House of Gallone · 6th Prince of Tricase · Marriage 1796
Giuseppe Gerardo Gallone
- 6th Prince of Tricase
- 12th Baron of Specchia Gallone
Son of Giuseppe Domenico Gallone (1706–1766), 5th Prince of Tricase, and of Beatrice Sersale (1737–1786), of the Marchesi Sersale.
Pivot of the house: through the 1796 marriage with Maria Emanuela Pignatelli he brings back the Principalities of Moliterno and Marsiconovo into the Gallone patrimony. He dies prematurely in 1806, at forty.
Origins and guardianship
Giuseppe Gerardo Gallone is born in 1766, the same year as the death of his father, the 5th Prince of Tricase Giuseppe Domenico Gallone (1706–1766). He therefore grows up under the maternal guardianship of Beatrice Sersale (1737–1786), of the Marchesi Sersale, until reaching his majority. He inherits, besides the princely title, that of 12th Baron of Specchia Gallone.
The restoration of the financial activities
After his emancipation, Giuseppe Gerardo restores the financial agencies of the house — essentially lending activities to the great Neapolitan Houses — which had constituted an important part of the Gallone patrimony since the 17th century.
The 1796 marriage and the recovery of Moliterno and Marsiconovo
In 1796, in second marriage, he marries Maria Emanuela Pignatelli (1775–1818), daughter of Giovanni Battista III Pignatelli, prince of Moliterno and Marsiconovo. He concludes mortgage contracts on the goods of her brother, Girolamo III Pignatelli (1773–1848), 3rd Prince of Moliterno and 5th of Marsiconovo, laden with debts and fallen into political disgrace.
By this route Giuseppe Gerardo recovers the fiefs of Moliterno and of Marsiconovo with the attached princely title. It should be noted that the formal title of Prince of Moliterno would be officially devolved to the House of Gallone only in 1848, on the death of Girolamo, with his son Giovanni Battista, 4th Prince of Moliterno and 7th of Tricase: Giuseppe Gerardo himself thus remains remembered mainly as 6th Prince of Tricase.
The petition to the king
In a draft petition to the king, Giuseppe Gerardo states that his ancestors served the Angevins as early as 1284 and then the Aragonese, that the proofs are preserved in the Grand Archive of the Regia Camera della Zecca of Naples, and he asks to be admitted “among the gentlemen of the Chamber in office”.
Descent
From the marriage with Maria Emanuela are born five children: four daughters (Beatrice, Maria Luisa, Brigida, Michela) and the only son, Giovanni Battista Gallone (1800–1868), heir of the house and future 7th Prince of Tricase, 4th Prince of Moliterno on the death of his uncle Girolamo in 1848. The youngest daughter Brigida dies around 1806, at about one year of age.
Death and burial
Giuseppe Gerardo dies in 1806, at forty. He is buried in Naples in the chapel of the Immaculate, under the juspatronage of the Gallone family, in the basilica of San Pietro ad Aram, where his daughters and his wife Maria Emanuela would later also be buried.
In Tricase, in the two altars of the transept of the mother church — dedicated to the Virgin of Constantinople and to Saint Charles Borromeo, already under Gallone patronage — is found the biparted Gallone-Pignatelli coat of arms in inlaid polychrome marble, a lasting memory of the 1796 marriage.
Sources
- D. Lala, L’Archivio dei Principi Gallone, Tricase 2001.
- E. Morciano, “Vestigia napoletane dei principi di Tricase”, in Ne quid nimis. Studi in memoria di Giovanni Cosi, edited by M. Spedicato and L. Montonato, Edizioni Grifo, Lecce 2017, pp. 201–225.