Guilla
Overview
Biography
Guilla was the wife of Rainerio II, marquis of Monte S. Maria. Peter Damian wrote to her to persuade her to correct the social injustices practiced by her husband’s family. The family is mentioned, unfavorably, in another letter of Peter Damian’s. ep.66 to an Italian countess, Blanche (Epistolae 1191.html). Sophia, an aunt of Guilla’s husband, as sister of Uguccio, margrave of Tuscany, Guilla’s father-in-law, and daughter of the Rainerio who had been made duke of Spoleto and margrave of Camerino by Henry II, is cited as an example of selfish arrogance: “Behold while we write these things, Sophia returns to our memory, namely of two marquises, sister of Uguccio, daughter of Rainerio; she, about six years before this, while still healthy and sound, asked the abbot of the monastery of the martyr St. Christopher, that she might build a tomb for herself, and with him resisting, she rather stubbornly carried out this folly. Upon entering, as soon as she saw the tomb constructed within the monks’ cloister, by what judgment I don’t know she fell ill, and shortly after miscarried and passed away. Indeed although its mound was gypsum and fortified on all sides by the skillful efforts of the masons, it breathed forth such a great flood of stench continuously through the cycle of the year on every side that it could scarcely be endured, nor did it allow the brothers to rest in the whole midst of the cloister itself. And although many tombs remained all around, they perceived that those same (tombs) and the expenses were much smaller; nothing except this alone brought disgust to the nostrils, so that by illustration it was more plainly noted that the more tenderly and gently human flesh is nourished, the worse it transforms into rottenness and nausea. Peter also wrote a letter to Guilla’s husband, Rainerio II, ep.151, in 1067, urging him to do the penance Peter had imposed on him for sins the marquis had confessed, to him. Rainier did not want to carry out the penance, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Though the husband’s sins are not specified in Peter’s letter to him, they are identified in the letter to Guilla.