SOURCE: Brown, G. K. “Vittoria Colonna.” Italy and the Reformation to 1550, pp. 235-39. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933.

In the following excerpt, Brown considers the events surrounding Colonna's life and her religious attitudes, claiming that she was interested in Lutheranism only insofar as it denounced the ecclesiastical abuses of the Catholic Church, and that the poet could in no way have been regarded a heretic.

Vittoria Colonna, who was a close friend of the great Italian painter and sculptor, Michelangelo, went through an experience similar to that of other noble ladies of the time. … Widowed at thirty-three years of age in 1525, she was, … attracted towards the close study and practice of piety. This instinct for religious things was inherited from her mother who was a model pilgrim and subjected herself to the strictest austerities. These practices Vittoria imitated with such fervour as to cause the intervention of her trusted adviser...