[*45] Guidantonio died on February 21, 1443, according to the inscription on his tomb; but the Chronicle of Gubbio (Berni, in Muratori, R.I.S., tom. XXI., p. 981) gives the date as in the text. The library at Urbino was begun by him.
[46] Regarding this daughter, who was born in 1428, we have some curious particulars to offer. After her father's death, she was carried to Rome, to be educated by her uncles the Colonna. There she married Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, in 1448, an alliance rather of policy than of affection, and was received in his capital with all demonstrations of joy by her new subjects. Her husband, fully occupied with war and business, soon after set off for Lombardy: and in sooth her charms are described, even by her enthusiastic eulogists, as very homely, and little adapted to fix the roving tastes of her lord, whose dissolute and brutal conduct exceeded even the licence of that age. After patient endurance of his outrages during twelve years, she fled to the convent of Corpus Domini, of the Franciscan order of Sta. Chiara, at Pesaro, which she enriched with 7500 ducats out of her dower. That she did not leave behind all mundane tastes may be concluded from a curious inventory of paraphernalia which she took into the cloister, printed by the Abbé Olivieri from the original in her own hand, and contained in [II. of our Appendix].[*B]
But even the sacred precincts of her cloister afforded to the unhappy Sueva no adequate sanctuary from her cruel husband, who, abandoning himself to a profligate connection with Pacifica, a fair damsel of Pesaro, sought by renewed persecutions to extort from his wife an entire release from his matrimonial tie. Her just complaints procured the interposition of the Colonna; but these were answered by false charges against her connubial fidelity, which, overawed by the menaces of Alessandro, that he would consign the monastery and its inmates to the flames, she tacitly admitted. Thus cut off from human succour, the afflicted lady had recourse to the support of religion, and whilst prostrated before a crucifix, her faith was reassured by the conviction that the figure upon it had turned towards her with compassionate words. For such woes the world had no asylum. The outraged wife became the spouse of Christ, by taking the final vows as Sister Serafina, and sent back to her oppressor the ring that had been the token of their ill-starred union. His restored liberty was immediately used to marry Pacifica, whom his cruelties within two years consigned to a premature tomb. Finally, repenting of his long criminal career, he sought forgiveness of Serafina, and richly endowed the convent, of which she had become abbess. After an age of peace, such as youth, and the world with its gauds, had failed to afford her, her body was deposited in the cathedral of Pesaro, where it is revered as a sacred relic, its spirit having, in 1754, received the honours of beatification, and been associated with Sta. Michelina and S. Terenzio, as a protectress of that city. I had the good fortune, in 1843, to discover in the Oliveriana Library there, and to rescue from neglect, a curious piece of furniture that had belonged to the Corpus Domini, on which were portraits of the Beata Felice who founded that monastery, and of the Abbess Serafina. They were executed in distemper, with much of the feeling of Pinturicchio, and the latter of them has been rudely but faithfully engraved for Olivieri's Life of Alessandro Sforza.
[*B] Cf. Feliciangeli, Sulla monacazione di Sueva Montefeltro-Sforza (Pistoia, 1903).
[47] The remote origin of the Ubaldini is curiously illustrated by an inscription, which is among the earliest known records of armorial bearings. It was inscribed in Gothic characters upon a stone, originally placed on one of their Apennine castles, but brought to Florence by a branch of their race, where it was long regarded as an heirloom. It has been published in Borghini's Discorsi Toscani, II., p. 25, and the following literal translation from its barbarous Latino-Italian rhymes may be acceptable to our readers. It was intended to commemorate the erection of the castle, and exhibits, in rude carving, the Ubaldini arms, a stag's head antlered.
| "For this boon Thanks I render to Christ, Completed on the fête of the gentle St. Mary Magdalene; Ah! do Thou specially pray To God for me a sinner. In this my chant, From the most veritable narration I in nothing deviate. In the year one thousand Of Christ's salvation, and a hundred Eighty-four, Chased by hounds Furiously, I, hard by the Coppices in Mugello, a stag By the horns stopped,— Of old the genius of the Ubaldini, Subjects of the holy Empire; Where, rushing on at speed, I grappled with my hands At his horns all the while. The mighty Sir Frederick, Who observed him thus cumbered, Having come up, slew him outright. Thereupon he gifted me with The forehead, beautifully horned, And honourably branched; And desired that it should be Of my race The accepted cognisance. My father was Ugicio, And my grand-sire Guarento, Son of Ugicio, son of Azo, Son of Ubaldino, Son of Gotichino, Son of Luconazo. Q.D.A.A.D.V." |
[Thus read]
"Who shall sway the Apennines? The favoured house of Ubaldini."
After many a conflict with their neighbours of Florence, the Ubaldini of Val di Mugello paid the penalty of their Ghibelline principles, by expulsion from their native fiefs, and were scattered throughout Central Italy. A branch of them retired to the more distant fortresses of Umbria, and after lording it for a time over Città di Castello, found an eventual home on the mountains north of Gubbio, which they are supposed to have had in dowry with a daughter of the Brancaleoni, about 1280. Her descendant,
Bernardino Ubaldini della Carda, a gallant condottiere in the wars of Count Guidantonio, died in 1437, having married that Count's natural daughter Aura. Their son,