Abstract
In the final years of her life, Vittoria Colonna developed a profound attachment to the English Catholic cardinal, Reginald Pole, who had formed a circle of reformers in the city of Viterbo where Colonna herself moved in 1541. This paper examines the epistolary exchange between Colonna and Pole with an aim of uncovering the nature of what Colonna repeatedly describes as her ‘extreme obligation’. The letters Colonna wrote both to Pole directly and to others in the Viterbo group about Pole reveal his role in her life as a Christ-like figure to whom she is both erotically and spiritually drawn.
