Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

to over 13,000. Aquaviva is honored for his work in help-
ing to preserve the society’s Ignatian tradition during a
time when Loyola’s principles were seriously threatened.

Aragon, house of The royal family descended from
Ramiro of Navarre who inherited the Pyrenean territory of
Aragon in 1035. Succeeding generations enlarged the fam-
ily’s inheritance by judicious marriages and by conquest.
By the end of the 13th century they had driven the Moors
out of northern Spain and ruled Aragon, Catalonia, Valen-
cia, and the Balearic Islands. Peter III’s acquisition of Sicily
after the ejection of the island’s Angevin rulers following
the Sicilian Vespers (1282) enabled the house of Aragon to
become a major Mediterranean power, ruling over Sar-
dinia, Naples, Sicily, and Athens, and enjoying the benefits
of a flourishing maritime trade. Alfonso V, who had con-
quered Naples in 1442 (see ALFONSO I), left Naples to his
illegitimate son, Ferrante (FERDINAND I), in 1458; his
other domains passed to his brother. The last male heir,
FERDINAND II, whose marriage to Isabella of Castile pre-
pared the way for the union of Spain, reunited Naples with
the crown of Aragon in 1504.

Aragona, Tullia d’ (1508–1556) Italian poet and
courtesan
The daughter of a courtesan and possibly of Luigi, cardi-
nal of Aragon, Tullia attracted numerous aristocratic and

scholarly admirers, including the Florentine historians Ja-

copo NARDIand Benedetto VARCHIand the Paduan poet

Girolamo MUZIANO. She published poems, mainly imitat-

ing Petrarch, in Rime (1547), dedicated to Eleonora, wife

of Cosimo I de’ MEDICI. Her Dialogo dell’infinità d’amore

(1547) is a fashionable Neoplatonic essay on love.

Arca, Niccolò dell’ See NICCOLÒ DELL’ARCA

Arcadelt, Jacques (c. 1505–1568) French or Flemish

composer

Though little is known about his early life, there is evi-

dence he may have spent time in Florence after 1532,

when the Medici regained control there. On the assassina-

tion of Alessandro de’ Medici (1537), Arcadelt probably

moved to Venice and from 1540 he was in papal service in

Rome. In 1544 he entered the employ of Charles of Lor-

raine, later archbishop of Reims, and settled in Reims until

at least 1562. He may have belonged to the French court

chapel and died in retirement in Paris.

Arcadelt almost certainly studied with Josquin DES

PRÉS; his Masses in particular show Josquin’s influence.

Arcadelt began by composing sacred music, but his secu-

lar works are better known. There are extant 126 chan-

sons and over 200 madrigals. The chansons were very

popular, the earlier ones reflecting the influence of

Josquin and the later ones written in Arcadelt’s character-

istic homophonic style, shifting between triple and duple

time. All are of a sentimental nature and eschew licentious

texts. In the madrigals, the text is of paramount impor-

tance, and musical effects are not permitted to interfere

with its rhythmic requirements. One such madrigal, “Il

bianco e dolce cigno” was consistently popular.

Arcadia The remote, mountainous area of southern

Greece to which Virgil referred in his Eclogues and which

thus passed into literary convention as the setting for the

idealized world of the PASTORAL. When writers revived the

pastoral as a literary form in the Renaissance, it was the

idealized landscape of Arcadia, not the reality, which dom-

inated their works, and “Arcadia” became the title of more

than one book. In 1504 a sequence of verse eclogues

linked by prose narrative was published by the Neapolitan

poet Jacopo SANNAZARO. The first pastoral romance, it

concerns the unrequited love of the hero Sincero who re-

tires into Arcadia to share the rustic life of the shepherds.

Written in Italian, rather than Latin, it was a very popular

and influential work. The Arcadia of Sir Philip SIDNEY, a

pastoral romance in prose, interspersed with lyrics, exists

in two versions. The first was written between 1577 and

1580, but during the years 1580–84 Sidney undertook a

radical revision of the work and added a third book. This

version was published posthumously as The Countesse of

Pembroke’s Arcadia (1590). Common to both is the golden

world of Arcadia itself and the trials and exploits of the

AArrccaaddiiaa 2255

Alfonso II

(1494–95)

Ferdinand II

(1495–96)

Ferdinand I

(1412–16)

Alfonso V

(1416–58)

Alfonso I of Naples

(1442–58)

John II of

Aragon

(1458–79)

Ferdinand II

(1479–1516)

illegitimate

Ferdinand I of

Naples (Ferrante)

(1458–94)

Federico

(1496–1501)

Neapolitan

succession

The simplified family tree (with regnal dates) shows the separation of

the kingdom of Naples from that of Aragon in the mid-15th century

and the reunion of the two realms under Ferdinand II of Aragon.

House of Aragon