Este against Pope Sixtus IV. and the Venetians, whose ambitious claims were a menace to his own dominions of Ferrara and Mantova. His son Giovan Francesco III. (d. 1519) continued the military traditions of the family, and commanded the allied Italian forces against Charles VIII. at the battle of Fornovo; he afterwards fought in the kingdom of Naples and in Tuscany, until captured by the Venetians in 1509. On his liberation he adopted a more peaceful and conciliatory policy, and with the help of his wife, the famous Isabella d’Este, he promoted the fine arts and letters, collecting pictures, statues and other works of art with intelligent discrimination. He was succeeded by his son Federigo II. (d. 1540), captain-general of the papal forces. After the peace of Cambrai (1529) his ally and protector, the emperor Charles V., raised his title to that of duke of Mantua in 1530; in 1536 the emperor decided the controversy for the succession of Monferrato between Federigo and the house of Savoy in favour of the former. His son Francesco I. succeeded him, and, being a minor, was placed under the regency of his uncle Cardinal Ercole; he was accidentally drowned in 1550, leaving his possessions to his brother Guglielmo. The latter was an extravagant spendthrift, but having subdued a revolt in Monferrato was presented with that territory by the emperor Maximilian II. At his death in 1587 he was succeeded by his son Vincenzo I. (d. 1612), who was more addicted to amusements than to warfare. Then followed in succession his sons Francesco II. (d. 1612), Ferdinando (d. 1626), and Vincenzo II. (d. 1627), all three incapable and dissolute princes. The last named appointed as his successor Charles, the son of Henriette, the heiress of the French family of Nevers-Rethel, who was only able to take possession of the ducal throne after a bloody struggle; his dominions were laid waste by foreign invasions and he himself was reduced to the sorest straits. He died in 1637, leaving his possessions to his grandson Charles (Carlo) II. under the regency of the latter’s mother Maria Gonzaga, which lasted until 1647. Charles died in consequence of his own profligacy and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand Charles (Ferdinando Carlo), who was likewise for some years under the regency of his mother Isabella of Austria. Ferdinand Charles, another extravagant and dissolute prince, acquired the county of Guastalla by marriage in 1678, but lost it soon afterwards; he involved his country in useless warfare, with the result that in 1708 Austria annexed the duchy. On the 5th of July of the same year he died in Venice, and with him the Gonzagas of Mantua came to an end.
Of the cadet branches of the house one received the lordship of Bozzolo, another the counties of Novellara and Bagnolo, a third, of which the founder was Ferrante I. (d. 1557), retained the county of Guastalla, raised to a duchy in 1621, and came to an end with the death of Giuseppe Maria on the 16th of August 1746.
Bibliography.—S. Maffei, Annali di Mantova (Tortona, 1675); G. Veronesi, Quadro storico della Mirandola (Modena, 1847); T. Affò, Storia di Guastalla (Guastalla, 1875, 4 vols.); Alessandro Luzio, I Precattori d’Isabella d’Este (Ancona, 1887); A. Luzio and R. Renier, “Francesco Gonzaga alla battaglia di Fornovo (1495), secondo i documenti Mantovani” (in Archivio storico italiano, ser. v. vol. vi., 205-246); id., Mantova e Urbino, Isabella d’Este e Elisabeth Gonzaga nelle relazioni famigliari e nelle vicende politiche (Turin, 1893); L. G., Pélissier, “Les Relations de François de Gonzague, marquis de Mantoue, avec Ludovico Sforza et Louis XII” (in Annales de la faculté de Lettres de Bordeaux, 1893); Antonino Bertolotti, “Lettere del duca di Savoia Emanuele Filiberto a Guglielmo Gonzaga, duca di Mantova” (Arch. stor. it., ser. v., vol. ix. pp. 250-283); Edmondo Solari, Lettere inedite del card. Gasparo Contarini nel carteggio del card. Ercole Gonzaga (Venice, 1904); Arturo Segrè, Il Richiamo di Don Ferrante Gonzaga dal governo di Milano, e sue conseguenze (Turin, 1904).
GONZAGA, THOMAZ ANTONIO (1744–1809), Portuguese
poet, was a native of Oporto and the son of a Brazilian-born
judge. He spent a part of his boyhood at Bahia, where his
father was disembargador of the appeal court, and returning to
Portugal he went to the university of Coimbra and took his law
degree at the age of twenty-four. He remained on there for some
years and compiled a treatise of natural law on regalist lines,
dedicating it to Pombal, but the fall of the marquis led him to
leave Coimbra and become a candidate for a magistracy, and in
1782 he obtained the posts of ouvidor and provedor of the goods of
deceased and absent persons at Villa Rica in the province of Minas
Geraes in Brazil. In 1786 he was named disembargador of the
appeal court at Bahia, and three years later, as he was about to
marry a young lady of position, D. Maria de Seixas Brandão, the
Marilia of his verses, he suddenly found himself arrested on the
charge of being the principal author of a Republican conspiracy in
Minas. Conducted to Rio, he was imprisoned in a fortress and
interrogated, but constantly asserted his innocence. However,
his friendship with the conspirators compromised him in the eyes
of his absolutist judges, who, on the ground that he had known of
the plot and not denounced it, sentenced him in April 1792 to
perpetual exile in Angola, with the confiscation of his property.
Later, this penalty was commuted into one of ten years of exile to
Mozambique, with a death sentence if he should return to America.
After having spent three years in prison, Gonzaga sailed in May
1792 for Mozambique and shortly after his arrival a violent fever
almost ended his life. A wealthy Portuguese gentleman, married
to a lady of colour, charitably received him into his house, and
when the poet recovered, he married their young daughter who
had nursed him through the attack. He lived in exile until his
death, practising advocacy at intervals, but his last years were
embittered by fits of melancholia, deepening into madness, which
were brought on by the remembrance of his misfortunes. His
reputation as a poet rests on a little volume of bucolics entitled
Marilia, which includes all his published verses and is divided into
two parts, corresponding with those of his life. The first extends
to his imprisonment and breathes only love and pleasure, while
the main theme of the second part, written in prison, is his
saudade for Marilia and past happiness. Gonzaga borrowed his
forms from the best models, Anacreon and Theocritus, but the matter, except for an occasional imitation of Petrarch, the natural, elegant style and the harmonious metrification, are all his own. The booklet comprises the most celebrated collection of erotic poetry dedicated to a single person in the Portuguese tongue; indeed its popularity is so great as to exceed its intrinsic merit.
Twenty-nine editions had appeared up to 1854, but the Paris edition of 1862 in 2 vols. is in every way the best, although the authenticity of the verses in its 3rd part, which do not relate to Marilia, is doubtful. A popular edition of the first two parts was published in 1888 (Lisbon, Corazzi). A French version of Marilia by Monglave and Chalas appeared in Paris in 1825, an Italian by Vegezzi Ruscalla at Turin in 1844, a Latin by Dr Castro Lopes at Rio in 1868, and there is a Spanish one by Vedia.
See Innocencio da Silva, Diccionario bibliographico portuguez, vol. vii. p. 320, also Dr T. Braga, Filinto Elysio e os Dissidentas da Arcadia (Oporto, 1901). (E. Pr.)
GONZÁLEZ-CARVAJAL, TOMAS JOSÉ (1753–1834), Spanish poet and statesman, was born at Seville in 1753. He studied at the university of Seville, and took the degree of LL.D. at Madrid. He obtained an office in the financial department of the government; and in 1795 was made intendant of the colonies which had just been founded in Sierra Morena and Andalusia. During 1809–1811 he held an intendancy in the patriot army. He became, in 1812, director of the university of San Isidro; but having offended the government by establishing a chair of international law, he was imprisoned for five years (1815–1820). The revolution of 1820 reinstated him, but the counter-revolution of three years later forced him into exile. After four years he was allowed to return, and he died, in 1834, a member of the supreme council of war. González-Carvajal enjoyed European fame as author of metrical translations of the poetical books of the Bible. To fit himself for this work he commenced the study of Hebrew at the age of fifty-four. He also wrote other works in verse and prose, avowedly taking Luis de Leon as his model.
See biographical notice in Biblioteca de Rivadeneyra, vol. lxvii., Poetas del siglo 18.
GONZALO DE BERCEO (c. 1180–c. 1246), the earliest Castilian poet whose name is known to us, was born at Berceo, a village in the neighbourhood of Calahorra in the province of Logroño. In 1221 he became a deacon and was attached, as a secular priest, to the Benedictine monastery of San Millan de la Cogolla, in the
