etter cited
by Giambattista Rota: "I do not desire to be the wife of a king, but
rather of that great captain who, by means of his valor in war and his
nobility of soul in time of peace, has been able to conquer the greatest
monarchs." Pescara, obedient to his wife's desire, immediately began to
free himself from the temptations which had been besetting his path, but
he had gone so far upon this dangerous road that he was able to turn
aside from it only after his hitherto untarnished honor had been
sullied. The criticism which he received at this time made him
melancholy, and, weakened by wounds received at the battle of Pavia,
which now broke out again, he soon came to his end at Milan, at the age
of thirty-five. Though she was for a long time stunned by her grief,
Vittoria finally accepted her sorrow with some degree of calmness.

Back she then went to Ischia, where they had passed those earlier days
together, and there, for seven years almost without interruption, she
spent her time thinking of the dead lord of Pescara, and extolling him
in her verse. Still young and beautiful, it was but natural that her
grief might be controlled in time and that she might again find
happiness in married life. Distinguished princes pleaded with her in
vain, and even her brothers urged her to this course, which, under the
circumstances, they considered entirely within the bounds of propriety;
but to them all she gave the calm assurance that her noble husband,
though dead to others, was still alive for her and constantly in her
thoughts. After the first period of her grief had passed, she found
herself much drawn toward spiritual and religious thoughts, and then it
was that her poetry became devotional in tone and sacred subjects were
now her only inspiration. Roscoe mentions the fact that she was at this
time suspected of sympathizing in secret with the reformed doctrines in
religion which were then making such headway in the North and playing
such havoc with the papal interests, but there seems little ground for
this suspicion beyond the fact that her devotion to the things of the
spirit and her somewhat austere ideas in regard to manners and morals
were in that day so unusual as to call forth comment. This sacred verse
was published in a volume entitled _Rime spirituali_, and Guingene is
authority for the statement that no other author before Vittoria Colonna
had ever published a volume of poetry devoted exclusively to religious
th