Farnese Family

Farnese Family, an Italian family that ruled the duchy of Parma and Piacenza from 1545 to 1731. Originating in upper Lazio, the family soon became noted through its statesmen and its soldiers, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The first of its most celebrated members was Alessandro (1468–1549), the future Pope Paul III (see Paul III under Paul [Papacy]). His vast culture, as well as the love affair of his sister Giulia with Pope Alexander VI, assured his rapid rise at the Roman court. A cardinal from the age of 25, he was elected pope on Oct. 13, 1534, after a compromise reached by the French and the imperial parties. In the prevailing spirit of nepotism, Paul III, at the consistory of Aug. 19, 1545, detached Parma and Piacenza from the papal dominions and erected them into duchies.

Pier Luigi (1503–47), the first duke, was Paul’s son by a woman whose name is unknown. He instituted a supreme council of justice and a ducal chamber, ordered a census of the population, reduced the Valtarese to submission, and curbed the power of the feudal lords. Pier Luigi’s second son and successor, Ottavio (1542–86), made Parma his capital instead of Piacenza and continued his father’s work of internal consolidation and the struggle against the feudal lords. He harshly repressed a conspiracy in 1582 and subdued the Valtarese again. Pier Luigi’s eldest son, Alessandro (1520–89), had been created cardinal at 14. A patron of scholars and artists, it was he who completed the magnificent Farnese palaces in Rome and at Caprarola.

The third duke, Alessandro (1545–92), Ottavio’s son, was the most distinguished male member of the Farnese family (see Farnese, Alessandro, duca di Parma e Piacenza). Educated at the court of Madrid, where he had been sent as a hostage according to a clause in the treaty of Ghent, Alessandro followed a career of arms and, after his father’s death, continued in command of the Spanish forces in Flanders because Philip II would not agree to his return to Parma, of which he was duke in name only.

Alessandro was succeeded in 1592 by his son Ranuccio I (1569–1622), who had been regent since 1586. In 1612 Ranuccio ferociously repressed a conspiracy of the nobles, which was provoked by a further diminution of the privileges of the local feudatories but was abetted by the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua and perhaps also by the house of Savoy.

Ranuccio’s son and successor, Odoardo I (1612–46), was ambitious and impulsive, and he engaged in inconclusive campaigns and diplomacy during the Thirty Years’ War. His eldest son, Ranuccio II (1630–94), who succeeded him in 1646, inherited a heavy financial and diplomatic burden. In 1649 Pope Innocent X accused the Farnese of the murder of an ecclesiastic and seized the fief; Ranuccio declared war but was utterly defeated at Bologna on August 13 of that year. Although the duchy survived, it remained on the whole precarious, one of the reasons being the continual passage of troops during the War of the Grand Alliance.

Francesco (1678–1727), son of Ranuccio II and his successor in 1694, attempted to save the fortunes of the state and of the dynasty, now in utter decadence, by his economic and diplomatic initiative, but his only important success was the marriage of his niece Elisabetta (see Isabella) to Philip V of Spain in 1714, which enabled him to pursue a plan for an anti-Austrian league in Italy.

The last Farnese of the male line was Antonio (1679–1731), duke from 1727. Parma and Piacenza passed to Don Carlos (the future Charles III of Spain), Philip V’s eldest son by Isabella.