Gasparo Contarini Research Articles

Virtues and institutions as the foundations of a res publica in Wawrzyniec Goślicki and Gasparo Contarini

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is to examine and compare two republican approaches to politics and res publica presented in the sixteenth century by Wawrzyniec Grzymala Goślicki and Gasparo Contarini.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Both authors define the core elements of a republican scientia civilis but emphasize different aspects as being of primary importance for a well‑ordered civitas libera. Goślicki saw the best safeguards of a free and well‑ordered commonwealth in the character and virtues of the rulers and citizens, whereas Contarini believed that such safeguards could only be found in a good legal and institutional structure that kept corruption at bay. The article follows the contextual method typical for intellectual history to present different arguments that Contarini and Goślicki formulated in their understanding of scientia civilis and the best commonwealth looking at both the context of their works and their arguments.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: After introducing the context for the two works the next two parts focus on Goslicki’s and then Contarini’s vision of scientia civilis and the most effective ways to keep corruption and decay at bay followed by comparison and conclusion.
 RESEARCH RESULTS: A comparison of these two visions should shed some light on the later development of both polities and republicanism in modern Europe more generally which largely followed Contarini and not Goślicki. It can also provide an important lesson for our own understanding of politics and political philosophy that should underpin a political order to make it resilient to corruption and backsliding.
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Examining these two authors and their prominent works helps better situate political discourses in the two countries that explain different trajectories of their constitutions and political developments, and for us today provide an interesting lesson on how we should understand politics and respublica.

Gasparo Contarini, The Republic of Venice. De magistratibus et republica Venetorum. Edited and introduced by Filippo Sabetti. Toronto, ON, University of Toronto Press 2019

Article Gasparo Contarini, The Republic of Venice. De magistratibus et republica Venetorum. Edited and introduced by Filippo Sabetti. Toronto, ON, University of Toronto Press 2019 was published on February 1, 2022 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 314, issue 1).

Tradition and Success of a Physical Treatise. The Reception of Contarini’s 'De elementis' in the Last XVIth Century

This article aims to reconstruct the tradition of Gasparo Contarini’s physical treatise De elementis, comparing all the extant witnesses. In the second part of the article, it is explored how the treatise reached a widespread diffusion and success in the universities, thanks to its clear exposition of Aristotle’s doctrine. A special attention is devoted to those Renaissance philosophers and professors who quoted Contarini in order to defend Aristotle’s natural philosophy against the new theories of Telesio and Campanella.

Sixteenth-Century Renaissance Utopianism: Conceptions of Ideal and Virtuous Governments in Gasparo Contarini's Treatise on Venice and Thomas More's Utopia

Sixteenth-Century Renaissance Utopianism: Conceptions of Ideal and Virtuous Governments in Gasparo Contarini's Treatise on Venice and Thomas More's Utopia

Trzy razy res publica: Thomas Smith, Gasparo Contarini i Wawrzyniec Goślicki

The interest in Republican thought is on the increase again, now chiefl y thanks to the works of Quentin Skinner and the circle of so-called neo-Republicans (or civic Republicans) concentrated around Phillip Petit. They stress the peculiar perspective that Republicans have had on the state and society. This is seen in their distinctive view of freedom as the absence of domination, or attachment to the category of citizenship and the related role of civic virtues. These special characteristics justify, in their opinion, distinguishing the Republican trend of political thought (historically and now) from other positions, especially the liberal tradition. Accepting generally the above opinion, the paper draws our attention to signifi - cant differences within Republicanism itself. To do this, it cites the three conceptions of republic that were formed in the 16th century and refer to England (Sir Thomas Smith), Venice (Gasparo Contarini) and Poland (Wawrzyniec Goślicki). Although they were formed around the same time and have common roots mainly in Aristotle’s philosophy and Roman Republican ideas, each of the three perspectives views the republic from a different angle. While all three authors believe the coexistence of three elements – orderly institutions, wise law and virtuous citizens – to be crucial for any state, they rely in their deliberations on one element only. This has an impact on the way their conceptions fi nally appear and on the conclusions for the political system they draw. And so, Smith gives precedence to institutions, Contarini emphasises the key role of law and Goślicki gives primacy to virtue, concentrated in an ideal senator. Taking notice of such differences among thinkers openly admitting to an attachment to the Republican tradition should make us even more careful so as not to oversimplify it as if it were uniform and completely cohesive. Further, the awareness of such differences may provoke refl ection how justifi ed the use of the Republican banner is in respect of so different authors as, for instance, Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires

This contribution seeks to present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522–1525, to unfamiliar readers, as well as to elucidate its contents. It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernán Cortés were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were constituted to decide upon the division of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were drawn up both to make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal – may simply be following a rhetorical precedent fashioned by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons drawn to the letters and reports of other contemporary observers, like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek at the Spanish court, as well as contemporary travellers and businessmen, like Jörg Pock in Lisbon.

Othello on the Rack

Othello appeared at time in England 's history when had come to fore in country's homeland security politics, legal debates, and popular culture.1 At pivotal moment in play's famous seduction scene, Othello twice says that Iago tortures him: hast set me on rack! (3.3.335); If thou dost slander her and me, / Never pray (3.3.368- 69). This essay scrutinizes these declarations by assessing them not only on basis of what happens in play, but also through Shakespeare's adaptations of his sources and through lens of play's historical moment. Notably, in Giraldi Cinthio's Un Capitano Moro, source of Othello's plot, Venetians physically Moor: Signoria . . . with many tortures . . . sought to draw him truth about why he murdered his wife, a lady of their city (388). In this version of story, no confession could be drawn from (388) Moor, who is exiled, and then killed, by lady's family. Shakespeare transforms source insofar as play stages an assault on mind rather than body; Iago pledges to practi[ce] upon [Othello's] peace and quiet / Even to madness (2.1.310-11), and general bids Farewell tranquil mind! (3.3.348).2 Whereas Cinthio portrays man who withstands physical torture, Othello shows man broken by insidious psychological methods that he himself describes as torture. A second source, Lewes Lewkenor's 1599 translation of Gasparo Contarini's The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, provides play's mise en scene and certain verbal echoes, but Shakespeare drew on this text more than has generally been recognized. In its preface, Lewkenor extols moderation . . . wherewith [the Venetians] governe such subjected provinces as are under their dominion, binding them thereby in faster bonde of (Contarini A2r). Othello stages an exercise of nonviolent domination insofar as Iago appears as an unweaponed Venetian (A3r), one who commands obedience without using violence.3 His use of such methods may in fact identify him as typical Venetian, perhaps even super-subtle one (1.3.356).Although Othello does not contain an episode of physical such as one found in Cinthio or Shakespeare's own King Lear (the blinding of Gloucester), absence of such violence is itself notable. This essay argues that Othello examines effectiveness of different kind of coercion, described here as psychological assault that enables torturer, Iago, to break his victim without using physical force. The play's signature accomplishment lies in its portrayal of Iago's ability to refashion Othello's mind and, by extension, general 's sense of himself as person. In an early modern culture of pervasive, public, and brutal forms of corporal punishment, such as branding, drawing and quartering, or burning at stake, usually remained invisible, hidden away in secret chambers. Othello, by contrast, vividly stages power of these coercive mechanisms to convert their victims, who then choose suffering, exclusion, and death. This essay examines Iago's transformation of Othello in light of such methods and in relation to legal and political associations that allusion to practice itself might have produced for early modern audiences. Othello's references to the rack and to may well have called to mind, at time of play's appearance in midst of England's century of torture (Langbein 71), complex range of meanings associated with practice at this historical moment. In short, Othello seems to draw on two crucial aspects of this cultural phenomenon: in way text suggests that Iago's coercive methodology amounts to form of psychological torture, and in way it situates his exercise of this power in extralegal context of military outpost at Cyprus.Writing in nineteenth century, David Jardine described torture's application under Elizabeth as manifestation of sovereign prerogative, monarch's ability to exercise an absolute power, which does not mean turning massive state apparatus to do her bidding at any time, but rather, occasionally operating outside (or against) law. …

After Rome; or, Why Spenser Was Not a Republican

This essay raises some objections to the emerging critical consensus that Spenser’s political values were, at least in certain significant ways, aligned with Renaissance republicanism. Noting Spenser’s tendency to downplay the Roman state’s own institutional history in favor of its relations to predecessors and successors, I argue that he belongs, rather, to an Augustinian metahistorical tradition for which “the republic” features as a dubious, problematic category. Spenser responds to republican discourse primarily as raising a set of moral arguments about time, action, and the politically structured society. But whereas the Venetian theorist Gasparo Contarini exemplifies the republican tendency to maximize the definitional relations among virtue, permanence, and constitutional design, Spenser in both The Ruines of Time and his commendatory sonnet for Contarini’s English translation pointedly disassociates himself from that republican nexus. The time-bound society, I show in concluding, looks most like s...

Between Sky and Water

Represented as the face of Venice, the houses of the Grand Canal were used during the Renaissance to support the portrayal of the Venetian Republic's unique structure of governance. Paolo Paruta's dialogue, Della perfettione della vita politica, a work of political theory on the Venetian Republic, is one such text used here to examine how in a changing context of modernization, architecture has been presented as a representation of state. Paruta's use of architecture as a representation of state was conceptually different from those earlier writers such as Gasparo Contarini who presented the uniqueness of Venice's social qualities through its orderly governance and law. Fundamental to Paruta's incorporation of architecture to the conceptualization of Venice was Daniele Barbaro's interpretation of Vitruvius’ representation of the body-of-state, being reflected in the architectural makeup of the city. However, Vitruvius’ text, De architectura, described the monarch's body reflected in the architecture and urban strategies of the late Roman Republic. Paruta's use of the text and of Daniele Barbaro aimed to transfer these values to the Venetian Republic and its social formations. Subtly forging links between the radicalism of Doge Andrea Gritti's renovatio programmes and the power struggles of the young patricians, Paruta's aim for architecture was to support the preservation of Venetian values as distinct from those of Rome. Indications are that Paruta's message was understood. To examine the comprehensibility of Paruta's political propositions, his terms and arguments are analysed in the context of three different architectural composition types used in Venetian houses of the mid-sixteenth century.

Gasparo Contarini: From Scholasticism to Renaissance Humanism

This paper examines the shift from Scholasticism to Renaissance humanism by focussing on the Italian humanist, Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542). The politico-religious climate of 15th-16th century Italy represents the arena in which Contarini developed his philosophy. His studies at the University of Padova where Padovan Aristotelianism dominated reflected the basis of his intellectual formation. The Platonic revival of Renaissance Italy also made its way into Contarini’s humanist philosophy.

Dialogue and Clash: Gasparo Contarini and the Colloquy of Regensburg of 1541

Dialogue and Clash: Gasparo Contarini and the Colloquy of Regensburg of 1541

Sulle tracce dell’eresia: Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553) (review)

Reviewed by: Sulle tracce dell’eresia: Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553) William V. Hudon Sulle tracce dell’eresia: Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553). By Giorgio Caravale. [Studi e testi per la storia religiosa del Cinquecento, 14.] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki. 2007. Pp. xii, 320. €35,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-822-25640-9.) Giorgio Caravale has completely reconsidered the life and work of Ambrogio Catarino, hitherto known as an unstoppable hunter of sixteenth-century Protestant heretics. The revisionist portrait Caravale has drawn should be read carefully by all students of the era. Some of his reasoning may be challenged, but all will agree that Caravale has admirably breathed genuine life—with its necessary contradictions—into a person too often left as a cardboard caricature usually propped up in standard assessments of early-modern Italy. Caravale reviews Catarino’s life, his career as a theologian and as a member of the Dominican order, and his numerous polemical treatises, all to challenge the typical portrayal of Catarino as the anti-hero in stories of the spirituali. The Sienese Dominican may have written vicious anti-Lutheran tracts and believed that obedience to ecclesiastical hierarchy was the principal remedy to the spread of heresy, but as Caravale shows us, his polemics were mixed with pastoral as well as theological concerns, and he engaged in discussions with noted spirituali like Vittoria Colonna and Gasparo Contarini. He was apparently mystified by the attraction of Lutheran thought, as he considered it completely empty, but in some places Catarino expressed views identical with Protestant fellow-travelers like Bernardino Ochino. Catarino held that contemporary clerical corruption and societal moral degeneration were sharp weapons placed in the hands of enemies of Rome by the Church itself. He was also a key contributor to debates at Trent on justification, and Caravale writes here glowingly of the Dominican’s innovative two-stage notion, simultaneously rejecting the Lutheran position—at least as he understood it—that believers needed to do nothing after first justification in baptism. For Caravale, Catarino thus demonstrated independent judgment and freedom of thought. [End Page 349] Catarino’s independence was not complete, however, according to Caravale, who saw Marcello Cervini—a figure who retains cardboard depth in this study—inspiring several of Catarino’s nastier polemics. Caravale used the fact that Ludovico Beccadelli worked for Cervini and informed him regarding certain matters, like Ochino’s activity in Switzerland and the reception of the text Il beneficio di Cristo in Reggio Emilia, to make some huge logical leaps. He used these to surmise that Cervini probably commissioned and/or inspired the content of Catarino’s Trattato della giustificazione attacking Ochino’s preaching in Geneva. Caravale also places Cervini behind Catarino’s Compendio attacking the theology in Il beneficio. These amplify suggestions made by Dario Marcatto in 1996, but are no more convincing now than they were twelve years ago. Given the friendship between Cervini and Catarino, the suggestions are certainly plausible, but characterizing them as “probable” simply is not warranted. Should some evidence emerge confirming the plausible to be true, historians will then have a deeper contradiction to explain: why Reginald Pole was elated at the papal election of Cervini in 1555. In the end, what Caravale concludes about Catarino and the inadequacy of thinking of him as an antihero is properly consistent with the revision of sixteenth-century Italian church history begun by Giuseppe Alberigo, Paul Grendler, Adriano Prosperi, and Eric Cochrane, now carried on by Thomas Mayer, Paul Murphy, and others. But Caravale ends with a cute paradox that just does not work. He indicates that this “different memory” of a Catholic controversialist was “destined to be retained and cultivated only outside the confines of Roman orthodoxy” (p. 305).This assertion must have Cochrane—a former president of the American Catholic Historical Association—spinning in the good Tuscan soil in which he is buried. For the “different memory” is not just of Catarino, and it is profoundly tied to historical analysis pursued by historians both inside and outside that Roman orthodoxy. In fact, if a quarrel over the memory did not begin between individuals explicitly and implicitly standing on one and the other side of those confines, historical...

Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy (review)

Reviewed by: Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy William V. Hudon Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy. By Paul V. Murphy. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2007. Pp. xxi, 290. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-813-21478-8). Those—like me—who have read and enjoyed Paul V. Murphy's essays in the Sixteenth Century Journal, in several edited volumes, and in this journal now have just what they hoped for: Murphy's thorough analysis covering the whole life of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505–63). He has made a first-class contribution to the history of sixteenth-century Italy. In six chapters here, Murphy traces the background and career of Gonzaga, placing both fully in context. A handsome, powerful Renaissance patrician, Gonzaga was fluent in the humanist culture prized by his social class. After studies in Bologna, entry into the circle of Reginald Pole, plus further studies in Mantua and Venice, he became the episcopal administrator of Mantua in 1521 and cardinal at the age of 22. He built an enormous library of humanist works, including texts on theology, patristics, canon law, and apologetics, the latter in both Protestant and Catholic voices. Murphy described him as a lifelong learner, for in addition to this book collecting—and presumably, reading—the prelate regularly sought out tutors. Present at the beginnings of what Hubert Jedin and others called "Catholic Reform," Gonzaga worked inconsistently to actualize diocesan reform. One reality that spurred such inconsistency in him and in others like him was personal pursuit of thoroughly unreformed behavior. Since he amassed an awesome portfolio of benefices delivering some 35,000 ducats annually, Gonzaga's reacting badly to nepotism under Paul III was rather like the pot calling the kettle black. Still, his modest reform initiatives in Mantua between 1533 and 1561 gained the good will of [End Page 826] prelates such as Gasparo Contarini and Gian Pietro Carafa. Gonzaga focused his diocesan reform on monastic life and on the improvement of local clergy, and he turned out to be fully capable of showing both severity and pragmatism in handling the failings of his human charges. When considering Gonzaga's connection with the contemporary so-called spirituali, Murphy finds it difficult to pin his subject down. Gonzaga exhibited the theological and religious influence of the group, but not consistently. He disapproved open preaching of Protestant doctrine on grace, but he was slow to discipline those who did. It was in artistic commissions and in work as a regent—beginning in 1540 for Francesco, the seven-year-old son of Federico of Mantua—that Gonzaga's patrician credentials were most apparent. There, Murphy explains, he understood his role perfectly: to maintain the status of his family as a clan of great lords. In his final years, Gonzaga served with Girolamo Seripando as legate to the Council of Trent. Murphy challenges the view of Jedin, arguing that the legates were not the source of problems encountered in the last phase of the council, but skillful diplomats facing an impossible balancing act. For Murphy, here at Trent the patrician and the reformer came together. Gonzaga sought, for instance, a limit on papal authority over the Council without any reduction in divinely instituted papal power. He and Seripando tried, Murphy insists, to preserve conciliar confidence in papal commitment to comprehensive reform. If all this sounds a little familiar, there is good reason. Intrepid scholars such as Giuseppe Alberigo, Eric Cochrane, Paul Grendler, and Adriano Prosperi began dramatic reconsideration of characters like Gonzaga long ago. Quite an edifice has been built upon their foundations by the rest of us fellow travelers, including Murphy. His work is another substantial brick in the wall. Prelates like Gonzaga worked amid competing commitments. The interrelationships they established were varied, multifaceted, and rather fluid. The positions they took and tactics they used were anything but uniform. Individual lives, groups of friends, political entities, and long-lasting institutions filled with contradictions defying customary historical models are the stuff of revision. A powerful, persuasive contribution to necessary revision lies here. William V. Hudon Bloomsburg University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of...

The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day by C. Colt Anderson

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 92 The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day. By C. Colt Anderson. New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007. Pages xxi + 262. Hardcover: $29.95, ISBN: 978–0–8091–0579–3. Recent scandals in the Roman Catholic Church have emphatically highlighted the crucial need for the structural reform and spiritual renewal of the Church in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately—as this volume amply demonstrates—the Church, as a community of sinners as well as of saints, has a long history of clerical malpractice and ecclesiastical mistakes. Fortunately—or providentially—even in the most scandalous of times, reformers have emerged to remind the Church’s members and their leaders of both the obligation of the biblical commandments and the observance of the evangelical counsels. This volume presents historical sketches of ten“Great Catholic Reformers”:Pope Gregory the Great (± 540–604), Peter Damian (± 1007–1072), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), Jean Gerson (1363–1429), Jan Hus (1369–1415), Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542), John Henry Newman (1801–1890), and Dorothy Day (1897–1980). As in the case of any list of “greats,” readers may wonder why some—such as Gerson, Hus, Contarini— made the list, while others—such as Teresa of Ávila, Charles Borromeo, Bartolomeo de las Casas, John XXIII,Teresa of Calcutta—did not. One might also wonder about chronological balance:three reformers from the eleventh and twelfth centuries,three from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, four from the other sixteen centuries. Yet, any list is inevitably discretionary and the ten reformers chosen for this volume serve well both to illustrate the continual need for reform in the Church and to provide a useful perspective on present-day scandals—though at times, the author’s legitimate concerns about recent scandals seem to have overly influenced his perspective about the past and his rhetoric about the present. In any case, the chapter of most interest to NSJ-readers is titled “The Most Dangerous Man in England:The Convert Cardinal Newman.” This dubious accolade of “most dangerous”originated with Monsignor George Talbot (1816–1886), the Roman representative of the English bishops,who was remarkably but rightly paranoid about Newman’s influence on the British public in general and Roman Catholic laity in particular. This chapter presents selections from four of Newman’s most famous works: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845, 1878),“On Consulting the Faithful” (1859), Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), and A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875). The optic through which these works are examined is their “assessment of the church’s history and its significance for reform and renewal” (197). This chapter is quite successful in presenting quotations that show Newman’s reliance on history in advancing his views about the development of doctrine, the participation of the laity in the life of the Church, freedom of conscience, and the infallibility of the Church. Although not accustomed to calling Newman a“reformer,” NSJ-readers will undoubtedly agree that “Newman’s contribution to the cause of reform cannot be ignored” (197). A chapter of merely twenty pages must inevitably paint Newman’s thought in broad strokes and Newmanists will note some shortcomings in this portrait. First,the works cited cover three decades of Newman’s life and more attention might well 93 have been given to the circumstances that prompted each of these four works—since they were responses to particular events, not systematic elaborations of a reformagenda . One might also have paid more attention to the development in Newman’s thought;as a case in point,the treatment of his Essay on Development mentions“tests and notes” without adverting to the fact that “tests” was the term used in the 1845 edition and“notes”was used in the 1878 edition. This change in vocabulary was not merely an editorial nicety, but reflected an ecclesiological shift when Newman extensively revised his Essay for republication.1 In addition, there is potential confusion in the statement that Newman’s “defense of conscience was certainly generated as a response to the Duke of Norfolk, the former prime minister William Gladstone, but it...

Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations (review)

Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations. Edited by Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine, and John Jeffries Martin. [Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies Series, 76.] (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 265. $4995.) This handsome volume is a Festschrift in honor of Elisabeth Gleason. As such, one might expect essays reinforcing her fairly traditional approach to early modern Italian religious history, but it contains some surprises in the introduction and twelve collected essays. In the opening pages, John Martin abstracts the contributions, but adds the argument that an intellectual tyranny of traditional monolithic images about early modern Italian history, not to mention the radical oversimplification they require, has now been overcome. The images are well known: victimized spirituali, proto-totalitarian intransigenti, 1542 as the history turning point, et cetera. Instead, historians have found and adopted a complexity, Martin suggests, for which there was room in early histories of the Counter-Reformation. Part one, Reformers and heretics: new perspectives, then follows with pieces by Massimo Firpo, Michelle Fontaine, and Paul Murphy. These hold together nicely, showing three different reasons why old about who was or was not a heretic, when heresy grew or was repressed in Italy, and when it was not, simply no longer work. In his essay, Firpo speculates-in the absence of evidence-on the reasons behind Lorenzo Lotto's entry, just before his death, into an oblate community at the Holy House of Loreto. Readers of Firpo's other works will likely find his insistence that overly rigid categories don't work in explaining Lotto more than a little remarkable. Fontaine's study on the rapid weakening of heretical thought in Modena after 1550-well before the so-called intransigenti allegedly seized control of the direction of the Church-is excellent. This piece, plus Murphy's treatment of inconsistent supervision over preachers in Mantua under Ercole Gonzaga, a bishop considered an iron ruler even by Ludwig von Pastor, will leave readers craving more. Part two, on the cultural contexts of reform, which features contributions by Ronald Delph, Frederick McGinness, Paolo Simoncelli, Paul Grendler, and Marion Leathers Kuntz, is less coherent. These essays show the broad context of reform action, but the subjects are disparate. Delph illustrates the attractiveness of humanist notions of restoration among supporters of dredging operations on the Tiber, where ideological motivations mixed with more mundane economic concerns. Grendler shows why the standard notion of early modern universities as bastions of traditional learning resistant to change needs revision. Students driven to attend the University of Padua by tradition, like Gasparo Contarini, later took part in decidedly non-traditional reform, promoting new learning. Kuntz delineates the union of ideal political and religious justice in the doge of sixteenth-century Venice, returning to the written works of Guillame Postel, which, over the years, she has mined so thoroughly. …

Reform before the Reformation: Vincenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy (review)

Reform before the Reformation. Vincenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy. By Stephen D. Bowd [Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, Volume LXXXVII.] (Leiden: Brill. 2002. Pp. xvi, 267. euro74; US $86.00.) When one thinks of reform in a sixteenth-century religious context, in most cases Martin Lutherjohn Calvin, and other Protestant reformers come to mind. Stephen D. Bowd in this well-written, well-researched, thoughtful book has presented the question of reform in a different context: Catholic reform that preceded Luther, Calvin, Munster, and Zwingli. The works of John O'Malley, John C. Olin, Elisabeth Gleason as well as Paolo Simoncelli, Massimo Firpo, Silvana Seidel-Menchi, Silvio Tramontin, Paolo Prodi, Ottavia Niccoli, and many others have been suggestive of the direction which Bowd has pursued in this excellent study. Bowd's focus is upon Vincenzo Querini and his friends, Tommaso Giustiniani and Gasparo Contarini, all Venetian patricians who pursued a spiritual journey as they served the Serenisstma. In the strict sense this book is not a biography of Querini, as the author notes, although Querini is the major figure in the pursuit of reform of the Roman Catholic Church before Luther. This work presents the reader with far more than biographical facts. Through the details of Querini's life (1478-1514) the reader is brought into the world of humanism, scholarship, and politics in the sixteenth century. Bowd demonstrates clearly how the specific aspects of Querini's life are related to his spiritual search and to the larger question of reform. In a carefully argued introduction the author sets forth the whole plan of the book. It was not the dire circumstances in which Venice found herself after her defeat at Agnadello by the assembled forces of the League of Cambrai that impelled Querini to seek the solace of the monastery. As early as 1501 Querini and Giustiniani had pledged to be chaste. The choice was not easy for Querini as he struggled with the reconciliation of chastity and civic life and duty. It was not despair with earthly life, however, which was the basis for his desire to withdraw from the world, but rather a profound love of Jesus Christ. Querini followed his friend Giustiniani into the monastery at Camaldoli in 1511. Gasparo Contarini warned Querini of the anger that his decision had evoked among some of the Venetian patriciate who accused him of disloyalty in abandoning his city in her time of need. The author gives an interesting account of the financial difficulties of Querini as he prepared to enter the monastery. The circumstances of many Venetian patricians were so extreme in 1511-1512 after the crushing defeat at Agnadello in 1509 that it was often necessary to sell their personal effects including clothing. In spite of the difficulties Querini and Giustiniani tried to draw as many of their friends as possible to Camaldoli. Gasparo Contarini, on the other hand, hoped for salvation as well as tranquility in the city. Dowd gives a balanced view of monasticism and monastic reform, the intellectual catalyst in the early Middle Ages; by the sixteenth century, however, the health of monastic life was less encouraging. Querini wanted to reform the organization of the Order which he had set out to do even before his ordination, by calling together a chapter meeting in Florence, much to the dismay of Pietro Dolfin and Francesco Soderini, protector of the Order. The hermits, aided by Giovanni de' Medici, the apostolic legate concerned with the Order, quickly obtained permission to summon a chapter meeting to consider ... union of monasteries into one (p. 115). Dolfin and Soderini were successful in thwarting the plans of Giustiniani and Querini. On july 4,1513, however, Pope Leo X granted a privilege which allowed sweeping reforms in the Camaldolese order. all of the houses were to be brought into one body under San Michele di Murano and would be administered by prelates. …

The Communication of Friendship: Gasparo Contarini's Letters to Hermits at Camaldoli

The modern idea that to converse means to talk, to exchange ideas with another person, emerged between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Before that time, and throughout the Middle Ages,conversatiowas a state of being or a way of life. To converse was to commune with God or other people, particularly in the context of religious communities. John Bossy says that this definitional shift from conduct to dialogue is one indication of how Christianity changed from a medieval system that promoted communal solidarity into a modern religion that emphasized morality and civility. John O'Malley similarly underscores the importance of the new meaning of conversation by pointing out that one of the Jesuit innovations was to make conversation a “ministry of the word” practiced in and through confession and spiritual exercises. But how did contemporaries experience the transformation of conversation from “togetherness” to “dialogue”? Apart from the Jesuit practices, do we have any way of discerning whether sixteenth-century Christians experienced conversation as a religious praxis?

Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet , and: Cardinal Pole in European Context: A via media in the Reformation , and: A Reluctant Author: Cardinal Pole and His Manuscripts (review)

Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet. By Thomas F Mayer. (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Pp. xv, 468. $74.95.) Cardinal Pole in European Context: A via media in the Reformation. By Thomas E Mayer. [Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS6-86.] (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co. 2000. Pp. xii, 334. $105.95.) A Reluctant Author.' Cardinal Pole and His Manuscripts. By Thomas E Mayer. [Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 89, Pt. 4.] (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. 1999. Pp. viii, 115. $15.00 paperback.) Thomas Mayer has spent the better part of twenty-five years studying Reginald Pole, and it shows. Beyond the works listed above, Mayer has more on the way, namely, a four-volume calendar of Pole's correspondence. But the books here reviewed themselves constitute an enormous contribution to early modem European history and to a re-thinking of the traditional understanding of Pole, a central figure in the story of the Reformation both in Italy and in England. Surely the greatest attention given to these new books will be focused on Mayer's biography of Pole. Such is only fair: Mayer's work will be considered the standard on this English cardinal for many years to come. There is too much in this fat tome to adequately analyze in a brief review, however. Mayer based this biography on vast archival research in Italy and in the United Kingdom. He attempted to do what Paolo Simoncelli (in his 11 caso Reginald Pole.- Eresia e santita nelle polemicbe religiose del Cinquecento [Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1977]) said could not be done: to describe the historical Pole separate from the myth of sanctity that has been woven around him. In my opinion, Mayer has succeeded. To begin with, he found that the problem was larger than Simoncelli suggested, since before a myth was woven by his followers and later historians, Pole consciously fashioned a self-image through his own writings. Mayer presents Pole in this study as a man who operated amid considerable tension. For Mayer, Pole was uncomfortably suspended between notions of authority and was personally not much inclined to the obedience he recommended to others. Mayer goes so far as to assert that his subject faced a permanent internal tension between personal ambition and a desire for selfabnegation. Because of these tensions, Pole fashioned two images of himself: as prince and prophet. Mayer found that the legend of Pole, the one for which both he and his followers were responsible, differed substantially from the historical record. Mayer uses the old term spirituali to refer to Pole and his followers, but argues that the term reform tendency is better. While Pole was a central figure in whatever one might call this group, however, he also played a substantial role in its disintegration. Mayer has showed that Pole's oft-noted closeness to Gasparo Contarini, Gregorio Cortese, Alvise Priuli, and Giovanni Morone is irrefutable, but also that Pole often ignored their advice. Mayer found that Pole, when addressing clerics as a bishop and legate, emphasized obedience to superiors-- like himself-and laid down the law for them. He even discouraged excessive reading and study of the Scriptures. These are attitudes we associate not with him and his circle, but rather with Gian Pietro Carafa and the more intransigent of reformers. Indeed, Mayer has persuasively demonstrated that Pole's relationship with Carafa was far more complex than has commonly been thought. The historical record just will not allow regurgitation of the simple confrontational relationship so often presented. Yet such a relationship is closely linked with the myth of Pole's sanctity. To call the relationship between Pole and Carafa on again/off again is putting the case mildly. Pole and his group surely had a high opinion of Carafa in the mid-1530's. But Carafa just as surely played a role in the English cardinal's failure to be elected pope at the end of 1549, after Pole came within one or two votes of the chair of Peter. …

The Republics of Ideas: Venice, Florence and the Defence of Liberty, 1525–1530

The sixteenth century has often been regarded as a crucial period in the history of political events in Italy, and in the history of political ideas. The contributions of Florence and Venice to this process have long been acknowledged. Florentine admiration for the Venetian political system reflected internal political instability in the former city. The evidence for Venetian‐Florentine contacts, and for a Venetian concern or admiration for Florence has been less noted. This article aims to show that there is evidence that Venetian concern for the defence of republican liberty after 1525 was allied to an awareness of Florentine political events and their significance for Venetian political practices. This awareness was stimulated by the pressure of imperial intervention on the peninsula after 1525. Florence and Venice were allies under the treaty of Cognac, and diplomats in both cities articulated a concern for republican libertas in Italy and an antipathy towards imperial rule. The work of Gasparo Contarini can be placed in this context, and as a result the critical point in the development of his arguments about Venetian political stability can be placed in the 1520s rather than in the years around 1509. The politics and political ideas of both cities were therefore developed in a wider context than has hitherto been supposed.

'The tune is marred': Citizens and People in Gasparo Contarini's Venice

'The tune is marred': Citizens and People in Gasparo Contarini's Venice