The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (28 page)

chapter 12

The Temporal Mother

The Bracciano estate was a small kingdom; in many ways it was a microcosm of the Italian peninsular. The fiefs, villages and compounds all had separate identities, interests and products. Land was given over to the raising of animals, to fruit orchards, to timber forests, or to the harvesting of grain and hay. It was an extraordinary task for one person to run efficiently, even if resident in one place, which Felice was not. Her year began in Rome, and she stayed in the city through the spring. In the early summer she would leave for Bracciano and then spend the late summer at Vicovaro with her children. She returned to Rome in the autumn. With such a fragmented year, Felice was heavily dependent on the abilities and services of her estate managers. She was also acutely aware that she could not simply leave the running of the estate in their hands, even if that had been her personal preference. She needed written accounts of every activity, and she herself had to oversee and personally authorize the management of provisions. She intervened in legal matters and launched judicial inquiries. She selected the appointment of Orsini officials as well as of the clergy in parishes on Orsini terrain. She also fielded endless requests for favours. Almost all of the letters she received were addressed to her as the correspondent’s
Patrona et benefatrix
, patron and benefactress, implying she was possessed of some kind of charitable munificence. Running Bracciano was in many ways akin to becoming the chief executive officer of a large corporation – hardly a philanthropic activity. However, an element of divine absolutism came with the position and Felice was, after all, now queen of the Orsini.

Anyone familiar with the lives of bees knows that queens do not rest, and Felice’s days were a buzz of activity. Wherever Felice was, her time from morning to night was occupied by a constant series of negotiations, the dispensing of orders and the granting of requests, the opening of dozens of letters and the dictation of replies. Although she signed her letters with her broad sweeping signature, ‘Felix Ruveris Ursinis’, she personally wrote relatively few of them by hand. Her writing skills were better than those of most members of the elite, especially women, but she was still not a professional scribe. Instead, the senior servants at Bracciano, Monte Giordano and Vicovaro stayed at her side, copying down her missives, sometimes when she was mounted on a horse, travelling from one home to another. Even when absent from one of her residences, it was important that her presence be felt. An astute servant, Francesco da Fano, wrote to her at Vicovaro from Rome that in her absence he was devoted to a portrait of her, which he ‘worshipped and adored as I do my Lady Patron’.
¹

There is now apparently no trace of this portrait. However, a painting by Sebastiano del Piombo, a colleague of Michelangelo and an artist personally known to Felice, might well be this work – or at least one very like it. This portrait, produced around
1520
, shows a dark-haired woman with a long nose and a determined chin. She is dressed in scarlet and black and through the window behind her can be seen a hilly landscape containing a castle on the shores of a lake. The woman has several books in front of her. The words on the one open in front of her could once be deciphered as ‘I raise my eyes and close my heart’, words which appear a sonnet written by an acquaintance of Felice’s, the noblewoman Vittoria Colonna. In this context they are appropriate to a widow whose heart is closed, as she indicates with her right hand. But equally important for Felice’s situation is that she keep her eyes open, aware of all that is going on around her.

The year
1515
had seen the publication of Niccolò Machiavelli’s
Il Principe
(
The Prince
), a work still considered one of the seminal works on government. Felice did not personally know Machiavelli, as she had Baldessar Castiglione, but it is interesting to see how closely her ruling ethos and circumstances parallel the advice Machiavelli gave to the would-be successful ruler. She became a Machiavellian
principessa
, as she had been a Castiglione
cortegiana.
Much of what Machiavelli has to say about the life of the man who ascends to such power reflects Felice’s own experience. He warned that the prince would make enemies of those injured in the seizing of the principality, and Felice made a few enemies among the Orsini. He advised that minor problems be taken care of immediately, before they got out of hand; Felice always concerned herself with minor problems. He counselled frequent visits to lands to discover any problems, and Felice certainly spent a lot of time moving between the Lazio estates and her Roman palace. The weak and powerless were to be protected, as they would see the prince as their chief source of support, and servants, rather than those nearer to the prince in status, should be the ones he relied on – again, Felice’s habit. Such concentrated and detailed government, stated Machiavelli, had its advantages: the ruler would become indispensable in the lives of his minions. Such was Felice’s goal.

Although she was never certain that the role of Orsini governor would be hers, Felice had been preparing for the position for many years. Even as a twenty-three-year-old newly-wed she had written to her new relative, Annibale Orsini, instructing him in very blunt language to ‘do what is necessary and no less’ in order to help his kinswoman Dianora Orsini. She continued to adopt this direct approach when dealing with the Bracciano officials and vassals, knowing that anything less would encourage corruption, dishonesty and anarchy. When she ascended to power, Cardinal Orsini warned her not to show weakness towards the indentured servants. Felice had little need of his advice; she knew what tone to take with those who failed to show her respect.

Felice della Rovere had learned the language and cadences of the courtier’s voice. Over the previous decades, she had had occasion to plead tearfully with her father and to take a somewhat obsequious position in order to ingratiate herself with Isabella d’Este. She had continually charmed and impressed the humanists and clerics of the Vatican court. Felice could be theatrical if need be: she had vowed to throw herself into the sea rather than be raped and she had wept at her husband’s deathbed. But her tone of authority is what endures. Felice had to be entirely intolerant of lawlessness, which would rapidly spread were it believed she might turn a blind eye to wrongdoing. She learned that a Roman, Prospero da Castel Sant’ Angelo, had been banished from the entire province surrounding Rome but was now hiding in the hilly area around Vicovaro. Suspecting a Vicovaro servant, Antonio del Covaro, of harbouring the fugitive, her stern response (referring to herself in the plural) ran: ‘We want to know that as soon as you receive this letter, you will ensure that Prospero will be gone within three days, and if not, you will be fined
25
ducats.
²
Vicovaro was frequently the site of criminal activity. To Hippolito della Tolfa, the bailiff of the estate, she wrote that she understood he had ascertained the whereabouts of Pietro Paolo da Celle, who had stolen some silver. ‘I expect’, wrote Felice, ‘that nothing will be spared in bringing him to, and dispensing, justice.
³

Astute servants learned the benefits of appealing to her magnanimity: ‘As it is not only us, but all of Italy who knows of your ladyship’s benignity and complexion,’ wrote the officials of the tiny fief of Incherico, ‘please could you assist us in giving some help to poor Simone Rocha, who has fallen on hard times.’
⁴
The
massari
of Sancto Poli exhibited a very clear understanding of Felice’s power when they wrote to her of the unspecified ‘mistake Gaspare of this place made, which obliges us to speak of it to your illustrious ladyship. He certainly does not merit any kind of supplication or justice. However, we beg of the love you hold for this land that you might wish to consider it, and so we rely on your mercy and as our temporal mother. We are firm in your immutable humanity and benignity.’
⁵

Felice might not have been a full-time mother to her own children, but her role as ‘temporal mother’ was certainly all-consuming. In fact she often utilized the persona of stern but loving mother who was disappointed when her ‘children’ displeased her. Learning that Hippolito della Tolfa had sent orders to the
massari
at the fief of San Gregorio without her permission, she told him, ‘I marvel at what you thought you could do...considering the opinion that we hold of you, I cannot but lament that you thought you could send such a mandate without first informing our own person, so I am writing now to advise you that you should never send out orders and mandates without first ascertaining our own advice and wishes.’
⁶

Felice was also equally ready to acknowledge her servants’ good behaviour. While she scolded Hippolito della Tolfa for his cavalier manner in dispensing orders, she sent him praise when he acted with restraint towards a fellow servant who had wronged him. ‘Having learned of the bestiality of Vincentio da Urbino towards you,’ she wrote to him, ‘we are extremely displeased, as we wish for our officials to be treated as if they were our very selves. But it does please us greatly that you have acted so prudently towards Vincentio, who has displeased us so greatly.’
⁷
Felice was clearly relieved that Gentile had not reacted violently to whatever injury Vincentio had caused him. In the subtext was the silent promise that Felice personally would deal with the miscreant.

For Felice, though, her position as governor, as ‘temporal mother’, was more than just about the exercise of power. Had she been a wealthy widow with time on her hands, she might well have spent her time performing good works. As it was, she enjoyed ensuring that all on her land received their fair reward, even after death. Hippolito della Tolfa aroused her ire yet again with the case of the wife of Cola da Riccardo:

Vicario, I am marvelling greatly that such a thing has happened in Vicovaro. And at you for allowing it to happen. The case is that, according to how I have been informed, of the wife of Cola da Riccardo, who delivering a boy in her eighth month, and dying, called the notary so that she could write her will. He was forbidden from doing so by the said Cola, and so the young woman has died intestate. I can easily see that this was done with malice and contempt for the law and I wish that proceedings are taken very deliberately against Cola to serve as an example to others in the future so that no one dares to do such a thing again.
⁸

Felice, who fought hard for her own rights and possessions, seems particularly angered that another woman should be denied the right to bequeath her own property as she chose.

Matters of litigation, justice and criminal prosecution occupied a great deal of Felice’s time. Disputes over property and rent were common. On one occasion Gian Battista di Bracciano asked her to mediate ‘in the case between Maestro Giorgio and his wife, and Liberana the widow of Bernabo Cosa, over the house once held by Bernabo and now inhabited by Liberana’.
⁹
In matters such as these, where she might need more information and an expert legal opinion to help her decide, Felice would call on the services of the Roman notary Prospero d’Aquasparta. He had served the Orsini for many years, had negotiated the settlement of Felice’s dowry and her acquisition of Palo, and he was to become particularly valuable to her. On
18
July
1520
Cardinal Orsini wrote to her asking for leniency for Galerano di Lorenzo da Siena, who rented a garden from her. Felice, anxious not to be accused of negligence, put Prospero to work immediately to investigate the matter. He replied to her on
25
July, only a week after the original request had come from the Cardinal:

A few days ago you sent me a letter to alert me to the dispute between Phillipo da Bracciano and Galerano Ortolano (gardener), over the rental of your ladyship’s vegetable garden, and so I have been obtaining the facts from both parties. I have found out that the garden was rented by Galerano for five years, at a rent of forty
carlini
a year, and that Galerano has held it for one further year. This year Galerano fell ill and went to the country to convalesce, and he left a boy in his place with all his belongings, among which are twenty-three chickens, big and little. Galerano being absent and not having paid the rent, Maestro Phillippo went to the garden and estimated the worth of the produce without the hens and without the hay, and that was seventy
carlini
, which Maestro Philippo sold for the rent in the absence of Galerano. Maestro Philippo says he sold the hay for
14
carlini
and after I examined him several times, the boy said he sold it for
28
. According to me, those
28
carlini
belong to this poor man, Galerano. I have not found out anything else.
¹⁰

Such skimming and cheating were inevitable on the part of the Bracciano servants. Phillippo’s act of corruption might have angered Felice but still she did not dismiss him. He was useful to her as agent and diplomat.

There were constant reminders of the violent nature of feudal life. Orsini relatives often asked Felice to pardon murderers, or those who had received the death penalty. In June
1520
, Michelangelo da Campagnino, who was being held prisoner at Bracciano, escaped. On his recapture, Felice’s stepdaughter Carlotta wrote to her telling her that ‘the faith and trust I have with your ladyship gives me the courage to write to you to beg you to have mercy on Michelangelo, who is about to be put to death’.
¹¹