Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation by Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi (review)

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Reviewed by: Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation by Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi William V. Hudon Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation. By Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi. Translated by Richard Bates. [Viella History, Arts and Humanities Collection, 11. Società di Studi Valdesi—English Series] (Rome: Viella. 2021. Pp. 248. € 49,00. ISBN: 978-88-3313-763-6.) Specialists in early modern Italian history know this first volume in the new Viella series, translating a work originally published in 2012. Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, lauded for her studies of reform in Italy, particularly in Modena, here provided reconsideration of a central figure in that history, Giulia Gonzaga (1513–1566). Rambaldi plays off an early, defective, and mannered initial biography of Gonzaga by Giuseppe Betussi (c.1512–c.1573). Gonzaga was significant not just for the dynastic and political life Betussi traced, Rambaldi maintains, but also because of her hazardous spiritual interests and contacts with heterodox individuals, features that Betussi omitted. Rambaldi argues that Gonzaga was affected by the social tension generated by growing Spanish imperial power and by Italian ruling factions allying with it, but never abandoned the largely clandestine, Nicodemitic culture she found appealing, not even when living in a Neapolitan convent. Instead, Rambaldi maintains, she and other women of the time exhibited a cultural and spiritual restlessness, plus a commitment to religious renewal they thought could be achieved within protective familial and political loyalties that ultimately proved not-so-protective. After this prefatory thesis statement, Rambaldi delivered a focused, five-chapter biography, one that revolves around the action of women from aristocratic families in the Gonzaga orbit. She highlights Giulia's agency throughout. Gonzaga, as a widow at the age of twenty-two, could have been considered socially and politically weak, but she proved overwise. She was, as Rambaldi said, "beautiful and difficult, … strong, proud … [and] sometimes vindictive" (p. 137). She was a protagonist, not a bystander, actively advising political leaders such as her cousin Ferrante (1544–1586), governor of Milan; Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505–1563), the governor of Mantua; and a beloved nephew, Vespasiano (1531–1591), founder and duke of Sabbioneta. She represented the family before Charles V on his tour in Naples, served as an unofficial marriage broker guiding her extended family on prospective alliances, and, as the close friend of Pietro Carnesecchi (1508–1567), narrowly escaped an inquisitorial trial—and likely execution—of her own. Rambaldi traced Gonzaga's movement around courtly circles, including her "ruling from the convent," the subject of a meaty chapter (pp. 137–96). All this seemed, for Rambaldi, to illustrate the inadequacy of standard images that circulate about early modern widows and nuns. I couldn't agree more, as my examination of the life and writings of Camilla Battista da Varano (1458–1524) confirms the point. Individuals like Gonzaga and Varano show how widely varied contemporary female experience of convent life really was. Rambaldi's findings are based on prodigious research. At the center lies her analysis of Gonzaga's vernacular correspondence scattered across numerous archives in north-central Italy. Imbedded in the notes are hints toward projects for [End Page 408] still more historical investigation, among the numerous individuals with whom Gonzaga corresponded. She was not alone in the activities that Rambaldi found so fascinating, including in her relationships with religious dissenters. And while the study highlights inquisitorial action under popes Paul IV (1555–1559) and Pius V (1566-1572), Rambaldi's analysis shows—like so many studies of local behavior—that institutional intent under those popes to restrict the spread of dissenting, heterodox ideas was firm, but their ability to shut it down, even among women like Gonzaga, was limited. William V. Hudon Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania William V. Hudon Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press