“Mostragli Caio allor, ch’a strane genti
Va prima in preda il gia inclinato Impero,
Prendere il fren de’ popoli volenti,
E farsi d’Este il Principe primiero;
E a lui ricoverarsi i men potenti
Vicini, a cui Rettor facea mestiero,
Poscia, quando ripassi il varco noto,
A gli inviti d’Honorio il fero Goto.”
—Orlando Furioso.
Guelph, Duke of Bavaria (succeeded 1071), from whom all the branches of the House of Brunswick are descended, was the son of Alberto Azzo, Marquis of Este, by his first wife, Cunegunda, a princess of the Suabian line.
Fulco I, Marquis of Italy and Lord of Este, the son of Alberto Azzo by his second wife, Garisenda, daughter of Herbert, Count of Maine, was the founder of the Italian branch from which the Dukes of Ferrara and Modena descended, the male line of which became extinct at the end of the last century. The Duke of Modena, who was deposed in the mid-nineteenth century, represented the house of Este in the female line,—his grandmother, Maria Beatrix, having been the last descendant of the Italian branch. Este continued in the possession of the descendants of Alberto until 1294, when it fell an easy conquest to the Carraras. Successively a dependency of Padua and of the Verona Scaligers, it passed to Venice in 1405, retaining its local government and municipal institutions.
Near Este is Arqua, where Petrarch died in 1374. It has been a literary shrine since 1650, for a chronicler of that time remarks it as one of the things to come to Italy to see. The house is still to be seen, and the sarcophagus containing his remains and an inscription beginning—
“Frigida Francisci lopis hic tegit ossa Petrarce”
is before the tiny church of this little frequented and little exploited village.
