ABSTRACT
One day in 1915 the peace of the mountains and wooded valleys of the Abruzzi was shattered by an earthquake which killed more than 30,000 people. Among the ancient villages of the worst affected area was Pescina: among the houses reduced to rubble was one that had once belonged to the Bufalini family. There, on Saint Bonaventura’s day, 14 July 1602, Hortensia Mazarini, born Bufalini, gave birth to her eldest son. Giulio Mazarini was destined to become an eminent statesman in the service of France and to play a significant part in re-aligning the map of Europe. Again it was 14 July, in 1789, when another kind of earthquake shook Paris as the Bastille fell to a revolutionary mob, demonstrating to the world the collapse of the old absolutist regime. To the early shaping of that regime no one had contributed more than Giulio Mazarini’s predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu: to its preservation during the crisis of the Fronde, no one more than Mazarini himself.
