Evan Brubaker (University of Virginia)
Emerging out of the turmoil and miseries of the 1527 Sack of Rome, the poetic genres of the consolatio (consolation) and lamentio (lament) for the fallen city have continued to attract scholarly attention. Studies by De Caprio (1986) and Gouwens (1998), and more recently Romei (2018) have explored how humanists such as Pietro Corsi and Piero Valeriano, looking to poetic models found in classical authors such as Statius and Ovid, sought to comfort the sacked city and rationalize its suffering.
In this paper I analyze a heretofore unstudied representative of this genre, the Consolatio ad Romam (Consolation for Rome) of the humanist poet and priest Ambrogio “Novidio” Fracco. Through a close-reading, I argue that Fracco’s poem, written in Latin elegiacs and published in 1538, serves to mythologize the Sack through classical allusion while also to celebrate an idealized version of Rome’s Cinquecento revival under Pope Paul III (1534-1549).
I begin by locating the Consolatio within Fracco’s own literary corpus and the larger tradition of poetry on the Sack. I here discuss Fracco’s own background as a survivor of the Sack and the tragedy’s role as a recurrent theme within his other opera, particularly his Sacri Fasti (Sacred Calendar) and his unpublished De Adversis (On Adversities). I then discuss discussion the consolatio genre, taking as my primary example Pietro Corsi’s Excidio Urbae Romae (On the Destruction of the City of Rome) which offers valuable insight into the genre and its conventions.
The following section considers the general structure and themes of the Consolatio ad Romam. I here focus on the Sack itself, for which Fracco draws heavily on Virgilian and Ovidian imagery. The initial breach of Rome becomes the new ultima nox (last night) of Troy, while the flight of Pope Clement VII to Castel Sant’Angelo is portrayed in language mirroring the rush of Aeneas against the Greek forces in Aeneid Book Two. So too, I argue, does Fracco draw on Ovid’s Fasti and Tristia, refashioning the city’s imperial invaders as the barbarian Getae and the slaughter of its young defenders as the spiritual successors to the three hundred Fabii who fell in the Battle of Cremera.
In the final section I examine what is perhaps the most unique quality of Fracco’s Consolatio, namely, its effort to place the Sack within the larger context of Rome’s renewal under Pope Paul III. Whereas other poets focus solely on the Sack of the city, Fracco frames the event as ushering in a revival in the city’s geopolitical status as the religious and political caput mundi. To this end, Fracco emphasizes the relationship between Paul and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, on which depended efforts to counter both the growing Protestant and Ottoman threats. Moreover, I demonstrate how Fracco exculpates Charles for his role in the Sack, ventriloquizing through the Habsburg emperor a newfound dedication to spreading the imperium of the Catholic Church.