As these old families, "pure Romans of Rome," have died out, their
place has been taken by the aristocracy of papal origin, and though as
a rule natives of northern provinces, these newcomers have become
Roman in sympathies and have inherited the privileges and traditions
of the Roman patrician. Not only did each new pope bring his own
relatives to Rome in his train and grant them titles, but he also
gathered round him followers from his own province among whom he
distributed the great papal offices. Sometimes the period of greatness
thus bestowed was short-lived, in other cases a permanent aristocracy
was created and the papal offices became hereditary. Thus the Ruspoli
from father to son are Masters of the Sacred Hospice; the Colonna are
Assistant Princes; the Serlupi are Marshals of the Pope's Horse; the
Sforza have the hereditary right to appoint the standard-bearer of the
Roman people; the Chigi are Marshals of Conclave, replacing the
Savelli in this office who had held it for nearly five centuries.
Some of these families were nobles in their own province. The
Boncompagni were a noble family of Bologna. Coming to Rome with
Gregory XIII. in 1572, they were created Dukes of Sora and later
Princes of Piombino and of Venosa.
[Illustration: MEDIAEVAL HOUSE AT TIVOLI]
The Ludovisi were nobles of Pisa, the Borghese patricians of Siena.
This great family came to Rome with Paul V. in the early seventeenth
century, and was granted princely rank with the title of Sulmona. In
the middle of the eighteenth century, Marc' Antonio Borghese
married a Salviati heiress and at that period was owner of the
beautiful Villa Borghese with its museum and priceless collection of
statues, of the great palace by the Tiber, of the villas Mondragone
and Aldobrandini at Frascati, and of thirty-six estates in the
campagna, building and endowing at the same period the rich Borghese
chapel in S. Maria Maggiore. At a later date, Camillo Borghese married
Pauline Bonaparte and was appointed governor of Piedmont by Napoleon
I. Of late years this family has been almost ruined by reckless
building speculations, and the greater portion of their magnificent
possessions has been sold and alienated. The Aldobrandini and Salviati
are both off-shoots from this family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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