WRITER - HISTORIAN - PALEOLOGO/GONZAGA

"Uno scandalo, un matrimonio politico e qualche delitto", 

URBS silva et flumen, xvii (2004), pp. 94-98.

Giorgio Quintini's sense of history was akin to that of the Kosovo Serbs; what happened hundreds of years ago might have been as yesterday to him. He never forgave the Gonzaga family for having been usurpers in Monferrato. From his point of view the marquisate should have remained in the Paleologo family, in which case, he reasoned, it would have come down to him and his cousins. In actual fact, had it remained with the Paleologo family, they would have contracted more grand dynastic marriages and not moved to Ancona, where they would marry into local families, and so there would have been no Quintini-Paleologo family. But this is the opinion of the present writer and would not have been that of Giorgio.

Guglielmo XI Paleologo (in Macrino d'Alba)

This longish article, which was published in the local history journal of Ovada in 2004, is possibly the most difficult for the layman and non specialist to read. It is written in Giorgio's most abstruse style, with long complex sentences, full of subordinate clauses,  recondite information and digressions. The first paragraph, which is one whole sentence, will give an idea of his style in this piece. One problem was that he was condensing a vast amount of information about historical characters who lived in the 15th century without giving his readers a chance to assimilate it before adding more. A diagram of a family tree would have helped in this article, for the pictures are only illustrative and do not help comprehension.

It tells the story of how the Paleologo family of Monferrato had problems with succession and how the Gonzaga family muscled in and took the place from them. This was because the last of the line was illegitimate, even though his father had recognised him. The real purpose of the story is to get to the final paragraph, which he underlined in red in his own copy of the article. This gives the 'legitimate' descent to the Paleologo-Oriundi family and ends with the key word OVADA, which was where Giorgio himself was living. Thus yet again he claimed the legitimacy of his residence in Monferrato.

Here is the first page of his own copy. It may be read more easily online at the URBS site.
http://accademiaurbense.it/pdf/URBS_06-04.pdf

This complex story of intrigues and violence is told with all the erudition of someone who had studied the period as a real historian. He sometimes takes it for granted that his readers will have the family trees and histories by heart as he undoubtedly had. Those who reached the end of the article saw the happy ending in which the author is able to establish the descent of his own flourishing family, as he underlined on the last page here.