Ferdinando I. Gonzaga di Castiglione

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Ferdinando I. Gonzaga di Castiglione

Ferdinando I. Gonzaga di Castiglione (also Ferrante Gonzaga) (born July 28, 1544 in Castelgoffredo , † February 13, 1586 in Milan ) was an Italian nobleman from a branch of the widely ramified Gonzaga house . In 1571 he became the first Marquis of Castiglione . His eldest son was canonized as Aloisius von Gonzaga (Italian: San Luigi Gonzaga ) on December 31, 1726.

origin

Ferdinando was the middle of the three sons of Margrave Luigi Alessandro Gonzaga di Castiglione from the old Italian noble family of Gonzaga , from his marriage to Caterina Anguissola (* around 1508; † December 13, 1550), daughter of Conte Gian Giacomo Anguissola. His paternal grandfather was Margrave Rodolfo Gonzaga di Castiglione , a son of Ludovico III. , the Marquis of Mantua .

In addition to his brother Alfonso, who was three years older than him, he also had his brother Orazio, who was one year younger.

Life

Childhood and loss of parents

On July 19, 1549, his father died in Castelgoffredo at the age of 55. The brothers who were still underage lost their mother in December 1550. Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505–1563) and his brother Ferrante Gonzaga (1507–1557), the governor of Milan , both senior citizens of the Gonzaga family, were given guardianship. However, since Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga took over the reign of the Duchy of Mantua for Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538–1587), who was almost the same age, in 1550 , the maternal uncle, Conte Giovanni Anguissola (1514–1578), took care of the three nephews and the current one Administration of the dominions of Castelgoffredo, Castiglione and Solferino . Due to the will of the father in 1548, the estate was divided among his three sons in 1558. Alfonso, the eldest, he was now 17, became lord of Castelgoffredo, Ferdinando got Castiglione and Orazio got Solferino. The division was confirmed by the imperial investiture of March 20, 1559. Orazio, the youngest brother, was 17 years old when the other testamentary regulations on non-feudal goods were recorded in 1562. Through this act Ferdinando received numerous possessions between Castelgoffredo and Castiglione, in addition to the actual rule of Castiglione.

A life between Spain and Italy

Ferdinando was sent to Spain as early as 1559 at the age of 15, following family tradition, to be trained in the arms trade. After his return in 1561, he stayed in Castiglione until the end of 1562, taking care of the affairs and obligations of both his feud and the Castelgoffredo estate, which he administered on behalf of his brother Alfonso. In 1563 and 1564 he was back in Spain, in the service of King Philip II , until he was commissioned in 1565. Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua sent him to Vienna to see Emperor Maximilian II to settle a delicate case concerning the Margraviate of Montferrat for him. On this occasion Ferdinando was able to prove his qualities as a diplomat, as he not only successfully completed the mission, but also received the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire from the Emperor .

Returning to Spain, he married the Piedmontese noblewoman Marta Tana di Santena , bridesmaid of the Spanish Queen Elizabeth of Valois, in Madrid in November 1566 . On this occasion he received a number of honorary and financial recognitions from Philip II, such as admission to the Alcántara order , the office of chamberlain of the court and a number of income in the countries of Milan and Naples . This income served Ferdinando to cover his ongoing need for money, which he had since his youth and throughout his life, it seems because of frequent gambling debts . At the end of 1566 he returned to Castiglione with his young wife. On May 30, 1567 he received the authorization from the emperor to open a coin and to mint money. This profitable financial recognition was followed on March 9, 1568 by the birth of the first son, Luigi (later St. Aloisius of Gonzaga ), on whom great dynastic expectations rested from the beginning. Almost exactly to the day, the second son Rodolfo was born the next year, followed by five more sons and a daughter.

Basilica di San Sebastiano in Castiglione

After another short stay in Spain in 1568, Ferdinando returned there in March 1570 to fight under Juan de Austria in the war against the Moriscos revolting in Granada ( uprising in the Alpujarras ). When he returned to Madrid in September, he stayed there for almost a year as Philip II's Chamberlain. In June 1571 he was commissioned by the king to join the emperor's sons, Rudolf and Ernst of Austria , to accompany them to Vienna. Once there, he learned that his fief Castiglione had been raised to margraviate. He returned to Spain in October 1572. There Ferdinando was appointed colonel by Philip II , with the task of training and commanding a company of 3,000 Italian infantrymen. His stay at the court of Madrid ended in September 1575. Ferdinando returned to Italy and for the next four years again took care of the affairs of Castiglione, which had been wisely administered by his wife during his frequent absences. While fleeing the plague , he and his family fled briefly to Montferrat in 1576 . In Castiglione he operated the expansion and modernization of the existing buildings and the further expansion of his residence. In 1577, in gratitude for having escaped the plague, he had the Basilica di San Sebastiano built on a hill above the city. This was Luigi's (Aloysius Gonzaga) favorite meditation place, where a relic of him was kept from 1610 to 1679 .

Governor of Montferrat and another trip to Spain

At the end of 1579 Ferdinando was appointed governor of Montferrat by Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga . On the one hand, the financial income associated with this office was very pleasant, on the other hand, the enormous responsibility brought a lot of uneasiness, in view of the delicate political situation in Montferrat, both inside (where unrest was on the agenda) and outside, in direct contact especially with Savoy , that posed a constant threat. Although he led the government with a steady hand and had partially restored public order, he was deposed after fifteen months as a result of serious conflicts with the Spanish governor of Milan. The result was the loss of the income that had been paid up until then, an economic damage that he wanted to repair by addressing King Philip II directly. To this end, he and his wife and three eldest children Luigi, Rodolfo and Isabella joined a procession from Prague in September 1581, which accompanied the Empress widow Maria of Austria , the sister of Philip II, to Spain. Once there, Ferdinando, thanks to the prestige that he apparently still enjoyed at this court, obtained the renewal of his economic advantages for himself and for his children the appointment as pages of the Infante of Spain . The stay, for Ferdinando it should have been the last in Spain, lasted over two years and ended in May 1584.

Return to Castiglione

After returning to his homeland in 1584, he had to deal with serious difficulties, one of which was again lack of money, mainly caused by the long and expensive stay in Spain. He was also worried about the decision of his firstborn son Luigi to finally devote himself to religious life when he entered the Society of Jesus . The choice that the young man had made during his stay in Spain was difficult for the father to accept and yet it turned out to be irrevocable. On November 2, 1585, the 17-year-old Luigi solemnly renounced the inheritance rights of the fief in the Palazzo di San Sebastiano in Mantua after Emperor Rudolf II had issued a decree in Prague on October 29, 1584 , which authorized Luigi in his favor Brother Rodolfo to renounce the margravate.

Ferdinando I Gonzaga di Castiglione, who had been suffering from a severe form of gout for a number of years , died three months later, on February 13, 1586, at the age of 41 in Milan, where he had gone for treatment for the disease. His body arrived in Castiglione on the evening of February 15 and, according to his will, was buried on February 17 in the Gonzaga Chapel of the Church of San Francesco, the mausoleum of Gonzaga, in Mantua. The son Rodolfo, not yet seventeen years old, inherited the Margraviate of Castiglione with its feudal and allodial assets.

  • Castello Castiglione, today owned by the Catholic Church

  • Castiglione

  • Castiglione as a separate margraviate in northwestern Mantua, 1702

  • Location of Castiglione in the Duchy of Mantua , 1796

  • Location of Castiglione in what is now the province of Mantua

  • Church of San Francesco in Mantua

  • Tower of San Francesco

Marriage and offspring

Ferdinando Gonzaga married Marta Tana (* 1550; † April 26, 1605), daughter of Conte Baldassarre Tana, Signore di Santena , on November 11, 1566 . They had eight children together:

  • Luigi Gonzaga (born March 9, 1568 in Castiglione, † June 21, 1591 in Rome at the plague)
  • Rodolfo Gonzaga (born March 7, 1569 in Castiglione, † January 3, 1593 (murdered) in Castelgoffredo) 2nd Margrave of Castiglione, Lord of Castelgoffredo
⚭ October 29, 1588 Elena Aliprandi (* 1573; † 1608 in Mantua), daughter of Giovanni Antonio Aliprandi
  • Ferdinando / Ferrante Gonzaga (April 15, 1570 - May 9, 1577)
  • Carlo Gonzaga (February 19, 1572 - August 23, 1574)
  • Isabella Gonzaga (November 12, 1574 - October 5, 1593 (in Madrid?))
  • Francesco Gonzaga (born April 27, 1577 in Castiglione, † October 23, 1616 in Maderno ) 3rd Margrave of Castiglione, Lord of Castelgoffredo
⚭ February 1, 1598 Bibiana von Pernstein (* 1578/83; † February 17, 1616), daughter of Vratislav von Pernstein
  • Cristiano / Cristierno Gonzaga (born September 30, 1580 in Castiglione, † May 22, 1657 in Solferino ) Lord of Solferino
⚭ 1605 Marcella Malaspina (*?; † July 1630 from the plague), daughter of Alfonso Malaspina Marchese di Castel dell'Aquila
  • Diego Gonzaga (born September 30, 1582 in Madrid, † August 19, 1597 (murdered) in Castiglione)

  • Ferdinando's father Luigi Alessandro Gonzaga di Castiglione (1494–1549)

  • Ferdinando's older brother Alfonso Gonzaga di Castelgoffredo (1541–1592)

  • Ferdinando's younger brother Orazio Gonzaga di Solferino (1545–1589)

  • Ferdinando I. Gonzaga 1st Marchese di Castiglione (1544–1586)

  • Ferdinando's wife Marta Tana (1550–1605)

  • Luigi's first son, St. Aloisius of Gonzaga (1568–1591)

  • The second son Rodolfo Gonzaga 2nd Marchese di Castiglione (1569–1593)

  • Rodolfo's wife Elena Aliprandi (1573–1608)

  • The fifth son Francesco Gonzaga 3rd Marchese di Castiglione (1577-1616)

  • Francesco's wife Bibiana von Pernstein (1578 / 83–1616)

literature

Web links

Commons : Ferdinando Gonzaga  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ In Casale , the old capital of Montferrat, a revolt broke out in 1565. With the help of the governor of Milan it was possible to defeat the rebels and force the city to give up. As a result of these events, Casale was turned into a fortress . Biography universal, ancient et modern. Volume 18, 1817, p. 95. (books.google.de accessed on June 7, 2018)
  2. ↑ The document (or a copy?) Is in the Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, b. 3309 . Raffaele Tamalio:  GONZAGA, Ferrante. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 57:  Giulini – Gonzaga. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2001. Retrieved June 8, 2018

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Raffaele Tamalio:  GONZAGA, Ferrante. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 57:  Giulini – Gonzaga. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2001. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
  2. ^ Genealogical page on the family , accessed June 9, 2018.


predecessor Office successor
Luigi Alessandro Gonzaga di Castiglione Lord of Castiglione
1549–1571 		-
- Margrave of Castiglione
1571–1586 		Rodolfo Gonzaga di Castiglione
personal data
SURNAME Gonzaga di Castiglione, Ferdinando I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gonzaga, Ferrante
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian nobleman, lord and margrave of Castiglione
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1544
PLACE OF BIRTH Castelgoffredo
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1586
Place of death Milan