The Ties that Bind: The Colonna and Spain

in the 17th Century

Thomas Dandelet,
University of California, Berkeley

In the early half of the seventeenth century, leading members of one of Rome’s oldest and
most powerful noble families, the Colonna of Paliano, produced a wide variety of historical
reflections on their family’s illustrious past.1 Some of the early texts came in the form of letters
or instructions from fathers to sons as they were on their way to the Spanish court to meet the
monarch before beginning a period of study or military service in Spain. Other examples took
the form of letters to the Spanish monarchs from leading members of the family that reminded
the monarchs of the long service of the family to the crown. In still other cases, we have more
expansive political testaments that include elaborate historical interpretations of the family’s po-
litical power and position in Italy. Finally, from the middle of the seventeenth century, we have a
full length published history of the family that recounted –or created– the history of the family
from antiquity to the seventeenth century.
The growth of noble family histories was common in seventeenth century Rome. In part
this growth was spurred by local political agendas as new and old noble families competed for
the privileges of precedence in the papal court. In the deeply hierarchical Roman social order,
old nobles like the Colonna and Orsini jealously guarded their place at the top of the nobility
in the face of challenges posed by rich newcomers from recent papal families like the Barberini,
Borghese, and Pamphili. Family history played a central role in this contest as noble families laid
rhetorical claims to their honored place in Rome both past and present.
In the case of the Colonna, an international and imperial political agenda also shaped their
historical self-perceptions and set them apart from many other nobles. Specifically, the strong
ties that had developed between the Colonna and the Spanish monarchy over the course of the
sixteenth century became a prominent theme in their family history. As the Spanish Empire
took on a dominant role in Italian affairs in the sixteenth century, families like the Colonna,
Doria, Sforza. Spinola, and many others, became servants of the Spanish monarchy as military

1
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were three major branches of the Colonna family: the Colonna
of Paliano, Palestrina and Zagarola. The family from Paliano was the major branch because of a superior number of titles
and lands and the fact that it had a pope, Martin V, in its lineage and a greater number of famous cardinals, soldiers and
statesmen.

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generals, admirals, governors and viceroys. In the case of the Colonna, the leading men served
as double vassals of both popes and kings since they held extensive estates in both the Papal
State and the Spanish kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. Their family histories subsequently
reflect these dual allegiances and dual identities as they present the families as both Romans
and ranking members of the Spanish empire and nobility. At the same time, the emergence
of this new social hybrid on the Roman social landscape also serves as a strong and central
manifestation of the social transformation not just of an important Roman family but more
generally of the Roman social landscape during the age of the Spanish domination of Rome,
Naples and Sicily.2
For the Colonna, we are particularly fortunate to have a thick archival trail that allows us to
see the family historical literary tradition and self-perception that marks this transformation as
it evolved over the later sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century. Early in the century,
numerous letters written by Filippo Colonna, head of the family from 1619 to 1639, provides
us with a number of instructions that are rich in historical material. A few decades later, his
third son and eventual heir to the title of Contestabile of Naples, Marc Antonio Colonna V,
(1609-59), went further when he wrote a treatise entitled Cifra del Stato (Code of the State).3 This
political testament, surviving only in manuscript form, is primarily concerned with decoding
the political history of the family and their states, but it is also rich in historical references. In
the same generation, the brother of Marc Antonio V, Cardinal Giralomo, the ecclesiastical head
of the family who also controlled Colonna lands in the Papal States, wrote numerous historical
letters to the kings of Spain reminding them of his family’s service to the crown. In addition, it
was also Giralomo who sponsored a family history from one of his Sicilian courtiers, Filadelfo
Mugnos, which he then paid to have published in Venice in 1658. It was the first formal pub-
lished history of the family.4
All of these historical texts, while very different in focus and tone, shared the distinctive
quality of producing family portraits that had a distinctly Spanish patina. More specifically, the
texts present a picture of a Roman family whose history over the previous 150 years had become
tightly bound to the history of the Spanish monarchy and nobility by diplomatic and military
service, blood ties, and interwoven economic and political fortunes. The Colonna of Paliano
were the leading members of the Spanish faction in Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. This political faction also counted numerous other Roman families, many of whom were
bound to the monarchy as formal military vassals because of their titles and incomes as knights
of Spanish military orders.
Together with the secular heads of the family, the Colonna cardinals led the Spanish faction
in the college of cardinals. For most of the seventeenth century, the Colonna cardinals were one
of the two “Spanish” cardinals, or cardinals who had been nominated directly by the king of

2
For a more comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions of the Spanish presence in Rome see T. Dandelet,
Spanish Rome, and especially chapter four, “The People of Spanish Rome,” pp. 109-159 (New Haven, 2001).
3
Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV), Fondo Colonna, Busta 3, ff. 352-390.
4
Filadelfo Mugnos, Historia Della Augustissima Famiglia Colonna (Venice, 1658). This was the first published his-
tory of the Colonna family from antiquity through the seventeenth century that was clearly sponsored by the family itself.
Another text from the same year is Ottavio di Agostino’s, Storia di Casa Colonna in foglio, (Venezia, 1658).

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Spain for that position. They worked closely with the Spanish ambassadors in Rome and other
members of the Spanish faction to advance the Spanish monarch’s political agenda in the city,
and especially to lobby the other cardinals during papal elections. While not unique among Ro-
man nobles in their allegiance to Spain, they were the most extreme example of a Roman family
that had been politically spagnolizzato, or hispanicized.
In the analysis that follows, I will be using some of the texts mentioned above to illuminate,
in the first case case, the historical self-perceptions of the leading Colonna men specifically as
they related to central historical developments, people, and motives that bound the Colonna to
the Spanish monarchy. Besides shedding light on the historical mentalities of the Colonna men,
these texts also provide a generally accurate, if selective, guide to the central moments and stages
in the thickening of ties between the Colonna and Spanish empire in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth century. At the same time, they reveal the central elements in the historical process of the
hispanicization of an Italian noble family as they describe both how and why an ancient Roman
family was transformed by their contact with the Spanish Empire, and also what they themselves
thought about this fact in the first half of the seventeenth century.
In 1611, Filippo I, the second son of Fabritio II, and grandson of Marc Antonio II “The
Great,” became the head of the leading branch of the Colonna family. The early deaths of his
older brother, Marc Antonio III in 1595, and his nephew, Marc Antonio IV in 1611, left Filippo
with vast estates in the Kingdom of Naples and Papal States, and with numerous titles including
Prince of Paliano, Duke of Tagliacozzo, and, most importantly, Contestabile of Naples. It was
this title, held by the heads of the Colonna family since 1515, that most tightly bound the Col-
onna to the Spanish monarchs, and it was this title that was most frequently used in correspond-
ence to describe Filippo and later his sons and successors Federigo and Marc Antonio V.
The kingdom of Naples was the primary early point of connection with the Spanish mon-
archy and the location of their material rewards for serving the Spanish crown. All of the lead-
ing men of the Colonna family in the early seventeenth century understood this period as the
foundational moment of their modern political history, and they repeatedly referred to the faith-
ful service of their ancestor, Fabrizio I, who had made the critical decision of siding with the
Aragonese monarchs during the Italian wars that began in 1494. They were also aware of both
the costs and reward of that service. The expansive Colonna states in Naples dated to this period
when the Aragonese Neapolitan kings, Ferdinando and his son Federigo, gave Fabritio over 35
towns including Tagliacozzo, Albe, Celle, Oricola, Rocca di Botte, Pereto, Colli, Tremonta and
others. He was also given 6000 ducats annually for the rest of his life which was to be raised from
the hearth and salt tax. The Colonna were still claiming the right to that payment in the sev-
enteenth century.5 This reward was confirmed by Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain, and further
expanded after the Spanish victory of 1504: additional lands given to Fabrizio Colonna included
towns in Abruzzo such as Acquaviva, Torano, Contraguerra, Belante, Morello and over twenty
others.6 Most importantly, in 1515, Ferdinand named Fabritio Contestabile of Naples, a title his
heirs would have for over two centuries.

5
A. Coppi, Memorie Colonessi (Rome, 1855), p. 233.
6
Ibid., pp. 249-252.

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Reflecting on the importance and meaning of the conquest of Naples over a century later in the
early 1640s, Marc Antonio V in his Cifra di Stato, attributed a central role to his ancestors. Indeed,
he described Fabritio and Prospero as conquerors of the Kingdom who had raised the trophy of
victory for Gonsalvo de Cordova and put the crown of the Kingdom of Naples on the head of King
Ferdinand. He went on with rhetorical flourish to claim that from that moment on the fortunes of
the crown of Aragon and the Colonna family were as inseparable as the rays of the sun.7
There was a cost to serving the Spanish monarchy, of course, and Fabritio Colonna felt it
in a tragic and personal way when his elder son, Federigo, was killed in the battle for Milan in
1515. In fact, almost every Colonna generation from the time of Fabritio to the time of Cardinal
Giralomo and the Contestabile Marc Antonio V, had lost a son or brother killed during military
service in the Spanish imperial forces: The eldest son of Marc Antonio II, Fabritio II, died at sea
in 1580 while commanding a Spanish ship, and Federigo, the eldest son of Filippo I and brother
of Giralomo and Marc Antonio V, was killed during the siege of Tarragona in 1641 while acting
as Viceroy of Aragon.
This ultimate sacrifice, blood witness to the loyalty of the family, was a central part of the
historical knowledge and rhetoric of the Colonna, a point repeatedly brought up in correspond-
ence between the Colonna and Spanish monarchs in the early seventeenth century. In the early
1640’s, for example, Cardinal Giralomo wrote to Philip IV requesting that the monarch grant
him a church pension in the amount of 6,000 ducats. The request was based not only upon the
cardinal’s own loyal service to the king, but also upon the long record of sacrifice of the Colonna
family on behalf of the Spanish monarchy. Like his brother Marc Antonio V, Giralomo also
pointed to the conquest of Naples over a century earlier and also added the conquest of Milan
during the reign of Charles V to the list of triumphs that were won with Colonna family help
and blood. And he went further to tie those victories directly to the current military service of
his brothers in Flanders.8
This overt connection between historical military service and the sacrifice of the family’s
blood, and contemporary financial favors and royal patronage was a constant characteristic of the
historical mentality and strategy of the Colonna in the seventeenth century. At the same time,
Giralomo and his brother Marc Antonio V, also stressed in their writings that they themselves
continued this tradition of military and diplomatic service to the crown especially in Rome and
the Papal states.

7
ASV, Fondo Colonna , Busta 3, f. 355v. The full text reads: “Fabritio e Prospero conquistatori del Regno fecero alzar
il trofeo a Consalvo, e` la Corona di Napoli sopra la testa di Ferdinando. All’hora Casa Colonna appico la sua bona fortuna
nell’Armi d’Aragona con chiodi di diamante. Non sono flessibili I diamanti: l’incastro e` perpetuo. In quel caso potrebbe dis-
taccarsi quando il posibile che la Corona Regale cadesse. E` fatta inseparabile Aragona e Colonna: come I raggi del sole.”
8
Biblioteca Santa Scholastica Subiaco, (BSSS) Archivio Colonna, Misc. Storica II A 27, Document 4. The full
text reads: “De Rey tan grande como de su Majestad siempre se ha de esperar honras y mercedes tanto mas quando hay
servicios grandes antiguos personales que dan animo y fundamento a ser pretendiente que es la peor condicion que puede
tener una persona esta fuy yo, por que quien ha leydo Historias sabe el fundamento grande que me dieron a mis preten-
ciones la conquista del Reyno de Napoles y del Ducado del Milan con tanta sangre derramada y avienda de mi familia,
y porque si todos estos servicios y ver la natural aficion de mi casa al servicio de su Mad.d y de esta Corona que apenas
nacidos los sujectos de ella quien por la guerra quien por la iglesia se dedican luego a ellos como mis ermanos en Flandres
y yo ...en espana.

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 THE TIES THAT BIND: THE COLONNA AND SPAIN IN THE 17TH CENTURY

Marc Antonio V, for example, presented the chinea, or traditional feudal dues and white
horse that the Spanish monarch paid to the papacy for the fief of Naples, on two separate occa-
sions in the 1640’s. This was an honor normally reserved to the Spanish ambassador in Rome,
but by the middle of the seventeenth century, the Colonna had become so tightly bound to
the monarchy that they eventually replaced the ambassador in this role. Marc Antonio V wrote
proudly of this royal honor in his Cifra making it clear that the high political role gave him a
particular joy.9 As the Contestabile, he clearly saw himself as one of the primary pillars of sup-
port for the Spanish in Rome, who, together with the Spanish ambassador, reflected the glory
of Spain. For this head of the Colonna family, “Rome is the center of greatness and the theatre
of the glory of Spain,” and it was the Contestabile and Spanish ambasador who acted as the two
primary lights of this glory10
The baroque rhetorical style of these last comments may raise some questions about the ac-
tual meaning of Colonna political support for the Spanish monarchy. The fact is that the sister of
Marc Antonio V and Giralomo, Anna Colonna, had been married to pope Urban VIII’s nephew,
Taddeo. And it is no secret that Urban VIII was no friend of the Spanish in Rome. In fact, the
leading Colonna men in this period were quite successful at attempting to be faithful servants of
both pope and Spanish monarch in the difficult years of the 1640’s. But when Urban VIII died
in 1644, both Marc Antonio V and cardinal Giralomo revealed their deep loyalties to the Spanish
monarch. Giralomo, for his part, led the Spanish faction in the college of cardinals as they suc-
cessfully pushed to get the pro-Spanish Innocent X elected. As extra insurance that the conclave
elect a pro-Spanish candidate, Marc Antonio V let it be known that thousands of soldiers from
the Colonna estates were armed and ready to defend the interests of Spain. After the election,
Philip IV wrote warm letters of thanks to both men for their faithful service.
The military service and obligation that Marc Antonio V owed to the Spanish monarch had
additional historical roots that were located inside the Papal states. More specifically, the Col-
onna fortress city of Paliano, first built up by Marc Antonio II in the 1560s, continued to play
an important role as a point of both contemporary military patronage and strong historical ties
between the Spanish monarchs and the Colonna.
The town had been chosen as the sight of a major fortress by Marc Antonio II because of
its strategic location in one of the valleys leading from Naples into the Papal state. Stressing its
importance for potential Spanish military operations, Marc Antonio II had secured funding for
100 Spanish artillery men to man the fortress, and payments were still being made in the 1640s.
Marc Antonio V commented on both the military importance of Paliano and the insight of his
ancestor in the Cifra where he praised the good judgement of his ancestor in choosing the highest
point in Lazio that had a commanding position between Naples and Rome.11
9
ASV, Fondo Colonna, Busta 3, f. 359v. ”Due volte ch’reso il tributo della Chinea con cavalcata a` nome di Sua
Maesta o sopplito lo parti dell’Ambasciatore mi son forzato di meritare quell’honoranza regia con grido di singolarita`.”
10
Ibid., f. 358v.-f. 359r. The text reads: “Roma e il centro della grandezza e teatro della Gloria di Spagna. …
“L’ambasciata Cattolica nel Cielo di Roma e’ un espero: il Contestabilato un lucifero: uniti insieme son due raggi di
splendore che fra la pompa e la maesta sorgento dell’uno e dell’altro Roma si gloria.”
11
Ibid., f. 360r-f. 361v. The text reads: “La Fortezze di Paliano e` una gran Piramide situata nel piu` alto del Latio
nel cuore del stato Ponteficio al prospetto di due gran promontorii Roma e` Napoli. L’occio della sovranita la vede….
Monstro giuditio pari al valore il mio gran Avo nell’elettione del luogo importante.”

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The fact that the Colonna continued to man their central fortress city in the Papal states with
Spanish soldiers in the age of Marc Antonio V underlines the hybrid nature of the Colonna of
Paliano. And this hybridity went beyond the political reality of serving two masters, pope and
Spanish king. For over the previous 140 years, this ancient Roman family with deep medieval
roots in the Papal state, had also grafted Spanish branches onto its family tree through intermar-
riage. More specifically, beginning again with the precedent established by Fabrizio I in the early
sixteenth century, the Colonna persistently pursued a policy of strenghthening dynastic ties with
Spain through marriage. In the case of Fabritio, he arranged for his first son, Ascanio, to be mar-
ried to Giovanna D’Aragona, the daughter of count Ferdinando di Castellana, illegitimate son of
Ferrante I, king of Naples. Subsequently related to the house of Aragon by blood, the Colonna
were regularly addressed as cousin by the kings of Spain. Charles V, during his famous visit to
Rome in 1535, made a particular point of acknowledging this blood tie when he paid a personal
visit to Giovanna D’Aragona, an honor given to few other individual noblemen in Rome. Fab-
rizio also married his daughter, Vittoria, to Ferrando d’Avolos, the Marcheses de Pescara.
After the precedent set by Fabritio, it became a regular habit for leading members of the
Colonna family to arrange marriages of their daughters to Spanish nobleman. Such was the case
with Fabritio’s son Ascanio, who married his daughter, Vittoria, to Don Garcia of Toledo, the
viceroy of Sicily. In turn, the son of Ascanio, Marc Antonio II married his daughter, Vittoria, to
the Admiral of Castile, Don Alonso Henriquez e Cabrera.
Thus, by the early seventeenth century, the Colonna had blood ties through marriage to
numerous leading Spanish families, a point emphasized by Filippo I Colonna in an instruction
to his son Giralomo when the future cardinal was on his way to study at the university of Alcala.
According to Filippo I, Giralomo did not have to feel alone or without family in Spain since he
could count the following as “parientes”: “Almirante de Castilla, Duque de Medina del Rio Seco,
Duque de Alburquerque, Duque de Lerma por su muger, Duque de Medina Celi, Duque de
Gandia, Duque de Arcos, y el Marques de Velada.”12
Besides recounting these family ties to Spain, Filippo I went a step further to reinforce them
through a marriage that he arranged for his oldest son, Federico, to Ana de Austria, the grand-
daughter of Don Juan de Austria, the illegitimate son of Charles V.
In 1625, Margarita, the queen of Spain, wrote approvingly of this marriage to Dona Ana
recognizing that this most recent union of the two houses of Colonna and Austria was a clear
sign of how dedicated the Colonna were to the service of the monarchy. Moreover, the queen
emphasized that Ana and her family could continue to hope for rewards and help from the king
in return for their loyalty.13
A few decades after this marriage, the thick connections between the Colonna family and
the Spanish nobility was memorialized, celebrated and visualizad in the formal setting of the
first published history of the Colonna family in the seventeenth century. Filadelpho Mugnos, a

12
BSSS, Archivio Colonna, Misc. Storica II A 26, Document 103.
13
BSSS, Archivio Colonna. Person. Illustri, AY, lettera 2370. The queen wrote: “os doy un muy cumplido parabien,
assegurandos que lo desee y procure con affecto, conociendo que de la union de dos casas tan inclinados al servitio desta
corona, se pueden y deben esperar nuevas demostraciones que obliguen al Rey mi Senor a hazerles nuevas mercedes, a
que ayudar yo en todas occasiones.”

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Sicilain courtier of Cardinal Giralomo, wrote his Historia Della Augustissima Famiglia Colonna
in 1658, under the patronage of Cardinal Giralomo, and it included extensive accounts of the
Colonna family ties to the Spanish monarchy and nobility.
Mugnos included a family tree made up of the coats of arms of the family entitled , "Armi
della Casa Colonna e suoi parenti di Spagna e Italia,"14 that included the house of Austria at the
top and center. For Mugnos, too, the precedent of Fabritio I, was central to the tradition of Col-
onna service to the Spanish crown, for it was Fabritio who as a sign of “the ancient affection that
the house of Colonna had both for the house of Austria and the Spanish nation gave his daughter
Vittoria at the age of five to Francesco Ferrando II the Marchese di Pescara.” 15
Bound to the Spanish monarchy and nobility by this “ancient affection” and blood ties that
stretched back 150 years; bound to the history of the Spanish empire through blood spilled in
Milan, Flanders, the Mediterranean, and Tarragona during military service to the Spanish kings;
and bound to the Spanish monarchy through the economic rewards, lofty titles and noble privi-
leges earned with the blood and loyalty of their family for over a century, the leading Colonna
men of the mid seventeenth century celebrated and memorialzed their ties to Spain in their writ-
ings and deeds. And it was in Rome, above all other places, that the brothers, Cardinal Giralomo
and Contestabile Marc Antonio V chose to play out this role in the public sphere. Integrated
deeply into the Spanish imperial system at the same time that they remained deeply rooted in
Rome, they were central Spanish players on the urban stage of Rome that they themselves called
the “teatro della Gloria di Spagna.”

14
F. Mugnos, p. 46.
15
Ibid., p. 271. Speaking of Fabritio, Mugnos writes that because of “l'antico affetto c'haveva la casa Colonne se all
Austriaca, & alla nation Spagnuola diede per moglie sua figlia Vittoria all'hora di età di cinque anni a Francesco Ferrando 2.
Marchese di Pescara figliulo d'Alfonso Davolo Marchese del Vasto.”

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