Arms of the Colonna family.

The Colonna family is an Italian noble family ; it was powerful in medieval and Renaissance Rome, supplying one Pope and many other Church and political leaders.

The first cardinal from the family was appointed in 1206 when Giovanni Colonna di Carbognano was made Cardinal Deacon of SS.

For many years, cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo ( elevated in 1193 ) was identified as member of the Colonna family and therefore its first representative in the College of Cardinals, but modern scholars have established that this was based on the false information from the beginning of 16th century.

This reinforced the pro-Emperor Ghibelline course that the Colonna family followed throughout the period of conflict between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.

In honor of this event, the Colonna family was granted the privilege of using the imperial pointed crown on top of their coat of arms.

The celebrated poet Petrarch, was a great friend of the family, in particular of Giovanni Colonna and often lived in Rome as a guest of the family.

He composed a number of sonnets for special occasions within the Colonna family, including " Colonna the Glorious, the great Latin name upon which all our hopes rest ".

In 1627 Anna Colonna, daughter of Filippo I Colonna, married Taddeo Barberini of the family Barberini ; nephew of Pope Urban VIII.

In 1728, the Carbognano branch ( Colonna di Sciarra ) of the Colonna family added the name Barberini to its family name when Giulio Cesare Colonna di Sciarra married Cornelia Barberini, daughter of the last male Barberini to hold the name and grand-daughter of Maffeo Barberini ( son of Taddeo Barberini ).

The Colonna family have been Prince Assistants to the Papal Throne since 1710, though their papal princely title only dates from 1854.

The family residence in Rome, the Palazzo Colonna, is open to the public every Saturday morning.

The main ' Colonna di Paliano ' family is represented today by Prince Marcantonio Colonna di Paliano, Prince and Duke of Paliano ( b. 1948 ), whose heir is Giovanni Andrea Colonna di Paliano ( b. 1975 ), and by Don Prospero Colonna di Paliano, Prince of Avella ( b. 1956 ), whose heir is Filippo Colonna di Paliano ( b. 1995 ).

Colonna and his staff aside, the French seized a great deal of booty on the raid, including 600 horses.

He had already become famous for zeal and eloquence, and was the intimate friend of the Spaniard Juan de Valdés, of Pietro Bembo, Vittoria Colonna, Pietro Martire, Carnesecchi, and others destined to incur the suspicion of heresy, either from the moderation of their characters or from the evangelical tincture of their theology.

According to tradition, the Colonna are a branch of the Counts of Tusculum — by Peter ( 1099 – 1151 ) son of Gregory III, called Peter " de Columna " from his property, the Columna Castle, in Colonna, Alban Hills.

Fra Marino also claims to have been alerted to the existence of the Gospel of Barnabas, from an allusion in a work by Irenaeus against Paul ; in a book which had been presented to him by a lady of the Colonna family ( Marino, outside Rome, is the location of the Palazzo Colonna ).

Matteo ousted the traditional rivals, the Colonna, from Rome and extended the Orsini territories southwards up to Avellino and northwards to Pitigliano.

Pope Martin V ( c. 1368 – 20 February 1431 ), born Odo ( or Oddone ) Colonna, was Pope from 1417 to 1431.

During his permanence in Rome, Martin moved his residence from St. Peter to Santa Maria Maggiore and, from 1424, the Basilica of Santi Apostoli near the Palazzo Colonna.

" Gregory secured for the Ludovisi two dukedoms, one for his brother Orazio, made a Nobile Romano and Duke of Fiano Romano, 1621, and the other, the Duchy of Zagarolo, purchased from the Colonna family by his nephew Ludovico Ludovisi in 1622.

Following the impasse during the previous conclave and to escape from the infighting of the powerful families that had produced earlier Popes, such as the Colonna and the Orsini, the Roman Church looked for a safer place and found it in Avignon, which was surrounded by the lands of the papal fief of Comtat Venaissin.

Columns carried from Veii to Piazza Colonna, Rome, by Pope Gregory XVI.

Noteworthy are a baptismal font ( 12th century ) and the Madonna di Capo Colonna, the icon of the Black Madonna which, according to the tradition, was brought from East in the first years of the Christian era.

The Victors of Lepanto ( from left: John of Austria, Marcantonio Colonna, Sebastiano Venier ).

The palace was plundered and Boniface was nearly killed ( Nogaret prevented Sciarra Colonna from murdering the pope ).

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ( from Greek hýpnos, ‘ sleep ’, éros, ‘ love ’, and máchē, ‘ fight ’), called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing.

The book, however, also includes words from the Italian language, as well as illustrations including Arabic and Hebrew words ; Colonna also invented new languages when the ones available to him were inaccurate.

* In Italian, Francesco Colonna created a similar style ( in prose ), packed with neologisms drawn from Hebrew, Greek and Latin, for his allegory Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ( 1499 ).

The most renowned condottieri fought for foreign powers: Gian Giacomo Trivulzio abandoned Milan for France, while Andrea Doria was Admiral of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In the end, failure was political, rather than military, stemming from disunity and political indecision, and, by 1550, the military service condotta had disappeared, while the term condottiere remained current, denominating the great Italian generals ( mainly ) fighting for foreign states ; men such as Gian Giacomo Medici, Ambrogio Spinola, Marcantonio II Colonna and Raimondo Montecuccoli were prominent into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.

An illuminated page from his Colonna missal ', John Rylands Library, Manchester.

The latter three appealed to Pope Boniface VIII who ordered Jacopo to return the land, and furthermore hand over the family's strongholds of Colonna, Palestrina, and other towns to the Papacy.

The Papal States were entrusted to a team of three cardinals, but Rome, the battleground of the Colonna and Orsini factions, was ungovernable.

The East African Fast Column ( Colonna Celere de Africa Orientale ) had covered approximately 120 km in three days.

In 1297, Cardinal Jacopo ( Giacomo Colonna ) disinherited his brothers Ottone, Matteo, and Landolfo of their lands.

At Villafranca the French, led by Jacques de la Palice, surprised and captured the Papal commander, Prospero Colonna, in a daring cavalry raid deep behind the allied lines ( the Chevalier Bayard providing the impetus and expertise ).

When the negotiations began, his quarrel with the king of France was temporarily in abeyance, and he had no intention of reviving it so long as there was hope that French money would come to pay the troops who, under Charles of Valois, the papal vicar of Tuscany, were so valuable in the crusade against the Colonna cardinals and their Sicilian allies.

Family enmity with Pope Boniface VIII led to destruction of the fortress at Palestrina and to the seizure of the Pope at Anagni by Sciarra Colonna in 1303.

), who was credited, along with the monk Francesco Colonna, with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.

* Original 1922 Almanach de Gotha ( edited by Justice Perthes ) entry for the Colonna family, link to the original universally-recognised genealogical reference document, with details of family honours

It struggled against pagan tendencies in Renaissance humanism, in Italy through Dominici and Savonarola, in Germany through the theologians of Cologne but it also furnished humanism with such advanced writers as Francesco Colonna ( probably the writer of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ) and Matteo Bandello.

Pope Martin V, who while still Cardinal Otto of Colonna, had attacked Huss with relentless severity, energetically resumed the battle against Huss's teaching after the enactments of the Council of Constance, seeking to eradicate completely the doctrine of Huss, for which purpose the co-operation of King Wenceslaus had to be obtained ; in 1418, Sigismund succeeded in winning his brother over to the standpoint of the council by pointing out the inevitability of a religious war if the heretics in Bohemia found further protection.

Here, according to the legend, he fell in love with Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara and a poet.

These views, and his chronic intervention in " temporal " affairs, led to many bitter quarrels with the Emperor Albert I of Habsburg, the powerful Colonna family of Rome, King Philip IV of France, and Dante Alighieri, who wrote his essay De Monarchia to dispute Boniface's claims of papal supremacy.

A bit later in the Inferno, we are reminded of the pontiff's feud with the Colonna family, which led him to demolish the city of Palestrina, killing 6, 000 citizens and destroying both the home of Julius Caesar and a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Nogaret coordinated with the cardinals of the Colonna family, long standing rivals against whom the pope had even preached a crusade earlier in his Papacy.

Upon assuming the papal chair, Eugene IV took violent measures against the numerous Colonna relatives of his predecessor Martin V, who had rewarded them with castles and lands.

This at once involved him in a serious contest with the powerful house of Colonna that nominally supported the local rights of Rome against the interests of the Papacy.

On the West Coast, in 1942 the band did a spot in Reveille With Beverly, a musical film starring Ann Miller, and a " Command Performance " for Armed Forces Radio, with Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Jerry Colonna, and the singer Dinah Shore.

Later, Charles V stripped most of the barons of their lands, replacing them with the Carafa, Revertera, Pignatelli and Colonna among the others.

Frederick landed in Calabria, where he seized several towns, encouraged revolt in Naples, negotiated with the Ghibellines of Tuscany and Lombardy, and assisted the house of Colonna against Pope Boniface.

The Centre Division consisted of 62 galleys under John of Austria himself in his Real, along with Sebastiano Venier, later Doge of Venice, Mathurin Romegas and Marcantonio Colonna.

His principal poetical works were: Dramatic Scenes and other Poems ( 1819 ), A Sicilian Story ( 1820 ), Marcian Colonna ( 1820 ), Mirandola, a tragedy performed at Covent Garden with Macready, Charles Kemble and Miss Foote in the leading parts ( 1821 ), The Flood of Thessaly ( 1823 ).

*" Marcian Colonna: An Italian Tale ; with Three Dramatic Scenes, and Other Poems ", 1821, at Google Books.

He collaborated with an expert in perspective, Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna.

Francesco Colonna ( 1433 / 1434 – 1527 ) was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.

His next assignment was the decoration of the churches S Bernardino and S Alessandro in Colonna with frescoes and distemper paintings.

Browning's friend and fellow poet Bryan Procter acknowledged basing his 1820 " Marcian Colonna " on this source, but added a new detail ; after the murder, the killer sits up all night with his victim.