The Venetian Bride

Girolamo marries Giulia Bembo in November 1549. The Council of Ten grants Girolamo permission to travel secretly to the bride’s home to finalize the marriage, but he is required to return to the Palazzo Ducale the same evening. With this unpropitious beginning, the newly united families adapt to a succession of challenges as Giulia’s father Gian Matteo works behind the scenes for a revision of Girolamo’s sentence. The hunt for Tristan Savorgnan and his henchmen continues. He escapes capture, but upon orders of the Council of Ten, his family palace in Udine is razed to the ground. Farnese support for Girolamo endures, notwithstanding the death of Paul III. But even with ongoing appeals from Rome, the Council of Ten holds firm on Girolamo’s sentence of exile. Giulia becomes pregnant, despite restrictions on Girolamo’s movement within the city. The couple prepare to board a galley for Crete in the summer of 1550.

The Capitano Grande

Giulia’s father Gian Matteo is actively engaged in political affairs and cultural endeavours (the Accademia degli Uniti) in Venice. He is Eelected Capitano Generale Grandeof Candia in 1552, he and sails to the island with his wife Marcella for a two-year term and . Hemakes notable additions to the infrastructure of the city. Continuing with the construction of Michele Sanmicheli’s city walls, he brings the first running water into the city, builds a fountain using Roman spolia, and completes new arsenals at the port. Giulia gives birth to Taddea and Giulio. Michele continues to lobby for a reduction of his brother’s sentence. Finally, after the election of a new doge (a close friend of Gian Matteo’s), the Council of Ten votes to allow Girolamo to return to Venice to complete the last five years of his term. The Della Torre and Bembo families sail back to Venice in September 1554.

Wars and Peace

Girolamo faces a revolt by the citizens of Ceneda while serving as procurator for his brother, and Venice is forced to intervene. But the decades-long blood feud in the Friuli finally comes to an end. After a pamphlet war and a duel, a Venetian procurator negotiates the Peace of 1568 between the heads of the warring families. Bishop Michele serves as papal nuncio to the French court. Gian Matteo is honoured with portraits in the Palazzo Ducale and several book dedications, but he reluctantly declines two prestigious posts because of ill health and dies in June 1570 at the age of seventy-nine. His will, omitting one son, leads to prolonged litigation. The Turks take Cyprus in 1571 and Michele fortifies the castle in Ceneda. As the threat recedes, he enjoys country life. Venice stages the triumphal entry of the new French king Henri III, but suffers two devastating fires in the Palazzo Ducale, and the worst plague in Venetian history.

Epilogue

The destinies of the descendants of Girolamo Della Torre and his Venetian bride, Giulia Bembo, were shaped by a feudal culture based on blood and soil that would gradually change to a culture with respect for the rule of civil law. They were also shaped, and not for the better, by a change in inheritance practice from comunella (equal shares to the patriline) to primogeniture. The clan solidarity of the sixteenth century of Girolamo and his brothers and sons eroded and was replaced by a culture of individualism, competition, and potential intrafamily strife. It is no small irony that despite efforts by both the Della Torre and Bembo families to preserve their patrimonies through large families and an unbroken succession of male heirs, the last survivor in the paternal bloodline of each was a daughter.

Exile

Girolamo and Giulia sail to Crete, their voyage reimagined from accounts of similar trips in that period. After avoiding attacks from corsairs, they arrive safely in the port of Candia, only to find half-finished city walls and many buildings partially in ruin from a recent earthquake. They soon obtain rental housing and insert themselves into a community of Latins and Greeks. Giulia gives birth to their first child, Lodovico, who dies two weeks later. A healthy second son, Sigismondo, is born, albeit with difficulties. With the Della Torre line now assured, the couple move within a complicated social hierarchy of elites and settle into the rhythms of colonial life. Girolamo collects rents for a Farnese cardinal and is granted permission to carry arms for his defence. The search for his brother’s assassins continues back in Italy, and Bishop Michele becomes a leading figure at the Council of Trent.

Restitution

Giovanni da Udine returns to his native city after the Sack of Rome and participates in a campaign of urban renewal. The Della Torre brothers engage in protracted litigation to receive financial restitution from the Savorgnan heirs, during which time Raimondo dies. The three surviving brothers also petition for entrance into the hereditary Venetian nobility, a rare distinction held by the Savorgnan, but are rejected. The rebuff is lessened in 1533 when the brothers are named cavalieri aureati—Knights of the Golden Spur—by the Emperor Charles V, just two weeks after he granted the same honour to Titian (Tiziano Vecellio). Girolamo, now head of the family, takes the lead in rebuilding Palazzo Torriani. Alvise II attends to family affairs at Villalta. Michele becomes a favourite of Pope Paul III, thus creating lasting links with the powerful Farnese family, and rises in the hierarchy of the church in Rome.

The Return

Back in Venice, Girolamo secures housing in Ca’ Morosini, a Gothic palace on the Grand Canal not far from Ca’ Bembo at Santa Maria Nova. Gian Matteo successfully defends himself from charges of improperly spending state funds in Candia and is allowed to stand for election again. His wife Marcella dies in August 1555, a few days after Giulia gives birth to a daughter named after her grandmother. It is a time of droughts and famine in the countryside, celebrations in Venice, and periodic outbreaks of plague throughout the territory. In early 1556, Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland, is feted throughout the territory. The following year the city celebrates the first coronation of a Dogaressa in a century, with more festivities. Two sons, Giovanni and Alvise III, are born to Giulia in 1556 and 1557. Bishop Michele becomes majordomo of the household of Pope Pius IV in Rome and reluctantly engages in papal politics.

A Future Bride

The story begins in Venice in the last decade of the fifteenth century with the unhappy marriages of Antonia Bembo, sister of Cardinal Pietro Bembo and mother of Marcella Marcello. Drawing upon Pietro’s abundant correspondence, we learn of unfaithful husbands and faithful wives, the mal francese (syphilis), marriage strategies, dowries, and the special significance of brides in Venice. Marcella is married in 1519 to Gian Matteo Bembo, an up-and-coming young patrician. They start a family in Ca’ Bembo, the family palace at Santa Maria Nova. With the birth of their daughter Giulia in 1531, they establish a bloodline that will run through the book.

Retrenchment

In 1587 Girolamo sells Palazzo Torriani to Antonio Marchesi, a rich merchant, to satisfy some of the creditors. Marchesi, who has noble aspirations, embellishes the palace with luxurious furnishings, including a ceiling painting by the workshop of Paolo Veronese, and builds new structures on the site. Girolamo ties up loose ends. He verifies the family’s titles and investitures and puts his financial house in order. Mindful of the litigation over Gian Matteo’s estate, he executes a notarized document, dividing his property, and his debts, equally between his three surviving sons, Sigismondo, Giulio, and Giovanni, ‘so that everyone would know his share’. Girolamo’s brother-in-law Pietro Bembo, Bishop of Veglia, dies in 1589. The pope gives the office to Girolamo’s son Giovanni over Venetian objections. Girolamo drafts his testament, reaffirming the property division of 1587. He dies in Venice in March 1590 at the age of eighty-five.

The Cardinal

Michele is named cardinal in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII and is lauded with extensive, and costly, celebrations in Ceneda and Udine. It is the high point of the Della Torre fortunes and reputation. When the pope dies in 1585, Michele is favoured by many to be his successor, but another cardinal is elected instead as Sixtus V. Michele dies in Ceneda the following year. This is a low point for the family. Girolamo’s son, Giovanni, is in line for a bishopric and there are hopes for the Ceneda post. But Michele Mocenigo, a candidate favoured by the Venetians, is named instead. SadlyMore seriously, Michele’s cardinalate (as well as the bishopric) was a costly honour, and the Della Torre family is deeply in debt. Girolamo becomes embroiled in a lengthy dispute with the pope over funeral expenses and with Mocenigo over assets in Ceneda.