CHAPTER THREE

PIETRO GORSI AND THE PERPETUATION OF CURIALIST IDEOLOGY

While the Castel Sant' Angelo provided a haven during the Sack of for those who, like Pietro Alcionio, succeeded in reaching it, the city below offered few places of refuge. Nearly four hundred people crowded into the palace of Cardinal Andrea della Veille in the Rione S. Eustachio.1 Because of della Valle's Imperial connections, his residence—like those of three other pro-Imperial cardinals, Wil• lem van Enkevoirt, , and Giovanni Piccolomi• ni—afforded temporary safety. The respite came at a price: on 8 May, an Italian captain in the Imperial forces, Fabrizio Maramaldo, extorted over 34,000 ducats in protection money from those in della Valle's palace. The protection he provided, however, was short• lived: within a week the German , who were not under Maramaldo's jurisdiction, laid siege to the palace of Cardinal Picco• lomini. When it fell in a mere four hours, the soldiers dragged Pic• colomini through the streets to the . Thus prompted, the Car• dinals della Valle, Cesarini, and Enkevoirt fled from their residences to the Palazzo Colonna which, because of 's return to the city on 10 May, remained secure. Many who had sought their protection, however, were abandoned to endure imprisonment and torments at the hands of the German troops.2 Among those who had fled into della Valle's palace was Pietro Corsi, a Roman humanist who had been a staunch papal advocate since the time of Julius II. When Maramaldo extorted money from the refugees, Corsi was compelled to pay 50 ducats, but evidently he lacked the connections to gain access to the Palazzo Colonna when the della Valle residence fell.3 After most of the Imperial soldiers left

1 F. Petrucci, "Corsi, Pietro," in DBI29 (1983): 579-81, at 580. Petrucci provides the most complete and up-to-date survey of Corsi's life and writings. 2 Pastor, History of the Popes, 9:409 & n, 410-12; Petrucci, "Corsi," 580. Cardinal della Valle and his household paid 7,000 ducats to Maramaldo, and the others who had taken refuge in the palace paid the remainder. 3 Petrucci, "Corsi," 580. 74 CHAPTER THREE

Rome for the countryside in mid-July to avoid famine and plague, Corsi escaped to Tivoli for a month, but soon the Imperialists har­ ried that town as well, and Corsi returned to Rome.4 By early Octo­ ber, the soldiers too had drifted back into the city, where they re­ newed their depredations.5 In a letter to Angelo Colocci (20 Novem­ ber), Antonio Tebaldeo reported that both he and Corsi were among those assaulted by the soldiers for trying to enter Colocci's residence.6 Tebaldeo's letter conveys a sense of the precariousness of life in occu­ pied Rome: for example, the troops recently had been threatening to execute some of their high-ranking ecclesiastical hostages unless Pope Clement were to pay a further exorbitant sum by 27 November.7 In the midst of these events, despite being subject to the whims of the occupying forces in a way that Alcionio was not, Corsi set about telling the story of the in another favorite humanist genre. In dactylic hexameters modeled upon the poetry of Vergil, he composed the Romae urbis excidium, which he dedicated to Francis Γ s mother, Louise of Savoy.8 Despite its invocation of long-standing

4 Santorre Debenedetti, "Le ansie d'un bibliofilo durante il Sacco di Roma," in Mélanges offerts à M. Emile Picot (Paris, 1913): 511-14, includes a transcription (513-14) of a letter from Antonio Tebaldeo to Angelo Colocci (20 November 1527). Writing from Rome, Tebaldeo notes (514) that "M. Pietro Cursio stette un mese a Tivoli, poi sempre è stato in Roma." Judith Hook, The Sack of Rome, 1527 (London, 1972), 213, notes that with the exception of 2,000 troops, who remained to guard the pope and Castel Sant'Angelo, the rest of the Imperial army left the city on 10 July. On the Imperialist assault upon Tivoli, see Giovio's Elogium of Andrea Marone. 5 Hook, Sack of Rome, 214-15. b Debenedetti, "Le Ansie," 513. Tebaldeo writes to Colocci: "Ho ricevuta tandem una vostra, a che vi rispondo che non sapete quanta fatica sia stata il stare in Roma, per la grandissima peste et per le botte che davano li soldati a chi volea andare a vedere le case, come fecero prima a M. Pietro Cursio et ultimamente a me in pre• sentia de le vostre vicine." While Tebaldeo was inspecting the damage to Colocci's library, he says, he was struck by a Spanish captain. Corsi provides a cryptic account of his own mistreatment in Excidium, 426, 11.45-65. (Full cite in n. 8 below) 7 Debenedetti, "Le ansie," 514: "Lo Episcopo di Verona, lo Episcopo de Pistoia, lo Episcopo Sipontino, TArcivescovo de Pisa, Iacobo Salviati et Lorenzo Ridolphi sono qui in casa del Cardinale Colonna, in mano de' Thedeschi per obstadesi, et stanno incatenati a dui a dui, che a vederli è una gran miseria; et se a' 27 di questo mese il Papa non paga una certa quantité di dinari, che è grande, li vogliono fare morire in Campo de Fiore...." 8 An early Roman edition of the poem in the Vatican Library (Race. I.IV.909, int. 5) bears this title. The poem was republished in Paris in May of 1528. I employ the critical edition of the poem in Léon Dorez, "Le poème de Pietro Corsi sur le sac de Rome," Mélanges d'Archéobgie et d'Histoire de l'Ecole Française de Rome 16 (1896): 420-436 (hereafter cited as "Corsi, Excidium"). In the edition Dorez edits, the poem is entitled, "Ad humani generis servatorem in urbis Romae excidio P. Cursii civis Rom. deplo- ratio."