On Vittoria Colonna’s Religious Thought

Vittoria Colonna was a leading female poet and aristocratic humanist in16th-century Naples,Italy.She was influenced by the remnants of the Renaissance and witnessed the development of the Italian Reformation.Colonna is best known for her collection Rime,a collection of spiritual poetry that reflects the complex Catholic thinking of individual lay people.Italy was in a state of political,economic and social imbalance in 16 th.The conditions of Italian society in transition and Colonna’s particular life experiences shaped her religious thought and provided the conditions for her religious practice.Colonna was not only an aristocratic widow known for her chastity,but also a female humanist poet with a high literary quality and a laywoman actively involved in religious activities.In her Catholic faith,she was a woman who valued traditional Catholic rituals and participated in pilgrimages;in the cult of the Virgin Mary,she valued the assertion of women’s rights and was concerned with ordinary women;and in the relationship between people and God,she held a spiritualist perspective,drawing on Luther’s Sole Fide and focusing on the personal spiritual experience of religious life.Colonna’s religious thought was focused on earthly life and did not form a systematic theological system.Colonna was conservative in her approach to the Catholic Reformation.She was more concerned with the state of human life than with bringing about reform.By incorporating the popular denominational ideas of the time,Colonna formed a highly personalised model of faith: a Protestant outlook in her beliefs,but a Catholic orientation in her actions.Colonna’s religious thought was individualistic,aristocratic and compromising,expressing a religious vision focused on the personal spiritual life and a desire to return to a pure faith.In fact,Colonna’s religious thought embodied a state of faith among the Italian humanists of the 16 th century and provided a secular perspective for the study of the history of the Reformation.