The Roman Question: Black and White Nobility
The division into social classes is a characteristic that has distinguished human societies from the earliest of times. One such class is the nobility, a term derived from the Latin nobilis, distinguished person, consisting of groups or families holding privileges and power.
The nobility of ancient Rome is sometimes said to have been born with the city itself and it has been present in many shapes and forms, and with different nuances, over the course of the centuries.
One of the oldest noble families is the Colonna family, documented in Rome as far back as the 12th century and which, after no less than 31 generations, is still present to this day. Among its most illustrious exponents is Pope Martin V (who reigned from 1417 to 1431) and who put an end to the papal crisis, as known as the Western Schism, a standoff that lasted for almost a century between duly elected pontiffs and antipopes, who attempted to usurp papal power and prerogatives.
Another famous representative of this family was the poetess Vittoria Colonna, who lived in the first half of the 16th century and was a friend and muse of the divine Michelangelo. Another Colonna who should be mentioned is Marcantonio II, a condottiere and admiral in command of the papal fleet that won the Battle of Lepanto in 1571; a victory so prestigious that the king of Spain, Philip II, appointed Marcantonio II viceroy of Sicily.
The history of Roman noble families goes back many centuries. In 1861 Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy and following this, in 1870, there was an important caesura which marked the end of the Papal State: the temporal power of the Pope was decreed.
This was a hard blow for the aristocracy linked to the papal court, whose most important families – Colonna, Orsini, Borghese, Aldobrandini, Chigi, Sacchetti, Massimo, Pallavicini, Patrizi Naro Montoro, Ruspoli – had distinguished themselves over time as condottieri, cardinals, bankers, military men, and patrons in the service of the reigning pope, as well as, as we have seen, counting elected pontiffs.
The nobility that served the pop was called “black nobility” because of the color of the court dress they were required to wear during official ceremonies.
Following the events of 1870, there was a great divide amongst the noble families: on one hand, the “black nobility”, those who remained loyal to the pope, and the “white nobility”, those who did not.
Black also symbolized the color of mourning against what they had called “an armed aggression against the Holy City,”. As a sign of mourning, as well as protest, they closed the gates and windows of their palaces, even matting them with black drapes and only used the back doors to enter their homes.
The pontiff at the time, Pius IX, obviously did not recognize the new state and, like the black nobility, also locked himself in the Vatican Palaces in protest. This protest lasted about sixty years, a period that historians have called the Roman Question. The dispute ended in 1929 with the signing of the Papacy.