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 standing committees exist to take a collective view of such matters as contracts, concessions, mineral and other leases, and patronage.

COLONNA, a noble Roman family, second only to the Gaetani di Sermoneta in antiquity, and first of all the Roman houses in importance. The popes Marcellinus, Sixtus III., Stephen IV. and Adrian III. are said to have been members of it, but the authentic pedigree of the family begins with Pietro, lord of Columna, Palestrina and Paliano (about 1100), probably a brother of Pope Benedict IX. His great grandson Giovanni had two sons, respectively the founders of the Colonna di Paliano and Colonna di Sciarra lines. The third, or Colonna-Romano line, is descended from Federigo Colonna (1223). In the 12th century we find the Colonna as counts of Tusculum, and the family was then famous as one of the most powerful and turbulent of the great Roman clans; its feuds with the Orsini and the Gaetani are a characteristic feature of medieval Rome and the Campagna; like the other great nobles of the Campagna the Colonna plundered travellers and cities, and did not even spare the pope himself if they felt themselves injured by him. Boniface VIII. attempted to break their power, excommunicated them in 1297, and confiscated their estates. He proclaimed a crusade against them and captured Palestrina, but they afterwards revenged themselves by besieging him at Anagni, and Sciarra Colonna laid violent hands on His Holiness, being with difficulty restrained from actually murdering him (1303). In 1347 the Colonna, at that time almost an independent power, were defeated by Cola di Rienzi, but soon recovered. Pope Martin V. (1417–1431) was a Colonna, and conferred immense estates on his family, including Marino, Frascati, Rocca di Papa, Nettuno, Palinao, &c., in the Campagna, and other fiefs in Romagna and Umbria. Their goods were frequently confiscated and frequently given back, and the house was subject to many changes of fortune; during the reign of Pope Alexander VI. they were again humbled, but they always remained powerful and important, and members of the family rose to eminence as generals, prelates and statesmen in the service of the Church or other powers. In the war of 1522 between France and Spain there were Colonna on both sides, and at the battle of Lepanto (1571) Marc Antonio Colonna, who commanded the papal contingent, greatly distinguished himself. A detailed record of the Colonna family would be a history of Rome. To-day there are three lines of Colonna: (1) Colonna di Paliano, with two branches, the princes and dukes of Paliano, and the princes of Stigliano; (2) Colonna di Sciarra, with two branches, Colonna di Sciarra, princes of Carbagnano, and Barberini-Colonna, princes of Palestrina; and (3) Colonna-Romano. The Colonna palace, one of the finest in Rome, was begun by Martin V. and contains a valuable picture and sculpture gallery.

 COLONNA, GIOVANNI PAOLO (circa 1637–1695), Italian musician, was born in Bologna about 1637 and died in the same city on the 28th of November 1695. He was a pupil of Filippuzzi in Bologna, and of Abbatini and Benevoli in Rome, where for a time he held the post of organist at S. Apollinare. A dated poem in praise of his music shows that he began to distinguish himself as a composer in 1659. In that year he was chosen organist at S. Petronio in Bologna, where on the 1st of November 1674 he was made chapel-master. He also became president of the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna. Most of Colonna’s works are for the church, including settings of the psalms for three, four, five and eight voices, and several masses and motets. He also composed an opera, under the title Amilcare, and an oratorio, La Profezia d’ Eliseo. The emperor Leopold I. received a copy of every composition of Colonna, so that the imperial library in Vienna possesses upwards of 83 church compositions by him. Colonna’s style is for the most part dignified, but is not free from the inequalities of style and taste almost unavoidable at a period when church music was in a state of transition, and had hardly learnt to combine the gravity of the old style with the brilliance of the new.

 COLONNA, VITTORIA (1490–1547), marchioness of Pescara, Italian poet, daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, and of Anna da Montefeltro, was born at Marino, a fief of the Colonna family. Betrothed when four years old at the instance of Ferdinand, king of Naples, to Ferrante de Avalos, son of the marquis of Pescara, she received the highest education and gave early proof of a love of letters. Her hand was sought by many suitors, including the dukes of Savoy and Braganza, but at nineteen, by her own ardent desire, she was married to de Avalos on the island of Ischia. There the couple resided until 1511, when her husband offered his sword to the League against the French. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Ravenna (1512) and conveyed to France. During the months of detention and the long years of campaigning which followed, Vittoria and Ferrante corresponded in the most passionate terms both in prose and verse. They saw each other but seldom, for Ferrante was one of the most active and brilliant captains of Charles V.; but Vittoria’s influence was sufficient to keep him from joining the projected league against the emperor after the battle of Pavia (1525), and to make him refuse the crown of Naples offered to him as the price of his treason. In the month of November of the same year he died of his wounds at Milan. Vittoria, who was hastening to tend him, received the news of his death at Viterbo; she halted and turned off to Rome, and after a brief stay departed for Ischia, where she remained for several years. She refused several suitors, and began to produce those Rime spirituali which form so distinct a feature in her works. In 1529 she returned to Rome, and spent the next few years between that city, Orvieto, Ischia and other places. In 1537 we find her at Ferrara, where she made many friends and helped to establish a Capuchin monastery at the instance of the reforming monk Bernardino Ochino, who afterwards became a Protestant. In 1539 she was back in Rome, where, besides winning the esteem of Cardinals Reginald Pole and Contarini, she became the object of a passionate friendship on the part of Michelangelo, then in his sixty-fourth year. The great artist addressed some of his finest sonnets to her, made drawings for her, and spent long hours in her society. Her removal to Orvieto and Viterbo in 1541, on the occasion of her brother Ascanio Colonna’s revolt against Paul III., produced no change in their relations, and they continued to visit and correspond as before. She returned to Rome in 1544, staying as usual at the convent of San Silvestro, and died there on the 25th of February 1547.

Cardinal Bembo, Luigi Alamanni and Baldassare Castiglione were among her literary friends. She was also on intimate terms with many of the Italian Protestants, such as Pietro Carnesecchi, Juan de Valdes and Ochino, but she died before the church crisis in Italy became acute, and, although she was an advocate of religious reform, there is no reason to believe that she herself became a Protestant. Her life was a beautiful one, and goes far to counteract the impression of the universal corruption of the Italian Renaissance conveyed by such careers as those of the Borgia. Her amatory and elegiac poems, which are the fruits of a sympathetic and dainty imitative gift rather than of any strong original talent, were printed at Parma in 1538; a third edition, containing sixteen of her Rime Spirituali, in which religious themes are treated in Italian, was published at Florence soon afterwards; and a fourth, including a still larger proportion of the pious element, was issued at Venice in 1544.

 COLONNADE, in architecture, a range of columns (Ital. colonna) in a row. When extended so as to enclose a temple,