3 - Genevra Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Strategies

Summary

Abstract: This chapter reveals dynastic strategies practiced by Genevra and Giovanni II in the creation and promotion of their children whom they used in an attempt to stabilise their position as rulers of Bologna. Genevra had two children with Sante; but then with Giovanni II she had sixteen more in seventeen years while he fathered a near equal number of illegitimates. All children were carefully placed in marriage alliances or ecclesiastical positions according to gender, rank and status—for the collective good of the family. Serving hundreds of Bolognese, the Bentivoglio were also active godparents, further strengthening their partisan base. This family building project in Bologna shows Genevra acting as a small-scale contributor to larger-scale Sforza projects across the peninsula.

Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, family history, Bologna history, fifteenth-century Italy, marriage alliances, Renaissance Italy

Introduction

Genevra Sforza participated to the fullest extent in the creation and development of the Bentivoglio family dynasty—first with Sante and then especially with Giovanni II. Contemporary writers of women's lives recorded many of Genevra's characteristic traits including her fertility: one recorded her as fecundissima, another noted she had a fecundo ventre. In 1503 after visiting the Bentivoglio, Marchese Francesco Gonzaga reported to his wife Marchesana Isabella d’Este that the many children of the Bentivoglio clan were a sight worth seeing. Genevra had been groomed from childhood for her role in life as a courtly consort—and after her arrival in Bologna, on many levels she unconditionally dedicated herself to the development of the house into which she was placed. A wife's main duty was to produce and raise children, and from her eighteen successful pregnancies and with no sign of miscarriage, it is clear Genevra was an extremely fertile and physically strong woman; she also had great luck in that she did not die of accouchement or its many complications.

Table 3.1 (above) charts her pregnancies and underscores how much of her life was spent bearing children who would serve as active participants in a family strategy—the focus of this chapter. In a decade of marriage with Sante, Genevra had two children but after her second child, a male, was born, Genevra stopped having children.