christ, emphasizing in her Thank-You letter to Michelangelo: “Your drawing has nailed on the cross all other images of the Crucified I have ever seen.” What a drastic, daring pun, what vehement rejection of Christ as Man of Sorrows in Late-Medieval Art! Her Renaissance-Humanism inspires Vittoria Colonna to unite the sombre one-sidedness of Theologia Crucis with the bright, glorious, painless divinity of the radiant God Apollo: 
L’alto Signor, del cui valor congiunte / tien due varie nature in un sol subietto / prego che sia il mio Apollo e gli occhi./ e ‘l petto / mi bagni omai del suo celeste fonte.”

VITTORIA COLONNA
a docile alumna of Bernardino Ochino?

Cardinal Giovanni Morone, who befriended Vittoria Colonna, as is proved by cordial letters she wrote to him in Viterbo, was interrogated by the Inquisition about her relationship with Ochino. Morone in his statement verbally: From her utterances I learned that she befriended Friar Bernardino. But I doubt that she shared his opinions.”

While Giovanni Bardazzi, Carlo Ossola, Emidio Campi, regard Vittoria Colonna, a female personality of Renaissance Humanism, as a docile alumna of Bernardino Ochno, denying her (as a Renaissance Woman?) religious subjectivism, authenticity, independent thinking, restricting her poetising to imitating Ochino, her contemporaries, true intellectual pundits, emphasize the intellectual equality of the erudite Humanist, let alone Michelangelo, raving about her: “A Man in a Woman anzi uno Dio!” Bembo had no personal problem whatsoever with recognizing Vittoria Colonna as an equal partner in theological discourses. He assured her that a theological dispute with Ochino was as gratifying to him as a dialogue with her.

How how deep reaching is Ochino’s influence on Vittoria Colonna’s spiritual poetry?

Giovanni Bardazzi elicited a great number of coinciding topics, motifs, and formulations in the Geneva sermons of Ochino and in Vittoria Colonna’s Rime Spiritual. However, he jumps to the conclusion that the poetess had made almost “plagiaristic” use of “ Ochino’s palette.”
Instead,Vittoria Colonna corrects Bernardino Ochino.
Vedea Alto Signor

Undoubtedly, the poetess, who in the years 1536-1538, travelled to the cities, where Ochino held sermons, was deeply fascinated by the Charisma of the Star Preacher. Like Luther, Ochino looked at the people’s mouths and listened to their songs. Vedea l’Alto Signor reflects such great enthralment with the sermons of Ochino that the poetess turned away from the loftiness of Petrarchan Style. At least in this sonnet, she preferred Ochino’s choice of drastic vocabulary. Enchanted by his sound effects, she also experimented with echoing vowels. However, neither do these textual and phonetic analogies prove the intellectual nor linguistic dependence of Vittoria Colonna on the preacher, because the sophisticated structure of the sonnet, apart from dramatical demands, conditions greater differentiation than the simple boldness of the preacher’s style. One sentence discovered by Bardazzi in Ochino’s Geneva sermons, reads:” Jesus died on the cross to humiliate us.” Vittoria Colonna takes the sentence up in the last line of her corresponding sonnet but corrects it: “to teach us humility.” Vittoria never tolerated the humiliation of the son of God. In her sonnet, the poetess upstages the humiliating aspect of the crucifixion of Jesus to glorify the divine omnipotence of the Crucified. Ochino’s simple thought – “Jesus died on the cross to make us humble.” - is countered by the reinterpretation of the death on the cross from a tragedy of divine humiliation and powerlessness into a spectacle of godly almightiness by the crucified Godson’s triumphant victory over the powers of evil, drastically illustrated by the poetess in frightening images. From the proud Renaissance Princess’s point of view, people had to learn humbleness from the modesty of the Godson despite his triumph over the powers of evil than from his divine humiliation on the cross.

 

VITTORIA COLONNA
Vedea l’alto Signor

KIERKEGAARD’S EITHER - OR
and the RENAISSANCE WOMAN’S 
Lack of Theologian Profile

“For historians of the Church, attempting to decipher the religious beliefs of Vittoria Colonna, is fascinating and daunting,” Emidio Campi ironizes the beginning of his essay in A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (372-398). “Instigated by her religious and humanist zeal, Vittoria grappled with theological problems”, Campi goes on, but she never produced  an unambiguous statement about her own religious views.” Campi discovers the reason for her abstinence from a Kierkegaard-like resolute Theologian Self-Determination in personal (female?) inability. However, lack of clear profiling, swaying between contrary poles (faith and scepticism), Seeking and not Finding the Divine, remaining on the way as God Seeker in unfulfilled longing for divinity, mistaking religiousness with persevering in religious subjectivism is characteristic of the religious Renaissance Personality according to Ernst Cassirer, to whom this religious subjectivism had Augustinian roots: Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi: in interiore homine habitat veritas.” In these sentences,” concludes Cassirer, “the primacy of religious experience over all dogmatic consequences of a metaphysical doctrine of the human soul and of God is postulated. The integration of the “Individual I” into a constructive scheme of objective understanding stops now, because this mediate determination is not adequate to the Renaissance Individual’s Specific Essence which is definitely a value sui generis.” The most fascinating aspect of Vittoria Colonna as a Renaissance Individual, the religious and theologian creative vivacity of Shakespeare’s Spirited Sister, would have been lost, had she obeyed to Emidio Campy and stood firm in her faith. “Which exquisite tools of a sculptor render the image of Vittoria Colonna? Which delicate nuances of eloquence portray her mind?” These are Paolo Giovio’s introductory questions about Vittoria Colonna in his Dialoghi.” Astonishingly, Giovio refrained from characterizing Vittoria Colonna. Fascinated by her outstanding personality, he did not characterize her, keen on rendering her individuality, by setting her apart from the conventional types of female Aristocrats. In his panegyrical finale of his Dialoghi, he does not glorify her person in a panegyric, but: “her education and spirit shine in such a lucid light that they resemble those huge fires that were enkindled on the spires of the Egyptian pyramids by the pharaohs on the occasion of great celebrations of victories or at other joyful public feasts: These huge fires were blazing into such heights that they could be watched by the natives in remote regions of Africa. They were seen from the Delta of the Nile and from the straits of the sea.” Once more: Giovio’s exuberant praise in his Dialogi de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibusis not dedicated to Vittoria Colonna’s personal Charisma but to the radiation of her Female Intellect and of her education as a Female Humanist.
Ochino’s flight to Geneva in 1542 to evade the summons by the Inquisition catapulted Vittoria Colonna into a serious dilemma, because he did not explain his decision to the Curia. Shortly before his flight, he wrote to Vittoria Colonna: “What can I still do in Italy? Preach a Jesus Christ masked in cipher language? I have the pleasure that they begin the church reform with my person. I prefer evading the pressure.” Cardinal Reginald Pole advised Vittoria Colonna to send Ochino’s letter to the influential Curia Cardinal Marcello Cervini, who together with Carafa purified the Roman Catholic faith, promoting a clear dissociation of the Church from the Reformation. Did Vittoria Colonna leave her “Padre Reverendisimo” in the lurch? Did she save herself, when she betrayed him, sending his letter to the Curia without being asked to do so? Of course, she was taken on the horns of a serious dilemma. Had she not sent the letter, she might have been summoned herself by the Inquisition. However, presumably influenced by Reginald Pole, her religious counsellor, Vittoria Colonna had already become estranged from Ochino before he wrote his fateful letter to her, in which he already complained about her aloofness:” It would have been helpful to talk to you and to hear your opinion and the opinion of Monsignor Polo or to receive a letter from you. For a month I have not heard anything from you. Pray to the Lord for me. With his mercy I intend to serve him with greater zeal than before. Kind regards to everybody!” Vittoria Colonna wrote to Cervini that she had received the letter by courir mail from Bologna and that she would not answer him. She added a postscript: “The more he believes to save others from the shipwreck, the more he exposes himself to the flood, because he stays outside the ark (Church), which saves and protects

After his flight, Ochino led the restless, homeless life of an emigrant of conscience.

VITTORIA COLONNA and REGINALD POLE
In thrall to the English Cardinal?

 

It was almost inevitable that Vittoria Colonna fell for Reginald Pole, the  aura of the Cardinale deInghilterra, his royal blood, his steadfastness against the English King Henry VIII, his Cousin, above all his resistance against the divorce of Henry VIII, ever since jeaopardizing his life by ordering assaults against Pole in his Italian exile, the dazzling physical appearance of Reginald Pole, his charismatic radiance, moreover Pole’s high status in the Church, his reformed religious orientation corresponding to Vittoria Colonna’s religiousness, his spirituality, his philosophical mind, the sublime style of the aesthete, this cumulative attractiveness unleashed a fascination in her susceptible soul that overwhelmed her fragile ego, the more so, because Pole, after the execution of his mother by the hangmen of Henry VIII, asked the childless widow to take his mother’s place as his substitute mother. Reginald Pole must have been deeply moved by her condolence letter, which got lost. Figlio e Signor! With the godmother’s salutation of Jesus, Vittoria Colonna initiates the sonnet dedicated to Reginald Pole, signalizing acceptance of the proposed role of a substitute mother and at the same time respectful distance to unfold the complexity of her relationship to Reginald Pole in this singular sonnet, because propriety excluded a conversation due to the intimacy of the subject.
However, in her letters and conversations with other persons she gives free rein to her enthusiasm for the Cardinale de Inghilterra in a veritable emotional storm, which exceeds all bounds and became a worrisome burden for Reginald Pole.
„She identified Pole with Jesus Christ “, the Inquisitior branded Vittoria’s excessive infatuation. She did not only idolise Pole. For her inflammable imagination, he embodied godliness. Vittoria Colonna experienced the charismatic personality of Pole as a mirror image of God. She wished to perceive God with her senses and to recognize him with her intellect, already now and here on earth. For her, as a woman, religiousness was grounded on “perception and feeling.” (Schleiermacher) A divine light had been focussed by Pole in the crystal of her soul, like in a burning glass, she raved in a sonnet, not naming Pole but meaning him. In the same sonnet, she referred to a painting, presumably the portrait of Pole by Piombo, commissioned by her (?). „Admiring the beautiful splendour of the painting for hours, I am trembling, I am glowing, I am weeping, unable to turn my eyes away. Mirando sovente il bel splendore, tremo, ardo, piango e bramo a tutte l’ore di tenere gli occhi in lei fissi ed intenti.Eroticism is forging ahead in her amorous rapture. Pole is exuding the fragrance of Christ, she enthuses. In a letter to Giovanni Morone, she emphasizes that she has always experienced Christ in Reginald Pole, sensing the divinity of Christ in Pole’s words, in his conduct, and in his deeds.
Reginald Pole made it unmistakably clear that he would not tolerate her ebulliant praise any longer. „As he told me that I should not praise him anymore, I must keep silent, “she complained in a letter to Giovanni Morone: „God knows my efforts to keep my heart from overflowing on this paper “. Pole’s initial deference to Vittoria Colonna seems to have gradually given way to disdain, because he could not bear her lack of contenance. Moreover, Vittoria Colonna lavished presents on him, although rejected indignantly by him. She even bequeathed 9000 Scudi, half of her liquid funds, to the English Cardinal, whose assets had been confiscated by Henry VIII and she nominated three Cardinals as executors of her last will to enforce her testament against the claims of her brother Ascanio. When Pole was nominated governor of the papal Patrocinium of Viterbo by Paul III, Vittoria Colonna, in October 1541, moved into the Convent Santa Caterina there to live in the proximity of Pole, who inducted Vittoria Colonna, as the only woman, into the Ecclesia Viterbiensis, an elitist clerical circle of the so-called Spirituali with three papabili Cardinals (Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, and Giovanni Morone) as members, who held top positions in the official church, however adhered to sola fide, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the core doctrine of the Reformation, which was later declared as a heresy at the Council of Trento (1545), which was opened by the Cardinals Pole and Morone as representatives of Pope Paul III.

Reginald Pole, after the death of Juan d Valdès (1541) and under the protection of Paul III, continued in Viterbo the informal mystic Christian community of „elected souls “, founded by Valdès in Naples, who already had accepted several women, Vittoria Colonna among them. Valdés even commissioned a woman, Giulia Gonzaga. with the edition of his texts.
Pole became the spiritual counseler of Vittoria Colonna, rather her soul’s physician, who healed her of anorexia nervosa which undermined her health. Pietro Carnesechi: „She had the skin on the bones”! When she fell seriously ill in Viterbo, Pole painstakingly cared for her, sending her qualified physicians, but denying her what she was longing for with every fibre of her heart: his presence!
Worse than her physical complaints were her psychic problems, her inner restlessness, her panic attacks, her mood swings leading to painful ambivalence of thought, she, gifted with self-observation, described in a letter to Giovanni Morone: “Your Magnificence have experienced my chaos of ignorance, the errors, the labyrinth, in which I strutted self-assured, attired in glittering gold, without standing up to the paragon of faith and without steeling myself in the fire of true love, while my body, in continuous motion, did not come to rest and my mind, in a state of upheaval, could not find peace. And God wanted that he (Pole) told me: FIAT LUX and taught me that I was nothing through myself but everything was possible through Jesus Christ. “
Reginald Pole was a soul-catcher. Seemingly open-minded, he gained the confidence of people, indulging in their intense affection he knew how to elicit from their hearts. However, in case they became dependent on him, he withdrew, making them feel his estrangement. Strong personalities like Elisabeth I of England or Giulia Gonzaga gave him the berth to avoid his indiscretion? Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned to death by Mary Tudor, refused Pole’s attempt to convert him by private dialoguing. It was on psychically unstable personalities that he exerted strong influence. A decade later he steered the difficult Queen Mary Tudor but failed to free her from her persecution mania pressing her to have so many Protestants executed. Thanks to Pole´s therapeutic influence Vittoria´s psyche brightened in his presence. Vittoria to Giulia Gonzaga on 8th December,1541:” Si, Signora mia, I am indebted to his most Venerable Magnificence (Pole), who took my disorders and delusions from me and restored my spiritual health. When the Inquisitor confronted Pietro Carnesecchi with this very passage from the letter of Vittoria Colonna to Giula Gonzaga, he answered
„Marchesa suggested that, thanks to the good advice and admonition, her extreme state of body and soul had been reduced to healthy mediocrity. Before Vittoria Colonna got to know the Cardinal, she had tormented herself with fasting, wearing a cilice, and other methods of mortification. Admonished by the Cardinal that she offended God by such rigorous treatment of her body, because as a Christian, she was obliged to take care of her body and to maintain this tabernacle given to her by God, Marchesa began to convert herself from her former ascetic life style to reasonable mediocrity”. Vittoria Colonna’s equilibrium, however, was only temporary, and soon, she was in need of Pole’s therapy again, thus getting into self-effacing dependence on him, which did not arouse his empathy but his disdain.
On 22nd June 1544, staying in the Convent of St Anna in Rome, when Pole was also there without her catching sight of him, she struck rather a sarcastic tone in a letter to Giovanni Morone. “What regards me, Your Magnificence must not believe that I can see Monsignor (Pole) more often, because he stays here in Rome, nor that I ask him to break his habit of dosing his love proportionally to his infallible will to ensure success of all his deeds.”  In a letter to Pole again from St Anna Convent in Rome, she expressed unselfish joy that he recovered a little in his beloved Viterbo, although she could not meet him, consoling herself with imagining his presence, „even though the fragrance of Christ Your Magnificence is exuding cannot be sensed from afar.“ In Pole’s presence, Vittoria feels God’s vicinity, while she has to content herself with mere faith in his absence. In her last letter to Pole, confiscated by the Inquisition, she admits that her experience of God is dependent on him:” I will always open my whole heart to Your Magnificence as the most immediate, sincerest servant of God I know. Do I not receive a token of love from Your Mgnificence, I experience little solace from Christ, because I become more and more secure that love in you is most perfect and divine. When kindly showing me your love, you instil in me a strong feeling of divine love. Without your palpable affection, only faith remains with me as a comfort I need to stay healthy “. She felt stimulated by God in her hope of his visit. In case he did not come, obedience was struggling against love in her soul, she herself swaying between spurs (love) and reins (obedience) In such a situation, faith was the secure medicine. Humbly she begs his pardon for the length of her letter: Perdoni si lunga lettera
On 4th October, 1546, Reginald Pole wrote his last letter to Vittoria Colonna, the presumable reason for his letter being her worrying health and perhaps his bad conscience, having familiarized himself with her at first to give her a wide berth later on. After using a respectful and even slightly intimate address - Illustrissima Signora et Madre Osservandissima - he initiates the letter playfully, more precisely, he plays a disparaging game with her: „Our Lilio (his butler) used his great eloquence to make it clear to me that Your Excellency loved me with all your heart, as if it had been something new. I let him talk as long as he wanted, which lasted for a while, waiting for his severe reprimand of my ungratefulness for such great and more than motherly love, because neither by deeds nor by words I responded to your great love, not even partly “. It is to his butler that Vittoria Colonna owes Pole’s letter, who makes no pretence of his Lilio being nearer and dearer to him than his substitute mother. Pole lustfully hurts Vittoria’s feelings. Later, striking a more serious tone, he confesses: “God does not let me find a way to recompense your kindness adequately. I comfort myself, praying to God that he may compensate you the more affectionately, the more intensively I feel my deficits. Let us rejoice together over the image of divine love that is expressed by your great devotion.” Unable to answer her love, he at least tries to give it a deeper meaning, involving God, who will reward her love, for him an image of divine love. However, his proposition, they could rejoice over Vittoria’s one-sided love together, pushes his sophistication of refined feelings to extravagant, even absurd extremes. When, in 1547, she was lying terminally ill in Saint Anna Convent in Rome, Pole did not visit Vittoria Colonna, although he stayed in Rome and she most urgently requested his presence.

Dissent
Reginald Pole disparaging Vittoria Colonna 
as an Ambitious Female Theologian

Vittoria Colonna asserting herself
in Intellectual Independence

Carnesecchi testified in front of the Inquisition: „He (Pole) often had discourses (raggionamenti) with La Signora in Rome as well as in Viterbo and they always conversed about things divine, because this topic enjoyed them most “. However, written documents about a theological dialogue between Vittoria Colonna and Reginald Pole do not exist. Instead, Reginald Pole recommends to her uniformity with the nuns in the convents San Paolo in Orvieto and in Santa Caterina in Viterbo. „As she told me, the rituals and the conversations with the nuns delight her so much that she believes, she converses with angels”, Pole, in 1541, assuring Contarini, who wanted to know, how marchesa faced the defeat of the House of Colonna in the so-called Salt War. Untiringly, Pole recommends to Vittoria Colonna the prayer for his person in community with the nuns: „Nothing gives me greater confidence in my salvation from assaults by Henry VIII than the letter, in which your Excellency wrote to me that you and your virgin sisters in immaculate love recommend me to God in continuous prayers “.On the one hand, Vittoria is willing to let herself be extricated out of the labyrinth of her subjectivity to go the straight way of salvation, defined by Pole to her: „It is only your Magnificency I am missing, it is only you I am longing for, because you have helped me continuously and more effectively than each other human being to recognize myself, to humiliate myself. You almost forced me to go this way of self-dissolution and to regard myself as nothing “, she wrote to Pole on Christmas 1545.
On the other hand, the self-aware Humanist kicked against the pricks of self-denial. The detrimental influence of Pole on her creativity, on her intellectuality, and spontaneity which enthralled Pope Paul III and Pietro Bembo, did not escape her acute self-awareness. Vittoria Colonna writes to Giovanni Morone: „I do not conceal from your Magnificence that my delight would have been greater, if I had been allowed to express what moved me. But each word of Monsignor is for me – I’don’t say a law, but a guideline, freeing me for going the right way. “Vittoria Colonna distinguishes carefully: Pole’s words are no law for her, to which she bows, but only a guideline she can follow of her own free will but need not. Neither does she give up her mental freedom nor her religious self-definition, not even for Reginald Pole.

VITTORIA COLONNA
Theological Self-Study 
in Viterbo

Vittoria replaced instructive dialogues on eye-level, which were withheld from her by indoctrinary Pole with theological self-study and by exchanging letters with kindred spirits, above all with Giulia Gonzaga, which fell into the hands of the Inquisitors. It would be a great comfort for her, she wrote to the Countess, if she could learn, what God had let Giulia know “by the very best means”. Pietro Carnesecchi had to explicate to the Inquisitors, what Vittoria understood by very best means. Carnesecchi answered that he could not imagine anything else but the doctrine of Juan de Valdés, although he did not know, what the Marchesa had thought about his views. „I have heard “, added Vittoria in a postscript to her letter to Giulia Gonzaga „that Your Magnificence have sent the interpretation of Saint Paul, which was explicitly welcome in the community, most desired by me, because I am in need of it “.  Carnesecchi added that it was the interpretation of the letters of Saint Paul by Valdés. When the Inquisitors asked Carnesecchi, whether Vittoria Colonna had read Luther, Bucer, Brenz, Calvin or Melanchthon, he answered, „I don’t believe so, because the Cardinal admonished La Signora many times, she should not be so inquisitive and stay within the limits set to her by her sex, her humility, and modesty “. In contrast, Giovanni Battista Scoti as an informer of the Inquisition, testified in the Inquistorial Process against Morone, Vittoria Colonna read Lutheran books, and Apollonio Merenda, another informer said, Vittoria Colonna defended herself, asserting she had been authorized by Pope Paul III to read „suspicious books. It is easily imaginable that Vittoria Colonna, with her intellectual aspirations as a woman, provoked Reginald Pole. In her letter to him, on 27th March, 1542, she mentions his disapproval of her „musings “, which are no remedies for her. Her intellectual self-will annoyed him. But, defiantly, she did not ask him to forgive her, “because it is a worse error to ask forgiveness and not to improve afterwards. “Vittoria Colonna was psychically dependent on Reginald Pole. In intellectual respects she did not let herself be influenced by him against her deeper insight. She defined herself as his dialogue partner on eye-level, in the same way as she debated with Ochino. 
Carnesecchi, in his process-file of the Inquisition, gives affectionate insight into Vittoria Colonna’s manner of reading reformed texts. “One day Marchesa told me that she had read a commentary of a psalm of David beginning with the words: Erectavit cor meum verbum bonum and that she found the text wonderful. The comment was by Martin Luther and had been shown to her under a pseudonym. 
She had read the text with such joy and delight that she could not remember ever reading a greater modern text. “The gifted poetess spontaneously captured the linguistic beauty of the text by Martin Luther.

VITTORIA COLONNA
A PERSONA SFUMATA?
in the Community of Viterbo?

Of course, Pole’s disparaging behaviour put on show towards Vittoria affected the other members of the exclusively clerical circle at Viterbo, with the renowned poetess of Rime Spirituali as the only female member. Constant derisive behaviour on the part of the Spirituali engulfed the identity of the sensitive, fragile poetess, throwing her into serious psychic crisis that impaired her health during the two years (1541-1543) she lived in Viterbo. In her deplorable situation and psychic dilemma, she aroused the pity of Cardinal Giovanni Morone, who made it his duty to support her against the other members of the exclusively clerical circle in her psychic plight. Overjoyed and grateful for his human warmth, Vittoria called him il mio Morone, il mio dolcissimo Morone, whereas she addressed Reginald Pole, the cool Brit, as Monsignor. Indeed, Vittoria Colonna felt marginalized in this exclusively clerical circle tinged with a homoerotic touch. Only Pietro Carnesecchi mentions her sonnets and advises the Inquisitors to read them, because they gave utterance to her religiousness. Therefore, Sergio Pagano denominated the poetess as persona sfumata in the elitist clerical circle in Viterbo. 

“Most Reverend Sergio Pagano, I beg your pardon! Vittoria Colonna befriended three papabili Cardinals, Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pope, and Giovanni Morone. Last but not least, she wrapped Pope Paul III round her lttle finger, who did her every favour (for instance a Cardinal’s Hat for Bembo!) because he was infatuated with her personal charme. Paolo Giovio: “Vittoria was also honoured by the rare gift for never letting boredom or indifference arise in her presence with friends and relatives. Instead, she aroused incredible admiration, because she made people think things more deeply. Her absence did not let friends forget her. But they were left behind, feeling infinite longing for her attractions.” One had better have called her a female annoyance in an homoerotical clerical circle. In a letter to Morone, „her impenetrable protective shield “, the Poetess complains; “They blame my servitude to Monsignor - la mia servitù con Monsignor. They say that my behaviour is exaggerated, too motherly carnal – materamente carnale – and similar things. “Marc Antonius Flaminius, Reginald Pole’s Favourite, composed a rhymed letter, presenting himself as Pole’s lapdog, who is keen on accompanying Pole on his travel to Rome. The poet presents himself as pretty, his figure being more girlish than masculine, only needing a small place. For instance, he could warm Pole’s feet. According to Thomas Mayer, Reginald Pole preferred Marcantonius Flaminius as poet and companion to Vittoria Colonna, because his neolatin poetry captivated him by gracefulness of form and nobility of feeling. Pole’s literary discernment may have been adapted to convention with the epigonal character of the Latin poetry of Flaminius escaping the British Cardinal. No comment on the part of Pole has been passed on about Vittoria Colonna’s novel spiritual poetry in lively Volgata. While it is precisely the authenticity of her poetry, which met with great approval in the Italian society. Presumably, it was her authenticity, which aroused Pole’s disapproval. In a sad tone, Vittoria wrote to Michelangelo about her dead poems, which did not arouse the same interest in Viterbo as the poetry by Flaminius, let alone the spectacular success of his revision and edition of Beneficio di Cristo.
Increasingly, the hyperactive Marchesa suffered under the passivity of the spiritual lifestyle in the community of Viterbo. Continuous internalization without activity made this superactive woman lonesome and worsened her physical and psychic crises. She was longing for the company of Giulia Gonzaga, to whom she writes:  „Monsignor (=Pole) is very occupied and I excuse him, but neither have I seen our greatest spirit, Marcantonius Flaminio more than twice, since he arrived, so that I would feel bad, were there not Monsignor Priuli und Signor Carnesecchi”. What these words mean, the Inquisitors wanted to know from Pietro Carnesecchi. „What they say!  She would have sensed the loneliness of her room much more intensively, if she had not been visited by Priuli and me more often than by Flaminius “. 
Vittoria Colonna began to call her contemplative life in Viterbo into doubt, writing to Priuli about the necessity to turn her mind away from excessive fixation on prayer and meditation and to return into active life in order to serve others and to practice charity. In a short letter to Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna contrasts the inactivity of her contemplative life style at Viterbo with his enormous creativity.
It occurs to her that she may have led a godlier life, when she wrote poems. The thought that the artist best serves God with his creativity shall encourage Michelangelo to new works of art.

„As you recognize in your sculptures the benevolence of Him, who made you the singular Maestro, you can understand that I believe, I owe God my poems already presumed dead. I offended Him less, when I wrote them than now, when I am idle. And I ask you to take my good thoughts as handmoney for future works”

In November1543, Vittoria returned to Rome. She was given three years to live, which she spent in the Convent Saint Anna, enjoying loving attention of her devoted servant Prudentia. 

 

VITTORIA COLONNA
Genesis of Female Self-Confidence
Through Dissent with Reform-Theologians

 

It is not by assumptions, speculations, and idealisations of the relationships of Vittoria Colonna with Contarini, Ochino, Valdés, Pole und Michelangelo, but by empirical research of her discourses with Reform-Theologians in letters she exchanged with them, and in her sonnets that Vittoria Colonna’s resistant authenticity and her dissent with Reform Theologians becomes evident: with Ochino about theologia crucis and about Mariology, with Contarini about sola fide and freedom of will, which, was indispensable for her religious self-definition as a woman. The complexity of her relationship to Reginald Pole, hidden behind the facade of their idealized friendship (Hubert Jedin) only came to the fore from her exchange of letters with Pole, Morone, Giulia Gonzaga, and the documents of the inquisitorial interrogation of Pietro Carnesecchi about Vittoria Colonna. Growing self-assertion through discourses with Reform Theologians is pivotal for the development of her female authentic poetising in her Rime Spirituali. It testifies considerable self-assuredness of the Renaissance Poetess that she does not conceal her dissent, which arose in these discourses with reformed theologians but dared poetise her conflicting female authenticity in her sonnets. The growing self-assuredness of the poetess is due to being deemed worthy of participating in their discourses by outstanding Reform Theologians, but it is also due to the transformation of the neoplatonic love sonnet into the spiritual Petrarcchan Sonnet, because she intuitively understood that internalization of faith as religiousness based on feeling is in need of lyrical transfer. She scored such great success with her Rime Spiritualithat she was rightly called the first female Publishing Phenomenon in the history of book print.

Vittoria Colonna reached a peak of female autonomy in theological circles in the Age of Renaissance, which is not only out of reach but hardly imaginable for women today.

 The poetess seems to have intensified her contacts with the Spirituali after leaving Viterbo and withdrawing to Saint Anna’s nunnery in Rome. Cardinal Morone visited her there several times. In her letter to him, in May 1545, she did not pour out her heart anymore, as had been her habit in Viterbo, but she drew a profile of her “sweetest Morone”, the leading politician of the Church in the most responsible assignments by the Curia. Papal Nuncio in Germany during the heated phase of the Reformation, in 1541, together with Contarini as papal legate, in the presence of Emperor Charles V , struggling in fateful discourses with the German Protestants at the Diet of Ratisbona to save the unity of the church, in 1545 together with Cardinal Reginald Pole, opening the Council of Trent, closing it again in 1563, in 1555 negotiating the religious peace at the Diet of Augsburg with the German Protestant Powers, this outstanding political personality of the Cinquecento took time for his deep friendship with Vittoria Colonna. As a sensitive psychologist, he stood by her side in her serious life crisis, undermining her health

Vittoria Colonna wrote to Giovanni Morone: 

“Although sympathizing with you for the obstacles, hardships, and adverse conditions obstructing the calm of your mind, I am satisfied to see your sovereignty to all hostilities. I am not at all worried about these difficulties or this slander, because your fundament is resistant and the building is compact and seasoned, borne by thousand firm columns of experience to the effect that all challenges bear testimony of your invincible faith, each adverse wind enkindling the light of your hope, all resistance of the world to your work being burned down by God’s Grace.” The healing influence of Giovanni Morone’s serene mind on her depressive, restless psyche could not have been mre beneficent. “I am dying to tell you that a spark of your serenity leapt over to me so that I do no longer feel the bitterness I have sensed in all the difficulties and distress that occurred to me. Your affetionate Christian attitude had a beneficent influence on me during the two years, when I had no inner resources and you made it clear to me that I had to raise my eyes to be enlightened according to my necessity and not according to my will. I do it now in this way, believing that anything comes from Christ.However a great anxiety remains with me, the anxiety of staying healthy. God may grant us a lot of time. Yet I leave everything to his fatherly providence.”

VITTORIA COLONNA
SONNET TO REGINALD POLE

L’Divin’Polo, che va sopra le stelle, altero e solo.

Reginald Pole to Vittoria Colonna

“The less consolation I felt by what I then read or heard, the more beneficent were the letters of Your Excellency, consoling me, even enjoying me”, wrote Reginald Pole to Vittoria Colonna in the summer of 1541, only a few weeks after the violent death of his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, under the guillotine of King Henry’s hangmen. Pole goes on: “Recognising that God bestowed highest virtueson your Excellency, I shall accept you in the place of my natural mother torn from me by the Pharao’s rage. Hardly is a higher distinction thinkable for Vittoria Colonna than this invitation. The poetess, as was her habit, when deeply moved, composed a sonnet: Showing modesty and devotion to Reginald Pole’s mother, Vittoria displays refined manners. Yet, instead of paying Pole thanks, she reveals resistance to his generous offer, setting off her fragile self against the heroism of the Countess of Salisbury and the charismatic personality of Pole. His divinity is focused in her soul like in a crystal, she poetised. Eroticism is vibrating in her rapture. Pole exudes the fragrance of Christ, she enthuses in her letter to Giovanni Monroe, emphasizing that she has always experienced Christ in Pole. The poetess obviously conditions religion on “visual perception and sensation”. (Schleiermacher)

Petrarchan Poet

Not feeling up to her new role as Pole’s substitute mother in the face of steadfast Countess of Salisbury and the towering personality of her son, Colonna finds a model for her fragile self in the poetry of Petrarch, who, measuring himself by high ethical demands, confesses his inadequacy in his poetry. However, never does the Petrarchan poet just copy her poet father. Mimesis of Petrarch involves discourse and distance. Evoking Petrarch ‘s collocations, Colonna accentuates her otherness. In a typical procedure of Petrarchan poets, she takes Petrarch’s idioms from their context to integrate them into the coherence of her own sonnets. For the sake of extending her discourse, she also calls forth substance and subject matter of Petrarch’s poetry, relying on her erudite audience’s familiarity with this poet. By granting the fountain of her inspiration presence in the backdrop, her sonnet gains density and depth as well as context, discursive extension and ambiguity. In contrast to Petrarch’s simplicity of style, Colonna strives for complexity that involves high compositional demand.

 

FIGLIO E SIGNOR

INTERPRETATION

The order to her „son“– convien ch’abbi talor l’occhio rivolto – and the addition of the final clause – che la tua madre non pera – are revealing as to Vittoria’s psychic problems. Beyond pastoral care, Colonna expected Pole to heal her mental disorders. Her contemporary audience, familiar with Petrarch’s poetry, were aware of the poetess having eye-diagnosis in mind so impressively exemplified by Petrarch in his canzone 331: He could have read Laura’s near-death situation on her forehead, he claims, had he only disposed of presence of mind and had he not turned his eyes away. It is proved several times that Reginald Pole attended to Vittoria Colonna’s psychic problems. „Si, Signora mia“, Vittoria Colonna assures Giulia Gonzaga in a letter, “I am greatly indebted to His Magnificence (Pole) for the health of my soul, because the latter was menaced by manias and the former was endangered by lack of composure.“

Imaginary dialogue substrate

With her spirited address Figlio the poetess initiates her ingenious dialogue sonnet as her personal response to Pole’s letter, also signalising her identification with the mother role he offered to her, underlining acceptance by two motherly orders to Pole in the second quatrain and the last line of her poem. The poetess aims at life-like styling of the imaginary dialogue by tinging the first motherly order to her “son” with eye-twinkling irony and using colloquial wording: To me……convien ch’abbi talor l’occhio rivolto. (7) “On me it behoves you to keep an eye once in a while.” Normally, a mother keeps an eye on her son and not vice versa. With her lively natural style, Vittoria Colonna parries the circumstantial style of the exegete Pole: “After the raging Pharao (Henry VIII) had deprived me of my mother, who gave birth to me, I have adopted you in her stead. However, unlike Moses, who denied being the son of the Pharao’s daughter, I shall commit myself to you for ever, on condition you will protect me, not less forsaken than Moses, who was a child, exposed, as I am, to the dangers of the river like him, but also to the dangers of the land and the sea, because of the Pharao.”

By alternating the focus between Pole and herself the poetess maintains the illusion of a dialogue throughout the sonnet. Beginning with her personal address Figlio e Signor, she unfolds an ideal image of his mother in the first quatrain. Instead of Pole’s answer – too lengthy a procedure in a sonnet –she switches Pole’s attention to herself by asking him to keep his eye on her, only to turn to Pole again, eulogising him in the first tercet. Finally, she focusses Pole’s interest on herself once more, when requesting his humble prayer for her person.

Antinomic Construction of the Sonnet

Even though she echoes the Holy Virgin ‘s salutation of Jesus in her address of Pole, the poetess uses the collocation Figlio e Signor as a contradictory connection of intimacy and distance to initiate the antinomic construction of her sonnet: Colonna’s threefold suggestion of accepting her mother role by addressing Pole

as Figlio and by giving her son two motherly orders in the quatrains and the tercets, is contradicted by the fact that she is destabilized by this demanding mother role, which is also featured in her sonnet. 

Mirror-Inverted Chiasm

In the quatrains, the poetess displays a mirror-inverted chiasm to picture the contrast between the fortitude of Pole’s natural mother (first quatrain) and her own fragile self (second quatrain). Freedom of movement was taken from the Countess of Salisbury in Prison. But thanks to her steadfastness she was not deprived of her inner freedom. The poetess enjoys freedom of movement but keeps her heart locked in poca terra. In the tercets, the poetess again sets her inner paralysis - visualized by immobile persevering in narrow space - in contrast to Reginald Pole’s infinite ascensions into heavenly spheres. She metaphorizes her inner state as ossified and frozen, whereas Polo Divino is burning with heavenly fire. Bowed by the burden of old age, she freezes in a small plot of earth. Shaking off restrictive influences, he strides through the fields of the Immeasurable Firmament.

Last Line of the Sonnet

To place a point at the end, the poetess introduces godfather, il padre commune, as connecting element (tertium quid) to bridge the chiasms of the quatrains and tercets. God, the common father, unites resilient Countess Salisbury and the depressive I-Speaker of the quatrains as well as the inwardly paralysed poetess of the tercets and charismatic Reginald Pole as equal human beings on the same level in the face of God. Instead of her humble request for Pole’s spiritual guidance, one is likely to expect from her, Colonna refutes his indoctrination by restricting her Spiritual Director to addressing a humble prayer to godfather on her behalf, suggesting that she and the Cardinal are equal before God. She is in no need of a go-between, which is in accord with Pole’s message of justification before God by inner faith alone, placing the human individual into immediate contact with God. Vittoria Colonna, the proto feminist, insisted on religious self-definition for women. Even though, she, in her letter to Marguerite d’Angoulême, emphasizes the necessity of a spiritual director, showing women the right way „with doctrines, and examples and encouraging them to overcome their lethargy, it seems to me “, she continues in the manner of a feminist theologian „that the models of our own sex are more adequate, because they make it easier to follow their example.” As her personal soul-carer Pole tries hard to break the female self-will of overbearing Marchesa, Vittoria is willing to let Pole disentangle her out of the labyrinth of her subjectivity to go the straight path of salvation: “It is only your Magnificence I miss. It is only your presence I am longing for, because, more than anybody else, you have constantly helped me to recognise myself and to humiliate myself. You have almost forced me to go this way of self-effacement and to regard myself worth nothing.” It is revealing as to her inner disjointedness that Colonna, on the one hand, subjects her Ego under the beguiling High Self of the charismatic English Cardinal and, on the other hand, upholds her intellectual and religious self-definition in unprecedented self-constituting as a female humanist of the first generation. Her intellectual haughtiness provoked Pole. As Carnesecchi testified to the Inquisition, the Cardinal often warned her „not to be so inquisitive but to stay within the limits set to her by gender, humbleness, and modesty.” Not always did Vittoria follow Pole’s instructions. Instead, she knew how to obtain the concession from Paul III for reading Lutheran texts. Her self-will annoyed Pole. But she did not ask his pardon, because „it is a greater error to apologise each time and not to improve.” As Vittoria, in her anxiety attacks and bipolar mood swings, emotionally depending on Pole to regain her inner balance, overstrained his readiness to give her spiritual support, Pole’s initial admiration gave way to disregard. Repelled by her lack in contenance, he withdrew from her, leaving her individual guidance to his friend Priuli, nicknamed Giezi after the companion of Prophet Elijah. Vittoria: „Yet, I am calling for Eliseo, attesting to Eliseo that he is needed in person."