DLudovica Torelli said it was a saint. Or a woman of easy costumes. But also an eccentric great. What is certain is that he was a person of great passions of which the era in which he lived, the Renaissance, was proud.
We could also be, if only we better knew his story and not only the surname that made it famous: Guastalla, that of the fiefdom inherited from the father at 23 years of age. It is then that the young woman becomes Countess of Guastalla, a name that today indicates a street in the center of Milanthe neighboring garden and a well -known college. But let’s go in order.
Ludovica’s adventurous life begins in 1499. It was born on September 26 in a Po Valley set at the intersection of three provinces: Reggio Emilia, Mantua and Modena. The winds of the Catholic reform are already heard in the air. The Church of Rome wants to demonstrate to Europe that it is not so corrupt and distant from the simple values of the Gospel, as the Protestants would like to believe.
Ludovica Torelli (Alamy/IPA)
In the areas of the Countess Ludovica, a form of matriarchy mixes with the religious atmosphere, which fueled emblematic stories, from that of the empress Angilberga in Ermengarda up to Matilde di Canossa. THEto determination the united to these figures, when inheriting the fiefdom, after the death of a brotherhe manages to keep him long firmly in his own hands and to defend himself from all the attempts of the relatives to take them away not only that but also life.
Skilled entrepreneur
High. Black eyes. Very light skin that will keep up to old age. Ludovica is beautiful. In the flesh it becomes only after the fifty years. And, as we read in the interesting biography The Countess of Guastalla (1987) by Aldo Zagni, he is also of acute, magnanimous heart, wise and sagacious ingenuity. Not only that: «If well for his maintenance he spent great, not only did it not diminish but the faculties paternal greatly increased». In short, she is a mature woman from a young age: indeed “woman of virile hindsight”. Finally, he writes very well.
When he marries Ludovico Stanga, count of Castelnuovo Bocca d’Adda, he is sixteen years old. Massimiliano Sforza, Duke of Milan chooses him: the bulls are the vassals of the Duke (they had received two fiefdoms from him). From this openly “political” marriage was born Achilles who, for a fever, dies at four years old. Soon the same fate happens to her husband, and within three years, to her mother.
But Ludovica doesn’t stop. He remarried with Count Antonio II Martinengo di Padernello di Brescia. And immediately he regrets it. Martinengo was a good soldier but also A violent (he had killed his first wife). Three years after the wedding in any case he is assassinated by a brother -in -law and Ludovica remains widow for the second time. He then dedicates himself to the defense of life and that of his own goods.
Above all, he approaches religion. And it does so through a particular devotion for Saint Paul so much so that “Paula aka Ludovica” signed. When his spiritual guide becomes Antonio Maria Zaccaria, founder of the Barnabites, he begins to finance the Constitution in Milan of the religious order of the “Angels”, who becomes the first female congregation not of cloister.
In an era characterized by male power and strong constraints imposed on women by the Churchwhen the religious authorities ask her to become a nun, to appropriate the assets (then the assets of a woman without children had to go to the Church), she resists and with Zaccaria takes to develop the so -called “missions”: they turn relentlessly between Vicenza, Verona, Venice and Ferrara “to renew its religious spirit”.
According to his opponents, who report the Serenissima, however, Barnabites and Angelicas are only spies from Gonzaga and Ludovica is banned by the Venetian lands, also losing, this time, the power to administer the fiefdomsince a cousin gets to stop, after having even resorted to the Pope.
Manages to escape the inquisition
Sold Guastalla, the countess focuses on the works of charity. It builds the monastery of Cremona and the church of San Paolo Converso (now deconsecrated) to Milan and is definitively transferred to this city. It has a great charisma and is animated by a profound apostolic spirit. What an external also with the two “practices” learned by the mother: charity towards the poor and devotion to the Madonna. However, he attracts many criticisms, for the character and resourcefulness. When he founds the Congregation of Angelicas in Milan, for example, he does not give up to exhibit acts of humility in public, which cost them new accusations in front of the Inquisition. Reject, however, by the judges who overturn the setting: his fervor and the love of God are to be praised.
Torelli remains in excellent relations with the angelics even when He decides to create a new religious institutebut not by nuns: he wants to make a sort of college.
Buy ground and immediately start building a place where beauty always reigns, As the Benedictines suggested, so that spirits cannot feel mortified by squalor. It organizes apartments for the matrons that should have educated you young people, “decayed nobles” without means. It wants spacious common environments, draws a beautiful garden full of fruit trees, avenues, fountains and fishponds: they are the current ones Giardini della Guastalla in Milan, open to the public and since 1936 owned by the Municipalitylike the palace, partly destroyed by the 1943 Anglo-American bombings.
Culture as a dowry
It is 1557 when the college was born, inspired by the Catholic principles but Equipped with an independence that makes it a unicum and confirms that Ludovica’s faith is authentic but far from the logic of power: the sign of its modernity. The people of the new community are chosen by her personally. Thirteen matrons and as many girls. It places it under the protection of Filippo II, king of Spain, and entrusts its spiritual care to the new congregation of the Jesuits, who, together with San Carlo Borromeo, has settled in the city. The girls allowed in the college would have remained from ten years up to twenty -two years: it is a success, the more time passes the more their number increases.
The headquarters remains in Milan until the first half of the twentieth century expropriation is transferred from the parts of Monza, to Villa Barbò Pallavicini, where she still continues to operate today.
Passage of witness
Ludovica turns off at 70 years old, on October 28, 1569 And she is buried in the church of San Fedele where it remains until 1938, when she is transferred to the chapel of the new college. For the lovers of Milanese, San Fedele is also the church in which three centuries later went to pray to Alessandro Manzoni and where he died, on January 6, 1873, beating his head on one of the steps of the entrance.
In the footsteps of the founder
Even today the Guastalla college works as a private schoolin the eighteenth -century Villa Barbò Pallavicini in Monza. And here it is also based The Collegio della Guastalla Onlus Foundationthat cIt opens the historical archive with over 60 thousand documents, registers, books and acts. More than five centuries of history, from 1530 to the end of the twentieth century, which in addition to telling the events of the college offer in particular a detailed photograph on the life and transformations of Milan in 1600, under Spanish domination. A heritage of knowledge and tradition that is preserved and valued through a project of cataloging and digitization. In line with the social commitment of Ludovica Torelli is also the support given by the Foundation to social promotion initiatives for the people of the area who live in fragility situations. It does so through economic aid to associations and with projects managed directly, as therapeutic communities and communities for people with disabilities. FoundationCaCastalla.org
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