Caterina Cibo

Caterina Cibo was born in 1501 at Ponzano near Florence, the sixth child (of eight) of Franceschetto Cybo (the illegitimate son of Pope Innocent VIII, Giovanni Battista Cybo, and somewhat infamous for a wastrel lifestyle), and Maddalena de’ Medici (daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici and Clarice Orsini). The marriage was a political exchange, whereby Maddalena brought brought a dowry of 4000 ducats, and the Pope made Lorenzo's son, Giovanni de' Medici, a cardinal. This made Caterina the granddaughter of Pope Innocent VIII and niece to both Lorenzo 'the Magnificent' de’ Medici and the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII, and meant that she was inevitably caught up in the politics of the time. Her father would flee Rome on the election of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, but later return under his successors; her uncle, Leo X, would make Caterina's brother, Innocenzo, a Cardinal. Another brother, Lorenzo, was Duke of Ferentillo, at one time commander in chief of the Papal Army. 

Growing up in a humanist court, Caterina read multiple languages (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at least) with ease and was well versed in ancient oratory, philosophy, poetry, and patristics. Three years after she married Giovanni Maria daVarano, the duke of Camerino in 1520, she gave birth to a daughter, Giulia. When her husband died of the plague in 1527, Cibo obtained a papal decree granting her sole rights to the duchy should Giulia predecease her. Between 1422 and 1534, she repeatedly fought off the armed attacks on Camerino by neighboring lords, one of whom attempted to rape and kidnap Giulia. Her stepson Rodolfo da Varano, with the support of the Colonna family, seized power, imprisoning Caterina and claiming the duchy. With the backing of her powerful family and papal allies, Caterina orchestrated her release and ultimately the execution of Rodolfo.  She created a refined Renaissance court, over which she ruled as 'a capable and sometimes severe ruler'.

In 1535, Cibo engineered a marriage between Giulia and the future duke of Urbino (Guidubaldo Della Rovere). Pope Paul III, however, feared the Duke’s growing power in the region: he confiscated the duchy, took Camerino for himself, and excommunicated Cibo, Giulia, and Della Rovere. Cibo took refuge with her brother in the Pazzi Palace in Florence. It was only after Cibo’s return from Marseilles, where she took part in Catherine de Medicis’ wedding to the future King of France, Henri II, that Cibo’s clashes with papal authority began to gather steam. In 1533, she joined the poet and reform thinker Vittoria Colonna in rescuing the Capuchins, a primitive monastic order whose independence caused the Pope to oust them from the church. At Cibo’s urging, Pope Clement VII took the Capuchins back into his fold and named as their general Bernardino Ochino, a disciple of Juan de Valdes, the leading reform theologian in Italy. Cibo is featured as Ochino’s chief interlocutor in his Seven Dialogues (1542), a work that dramatizes his conversations with the duchess about the relation between faith and works, the question of predestination versus free will, and other doctrinal issues. After Ochino’s flight to Zurich, Cibo turned for intellectual companionship to the Padua-educated Aristotelian, Marcantonio Flaminio. Though no writings of hers survive, Cibo’s theology is believed to have evolved from her conversations with Flaminio, Cardinal Reginald Pole, and Pietro Carnesecchi, with whom she met frequently at Carnesecchi’s house in Florence in 1541 on the eve of the Inquisition. Cibo was denounced as a 'heretic, a follower of heretics, and a teacher of heretics' by a witness at the Holy Office’s trial of Cardinal Giovanni Morone in 1557. Nonetheless, she escaped the fate of Carnesecchi, who would be burned in Rome in 1567. Cibo died of natural causes in the Pazzi Palace in Florence, to which she had inherited the usufruct.

Sources

• (https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/caterina-cybo_(Dizionario-Biografico))

• (https://www.condottieridiventura.it/cybo-caterina/)

• (https://www.capuchin.org/history/)

Bibliography

Felici, Lucia, 'Inquietudini spirituali di una nobildonna del Cinquecento: Caterina Cybo', Rivista di storia del cristianesimo XVII (2020): 205-222.

Petrucci. F. 'Cibo, Caterina.' In Dizionario biografico degli Italian!. Vol. 25. Rome: Istituto dell Enciclopedia Italiana. 1960.

na., https://www.labyrinthsofinfinity.com/caterina-cybo-da-varano-history-women/

Robin, Diana, 'Caterina Cibo ('Cybo', 1501-1557)', in Diana Robin, ‎Anne R. Larsen and ‎Carole Levin (eds.), Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England (Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), p. 79.