Chapter Two
Concepts of Order in Church and State

Philosophical Foundations

The first edition of Contarini's works appeared in 1571 in Paris; it was seen through the press by his nephew Alvise and dedicated to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who had first known Contarini thirty-six years before. Alvise Contarini divided his uncle's career into three stages. He thought of the first as having been devoted to the study of philosophy, the second to the service of the Venetian state, and the last to the service of the church. Accordingly he divided the works into three parts by grouping them as philosophical, political, and theological writings.^[1] While Alvise implied a progression on Contarini's part from philosophy to theology, the actual picture is less schematic. Contarini's most important philosophical works were written during the period of service to Venice, as were two of his theological treatises, while a third belongs to the period before he entered political life.^[2] Philosophy remained his favorite field of study, and on

[1] Gasparis Contareni Cardinalis Opera (Paris, 1571). Alvise Contarini's dedication is on the first unnumbered page. For the background and printing history of this edition, see Gigliola Fragnito, "Aspetti della censura ecclesiastica nell'Europa della Controriforma: l'edizione parigina delle opere di Gasparo Contarini," Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 21 (1985): 3-48.

[2] The Compendium primae philosophiae was written between 1522 and 1526, during Contarini's embassy to Charles V, and then corrected and revised in 1526-27. De elementis et eorum mixtionibus libri V was written between 1530 and 1535, while Contarini was actively serving the Venetian government. To the same period belong his Confutatio articulorum seu quaestionum Lutheranorum and De potestate pontificis quod divinitus sit tradita , while De officio episcopi goes back to 1517.

several occasions he expressed regret that the pressure of affairs left him little time for its pursuit. During his seven years as cardinal he took a stand on many disputed questions dealing for the most part with theology. But whatever the topic, all his works bear a strong family resemblance since they proceed from the same presuppositions.

Several modern studies have been devoted to Contarini's theological writings,^[3] chiefly because of the interest inhering in his role at the colloquy at Regensburg in 1541. His political thought has not fared so well, and less attention still has been given to his philosophical works, on which we have but a single thirty-year-old article and no book-length study.^[4] Although the philosophical writings are technical and for the most part derivative, they are an invaluable key to understanding the structure of Contarini's thought on politics and religion. This thesis was argued persuasively more than twenty years ago, yet there has been no further progress in the systematic study of Contarini's philosophy.^[5]

His literary activity began in 1517 With two tracts. One dealt With the duties of a bishop, while the other was written in answer to the famous On the Immortality of the Soul by his teacher Pietro Pomponazzi, who sent his treatise to Contarini shortly after its publication in Bologna in November 1516. Contarini's reply was his only work published during his lifetime.^[6] Pomponazzi answered with an Apologia in February 1518, to which Contarini in turn made a response that was

[3] The most useful are Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 75-189; Hanns Rückert, Die theologische Entwicklung Gasparo Contarinis , Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte (Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Weber, 1926); Mackensen, "Contarini's Theological Role at Ratisbon"; Hubert Jedin, Kardinal Contarini als Kontroverstheologe (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1949), 5-18; Friedrich Hünermann, Introduction to Gasparo Contarini, Gegenreformatorische Schriften (1530c.-1542 ) (Munster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1923), xi-xxiv; idem, "Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Kardinals Gasparo Contarini," Theologische Quartalschrift 102 (1921): 1-22; Aldo Stella, "Spunti di teologia contariniana e lineamenti di un itinerario religioso," in Cavazzana Romanelli (ed.), Gaspare Contarini e il suo tempo , 147-66.

[4] Carlo Giacon, "L'aristotelismo avicennistico di Gasparo Contarini," Atti del XII Congresso internazionale di filosofia , vol. 9 (Florence: Sansoni, 1960), 109-19.

[5] Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," 102, rightly thought that Contarini's works of the decade 1516-26, especially those dealing with philosophy, "represent the application of the same general system of thought to different aspects of life and nature" and thus cannot be viewed in isolation from his later writings.

[6] Opera , 179-209. Originally it was entitled Tractatus contradictoris and published in part by Pietro Pomponazzi together with his own Apologia (Bologna, 1518), then in complete form following the text of the Apologia (Venice, 1525). Eventually it became Book I of Contarini's De immortalitate animae . Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 176n.375, argues for a date between July and November 1517. See Etienne Gilson, Appendix 1 to "L'affaire de l'immortalité de l'âme á Venise au début du XVI siècle," in Branca (ed.), Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano , 31-136; and idem, "Autour de Pomponazzi: problématique de l'immortalité de l'âme en Italie au début du XVI siècle," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 28 (1961): 163-279.

printed only much later as Book II of his own De immortalitate animae .^[7] This exchange between the noted philosopher,^[8] certainly the most original mind with which Contarini came in contact during his years at Padua, and his former student belongs to the vehement debate about two topics of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, both discussed in the third book of Aristotle's De anima : the unity of the intellect and the immortality of the soul. A thinker was considered an Averroist, a Thomist, or an Alexandrist depending on the position he took as to whether the human intellect (intellectus possibilis ), common to all men, retained an identity after death or became united with a higher active intellect (intellectus agens ). If the former, did it continue to exist in union with the mental faculties of the individual, or did it attain its end in the Thomistic visio beatifica ? Further, was there such a close union of the soul and the body that the soul could not be conceived of as immaterial or separable from the body—in short, that it was incapable of immortality? These questions and related controversies with long historical antecedents became especially acute in Padua during the later fifteenth century as a result of increasing acquaintance with the works of Greek and Roman philosophers. One of Pomponazzi's teachers, Nicoletto Vernia, was himself deeply involved in the arguments for and against the immortality of the soul, and brought to his students' attention such lesser-known Greek commentators as Themistius and Simplicius, on whom he drew in his own writings, thus widening the scope of the debate.^[9] That the extent and

[7] Opera , 210-31.

[8] The bibliography on Pomponazzi is extensive. Among the most pertinent works in the present connection are Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University, Press, 1964), chap. 5; Bruno Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence: F. Le Monnier, 1965); John H. Randall, The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science (Padua: Antenore, 1961), 69-115; idem, "The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua," Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940): 177-206; Antonino Poppi, Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi (Padua: Antenore, 1970); Cesare Oliva, "Note sull'insegnamento di Pietro Pomponazzi," Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 7 (1926): 83-103, 179-90, 254-75; and Erich Weil, "Die Philosophie des Pietro Pomponazzi," Archiv, für Geschichte der Philosophie 41 (1932): 127-76.

[9] Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality," in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller , ed. Edward P. Mahoney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 144-45.

ramifications of the dispute caused concern to the ecclesiastical authorities can be seen from a decree of 1489 by Pietro Barozzi, bishop of Padua, forbidding public discussion of the unity of the intellect as interpreted by Averroës.^[10]

During the period when Contarini was a student, Pomponazzi was working out the ideas he expressed more fully in his later writings. He came increasingly to assent to the mortality of the individual soul as held by Alexander of Aphrodisias,^[11] and to see man as an integral whole comprising a body and a not entirely immaterial soul. Man was therefore a creature of this world, whose happiness could not be attained after death through the gratification of one element of his nature only.^[12] Pomponazzi contended that virtue was an end in itself, quite apart from the conventional notions of reward and punishment after death. Thus he adopted essentially Stoic principles. When Contarini first knew Pomponazzi the latter had not yet openly expressed these ideas but was moving toward them? Pomponazzi also advocated the separation of both science and philosophy from theology on the ground that the former two depended on reason, the latter on will—a position that "is widely, and somewhat crudely, referred to as the theory of the double truth."^[14] Actually, Pomponazzi never taught this doctrine in the exaggerated form in which it is sometimes presented. Contarini accepted his master's view that a truth in the realm of faith, though it may not be susceptible of rational proof, is not thereby cast into doubt.^[15]

The existence of a bond between master and pupil is already attested by Pomponazzi's dedicating a philosophical tract to Contarini in 1515, and by Contarini's signing a notarial document on behalf of

[10] Ibid., 149.

[11] Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Two Unpublished Questions on the Soul of Pietro Pomponazzi," Medievalia et humanistica 9 ( 1955): 83.

[12] Weil, "Philosophie des Pietro Pomponazzi," 138-39. See especially chap. 9 of Pomponazzi, On the Immortality of the Soul , in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man , ed. Ernst Cassirer and John Herman Randall, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 313-30.

[13] From lecture notes of a student in 1504 it is possible to see how Pomponazzi's ideas then differed from his more mature conceptions, and to get an idea of the Pomponazzi who taught Contarini; see Paul Oskar Kristeller, "A New Manuscript Source for Pomponazzi's Theory of the Soul from His Paduan Period," Revue internationale de philosophie 5 (1951): 144-57.

[14] Kristeller, Eight Philosophers , 84.

[15] But see M. Pine, "Pomponazzi and the Problem of 'Double Truth,'" Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968): 174-76, for the view that Pomponazzi ultimately came down on the side of the superiority of reason over revelation.

Pomponazzi in 1516.^[16] This teacher who deeply influenced Contarini was a complex, undogmatic person, unconcerned with clinging to a given philosophical position or any one school. He is credited with maintaining that "in philosophy, one must be a heretic,"^[17] in the sense of having confidence in one's own intellectual powers, and he ultimately entertained a very exalted view of man's reasoning abilities.^[18] Even when Contarini disagreed with Pomponazzi, he spoke of him with a respect and reverence that go far beyond what was required by convention. Contarini's own undogmatic, open attitude toward questions of philosophy carried over to theology and was probably fostered by his contact with his teacher. Though Contarini thought primarily in Aristotelian terms, he felt free to range eclectically. Indeed, one of the most attractive qualities of his philosophical and theological writings is their frequently provisional nature and openness to reconsideration. He was often quite literally thinking as he wrote, so that his writings show a freshness but also a lack of stylistic finish.

Contarini's De immortalitate animae is a case in point. A commentary on Pomponazzi's treatise, neither revised nor polished, it was not intended for publication. In the first part Contarini musters proofs for the immortality of the individual soul, refutes Pomponazzi's arguments in favor of the opposite view, and adduces reasons for believing that Aristotle considered the soul immortal. Book II further explains many of the points made in the first part, to which it is really a more vigorous supplement. That Pomponazzi took Contarini's views seriously can be seen from the fact that he replied to only two of his many critics, Contarini and the Dominican Agostino Nifo. While Contarini's piece primarily illustrates contemporary reaction to Pomponazzi's ideas, it also reveals a good deal about Contarini's own attitudes and ways of thinking.

Contarini approached the problem of the soul's immortality neither as an abstract philosophical question nor as a dogma of the church, but above all as an issue with profound implications for personal ethics.

[16] The tract was De reactione ; see Oliva, "Note," 266. For the document, see Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi , 229.

[17] Oliva, "Note," 275.

[18] John H. Randall characterizes "the Paduan doctrine of man" thus: "The Paduans were not merely secularists, they believed in a rational science attainable by the human mind. In the act of knowing, man seemed to them to lift himself above the limitations of an animal body and to see What Is with a transparency and clarity, that no merely biological creature has any fight to possess" ("Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered," in Mahoney (ed.), Philosophy and Humanism , 277.

Because he thought that one's way of life and the choices one made depended directly on the position one took regarding the soul's immortality, he spent years examining the matter.^[19] As a student he initially agreed neither with Averroës nor with Aristotle on this topic, but preferred Alexander of Aphrodisias to both, following the lead of his teacher. Even before 1516, however, he changed his mind and came to espouse a position similar to that of Avicenna, holding that the incorruptible possible intellect specific to each person survives death, while the active intellect is distinct and single.^[20] Contarini's main argument against Pomponazzi is that individual immortality is capable of rational proof because it can be shown that the soul is immaterial.^[21] He disagrees strongly with Pomponazzi's psychology and epistemology according to which the soul cannot perceive, think, or will without the body and therefore is incapable of existing wholly apart from it or surviving physical death intact because it is partly mortal and partly immortal.^[22] Contarini sets out to demonstrate the immortality of the soul through reason alone, adducing a series of propositions which culminate in the argument that Pomponazzi's dictum "intelligere non est sine phantasia" is mistaken since concepts are in fact grasped without images, and that only the immaterial part of man can understand abstract ideas that do not depend on sense impressions. He goes on to argue that reason does not suffice to illuminate the status of the soul after death: faith alone can do that.^[23] Contarini's arguments were ostensibly based on reason alone. Yet as he came to see that reason alone could not guarantee the only conclusion acceptable to him—that the soul was truly immortal—he casually called in the fundamentally different authority of faith. He liked to philosophize, but he was not a philosopher.

Another issue on which Contarini differed from Pomponazzi was the relation between faith and reason. Unlike his teacher, Contarini was at pains to insist that there was harmony between what man knew

[19] Opera , 179, 192. In 1513 the Fifth Lateran Council proclaimed the immortality of the soul a dogma; see Johannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio , ed. J. B. Martin and L. Petit (Paris: Welter, 1899-1927), 32:842.

[20] Opera , 204; Giacon, "L'aristotelismo avicennistico," 116-19.

[21] Opera , 198.

[22] For a descriptive summary of each man's central arguments, see Giovanni Di Napoli, L'immortalità dell'anima nel Rinascimento (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1963), 277-97. There is, however, no analysis of the issues.

[23] Opera , 192.

from "the light of natural reason" and through faith, because both were ways toward one truth.^[24] He thought they should not be kept separate, since reason acted as a check on speculation while faith gave answers unattainable through reason.^[25]

What emerges from the exchange between Contarini and Pomponazzi is a picture of the young Venetian patrician that supplements the evidence for his attractive character drawn from other sources. He was open-minded and flexible enough to change his views on issues of crucial importance to himself and did not mind admitting his own uncertainties,^[26] yet possessed enough independence to disagree with a major philosophical thinker of his time. In his arguments he was careful, dispassionate, and professional, stating repeatedly that he had no intention of merely quoting authorities, since he sought to rely on reason alone.^[27] That he held man's rationality in high esteem appears also from other works he wrote in different contexts, most notably the Confutatio articulorum seu quaestionum Lutheranorum . Believing firmly that human beings were amenable to persuasion by means of clear logical arguments, he saw man very much as St. Thomas Aquinas had, as a creature whose well-ordered faculties, properly exercised, enable him to rise to great heights of understanding through the use of his intellect and his will. Although Contarini drew on St. Thomas, as did Pomponazzi, he did not simply recapitulate Thomistic arguments but turned also to other philosophers for aid in formulating his own ideas.^[28] In theology Contarini followed St. Thomas to a considerable extent, yet in philosophy he was quite eclectic, working out from an Aristotelian foundation but showing familiarity with Plato and Neo-platonic thought as well.

Contarini's treatises on the immortality of the soul, besides revealing some of his basic attitudes, make clear that he was learned and

[24] Ibid., 229.

[25] Ibid., 157.

[26] Ibid., 180. See the perceptive remarks about the exchange by Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 227.

[27] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 181, 212, for example. Beccadelli, "Vita," 41, stresses Contarini's dislike of simply quoting authorities in arguments: "He [Contarini] used to say that studying the theories advanced by others meant understanding the reasons that made them hold them, and that basing oneself only on authorities was not knowing but believing." Beccadelli also underlines Contarini's common sense: "Because he had good judgment, he always accepted the real senses [of philosophical writings]."

[28] For example, Contarini had recourse to the epistemology of Albert the Great; see GC, 224.

sensible but unoriginal in philosophy.^[29] Although he had confidence in his own judgment, his philosophical ideas at no point broke new ground. Arguably it is precisely because of this basic unoriginality, his conservative bent and balanced personality, that he belonged to the mainstream of the Venetian ruling class. He was well attuned to the conservative categories of thought he encountered in the circles in which he was reared, and also of the church in which he had grown up. The absence of eccentricities or novel ideas characteristic of exceptional minds makes his a nondistorting mirror of the world he knew both in Venice and in Rome.

Contarini's major philosophical work, the Compendium primae philosophiae ,^[30] gives a better insight into his thought than do the treatises against Pomponazzi. Composed during the Spanish embassy, the Compendium was dedicated in September 1527 to his friend Giustiniani, who had requested it. Since "no subject of philosophy was treated more scantily by Aristotle" than metaphysics, according to Contarini,^[31] he hoped to offer fuller discussions of certain key concepts on which others could build further. He emphasized to Giustiniani his distrust of eloquence for its own sake: "I took the work in my hands, read it again, and took care that it was copied for you with little change. In this work many who have more delicate literary tastes than I will probably reprove me for not troubling myself about any ornamentation of language or splendor of eloquence, or for using words or phrases that do not belong to the Latin language but rather seem taken from the barbarous middle ages."^[32] Contarini was not troubled about such criticism; he did not want to distract the reader's attention from his meaning by employing a style that could obscure it. Here we see some of the same consistent lack of interest, not to say defensiveness, regarding

[29] Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," 102, finds that "Contarini was not a thinker of great originality." This is a far more accurate assessment than the hyperbole of Giovanni Di Napoli: "Il Contarini ... è quasi ignoto come cultore di studi filosofici; il poco che egli ci ha lasciato rivela un intuito speculativo di prim'ordine, dal quale molto il pensiero cristiano avrebbe potuto ottenere, se il nobile veneziano si fosse dato agli studi ... [egli] si formò una cultura filosofica varia e mantenne una grande indipendenza di giudizio" (Studi sul Rinascimento [Naples: Giannini, 1973], 300). Dittrich bypasses the question of Contarini's originality by overstressing his independence as a thinker; see GC , 231 (contrasting Nifo, who depended on Averroës, with Contarini, who "mehr als selbstständiger Philosoph vorgegangen war") and 257: "überall tritt Contarini als selbstständiger Philosoph auf."

[30] Opera , 93-176.

[31] Ibid., 95.

[32] Ibid., 94. For a similar emphasis on his disdain for eloquence, see Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 185; and the opening section of De elementis , in Opera , 2.

literary studies as such that made his speeches before large groups pedestrian and lackluster. For him, the gravitas proper to a Venetian patrician required no support from "mere" oratorical skills. At the same time, he was confident enough to use Latin as it suited him, in a lively personal manner, without allowing his style to be forced into a Ciceronian mold. The Compendium is written in a more relaxed, less technical manner than De immortalitate animae ; it is easy to believe that Contarini enjoyed working on it as a change from the stream of dispatches he was obliged to send from Spain, and that the work brought back memories of his student days in Padua.

The Compendium is not an orderly commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics but rather a sort of anthology of ideas about the main topics of that work drawn from philosophers ranging from Plotinus, St. Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Thomas, Avicenna, Al-Farabi, and Averroës down to Contarini's own Paduan teachers. To these Contarini adds the ideas at which he himself had arrived as a result of "constant reflection."^[33] While the thought of Aristotle is basic to Contarini's treatise, he does not simply summarize it. Often he argues with its emphases or supplements it with Platonic or Neo-platonic explanations for the great questions he examines: being, the one, truth, goodness, act and potency, the first cause and the relation of all created beings to it, the heavenly bodies, and finally the realm of coming-to-be and passing-away.^[34]

No surprises are in store for the reader, who will find in the Compendium simply the result of a reasonably solid philosophical education. Its most basic motif is Contarini's belief in the reality of a comprehensible, orderly universe. He seems to have had not even an inkling of such disquieting alternatives as those proposed by Nicholas of Cusa, a man not far removed from him in time, whose notion of an infinite universe, without a center where God is located, breaks new ground in philosophy.^[35] For Contarini, all in the universe is order and hierarchy, beginning with God and the spiritual beings closest to him and descending to the lowest of the four elements, earth.^[36] Contarini

[33] "... Nonnullaque assidua cogitatione harum rerum mihi assequutus esse viderer, quae alios fortasse praeterissent" (Opera , 95).

[34] Opera , 95-96.

[35] See Pauline Moffitt Watts, Nicolaus Cusanus: A Fifteenth-Century Vision of Man (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 61-74.

[36] See Opera , 170-72, for Contarini's exposition of creation arranged in hierarchical order. Felix Gilbert has rightly stressed the importance of this in Contarini's thought: "The feeling that an ordered world meant a hierarchically organized world was extremely strong in Contarini and permeated his entire thinking" ("Religion and Politics," 105). For a succinct discussion with an extensive bibliography of works on ideas of hierarchy and order, and the important distinction between the two, see C. A. Patrides, "Hierarchy and Order," in Dictionary of the History of Ideas , ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Scribner, 1973), 2:434-49.

embraced the Neoplatonic concept of divine emanation, interpreting this to mean that the entire graduated universe derived its being from the first being.^[37] Man, partly spiritual and partly material, can come close to the celestial intelligences by the use of his reason^[38] and is capable of grasping that the bond moving all of creation closer to its creator is love: "Inasmuch, then, as all that exists emanates from the first being in proportion as it has being, but of itself tends toward nonbeing, it is clear that if anything that exists is to be as perfect as its own capacity permits, there must be a force implanted in it by nature by means of which it turns back again toward that being from which it derives. In this manner it describes an unbroken and perfect circle."^[39] Contarini's emphasis here is on a dynamic universe suffused with desire of and love for its creator and moving toward him in harmony symbolized by the circle. He was convinced that the goodness of everything that was created is manifest to the rational faculties of man, who can understand that the primary force in creation is love, which in turn has for its object the good.^[40] This love is active and outflowing, causing every being to seek to overcome impediments to its own perfection and thus "to divest itself of matter as far as possible and to realize its own form."^[41]

The terminology of the Compendium may be that of metaphysics, but the specific accents in the treatise reflect Contarini's own deeply held views. There is a strikingly direct and down-to-earth quality about his refusal to be drawn into the debate over universals or to become sidetracked into combating radical positions. He explains his own moderate realism in a straightforward manner,^[42] choosing a solution that appeals to his common sense. It is little wonder that Aquinas was particularly congenial to Contarini, who called him "that most excellent man, who can never be praised enough."^[43] Contarini's views

[37] Opera , 107.

[38] "... Inter substantias inferiores homo supremum locum obtinet, qui suprema sui parte etiam coelestes mentes quadam ratione attingit" (Opera , 169).

[39] Ibid., p. 174.

[40] "Appetitus veto huius primus motus ac praecipuus est amor, cuius obiectum est bonum" (ibid., 163).

[41] Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," 105.

[42] Opera , 100-101.

[43] Ibid., 160; and De elementis , 13, where he calls St. Thomas "vir item doctissimus et nunquam satis laudatus." Beccadelli, "Vita," 40, writes that Contarini moved away from Averroism toward St. Thomas: "As it seemed to him that St. Thomas was the more learned doctor, he applied himself to [St. Thomas] and always took him into account, especially in theology."

regarding the relation between faith and reason, like those of St. Thomas, do not contemplate the possibility of their ultimate conflict. Nature has set limits on the human ability to know, Contarini argues, which man must accept in the realization that many things will remain obscure and hidden from him.^[44] Repeatedly he asserts that the final answers to the deepest questions about God and man's destiny come through revelation and are nonrational, and thus not amenable to philosophical analysis. There comes a point where words and reasoning power fail: "If we are to approach the Godhead as it is in itself, then we must be all but silent. For no one has words or concepts by which adequately to express it or speak of it."^[45] Contarini here restates conclusions at which he had already arrived in the course of his own religious development. But though man must accept the limits set to reason, it does not follow that he should slacken his efforts to use that reason to the fullest extent possible. For it is precisely reason that shows him the perfect order of the universe and the ideal order in state and church. Disorder in either is due to material, not spiritual, causes, and to evil seen as the absence of the good and defined by Contarini in essentially Augustinian terms.^[46]

By the time he finished writing the Compendium Contarini's most important and characteristic philosophical views were fully formulated. He saw himself as already serving God through an active life of service to Venice and his fellow man, secure in the knowledge that God had created an orderly universe and given everything in it an ideal, perfect form. This deep conviction, expressed most fully in the Compendium , was the foundation on which his political thought rested and on which his ideas concerning reform of the church were to be built. Contarini was a fortunate man in whom the ethos of commitment to a specific social class, political commitment to a state, personal religious convictions, and a good education combined in a harmonious way. After the resolution of his religious and emotional difficulties, his world of thought was ordered and consistent. His philosophy was cut from the same cloth as his political and theological writings, since according to him they all addressed aspects of the same reality.

Contarini's preoccupation with philosophy can also be seen in another lengthy treatise belonging to the period 1530-35, De elementis

[44] Opera , 157.

[45] Ibid., 142-43; cf. also 106.

[46] Ibid., 127-28.

et eorum mixtionibus libri V .^[47] It was dedicated to his brother-in-law Matteo Dandolo, to whom Contarini was closely tied by friendship and kindred intellectual pursuits.^[48] Again, this work concerning physical science contains nothing unexpected. Like the Compendium it, too, begins with a more or less superfluous disclaimer of literary merit, stylistic gloss, or verbal ornamentation.^[49] Then Contarini sets himself to discuss in brisk readable Latin that part of natural philosophy which examines the four elements and their combinations. He summarizes prevailing views on the nature of the physical world, adding his own comments, based largely on Aristotle but also on scholastic thinkers. While the work makes no contribution to sixteenth-century physics, it testifies to Contarini's Aristotelian and Galenic opinions about physical reality, and the delight he took in returning to philosophical questions in the midst of his vita activa .

His conventional explanations of natural phenomena are interspersed with many details of personal experiences from his travels. He was fascinated by topography and especially the question of what causes tides,^[50] and avidly sought information from navigators' reports of newly discovered lands.^[51] As we have seen, he knew Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, the Italian author of De orbe novo decades , which described Spanish discoveries and conquests in the New World.^[52] The fresh knowledge of new lands and peoples is integrated by Contarini into old thought patterns, as was generally the case with Europeans of the first generation or two who received descriptions of America.^[53] Contarini's views of the physical world were not structurally altered by new infor-

[47] Ibid., 1-90. For a summary, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923-58), 5:552-55.

[48] That they discussed philosophical issues together is evident from Contarini's remarks in Opera , 2. Beccadelli, "Vita," 57, says that Contarini "loved [Dandolo] not only because he was related to him but because of the prudence and knowledge of letters and the goodness he saw in [him]."

[49] Beccadelli, "Vita," 43, remarks that "it is true that in his writing style he paid little attention to the refinements of the Latin language, concentrating more on the knowledge of things than on words; yet one can see that he was not uncouth, but came quite close to the style of the ancients."

[50] Opera , 30-36.

[51] E.g., ibid., 39-40.

[52] For Contarini's acquaintance with Pietro Martire, see "Relazione," 50 (16 Nov. 1525).

[53] See John H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750-1900 , new enlarged ed., trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University, of Pittsburgh Press, 1973); Federica Ambrosini, Paesi e mari ignoti: America e colonialismo europeo nella cultura veneziana (secoli XVI-XVII ) (Venice: Deputazione Editrice, 1982).

mation, but he had great curiosity about details, which he worked into his writings as illustrations of general propositions? De elementis , in fact, shows that Contarini was as conservative in physics and geography as he had been in cosmology. In another and minor work of the same period, he opposed the theory of epicycles, calling it a deformity and ugly disgrace, and disagreed strongly with explanations of planetary motion that had recourse to epicycles.^[55] His biographer is fight in pointing out that Contarini looked at the physical universe from a purely theoretical standpoint and "saw the world primarily in the form of an esthetic idea."^[56] Therefore he could admit no modification of its consummate order and perfect circular motion. One can only wonder how he would have reacted to the ideas of Copernicus, his fellow student at Padua, had he known of them. But Contarini's De elementis must have struck his own age as having greater merit than modern readers are inclined to grant it, for part of it, translated into Italian, was plagiarized and printed at Venice by Paolo Manuzio under his own name at the Aldine Press. Strangely enough, this version was translated back into Latin a year later by a French writer, without any reference to either Manuzio or Contarini.^[57]

A more intimate idea of Contarini's personality than his writings on metaphysics, cosmology, and physics afford us can be found in two letters to the Venetian patrician Trifon Gabriele, Contarini's friend since youth. As philosophical minitreatises revealing some of Contarini's cherished convictions, they deserve to be read with care.^[58] They were written at Gabriele's request as meditations on topics the two men had been considering in the course of their frequent discussions of philosophical questions. The first, dated 10 January 1531 (more Veneto = 1532), asks: "Since God is true and good, why is it that one reaches him more readily with the will than the intellect, notwithstanding that as truth he is the object of the intellect [in the same way that] as goodness he is the object of the will?"^[59]

[54] E.g., Opera , 414, where he discusses the idea that religion is natural and ingrained in mankind, using evidence from ancient history and also from newly discovered peoples.

[55] "De homocentricis ad Hieronymum Fragastorium," in Opera , 238.

[56] GC , 278.

[57] Thorndike, History of Magic 5:555-56.

[58] These two letters were preceded by another to Gabriele, a general treatment of the mind and the intellect, that is published in Delle lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini et eccellentissimi ingegni scritte in diverse materie (Venice, 1560), 110-14, and was written on Christmas night 1530.

[59] "A Messer T. G. Risposta," in Quattro lettere di monsignor Gasparo Contarino (Florence, 1558), 9-20.

Behind this rather clumsily phrased question lie specific issues close to Contarini's heart, which he approaches, as was his habit, through general considerations. He first asks in what our chief happiness consists, answering that for some thinkers it is the intellectual knowledge of God reached through the understanding of his creation,^[60] while for others it lies in the motion of the will toward that love by which we love God perfectly.^[61] (That a person's chief happiness could be this-worldly was a notion not even worth refuting.) Citing from pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's On Divine Names to the effect that both approaches are necessary, Contarini proposes a third solution consisting in the union of the soul with divine goodness and truth in such manner that it loses itself and becomes that with which it is united. He echoes St. Paul in 2 Corinthians that tongue cannot express such felicity nor intellect apprehend it: "Thus he who has reached that center and that repose ceases his own action, or rather transcends his every action of intellect and will, but is absorbed in peace, truth, and divine being."^[62]

As in the Compendium , Contarini stresses that the deepest recognition of unutterable truth is in the silence that lies beyond the operations of human faculties. In other contexts he was to repeat that God is ultimately known in a wordless way, in the silence that transcends all human understanding. This conviction forms a prominent element in Contarini's religious thought and was rooted in his own experience of God's ineffability. More important, it made him uninterested in splitting hairs over theological definitions and impelled him to look at wider, more fundamental issues beyond terminological differences. What to some of his critics seemed unnecessary accommodation to the Protestants in 1541 was actually another instance of Contarini's lack of trust in the ability of words to express fully the mysteries of faith, and thus his unwillingness to stake everything on verbal constructs.

The letter to Gabriele is of interest for another reason as well. Contarini is not the impartial examiner of the question posed at the outset, but argues that if we want to know God by joining ourselves to him and becoming similar to him, then the will is especially powerful, because knowledge and intellect do not cleanse the stains that make us most unlike God, whereas love does. It draws us out of ourselves toward God.^[63] Thus a good but unlearned man can arrive at the knowledge of God better than a man learned but not good.^[64] Contarini's

[60] Ibid., 13

[61] Ibid., 16.

[62] Ibid., 17.

[63] Ibid., 20.

[64] Ibid., 19.

emphasis on the importance of the emotions is deeply personal. It was his experience that love and trust brought him close to God, and that love was ultimately the only response man can properly make to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Indeed, he had already dealt with these issues in the letter describing his confession of Holy Saturday 1511.^[65] Although the ideas are here recast in different language, they still had the same reality for him as they had had twenty years earlier.

Like the first letter to Gabriele, the second begins by considering general topics but soon comes to echo Contarini's personal experience. The introduction gives an attractive picture of him and Gabriele engaged in philosophical discussion during a boat trip to the charter-house near Padua. They considered whether the speculative sciences are nobler and more perfect than the moral virtues, and then asked whether, if one had to choose, one should choose knowledge or innocence. Somewhat wistfully Contarini reports that he is now so busy with other matters that he has lost touch with the study of philosophy,^[66] though he had always taken pleasure in it and indeed "joyfully spent time on such inquiry."^[67] In reply to Gabriele he first resorts to Aristotle's Ethics to define virtue and clarify the difference between science and moral virtue. This becomes something akin to a textbook exercise until Contarini reaches his third point, a discussion of whether innocence or knowledge is to be preferred.

Suddenly the tone changes and life is infused into the little treatise. It is obvious that for Contarini the question is no longer simply theoretical. First he demonstrates that science is nobler than moral virtue because together with contemplation it belongs to man, "insofar as there is in him something of the divine," whereas "the moral virtues guide man in the active life which is proper to him."^[68] He uses the example of the captain of an armed fleet in relation to his second-in-command as a parable of the intellect and will. But lest one conclude from this that the choice of science (which Contarini calls the virtue of the intellect) is preferable, he adds that the particular good that is most noble and perfect on an absolute scale need not be chosen by everyone in every case. "Everyone should choose that good which is most appropriate and most in accordance with his own nature, his condition, and his time, and should take into account all other circumstances, because for everything the greater good is that which is suitable to it, not that which may suit others, even though in absolute

[65] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," esp. 14-15.

[66] .Quattro lettere , 40. Contarini's letter is dated 13 December 1532.

[67] Ibid., 20.

[68] Ibid., 31.

terms the second may be more perfect than the first."^[69] Contarini's conclusion is that if one must choose between intellectual knowledge and science, on the one hand, and moral virtue, on the other, the latter is preferable even though it is less perfect than the former. He adds that everyone must choose that good "which is appropriate to his nature rather than a good that [might entail] some loss for his nature. Moral virtue is the active life which is proper to man, the contemplative life is beyond man."^[70]

When read against the background of the earlier letters to Giustiniani and Querini, this little treatise is impressive testimony to the remarkable continuity of Contarini's thought regarding the respective merits of the active and the contemplative life. His commitment to the active life has deepened, and there is no sense of regret about the choice he made as a young man except for his having little time for philosophical studies. At the time he composed this letter to Gabriele he was deeply involved in the work of the Venetian government as one of the six ducal councillors who participated ex officio in the meetings of numerous councils and committees. The letter is evidence of Contarini's inner calm and certainty, but also of his humanity. Far from prescribing schematically what people should do, he is capable of accepting the fact that vast differences exist among individual characters and temperaments; thus, he understands that the choices people make cannot be governed by formulas but must arise from specific circumstances.

This way of thinking gave him what was for his time an unusually wide tolerance for others. No wonder that his friendships were many and lasting, and that he had the reputation of being unusually gentle. This reputation he consciously cultivated. Beccadelli records how Contarini kept his occasionally quick temper successfully in check so that he appeared mild even though he was in fact inclined to be irascible.^[71] He was an emotional man with deep feelings, loyalties, and commitments. These appear even in his philosophical works, sometimes as obiter dicta and sometimes expressly, as in the two letters to Gabriele. For Contarini, the universe was hierarchical, hence orderly and understandable, and man's life in it was purposeful. Because all was God's creation, man could move toward him with a love that defied logical analysis and expression in words. Contarini's thought and actions rested on these convictions.

[69] Ibid., 37.

[70] Ibid., 38.

[71] Beccadelli, "Vita," 48-49.

Order in the Church

Contarini's Christianity was profound and personal. As a young man he had experienced uncertainty, dryness of heart, and listlessness while in quest of a vocation that would be pleasing to God. As a mature man he had acquired inner certainty, yet his religion does not strike the reader of his works and letters as static. For him, being a Christian meant commitment. He accepted the visible church as founded by God, with the pope as his vicar who ruled over a hierarchical structure that embraced all men. There is no trace of the conciliarist model of church government in Contarini's writings; his mention of the Council of Constance is so cursory that from it no reader could realize the importance of its decrees.^[72] But acceptance of the church's hierarchical government did not preclude criticism of its shortcomings. His ideal of the church made him chafe all the more at the toleration of abuses, and he championed reform with conviction. Contarini combined great loyalty to the institutional church and its doctrines, including the Eucharist as defined by the Fourth Lateran Council, the Petrine supremacy, and the conventional teaching on the seven sacraments, with an undogmatic spirit of freedom and openness. Just as he was eclectic in philosophy, he demonstrated a willingness to take seriously the views of others in religious matters and give them full consideration. This attitude, so intimately a part of his personality, nevertheless remained incomprehensible to many who knew him, and eventually it became suspect.

Apart from the letters to Giustiniani and Querini, the earliest evidence for Contarini's interest in church reform is found in a short note he wrote on Savonarola. Giustiniani, having been consulted by Pope Leo X in connection with the reexamination of the friar's case,^[73] asked Contarini for his opinion.^[74] In his reply of 18 September 1516

[72] "... Celebrata fuit synodus Constantiensis tempore magni schismatis: quo tres Pontifices erant Benedictus, Gregorius et Joannes vigesimus tertius. Opera Sigismondi Imperatoris, qui multum laboris, et industriae impendit, ut schisma illud tolleretur, fuit coacta synodus Constantiae ... electus fuit Martinus Columna vir egregius, et pius. Post Constantiense consilium, ut seruaretur Decretum de congregatione conciliorum, indictum fuit concilium, quod fuit Basileae coactum" (Conciliorum magis illustrium summa , in Opera , 563).

[73] Felix Gilbert, "Contarini on Savonarola: An Unknown Document of 1516," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 59 ( 1968): 145-46.

[74] For the text, see ibid., 147-49.

Contarini wrote that he had been reading Savonarola's works, including sermons preached after the friar's excommunication. The fact that Savonarola did not obey the pope was for Contarini insufficient reason to declare him a heretic, for "the vicar of God used the power given to him against God and charity; ... therefore he did not have to be obeyed."^[75] Another accusation against Savonarola was that he had declared himself a prophet. Again, Contarini defends the friar by arguing that it is not contrary to faith to think that prophets could still arise in the church: "To enter a definitive judgment in this matter seems to me very presumptuous and dangerous. I say the same about the interpretation of Scripture according to his prophecies. I know that renewal of the church [is necessary], not because of prophecies but because natural and divine reason tell me so.... Divine reason also tells me that sometimes God must order his church, which is to be fervently desired by all Christians."^[76]

Despite his sympathy with Savonarola's call for reform, Contarini ends his letter by submitting himself in all respects to the decision of the church. Though he freely asserts that no vicar might use the power committed to him for purposes contrary to those which that power was intended to serve, he balances this declaration by accepting the need for church discipline. It is telling of Contarini's way of thinking that he could admire both the visions of Savonarola and later the methodical spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola, with its emphasis on the necessity of "sentire cum ecclesia," or thinking with the church.^[77] For Contarini, membership in the church entailed subjection to legitimate papal authority. He felt free to speak against its arbitrary exercise precisely because he accepted the principles on which it was founded. But Contarini's declaration of submission to the ecclesiastical authorities in this particular instance could also be explained at least in part by his realization that he was unfamiliar with the technical arguments used by the friar's opponents. His diffident handling of the Savonarola case points to a real weakness in his academic preparation for his later career in state and church: a lack of familiarity with civil and canon law.^[78]

[75] Ibid., 149.

[76] Ibid., 149.

[77] A. Suquía, "Las reglas para sentir con la iglesia en la vida y en las obras del cardenal Gaspar Contarini (1483-1542)," Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 25 (1956): 380-95.

[78] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 120-25, discusses Contarini's letter fully and gives useful bibliographic information. She mentions Contarini's "insufficiente preparazione teologica e canonistica" (124, 178); nevertheless he appreciated the importance of legal education for the bishop; see Opera , 411.

Here, knowledge of the latter might have sharpened his argumentation considerably and given him a better grasp of the legal issues involved.

In the following year, 1517, Contarini wrote one of his best-known treatises, De officio viri boni ac probi episcopi ,^[79] the first part of which describes the formation of the ideal bishop, and the second his exercise of the office entrusted to him.^[80] It has received thorough examination by Gigliola Fragnito.^[81] She points out that the work owes much to the example of Pietro Barozzi, bishop of Padua from 1487 to 1507, whom Contarini knew, as well as to the ideas of his friends Giustiniani and Querini, and possibly also to Contarini's reading of Savonarola's sermons during the summer of 1516.^[82]

The immediate occasion for the composition of De officio episcopi was the accession of the teenaged Pietro Lippomano to the bishopric of Bergamo as successor to his uncle, in flagrant contravention of canon law, which established a minimum age of thirty for bishops.^[83] Contarini makes no allusion to the bishop-designate's youth or the law that was flouted in this treatise intended for Lippomano's guidance. Indeed, the work eludes neat categorization, although it is generally ranged among Contarini's theological writings.^[84] It includes philosophical reflections, discussion of moral issues, ideas on education and psychology, criticism of prevailing practices, even specific suggestions for the bishop's everyday life down to such details as his meals, the kinds of music he should listen to, and the kinds of books he should read.^[85] The treatise lacks the theological and legal dimensions of other works in the "mirror of the bishop" literature. A portrait reflecting Contarini's own wishes and preferences, it does not touch on theoretical issues of episcopal power, its nature, or origin. Neither does it dwell on concrete matters of diocesan administration, about which its young lay author probably knew little. But it is more than the work of "a

[79] Opera , 401-31.

[80] Silvio Tramontin, "Il 'De officio episcopi' di Gaspare Contarini," Studia Patavina 12 (1965): 295, thinks the work is divided into three distinct parts discussing the virtues of the bishop, his duties, and the bishop's day.

[81] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 75-189.

[82] Ibid., 126-33. For Barozzi as model, see also Hubert Jedin, "Das Bischofsideal der katholischen Reformation: eine Studie über die Bischofsspiegel vornehmlich des 16. Jahrhunderts," in Kirche des Glaubens 2:86.

[83] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 179n.386.

[84] GC , 283.

[85] For a detailed summary of the contents, see Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 138-75; and GC, 283-96.

sensitive observer,"^[86] since its main ideas are rooted in Contarini's own religious experience and foreshadow his later, more fully elaborated views.

The author of an otherwise thoughtful study finds the first book of the treatise "academic in the worst sense, unoriginal and uninspiring. It was most surely the concrete programme of action enunciated in the second book that gave the treatise its reputation."^[87] Yet it is the first book that reveals significant aspects of Contarini's way of thinking. As was his custom, he opens the treatise with general considerations, in this case of the nature of the two societies to which men belong, the secular and the ecclesiastical. It soon becomes obvious that Contarini takes a hierarchical view of both. Just as the ruler by virtue of his position in the body politic enforces order in that realm, so the bishop must be responsible for order in the church on the diocesan level. The two societies, however, do not exist side by side; the ecclesiastical is superior to the secular because its charge is the transmission of the Christian message and instruction in Christian living, responsibilities that confer on the bishop greater dignity than the secular ruler possesses.^[88] By virtue of his office the bishop has a special position: he "is between the divine spirits and the human race" and must participate in both the angelic and the human nature.^[89] Contarini's extravagant exaltation of the bishop follows from his conviction that the moral and religious foundation of the Christian people is a higher endeavor than the task of secular government, because their eternal salvation depends on their acceptance and understanding of the Christian message. In keeping with his own preferences, he stresses repeatedly that the best instruction is through the bishop's good example, not through the rules and regulations he might make. As he himself had learned from "living books," as he called his friends, so the bishop's flock would learn from seeing in his behavior the way to conduct themselves as good Christians.

Given these premises, it is understandable that Contarini designs an ideal education for the formation of the youth who is to rise above the level of ordinary men by his position as bishop in the church. To be sure, the rather dry listing that follows of what such a man must know and what virtues he must possess is heavily indebted to Aristotle's

[86] Jedin, "Bischofsideal," 86.

[87] Oliver Logan, "The Ideal Bishop and the Venetian Patriciate: c. 1430-c. 1630," Journal of Ecclesiastical History , 29 (1978): 429.

[88] Opera , 402.

[89] Ibid., 403.

Ethics . Nevertheless, the choice of virtues that the bishop needs is Contarini's own: amiability and kindness, fortitude, magnanimity, simplicity of living, humility, justice, and prudence, in addition to the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.^[90] The stress on justice and especially on prudence gives Contarini's treatise an unmistakably Venetian character. If it is true that "the Venetian political temperament was characterized by compromise, consensus, conciliation, and expediency,"^[91] then Contarini was arch-Venetian. He prized all the virtues but gave pride of place to prudence, that peculiarly Venetian virtue^[92] without which a man in a responsible position could not be effective, whether in church or state. Contarini here assigns many of the same specifically Venetian virtues associated with secular rule to the man in charge of the fundamental unit of church administration, the diocese.

His ideal bishop has the quality that Contarini himself thought basic to the government of men in a Christian society: moral probity. Thus the bishop's education centers on the formation of a morally principled good man rather than on the perfect gentleman. The study of moral theology and philosophy is the best preparation for the future bishop, not the pursuit of worldly wisdom, poetry, or eloquence. Here again we find distrust of eloquence in itself, disjoined from nobler, higher purposes. We have found this distrust in the letters to Trifon Gabriele a dozen years earlier; it no doubt goes back to the period of Contarini's close association with Giustiniani and Querini, who were so convinced of the perils inherent in secular learning that they recommended to Pope Leo X that priests be instructed in Latin only to the extent necessary for understanding the Scriptures.^[93] Giustiniani and Querini's Libellus might have been the basis for the decree of the Fifth Lateran Council of 19 December 1513. Felix Gilbert has argued persuasively that this decree not only condemns philosophical debates about the immortality of the soul, but also testifies to a profound suspicion of the secular tendencies in humanistic studies.^[94]

[90] Ibid., 405-10. I do not agree with A. D. Wright's summary of the purpose of this treatise, that the "central and characterisic concern of Contarini" was "to encourage an underage boy, of the patrician elite, not so much in the practical duties of the episcopal office as in the private pursuit of God-fearing but unsuperstitious virtue" (Review of Gasparo Contarini , by Gigliola Fragnito, Journal of Modern History 63 [1991]: 405).

[91] Robert Finlay, "Politics and Family in Renaissance Venice: The Election of Doge Andrea Gritti," Studi veneziani , n.s., 2 (1978): 107.

[92] See the fine observations on prudence as "an aspect of the Venetian collective sensibility" by Cervelli, Machiavelli , 321.

[93] For a discussion of their views, see Gilbert, "Cristianesimo," 984-85.

[94] Ibid., 978.

Contarini's sympathy with his two friends' view appears clearly in his treatment of the bishop's education, where he expressed reservations regarding the effects of a humanist education on the moral development of the young.^[95] He never condemned humanistic studies as sweepingly as his two friends did.^[96] Like them, he was sensitive to basic tensions between secular learning and Christian principles;^[97] yet he was also well aware that such tensions had been a constant in the life of the church. In his sensible, balanced way Contarini issued no blanket condemnations of humanist education but sought to limit its potentially harmful effects. This is why twenty years later he agreed to the recommendation that the reading of Erasmus's Colloquies be forbidden in the grammar schools, since they "contain many things inciting uneducated minds to impiety."^[98] What was forbidden to boys, however, he thought useful to adults. It is certain that he himself had read some Erasmus, though there is no evidence that he ever had personal contact with the great Dutch humanist.^[99]

Several other themes in De officio episcopi are especially useful in illuminating Contarini's conception of order. He posits a close cooperation between secular and ecclesiastical authorities. The ideal bishop would supervise carefully the applicants for admission to holy orders, making sure that the church never served as an asylum for criminals; he would respect the state and its laws and not shield guilty clerics, who should be committed to the secular jurisdiction save in exceptional cases wherein he personally would act as judge.^[100] Here Contarini incorporates into his ideal diocese the same relation to secular authority that characterized Venice. A reflection of Venetian practice is his

[95] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 129-32. See also Opera , 426.

[96] For Giustiniani and Querini's views, see the references in Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 130.

[97] For arguments for a particular sensitivity to these issues in the generation to which Contarini belonged, see Cessi, "Paolinismo preluterano," 18-19.

[98] In the "Consilium de emendanda ecclesia," Concilium Tridentinum: diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova collectio , ed. Societas Goerresiana (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1901-38), 12:141 (hereafter cited as CT ); translated in Elisabeth G. Gleason, Reform Thought in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), 96. Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 138n.266, suggests that Contarini may have had to compromise on this point with Carafa and Aleandro.

[99] See Contarini's references to his familiarity with Erasmus's "De libero arbitrio" in the "Confutatio articulorum ... Lutheranorum," Gegenreformatorische Schriften, 7 . For Contarini's possible indirect contact with Erasmus, see Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 137. For the larger question of Erasmus's influence on Italian contemporaries, see Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 1520-1580 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987).

[100] Opera , 422, 426.

recommendation that the secular government be called upon, where necessary, to end disorders in nunneries and root out the terrible conditions prevailing in many of them. In his view, the state should concern itself also with heresy, for heresy, like civil crime, endangered both societies and undermined the foundations of all government.^[101] Contarini did not diverge from contemporary thinking on the nature and danger of heresy; in fact, he repeated the stock arguments against it. Just how conventional his view was can be seen by comparing it with the somewhat later work of Mino Celsi, for example. Celsi introduced new and original elements into the debate about heresy by arguing that heretics cannot be treated as criminals since the necessary condition for any crime is the will to commit it. Heretics, however, were misguided and impaired, and therefore, like mentally ill persons, they had no consciousness of wrongdoing.^[102]

Another personal note in Contarini's tract is the fervent expression of a desire for reform of the church. Although his denunciation of absentee bishops at the end of Book I adds no new dimension to the topos of the shepherd who abandoned his flock to the hireling, its passionate tone is reminiscent of Protestant attacks on abuses in the Catholic church.^[103] Contarini's misgivings about excesses in devotion to the saints led him to recommend that the bishop teach his people to love God above all and to impress on them that without God the saints are nothing. These recommendations were later censured by ecclesiastical authorities; though printed editions of the treatise contained passages on this topic, they were greatly toned down in comparison with the manuscript original, where Contarini's indignation at the laxity and abuses on the diocesan level had been expressed forcefully, even vehemently.^[104]

It has been pointed out that Contarini failed to mention such obvious and proven means of reform in a diocese as episcopal visitations and diocesan synods.^[105] One explanation for the omission may be his lack of knowledge of diocesan administration at the time he wrote the treatise. A more important reason for the neglect of these practical steps is likely to be Contarini's focus on the individual: reform in De

[101] Ibid., 425; and Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," 110.

[102] Mino Celsi, In haereticis coërcendis quatenus progredi liceat , ed. Peter G. Bietenholz, Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum (Naples: Prismi Editrice/Chicago: Newberry Library, 1982), 346.

[103] Opera , 413.

[104] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 77-79, 187-89.

[105] Ibid., 180.

officio episcopi has no collective or communal dimension. Contarini's moral radicalism is uncluttered by institutional and legal asides. He was convinced that the bishop's example was of fundamental importance for a diocese; the bishop would bring about change not so much by laws and regulations as by what he himself was. There is, of course, an appealing simplicity about such an approach. But Contarini's design of the ideal bishop was not simpleminded. His treatise affirmed in yet another mode what he had experienced and interiorized—that change of heart in the individual was the necessary first step toward reform of the church. Good men were "living books" impelling others to learn from them. In the last analysis Contarini's good bishop touches men's emotions and will rather than their intellect, moving them to the love of God and charity toward their neighbors and kindling in them the desire to lead Christian lives based on the precepts of the Gospels.

The weakness of Contarini's treatise lies in the absence of a thorough and precise examination of the nature and limits of the bishop's power in the church, its theoretical underpinnings, and a clear sense of how he could initiate or advance institutional reform. Its strength is in the vision of a church whose order depends on the observance of the gospel precepts by its shepherds, the bishops. Contarini's ideal has just enough concrete touches to prevent his bishop from becoming a cardboard figure and to bring him into the realm of the thinkable and desirable, if not always the possible. By the perfection of his virtues the bishop was to be a potent critic of those who in actuality fell far short of the obligations of their office. In that sense one can agree with Dirt-rich that De officio episcopi was Contarini's "first reformatory deed."^[106]

Contarini's first exclusively theological work, of great significance for the understanding of his thought, is the Confutatio articulorum seu quaestionum Lutheranorum , written between 1530 and 1535 (probably closer to the earlier date).^[107] In it he summarizes and comments on sixteen of the twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession for the benefit of an unnamed correspondent. The treatise is notable for the serious consideration Contarini gives to Philip Melanchthon's accommodating formulations of basic Protestant teaching, quite unlike the

[106] GC , 296

[107] The edition in Opera , 564-80, is superseded by that in Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 1-22. For a German translation, preceded by a useful introduction, see Jedin, Kardinal Contarini als Kontroverstheologe . For the most plausible dating, see Rückert, Theologische Entwicklung , 6n.2.

later Catholic theologians who rejected the document for the very reason that it toned down differences with Catholic doctrine.^[108]

Contarini's interest in Luther and the German religious situation was of long standing. During his embassies to the Spanish and papal courts he was well informed of events in Germany. His brother-in-law Matteo Dandolo, Venetian ambassador to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, may have given him a copy of the Augsburg Confession.^[109] That Contarini mulled over its articles can be seen in the fact that he rearranged their order so as to give them a tighter structure than the original document did. Articles on which there existed actual or potential agreement were omitted, such as that on God (art. 1), the Son of God (art. 2), baptism (art. 9), or the Second Coming of Christ (art. 17). He thought it appropriate to begin with the fourth article of the Augsburg Confession because it deals with justification by faith, the subject "on which Luther chiefly dwells." Contarini follows St. Thomas closely in considering the infusion of divine grace as the formal cause of justification, which he calls a spiritual rebirth that allows man to participate in divine nature.^[110] He also accepts the Thomist proposition that although the justified continue thereafter to entertain an inclination to sin, this inclination is not itself culpable in God's eyes but is rather a punishment for past sins.^[111] The first step toward justification is the dispositio , man's acceptance of the infusion of grace given freely by God. Contarini defines this disposition as "credulitas qua in Deum tendimus,"^[112] and thus a dynamic, living, active faith rather than passive assent. In this specific sense the beginning of justification is by faith alone. But by its very nature this faith brings forth good works, since it is united to love in a single harmonious whole. Because of this intimate connection it is possible to say that "for that reason and in that sense man is justified by works, not only by faith. Not that we

[108] Jedin, Kardinal Contarini als Kontroverstheologe , 11.

[109] Dittrich, GC , 305, thinks that Contarini relied on detailed reports by others rather than on the text of the Confession . Neither Hünermann (Introduction to Contarini, Gegenreformatische Schriften , xii, n. 2) nor Jedin (Kardinal Contarini als Kontroverstheologe , 10-11) commits himself on the question of whether Contarini worked from the actual text. I agree with Rückert, Theologische Entwicklung , 30n.1, that Contarini was unlikely to write an entire work about a text he had not read, especially since he makes specific references to details of the Augsburg Confession and is obviously familiar with many of its arguments.

[110] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 2.

[111] Rückert, Theologische Entwicklung , 19.

[112] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 3.

merit justification by our works (that idea has been rejected above), but because a faith that remains without works is not that faith by which we strive toward God and through which we are disposed to receive grace; it is therefore dead, as St. James says."^[113] We find here no hint of Contarini's later theory of double justification, but rather a marked dependence on St. Thomas and a characteristically sensible approach to Lutheran paradoxes, which led him to deemphasize the reformer's ideas of concupiscence and preserve the importance of both faith and works.

The further examination of their relation logically follows as Contarini looks at article 20. He agrees with the Lutheran idea that good works are necessary to "destroy the body of sin which we have inherited from Adam" and to purify the soul. But he argues against the assertion that good works are of no avail in gaining for us eternal life. His main point is that because good works after justification are done by God's grace they have their origin in his being, in which men participate through divine goodness and generosity, and for this reason they do merit for us eternal life and happiness.^[114] The careful scholar Harms Rückert noticed Contarini's divergence here from St. Thomas but was at a loss to understand it. He tentatively attributed it to the effect of Reformation ideas about faith and works upon Contarini's independent thought. In the last analysis, however, Rückert thought Contarini incapable of formulating these ideas clearly, for he did not reach definite conclusions.^[115] But Rückert wrote before Contarini's letters to Querini and Giustiniani were discovered, and thus could not know how deeply personal this whole issue was for him. Contarini was no systematic theologian; his own experience of justification and closeness to God is at the root of his idea that man participates in the divine nature and that God's grace brings forth good works in us. His personal conviction is the key to understanding what otherwise seems an idiosyncratic view that neither agrees with Luther nor depends clearly on St. Thomas.

In his treatment of original sin Contarini went out of his way to minimize difficulties, but in fact he misinterpreted the Lutheran position. Twice in a few lines he appeals to "those among the Lutherans who are more reasonable"—presumably meaning Melanchthon and other moderates who were willing to enter into discussion with Cath-

[113] Ibid.; cf. James 21:7.

[114] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 4.

[115] Rückert, Theologische Entwicklung , 32.

olics.^[116] After summarizing articles 2 and 4, Contarini suggests some improvement in wording and interpretation that would make Lutheran teaching about the necessity of the law acceptable. By correcting the definition of original sin, Contarini makes it essentially Thomistic in spirit if not in words, calling it "carentia gratiae et iustitiae Dei" (privation of God's grace and justice).^[117] Significantly, he does not come to terms with the Lutheran concept of concupiscence in all its rigor, and his version of it cannot be reconciled even with the "soft" expression of the Augsburg Confession, let alone with Luther's words.

Willingness to accept what to him seemed right and well expressed in Protestant thought characterizes Contarini's brief discussion of free will. He states that he has not read Luther's De servo arbitrio , which he knows only from Erasmus's De libero arbitrio and from what he has heard from others.^[118] His arguments are directed against what he takes to be the Lutheran position that God is the cause of our good as well as our bad works, and concludes that man can fall into perdition by his own power but cannot be saved without the grace of God, which, however, he can choose to accept or reject. Seeking to agree with as much of the Protestant position as possible, he accepts what Luther has said "in a beautiful and excellent way," that we must have recourse to grace in order to do good and that we cannot be justified through the Mosaic law.^[119] This discussion, though, is quite unsatisfactory, leaving no doubt that he was unfamiliar with the logic of Luther's views on the bondage of the will. Contarini's irenic temperament made him seek to reconcile God's overwhelming grace with man's freedom of the will, yet he does not manage to do so in any convincing way.

The last major article of faith that Contarini singles out for discussion deals with the sacrament of penance. Again he interprets the Lutheran position in less than its full austerity, an easy enough error given the brevity of article 11 and the broadly general nature of article 25 of the Augsburg Confession. In principle he finds acceptable the Protestant position that only those serious sins that oppress the conscience

[116] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 5. Contarini here writes of "illis ex Lutheranis qui melius sentiunt."

[117] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 6. Cf. Summa theologiae I II , qu. 82, art. 1. Contarini simplified the Thomistic definition and came close to that of Cochlaeus: "Carentia seu privatio originalis iustitiae, quam Adam protoplastus lapsu suo perdidit" (Hugo Laemmer, Die vortridentinisch-katholische Theologie des Reformationszeitalters [Berlin, 1858], 107).

[118] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 7.

[119] Ibid., 10.

should be confessed. Nevertheless, he prefers to see the old practices retained for the sake of simple Christians who frequently find it impossible to distinguish serious from venial sin.^[120]

Contarini's next four articles deal with disciplinary matters or long-established liturgical practices: the invocation of saints, monastic vows and the celibacy of priests, the mass, and fasting on Fridays and during Lent. Without advancing new ideas, he confirms the old practices, but his tone and spirit differ significantly from the tack taken by such other Catholic controversialists as Johannes Eck.^[121] Contarini's sincere attempt to understand the Protestant position notwithstanding his frequent inability to share it stands out, as does his willingness to admit errors and abuses in the Catholic church. Granting that a misunderstood cult of saints can lead to flagrant superstition, Contarini repeats what he wrote in De officio episcopi , that reform in this area is an urgent matter to be undertaken by zealous bishops.^[122] Similarly, he makes no excuses for the deplorable conditions in many monasteries and nunneries. While defending monastic vows and celibacy in principle, he calls for energetic reform.^[123] He would also do away with another evil of which Lutherans made much: masses said too frequently in private houses without regard to their sacred character.^[124] He singles out for treatment the laws of fasting and the widespread misunderstanding of their purpose, even though the Augsburg Confession contains no separate article on them. In themselves these laws do not affect man or his soul, nor are they divinely instituted, yet obedience to them shows obedience to the church and the pope. With this last consideration Contarini returns briefly to the necessity that there be one head and one authority for all Christians. In this he was arguing implicitly against the final article of the Augsburg Confession but avoiding a thorough treatment of papal power and its relation to that of bishops and councils. He contents himself with saying that these questions are still being debated: "Many say many things."^[125]

The Confutatio is the first work in which Contarini grapples with the great issues raised by the Protestant reformers. As a theological treatise it is not remarkable, and its minor place in the history of

[120] Ibid., 11.

[121] A comparison of Contarini's Confutatio with Eck's Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutheranos (1526) shows the mildness and willingness of the former to give Lutheran opinions serious consideration. Eck, by contrast, calls Lutherans "haeretici" and polemicizes sharply against them; he devotes chap. 27 to cautioning Catholics not to dispute with them.

[122] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 14.

[123] Ibid., 16.

[124] Ibid., 18.

[125] Ibid., 20.

sixteenth-century religious controversy is justified. Contarini had not read enough of Luther at the time he wrote it to understand clearly the difference separating the reformer's views on such crucial topics as justification, freedom of the will, or authority in the church from his own views. Nor did he know Melanchthon's Apologia , which would have made some of his optimism about the Augsburg Confession impossible. Neither did he make reference to the Confutatio issued on 3 August 1530 by Catholic theologians. The importance of Contarini's treatise, rather, comes from the light it sheds on the future cardinal's mind regarding questions of reform and order in the church.

A striking feature of the Confutatio is its dependence on St. Thomas. In the first five sections there is hardly an idea not derived from Aquinas's Summa , though Contarini abridges and simplifies,^[126] presumably in the interest of the unknown addressee and other laymen ignorant of philosophy. Unlike his earlier philosophical treatises, this work is written in nontechnical language. At this stage of his life Contarini was firmly convinced of the validity of Thomistic thought in explaining the mysteries of faith.^[127]

Another evident quality of the Confutatio is the desire to be fair to the Lutherans. Contarini does not dig in to defend indiscriminately everything then regarded as forming part of Catholic faith. Equally remarkable is the fact that he writes from the standpoint of a Venetian aristocrat even when he is dealing with critical issues of Reformation theology. Repeatedly we find theological points illustrated by reference to Venetian civic order, so pervasive and self-evidently correct was the political and social world of his patria in Contarini's mind. For example, in discussing original sin he uses the analogy of a foreigner given citizenship and patrician status through the generosity of the

[126] This is repeatedly stressed by Rückert, Theologische Entwicklung , 8, 46. Mark Burrows argues in his paper "Converging Themes in a 'Counter-Reformation' Debate: A Study of the Pastoral Foundations of Contarini's Confutatio articulorum seu quaestionum Lutheranorum and the Confessio Augustana ," presented at the Princeton Theological Seminary in September 1984, that common pastoral concerns underlie both Contarini's and Melanchthon's thought, and that they are united in their antipathy to late medieval nominalism. I would like to thank Mr. Burrows for allowing me to read his paper.

[127] Beccadelli was struck by Contarini's agreement with St. Thomas: "[Contarini] fu studiosissimo d'Aristotile, il quale haveva tutto più di una volta con diligenza visto, et perchè varie sono le vie de gli espositori, fu prima Averroista, la cui dottrina a quel tempo era maestra nelle scuole; di poi parendoli che San Thomaso d'Aquino fosse più reale Dottore, a lui s'applicò, et gran conto ne fece sempre, et maxime nella Theologia" ("Vita," 40). Also: "Nella Theologia ... fu molto dotto, et tenne principalmente la via di San Thomaso, del qual Dottore imitava non solo la dottrina, ma li costumi anchora, et haveva ... tutta la Summa di quel Santo Dottore alla mente" (43).

Senate. This man's posterity would inherit his newly acquired status, but if he were to commit an act against the state not only would he lose that status himself, but so would his descendants, "who, though they may not themselves have transgressed against us, are shoots from a bad plant, from him who committed an offense against us. Let this suffice for describing original sin."^[128] Here Contarini's identification with the ruling elite of Venice is complete: it is obvious that "we" who are offended can deprive the offender and his descendants of the status "we" have conferred on them. So we have a wonderfully Venetian touch: the Senate watches over justice in the state just as God watches over justice among mankind.

Venetian thinking appears again in the discussion of the sacrament of penance. Contarini argues against the Lutheran idea that satisfaction for past sins performed after absolution is of no avail by using the example of a murderer's punishment. Like all men, the murderer is subject to the laws of God, nature, and civil society. Therefore, even after his reconciliation with God he is not freed from the sanctions of the state. In Contarini's mind, the state's laws must be upheld without question.^[129] Later on, writing about invocation of the saints, he calls the saints "citizens of the city of God" who pray for us, their fellow citizens.^[130] For Eck, by contrast, saints are "friends of God who should be asked to intercede for us."^[131] In justifying celibacy and arguing that not everyone need be married, Contarini reaches for another interesting parallel from civil society. God's command to increase and multiply, he argues, was given to mankind as a whole rather than to each individual singly. Those who remain celibate for the sake of the kingdom of heaven benefit the community of believers much as do their counterparts in a state threatened by overpopulation, whose decision not to have children benefits the body politic:

Generation is for the good of the [human] species, so that it can endure, as agriculture is good because it gives the food to nourish us. However, it does not follow that any given person has to take it upon himself to beget children. In fact, since man is a political animal and an excessive number of citizens militates against the good of the city, as philosophers agree, so the celibacy of some men contributes not a little to the happiness and goodness of human life.^[132]

The church, as the body of all Christians, would be excellently ordered, he maintains, if it became more like a well-governed city or state.

[128] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 6.

[129] Ibid., 12.

[130] Ibid., 13.

[131] Eck, Enchiridion , fol. 56.

[132] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 16.

The Confutatio reveals also Contarini's profound belief in the rationality of men. We have noticed this aspect of his thought in his philosophical writings, but in this tract it is indeed remarkable. Time after time he invokes natural reason as arbiter of theological differences, most notably when considering freedom of the will and arguing against Luther, who, "if we can believe Erasmus, and if I am repeating correctly what I have read, makes God the author of both our good and our bad works. . .. This position of Luther goes so much against natural reason and Scripture that one cannot imagine anything more incongruous. Who in his fight mind would say that God is the author of our bad works? . . . Only a madman can say that God causes our bad works; it goes against natural reason."^[133] Contarini makes such arguments again when he discusses good works, satisfaction after forgiveness of sins, and the authority of popes and bishops.^[134] At times the appeals to reason as arbiter in theological disputes are simply substitutes for rigorous debate. They mask his impatience with long-drawn-out discussions and the technical language of theology—in which he did not particularly shine—and make him glide rapidly over basic differences between Catholics and Protestants, most notably on original sin.

Older Catholic authors, writing when contrasts between Lutherans and Catholics were more rigorously maintained than they are at present, studied the Confutatio to show Contarini's unexceptionable Catholicism.^[135] More recent readers of the treatise are likely to single out his irenic orientation and his willingness to seek common ground between the two confessions, emphasizing similarities rather than differences. His ideal of peaceful solutions to difficulties encouraged him to take too sanguine a view of the Augsburg Confession and see more points of agreement between it and Catholic doctrine than existed in reality. More important for the future was Contarini's erroneous conception of the nature of Luther's attacks on the Roman church: he believed that once disciplinary reforms were effected in the church, the other obstacles to concord would fall away of themselves.

Some of Contarini's convictions on the subject of church reform emerge clearly from the Confutatio . They can be summed up in one phrase: restoration rather than change, let alone revolution. Aware

[133] Ibid., 7.

[134] Ibid., 4, 11, 20.

[135] Dittrich, GC , 308, 310, writes of Contarini's "correct" views concerning Catholic teaching on original sin and good works. Laemmer, Vortridentinisch-katholische Theologie , 137-69, repeatedly seeks to show that Contarini's thought on justification, faith, and works was in agreement with that of Catholic theologians; as also does Friedrich Lauchert, Die italienischen literarischen Gegner Luthers (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1912), 375.

of the spread of abuses throughout the hierarchy of the church, Contarini distinguished between the ideal and actuality, clinging always to the former. The tightening of discipline everywhere, the doing away with superstitious practices, and the abandonment of luxurious living emerge as prerequisites for any meaningful reform, be it disciplinary or doctrinal.

Ultimately, he said, concord will come not from papal or conciliar decrees but from charity and humility. He interrupts his discussion of article 24 of the Confession (his own eighth section) with this aside:

If only Christians who profess to be followers of Christ and firm believers in him would preserve charity and humility! Christ commends these virtues as superior to all others. Then it would be easy to obviate all controversies. Since we now make a verbal show of love of God and neighbor and of humility of soul, while we are actually puffed up with arrogance and pride and everyone wants to appear wiser than others and not to have accused his neighbor without cause, it has come about that, blinded by pertinacity, we consider nothing more important than to defend our own views and refute those of our adversaries. Let us preserve humility of soul; then it will be easy to settle this controversy!^[136]

This passionate appeal to the power of love and humility leaves altogether out of account the reality of the situation that prevailed between the two religious groups in Augsburg in 1530. Contarini closed his eyes to the political and economic struggle in which the Catholic princes were involved in Germany and to the defensive stance of the old church in the face of Lutheran attacks. But it is of utmost importance to realize that he did not do this because he was ignorant of the gravity of the situation in Germany or because he was simpleminded. There is remarkable consistency in his thought. When he held the image of the ideal papacy before Clement VII or drew the portrait of the ideal bishop, he appealed to the highest and noblest idea one could entertain of the men in charge of the church. In the Confutatio he again presents an ideal, that of the conceivable outcome of religious controversy if both sides took their professions as Christians seriously. There is a radical, uncompromising strand in Contarini's thought that can easily be missed if it is considered merely utopian. Contarini the critic held up to Catholic theologians and controversialists a mirror when he closed his Confutatio with this vision:

No councils, battles of words, syllogisms, or biblical citations are needed to quiet the unrest of the Lutherans, but good will, love of God and one's neigh-

[136] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 17.

bor, humility of soul in order to do away with avarice, luxury, large households, and courts, and to limit oneself to that which the Gospels prescribe. This is what is needed to overcome the tumults of the Lutherans. Let us not move against them with masses of books, Ciceronian orations, subtle arguments, but with an exemplary life, humble mind, without luxury, only desiring Christ and the good of our neighbor. With these weapons, believe me, not only the Lutherans but also the Turks and Jews could be converted without difficulty. In this the duty of Christian prelates consists, and to this they should direct all their ambition. If they fail to do so, seeking support instead in the favor of princes, in reasons and authorities and masses of books, their efforts will be of no avail. This is my firm conviction.^[137]

One brief phrase reveals the heart of his program: limiting oneself to "that which the Gospels prescribe" meant personal, internal reform. As in his earliest extant letters to his friends, so now he sees this sort of self-correction as the beginning of church reform. The systematic weaknesses of his position are balanced by the fervor of his convictions. Reform would begin with an act of the will and proceed to an affective, interior response to the gospel by the individual.

Reflection on proper order in the church led to consideration of the papacy. Of Contarini's three tracts on the power of the pope, one was written while he was a layman: the brief treatise De potestate pontificis quod divinitus sit tradita .^[138] The occasion for its composition was a series of debates in the Venetian Senate during the early 1530s regarding forced loans that the Republic intended to levy on ecclesiastical property. Some senators, notably Sebastiano Foscarini, held that it was unnecessary to consult the pope first on such a matter, for he was to be obeyed only "in materia fidei et sacramentorum"—in questions involving faith and the sacraments. As we have seen, however, Contarini's opposing view prevailed, and according to the report of Girolamo Aleandro, then the papal nuncio to Venice, it was Contarini's influence, notwithstanding the views of prominent anti-papal senators who mistrusted the pope as the destroyer of republican government in Florence, that persuaded the Senate to consult the pope before levying the loans.^[139] In this context Contarini wrote De potestate pontificis in a single sitting at the request of a friend.

The brief treatise seems intransigent in tone, out of keeping with his statements as ambassador to Clement VII, indeed simply an echo of conservative views concerning the divine institution of the papacy. It

[137] Ibid., 22.

[138] The best text is in ibid., 35-43; also Opera , 581-87.

[139] Gaeta (ed.), Nunziature di Venezia 1:210 (letter 77).

adduces proof from Scripture, reason, and history, without any reference to exegetical work by Protestant theologians, some of whose arguments Contarini certainly knew by that time. He affirms that the keys were given to Peter alone, whose successor possesses the plenitudo potestatis of judging, binding, and loosing, and through whom bishops receive their power. Two other powers were also given by Christ to the pope: to be the supreme shepherd of the Christian flock, and to instruct it in true doctrine, with authority to make the final decision on matters of dogma and faith.^[140]

The second line of argument proceeds from a philosophical basis as Contarini states that no human group can be united without a head. Rejecting the Lutheran belief that Christ leads the church without an intermediary, Contarini argues human nature is such that without a visible head chaos would soon ensue.^[141] Turning to the history of the early church, he seeks to show that from the beginning the authority of Peter was greater than that of James, and that the see of Rome took precedence over all others. He closes with a paragraph reaffirming the divine institution of papal authority.^[142]

Despite first impressions, a careful reading will show the links between this little treatise and the ideas Contarini expressed earlier about the papacy. Above all, he strongly affirms the hierarchy of the church culminating in the pope. He was never to deviate from this position or to entertain other conceptions of church structure and governance. Moreover, he stresses throughout that the fullness of power belongs properly to the pope but that its misuse has grievous consequences for both the church and secular society. Long ago he had written to Querini that the principal cause of temporal and spiritual evils in the church was "lack of religious feeling and the example of the lack of devotion in persons who in past years governed the church of God."^[143] Contarini believed that the pope must understand clearly not only the immense power given him by God but also its precise limits and the proper sphere for its exercise if the church was to see meaningful change. These ideas were developed further after he became a cardinal, as we shall see.

Before that time, however, his ideas on order in the church were neither novel nor systematic. He did not envision new possibilities of

[140] Gegenreformatorische Schriften , 40.

[141] Ibid., 41.

[142] Ibid., 42-43.

[143] ". . . Il pocho religioso affecto et exemplo de quelli che ne li passati anni hanno governato la Chiesia di Dio" (Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 44).

organizing the Christian people or conceive of administrative structures that differed substantially from existing ones he considered adequate. In Contarini's works there is no image of a golden age of the church to which he wanted to return; he knew church history well enough to realize how many practical difficulties and theological disputes had arisen in the past. Instead, his view of order puts first the observance of norms and regulations already enacted by ecclesiastical authorities but no longer properly enforced. In advocating the reaffirmation of existing laws that would ensure good government in the church, Contarini was of course looking backward. Yet his stance was not simply that of a conservative intent on preserving whatever already existed; rather, it was that of an intelligent Christian living in the world who knew that laws alone do not suffice to maintain order throughout the church.

It is precisely for this reason that the figure of the bishop assumes such importance in Contarini's writings. The bishop can become the key to good order on the local level through his moral force and example to the priests and people of his diocese, making the Christian message a living reality to them. But as a good shepherd he also enforces the laws of the church in a reasonable manner. He is the visible link between the spirit of prophecy in the church and the spirit of order, of the fervent, visionary aspect of Christianity and the necessary structures designed to transmit the Christian religion from generation to generation. Contarini was only too aware of how difficult it would be to reform the whole church, and he had no detailed blueprint for change. On the local level, a good and appropriately educated bishop could conceivably bring about a turn for the better. Notwithstanding the seemingly utopian character of Contarini's tract on the office of the bishop, it arguably has its practical side too. After all, its author confined himself to the level of the church where there was most hope for change, rather than tackling the entire hierarchy.

One quite specific Contarinian concept is the need for cooperation between the bishop and the secular authorities. Here the author's Venetian outlook again shows itself. Contarini envisions church and state working harmoniously in their separate spheres for the good of society. Order in the church entails the recognition that there are limits to the competence of ecclesiastical rulers in deciding issues concerning their Christian flock, including deference to the state in such matters as criminal justice. Though Contarini did not use the image of the two swords, he unquestioningly accepted a theory that saw both church

and state as God's agents in bringing about and preserving peace, order, and justice in this world.

Finally, order in the church, in Contarini's view, excluded coercion or violence. That his was not an inquisitorial mentality can be seen from the Confutatio . Unlike Gianpietro Carafa, his future close associate in efforts at reform, Contarini never considered the battle against heretics of prime importance for the church. Christians were to be like the light shining on the mountain, impressing the sinful and the indifferent by their example. Here a side of Contarini emerges that is almost Erasmian: his firm belief in the teachability and rationality of human beings, who will respond to what is good, true, and noble when it is set before them. Again, Contarini should not be interpreted as an impractical dreamer in the conclusion to the Confutatio . Open to persuasion and utterly unfanatical himself, he had no difficulty in imagining men who held different, even antithetical, opinions, without seeing in them adversaries to be extirpated. The strength of his position came from the inner certainty he himself had attained. It made him willing to discuss and debate other views without fear of compromising his own. The ideal ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Confutatio is in reality a projection of Contarini's own ideal. He saw Christians as reasonable persons whose spirit of charity precluded undue attachment to their own opinions; they would be willing to listen even to Lutherans, and to see in them brothers.

Just as he had called on the pope in 1529 to be a father and keeper of peace among nations, so Contarini in his theological works of the early 1530s called on the governors of the Christian people to set them the example of good shepherds. He saw charity and humility, not coercion or sanctions, as the key to a revitalized church.

Order in the State

Contarini's literary fame in the sixteenth century rested not so much on his philosophical or theological writings as on his book dealing with the government of Venice, which remains even today the best-known treatise on the subject. Begun between 1523 and 1525 and finished in the early 1530s,^[144]De magistratibus et republica Vene-

[144] Gilbert, "Date of Composition," 175-77.

torum was first published in Paris in 1543, with French and Italian translations appearing in the following year and an English translation in 1599.^[145] The only modern monograph devoted to the book^[146] needs to be updated by recent contributions that have deepened our understanding of what has been called "the great source that fed republican thought in monarchical centuries"^[147] and underlined the significance of the work for European political thought. Although one of the treatise's principal purposes was to reinforce the so-called myth of Venice as the perfect state,^[148] a close examination of the text reveals a number of other purposes as well. But no consensus has emerged concerning its ultimate intent or the readers for whom it was intended.

One intriguing suggestion is that the book may have originated in a dinner-table conversation between Contarini and Thomas More in Bruges in 1521.^[149] More's Utopia had appeared five years earlier, and Contarini could easily have read it. Yet Contarini makes no mention of the book and remarks merely that More was a very learned gentleman. A more likely candidate than More as a stimulus to reflection on the nature of republics is Giovanni Corsi, the Florentine ambassador to Spain from 1522 to 1525. Corsi had belonged to the group that met in the Orti Oricellari, with which Contarini became briefly acquainted in 1515, and the two ambassadors were friends at the Spanish court.^[150] Inevitably they discussed the governments of their own states, in

[145] The first Latin edition was published by M. Vascosani, the French translation of 1544 by Galiot du Pré in Paris, and the Italian translation of the same year by Girolamo Scotto in Venice. The English translation by Lewis Lewkenor was published in London in 1599 (facsimile reprint, Amsterdam and New York, 1969); see David McPherson, "Lewkenor's Venice and Its Sources," Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988): 459-66. Numerous editions of the Italian and French versions attest to the continuing interest in Contarini's book well into the seventeenth century. The manuscript is in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Cod. Magliab., cl. XXX, N. 146, fols. lr-78r.

[146] Hermann Hackert, Die Staatsschrift Gasparo Contarinis und die politischen Verhältnisse Venedigs im sechzehnten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter, 1940).

[147] Gilbert, "Date of Composition," 184. For a comprehensive view of the work, see the observations of William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 145-53; and the more debatable treatment of J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 320-30. See also Elisabeth G. Gleason, "Reading Between the Lines of Contarini's Treatise on the Venetian State," Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 15 (1988): 251-70.

[148] James S. Grubb, "When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography," Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 46.

[149] Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," 115.

[150] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 114n.165. On Corsi, see P. Malanima, "Corsi, Giovanni," in DBI 29:567-70.

contrast both to each other and to the Habsburg Empire, which they were observing at its administrative center. During his stay in Spain Contarini had the leisure to put his thoughts on paper, an occupation that may have assuaged the yearning for Venice he occasionally expressed in his dispatches.

The years following the Spanish embassy were crucial for the final shape of the book. The sack of Rome, the mission to Clement VII, participation in the negotiations leading to the Peace of Bologna, and finally immersion in Venetian government affairs all gave Contarini an insider's understanding of Venetian, Italian, and European politics. De magistratibus is written without illusions about the new realities of political power after Charles V's triumph in 1530. Contarini knew that Venice had descended to the rank of one of the lesser European states. His book thus does more than merely reflect views held by Venetian patricians after the War of the League of Cambrai^[151] or the "interpretation of history and politics formulated by Venetian humanists of the post-Cambrai generation."^[152] It is marked first of all by Contarini's realization of what the Peace of Bologna meant for Venice, and only secondarily is it his response to the Cambrai crisis.

The work is divided into five books. The first deals with the location and origins of the city, of Venice and its basic political institution, the Great Council. Book II treats the office of the doge, followed in the next by a discussion of the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the main judicial tribunals. Book IV continues the description of the various magistracies, while the last discusses the government of the Venetian terraferma . Along the way the author offers numerous reflections about the past, pointed and at times poignant obiter dicta , and glimpses of his own views, all of which contribute to infuse life into the book as well as to make its texture more intricate than it at first appears.

On the surface, De magistratibus is written for strangers coming to Venice, predictably full of admiration for the beautiful and splendid city in its improbable setting. Contarini sets out to help his readers see a less obvious aspect of the city's remarkable nature: its excellent government, which surpasses even the dreams of philosophers who created imaginary commonwealths.^[153] His intention thus seems clear. Yet even

[151] Myron Gilmore, "Myth and Reality in Venetian Political Theory," in Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice , 434.

[152] Lester J. Libby, Jr., "Venetian History and Political Thought After 1509," Studies in the Renaissance 20 (1973): 8.

[153] Opera , 264. If Contarini is including More's Utopia here, the reference remains very general.

a cursory reading reveals that he went far beyond his announced intention by writing a treatise that at crucial points speaks to members of his own patrician class much more forcefully than to even the most admiring foreigner, who after all had little personal concern with many of the issues Contarini raised. The book in fact has several levels of meaning: first, the description of institutions and magistracies; then, well-chosen and pedagogically effective examples from the Venetian past meant to illustrate the philosophical basis of the Republic's form of government; and finally, subtle but pointed references to aspects of the Venetian state which Contarini regarded as needing reform so that Venice could take her due place in a greatly changed Europe. The new international order had left her diminished in military, political, and economic significance, but Contarini believed that the Venetian state could still contribute much to contemporary European culture and political understanding.^[154]

Contarini's treatise is neither a faithful portrait nor a utopian tract, but a combination of the actual and the ideal, the descriptive and the prescriptive, which blend to form the portrait of good and just government.^[155] Enlarging on his statement that he is addressing his work to foreigners, he adds that he hopes to enable "anyone to determine easily whether [the Venetian Republic] is ordered well or wrongly."^[156] For this purpose an exposition of the principles on which the government is based is as important as a discussion of its various organs and

[154] William A. Bouwsma, "Venice and the Political Education of Europe," in Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice , 451, discusses the "particular advantages" of Venice "for bringing into focus the political conceptions of modern Europeans" and remarks that the Venetian achievement "corresponded to the emerging needs of the European nations."

[155] Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans , 2d ed. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962), 39, briefly but correctly notes that Contarini "performed the extraordinary feat of bringing the real and the ideal together." But I have reservations about the notion that Contarini thought he was describing a "miracle." Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," 110n.70, points to Hackert's misunderstanding of Contarini's idealizing of Venice. Unless one reads the work as both descriptive and idealizing, it is possible to accuse Contarini of hypocrisy and "the smugness of Venetians" (Hackert, Staatsschrift , 113) and to miss what he was really doing. Dittrich, GC , 238, in my opinion overstates the importance of philosophical elements in Contarini's book, thereby missing some of its most significant dimensions. While stating that it describes "the actual circumstances of the Venetian constitution at the beginning of the sixteenth century," he nevertheless decides that it should properly be reckoned among Contarini's philosophical works.

[156] "Quamobrem dum de hac nostra Republica scribere instituerim, ut quilibet facile dignoscere queat, rectene an perperam se habeat, hinc mihi potissimum exordium sumendum reor" (Opera , 264).

magistracies. The state, according to Contarini, exists to ensure that through its institutions its citizens can lead happy lives in the exercise of virtue. He thinks that Venice has been more successful in this than any of the states of antiquity, including Athens, Sparta, and Rome, and the whole of his book supports this central thesis.

Interestingly, Contarini makes no flat assertion that republics are inherently superior to monarchies. His comparison of the two forms of government is more cautious and more subtle than that. Not only would many of his presumed readers come from states governed by princes or kings, but even his fellow nobles in Venice, who in general were convinced of the incompatibility of principalities and republics, included open admirers of Charles V and his empire.^[157] If not outright advocates of a pax Habsburgica , these men at least contemplated with equanimity Venice's close cooperation with the emperor and his brother Ferdinand. To this group belonged Alvise Mocenigo, Contarini's inveterate enemy, whose pro-imperial stand was notorious.^[158] Thus Contarini did not challenge the proponents of monarchical government, acknowledging that all things being equal the rule of one man exercised in accordance with reason might be best. Yet he thought that this possibility remained open only in the realm of philosophy, for in actuality human nature is inclined to baseness, and the brevity of human life makes government by a larger number of men preferable for civil society, as "experience, the mistress of all, so excellently teaches us."^[159] Venice is the paradigm of a state in which experience has tempered theory to produce a perfect government. In this pronouncement we catch an autobiographical note: for Contarini, experience was a critical contributor to the development of living organisms, whether individual or collective.

Contarini's reconstruction of the Venetian past reveals first of all that he fully accepted the ethos of his patrician class. The establishment of perfect political order was due to noble ancestors, "maiores nostri," who are repeatedly spoken of as having possessed all but superhuman virtue—wisdom and goodness together with complete selflessness—

[157] Ambrosini, "Immagini dell'impero," 67-68. I do not think that the prospect of Charles V's universal monarchy seemed to Contarini a good thing for independent Italian states, as the author does (69).

[158] For his deportment during the negotiations at Bologna in 1529-30, see Sanuto, Diarii 53:51, 65, 68, 132. He consistently supported Habsburg political objectives; see, for example, Aldo Stella, "Die Staatsräson und der Mord an Michael Gaismair," Der Schlern 58 (1984): 309-10.

[159] Opera , 266-67.

which made them willing to subordinate their private good to the public good.^[160] From the beginning of the city's existence aristocrats had been the shapers of her destiny, since the first inhabitants, refugees from Attila who had settled with their families in the lagoon after being forced to abandon their mainland homes, "excelled others in nobility and wealth." Although the makers of Venice were God's instruments, their superior social status did not derive from that fact. They brought nobility with them when they first reached the site of the future city: "The noblest people of the province of Venetia, fleeing the violence of the barbarian and the destruction of all Italy, withdrew to our estuaries and founded this most splendid city. They gave it the name of Venetia so that posterity should know that the flower of the nobility of all towns in the region of Venetia were assembled together there."^[161]

Nobles had shaped the city, and only they possessed the fullness of citizenship. The founders in their wisdom had decreed that the common people could not share in this privilege, since "a citizen is a free man," unlike those who perform servile work.^[162] Nobility of birth alone enabled men to participate in government; the mere amassing of wealth was no argument in favor of admission to noble status. Contarini is aware that new names had been inscribed in the rolls of Venetian nobility, most notably after the War of Chioggia in the fourteenth century, but he touches on this fact only briefly in mentioning foreigners whose high rank or exceptional service to the Republic had made them eligible for admission to its patriciate.^[163] These cases were so rare as not to mar Contarini's general picture of the hereditary nobles as "the eyes of the city." Using the analogy of the human body, Contarini points out that members who lacked eyes necessarily obeyed those who did have eyes and saw what needed to be done. This is the order that harmonizes with nature. Contarini concludes that "if in any state—as happens in many—the citizens should get to the point of folly, and the people should want to exercise the power of sight and claim for themselves the function of the eyes, that entire state will necessarily be in continuous turmoil."^[164] To prevent that from happening Venice had guardians of order, the nobles, whom God used to preserve

[160] E.g., ibid., 264: "Certissimum hoc reor argumentum esse, non ambitionis ventosaeque famae maiores nostros studiosos fuisse, sed patriae tantum bono, communique utilitati consuluisse. Hac ergo incredibili virtute animi, maiores nostri hanc Rempublicam instituere, qualem post hominum memoriam nullam extitisse." Similarly, p. 263.

[161] Ibid., 307.

[162] Ibid., 268. Here Contarini echoes Aristotle, Politics , 3.5.

[163] Ibid., 269.

[164] Ibid., 326.

justice and minister to the general good.^[165] Contarini believed that the nobles were a superior class even when they were impoverished, and argued elsewhere that they had a special claim on assistance should they need it.^[166] As Venice's preeminent element, the nobles had created an orderly society that in turn reflected hierarchical cosmic order;^[167] they were the mind and soul of the Venetian state, which originated from the political genius of their class.^[168] Thus Contarini's book, while it continues the long tradition of exalting aristocracy that is found in Venetian humanist literature,^[169] is also the supreme literary monument to what he considered the political achievement of the Venetian nobility: a just state and a just society. Although governed by nobles, the state existed by the consent of the governed and their love of those who guided them.^[170] Ultimately, the system worked because of the moderation of the nobility,^[171] on whose virtue Venetian greatness rested and who wisely provided safeguards against disturbances by the people.

The most famous part of Contarini's book is his presentation of the Venetian state as a perfect balance of democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy. Elaborating the myth that Venice possessed a mixed constitution, Contarini sees the democratic principle operating in the Great Council; the aristocratic in the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the savi ; and the monarchical in the doge.^[172] At the conclusion of Book I

[165] Contarini expressed similar thoughts in "Cardinali Polo de poenitentia," Reg ., 355-56: "Il medesimo ordine si vede nel governo delle famiglie fra li homeni et nel regimento delle cita, che dio usa per instrumento suo alcuni homeni, li quali sono causa di conservare la iustitia et il bene commune."

[166] "De officio episcopi," in Opera , 430.

[167] See the observations of Cervelli, Machiavelli , 315.

[168] This point is stressed in Franco Gaeta, "L'idea di Venezia," in Arnaldi and Stocchi (eds.), Storia della cultura veneta 3(3):635.

[169] For this tradition, see Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), esp. 92-150.

[170] Opera , 321: the people of the Venetian mainland showed themselves always as loving and obedient to the Venetian nobility ("populus . . . semper amantissimum atque obsequentissimum nobilitatis se praestitisse").

[171] Ibid., 326. Contarini closes his book with these reflections.

[172] Ibid., 269. A vast literature exists on the myth of Venice as the perfect state in the sixteenth century. Among the most important studies are Gina Fasoli, "Nascita di un mito," in Studi storici in onore di Gioacchino Volpe per il suo 80 compleanno (Florence: Sansoni, 1958), 1:447-79; Felix Gilbert, "The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought," in Florentine Studies , ed. Nicolai Rubinstein (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), 463-500 (reprinted in History: Choice and Commitment , 179-214); Franco Gaeta, "Alcune considerazioni sul mito di Venezia," Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 23 (1961): 58-75; idem, "L'idea di Venezia," 565-641; Brian Pullan, "The Significance of Venice," Bulletin of t he John Rylands University Library of Manchester 56 (1973-74): 443-62; August Buck, "Laus Venetiae," Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 57 (1975): 185-94. For further bibliography, see Grubb, "When Myths Lose Power."

and the beginning of Book III, Contarini repeats this idea, each time comparing the well-tempered constitution to the harmony of beautiful music, which comes to serve as a metaphor for the well-ordered state.^[173] This analysis of the Venetian constitution depends primarily on Aristotle and Polybius, but it also carries on the Venetian tradition, reaching back into the Middle Ages, of stylized encomia of the excellence and balance of the Republic's government. It has been rightly suggested that Contarini's should be compared with earlier treatises in order to be bring out all its nuances.^[174] His treatment of the mixed constitution is much more than "a masterpiece of intellectual play, full of elegance and taste."^[175] Contarini believed that this constitution existed in reality as the basis of civil concord, since it assured that no single element could assume the dominant role in government. He did not, however, think that a mixed constitution in and of itself guaranteed good order and civic peace. The key to the latter was the political wisdom of the noble class. Because the government was the exclusive preserve of that class, Contarini actually was analyzing democratic, oligarchic, and monarchical elements within the ruling class alone. Jean Bodin's later observation that Contarini denied the aristocratic character of Venice is beside the point because Contarini made a basic distinction between mere inhabitants of the city and the nobles as its true citizens, to whom he confined his discussion.^[176]

Although in Contarini's writings the identification of the ruling class and its ratio is complete, his personal solidarity with the actual nobility of his time is a more complex matter. De magistratibus reveals him as both the encomiast and critic of his class, conscious that some of its members have turned their back on the patterns of behavior laid down by the founders. He addresses himself to them in outlining the high ideals they must live up to in order to perpetuate the excellence of the state into which they were born. Choosing a few key instances from the past, Contarini uses them as mirrors for nobles whose departure from established practices has brought harm to the state.

[173] See Ellen Rosand, "Music in the Myth of Venice," Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977): 512-13; and Libby, "Venetian History and Political Thought," 19. For the wider implications of Contarini's analogy, see Leo Spitzer, Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmon ), (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963).

[174] Daniel Robey and John Law, "The Venetian Myth and the 'De Republica Veneta' of Pier Paolo Vergerio," Rinascimento , 2d ser., 15 (1975): 13. Vergerio's work of the early fifteenth century already includes the idea of the Venetian political system as a mixture of aristocratic, democratic, and monarchical elements (ibid., 17).

[175] Hackert's formulation of "ein meisterhaftes Spiel, voll Eleganz und Geschmack" (Staatsschrift , 99) is quite inept, for it touches only the surface.

[176] Ibid., 98-99.

Foremost in his critique is the nature of their participation in maritime affairs. He recalls that in former times Venetians achieved many victories at sea because they were familiar with it and, owing to extensive training, inured to the hardships it posed,^[177] whereas now young patricians no longer regularly went to sea.^[178] In the past the Arsenal was more important than it now was, and its supervising magistrate held in higher esteem.^[179] Similarly, the magistrates in charge of naval affairs, the savi agli ordeni , formerly were of great account, whereas now young and inexperienced men were often elected to those positions.^[180] Contarini points regretfully to the decline of Venice as a maritime power, in the hope of seeing that decline reversed by the same class that originally had carved out a seaborne empire. Still, he knows that the reorientation of the ruling class away from the sea and toward the terraferma is an accomplished fact.

It has been argued recently, and I believe incorrectly, that "Contarini's traditionalist view of the sources of Venetian strength and greatness made him deeply hostile to the republic's policy of landward expansion, which he regarded as a dangerous innovation of recent times."^[181] On the contrary, he paints an idealized picture of Venetian expansion that reconciles it with his theme of Venice as the perfect commonwealth. Venice manifested her greatness by coming to the aid of her neighbors when they appealed for help, even though the Republic was reluctant to become embroiled in the affairs of the terraferma :

Nevertheless after a long period the policy of the Senate yielded to the pleas of the neighboring peoples, all of whom suffered under the rule of petty kings whom they could endure no longer. The Senate turned its attention to the mainland. When it had driven out the tyrants, and the citizens everywhere gave it their adherence, it restored the whole region of Venetia to essentially its original state. Venetia now reverted gratefully to its native inhabitants after the foreign tyrants were ejected, those offscourings of the barbarians who had settled throughout the region and oppressed the conquered peoples with a harsh servitude.^[182]

Contarini here employs a humanist historiographical scheme, portraying Venice as the restorer of order on the mainland as it had existed in

[177] Opera , 317, 319.

[178] Ibid., 320.

[179] Ibid., 314.

[180] Ibid., 293.

[181] Libby, "Venetian History and Political Thought," 29. Cervelli, Macchiavelli , 324-26, gives a better assessment of Contarini's ideas regarding Venetian expansion.

[182] Opera , 317.

classical times before the onset of the destructive barbarians. By acting as it did, the Senate in a sense built a bridge between the Republic and ancient Rome that spanned the valley of darkness and bondage into which the neighbors of Venice had been plunged for centuries.

In olden times there was a link between the sea, commerce, and the virtù of the nobility. That virtù , far from being lost, now maintained itself in a different setting. Venetian wisdom in modern times was revealed in the government of mainland cities. Each had an appointed podestà or governor who now functioned as judge, a capitano in charge of military affairs, a treasurer, and a castellan where there was a castle or fortress.^[183] Despite the appointment of Venetians to the more important posts, the subject cities had been left undisturbed in the possession of their ancient laws and statutes. When dealing with legal issues the governors sat together with local experts in the law, deciding nothing without consulting them. Venetian nobles were not permitted to function as iurisperiti , or legal advisors,^[184] in deference to local customs and traditions. Thus the uniquely high standards of Venetian justice forged an additional tie between city and terraferma , the solidity of which was shown in the mainland's loyalty to Venice during the dark days of the War of the League of Cambrai. Contarini sees the expanded Venetian state as benefiting the subject cities greatly, since they were assured of good order while still retaining a certain amount of autonomy and having their defence organized and paid for by Venice.^[185] The city, then, was not only the center of the terrafetma in every sense, but also the bringer and guardian of peace.

On this last point Contarini is eloquent, attributing to the founders of Venice a deep concern for harmony and peace. Unlike the Romans, who educated their young so completely in warfare that when Carthage was destroyed they turned upon one another, the Venetians did not gear their men for war but for defense. Venice never forgot the intention of the founders, who in their wisdom knew that warfare should be subordinated to peace and that wise government would ensure continued peace.^[186] For Contarini peace is not the mere absence of conflict but a transcendent good. It benefits the entire state and society and must be pursued actively, even aggressively. His views

[183] Ibid., 316.

[184] Ibid., 325.

[185] On this topic see also Gaeta, "L'idea di Venezia," 637-38, who regards Contarini's treatment of the harmony between the city and the mainland as "the most subtly seductive" part of the entire work.

[186] Opera , 267.

cannot be explained simply as the product of a contemplative bent that made him dislike armed conflict, or by supposing that he and his contemporaries consciously rejected the turbulence of martial undertakings for the security of an ordered cursus honorum where one office led smoothly to the next with no risks entailed.^[187] Contarini's exaltation of peace has more complex roots. His consistent preference for resolving conflicts by patient diplomacy reflects his own temperament, his reasoned conviction, and his experience as ambassador. He knew how dangerous further war would be for his homeland. By herself Venice could not hope to achieve military victories in Italy, but joining leagues was an alternative also fraught with problems, as recent experience had shown. Contarini is speaking to his fellow nobles when he praises peacekeeping as a specifically Venetian virtue. In this instance he ignores the fact of Venice's many previous wars in order to drive home to his readers the bitter lesson he himself had drawn from the involvement of his homeland in the League of Cambrai.

For Machiavelli, too, that lesson was clear. He saw in the defeat at Agnadello a proof of the deficiency of the Venetian state: "In one day they [the Venetians] lost the state which they had acquired during many years with infinite expense; although they recently have gained some of it back, they have regained neither their reputation nor their strength, and thus live at the mercy of others, like all the other Italian rulers."^[188] That Machiavelli was no admirer of Venice is well known. He thought Venetians arrogant in prosperity but weak and cowardly in adversity, and he judged their state to have been a threat to the political stability of Italy before 1494 because of its expansionism and aspirations to the "monarchia d'Italia."^[189] Agnadello only confirmed that underneath the blustering facade which Venetians presented to the world there lay the serious weakness of a state that relied on mercenary soldiers. To their chagrin they had to learn what St. Mark himself had

[187] Hackert, Staatsschrift , 75, 96. He believes Contarini's encomium of peace masks his passive, contemplative side that makes him shrink from war, and compares Contarini's generation unfavorably with that of the great warrior Andrea Contarini, even seeing in the outlook of the former a sign of Venetian decadence.

[188] Istorie fiorentine , Book I, 29. For an excellent description of the battle of Agnadello, see Piero Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana , 2d ed. (Turin: Einaudi, 1971), 455-69.

[189] Machiavelli "represented Venice as an ungrateful friend, an unreliable ally, and a major threat to the peace of Italy before the coming of the French. Her populace he depicted as morally deficient, insolent in prosperity and abject in adversity" (Bouswsma, Venice , 69). See Discorsi , Book III, chap. 31; Istorie fiorentine , Book V, chaps. 19-21; Il Principe , chap. 2. For Agnadello, see Discorsi , Book I, chap. 6.

had to learn in order to be the symbol of effective Venetian domination of the mainland: "At his own cost, and perhaps to no avail, St. Mark realized too late that he needs to hold in his hand the sword and not the book."^[190]

Contarini interprets the consequences of Agnadello quite differently. Though almost all the European rulers had conspired against Venice, she had withstood their assault with God's help, "and our state, which almost fell into ruin, is [now] restored undiminished."^[191] While duly acknowledging that God had preserved the Venetian state from its enemies, Contarini leaves no doubt that it deserved to endure because of its fundamental justice. The period immediately following the defeat in the War of the League of Cambrai showed once and for all that the nobility and the state were one^[192] and that the political virtue of the rulers had bound the entire dominion to its center not by force or fear, but by the love and devotion of the governed for their governors. No other state had ever achieved what Venice had:

From the first beginnings until our own time [the Republic] has remained safe for one thousand two hundred years not only from the domination of strangers but also from civil sedition of any consequence. This was accomplished not by violence, armed might, or fortified strongholds, but by a just and temperate manner of ruling so that the people obeyed the nobility very willingly. They desire no change of government, but on the contrary are more strongly attached to the nobles.^[193]

The recent war furnished proof that the Venetian state survived because of the reciprocity of right disposition and action on the part of the nobles and the other inhabitants. After the terrible defeat at Agnadello, when Venice was hard pressed on all sides, the people not only made no attempt to overthrow the nobility, but even, "weeping, offered their lives for the defense of the Republic, thereby preserving it." Their love for Venice was further demonstrated at the siege of Padua, when many plebeians voluntarily joined the nobles against the troops

[190] Machiavelli, "Dell'ambizione," as quoted by Gaeta, "L'idea di Venezia," 607: "San Marco ale sue spese, e forse invano, / tardi conosce come li bisogna / tener la spada e non il libro in mano." For a fine discussion of Machiavelli's anti-Venetian attitude, see pp. 604-14.

[191] Opera , 309.

[192] Another Venetian patrician, Andrea Mocenigo, stressed the absolute solidarity of the state with the nobility in his history of the War of the League of Cambrai, written between 1515 and 1518; on this see Libby, "Venetian History and Political Thought," 33.

[193] Opera , 325.

of Emperor Maximilian.^[194] A most important argument barely surfaces here: that the Venetian state has continued to exist because of the consent of the governed. This idea, however, is not elaborated. Having given their actions his approval, Contarini has little more to say about the commoners, who as a class held no theoretical interest for him.

The most important lesson of Agnadello for Contarini was that Venetian nobles had built a state so solidly based that it survived a calamitous war, proof of the nobles' political and moral virtue. Yet Contarini is not complacent in his admiration of this supreme achievement of his class; rather, he voices his apprehension that the war may have strained the cohesion of the nobility. His book does not present the nobility as a monolithic unit, but as a complex class in which the interests of the young and the old or the rich and the poor members are at odds.^[195] The best arguments against reading De magistratibus as a picture of static Venetian perfection is contained in certain significant passages, which, although their author does not stress them, illuminate his remarkable understanding of Venice's actual historical position.

In the first such passage he comments on an old law providing for relief of poor nobles. Each Venetian galley used to have eight young nobles assigned to it who were not only salaried but also allowed to carry a certain amount of trading merchandise exempt from tolls and taxes. The latter privilege could be transferred for a payment; thus nobles could profit from it even if they did not themselves engage in trade. By this means the state gave financial support to the nobles, who in turn learned the art of seafaring.^[196] Contarini continues: "These ancient laws and customs endure even to our time, although certain young men, corrupted by ambition or luxury since the expansion of the empire, have neglected their country's institutions. In addition the number of citizens has so increased that through the inroads of war in our time and expenses at home, many more have become poor than can be provided for by this law."^[197] Here is explicit admission that

[194] Ibid.

[195] Gilbert, "Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai," 290, writes: "Of course the struggle of the young against the old, of the poor nobles against the rich, of the old families against the new has been a constant feature in Venetian history. Nevertheless it might be suggested that the formation of a firm bloc consisting of the traditional ruling families and of the newer families of great wealth distinctly separate from the rest of the nobility, achieved its completion and perfection in the times of the war of the League of Cambrai."

[196] Opera , 319.

[197] Ibid., 320 (translation from Bouwsma, Venice , 152-53).

change had occurred in both the values and the economic position of members of the noble class. Old laws were falling into desuetude not because of their inadequacy but because recent events had produced a new type of noble who no longer subordinated his own interests to those of his class or the state as a whole. Contarini's brief mention of two additional instances of the neglect into which old regulations had fallen acquires added poignancy: no longer observed is either the law forbidding a Venetian noble to command more than twenty-five men^[198] or the law providing that no captain of an armed galley can return to the city without first paying and dismissing most of his crew in Istria.^[199] These are but surface symptoms of a much deeper problem, the decline from the high standards to which the noble class formerly adhered.

Contarini touches this problem only briefly, as if reluctant to face the implication of his reflections on order and disorder in the state. A crack has opened in the harmonious structure he has been describing, and he is too honest to ignore it but too much the Venetian to face it squarely. A few pages from the end of the book we read:

For nature so works that nothing can be permanent among men, but all things, no matter how perfectly they seem to have been established at the beginning, require restoration after some years, since nature inclines toward the worse; just as the body, though sated with its midday meal, cannot long remain sound unless dinner follows some hours later. Thus in everything it is necessary to assist and renew declining nature. May God help us to follow reason in this too, and devise such a remedy that everything needful may be provided in our Republic.^[200]

William Bouwsma has called attention to "the curious ambiguity in Contarini's appeal to nature" here, and his awareness "of some sense in which nature is far from stable."^[201] But this passage also reflects Contarini's mainstream cosmological views dating from his Paduan years. In contrast to the supralunary sphere, where everything was in harmony and order, the sublunary sphere was thought to undergo continuous change. The Venetian state, for all its perfection, belonged to the sphere of generation and corruption; mutable nature made no exception for it. Contarini is not denying that Venice, too, is subject to change, but he is calling on the nobles to stem and deflect the course of "natural" events by summoning up those qualities that made the

[198] Ibid., 318.

[199] Ibid., 321.

[200] Ibid., 320 (translation from Bouwsma, Venice , 153).

[201] Bouwsma, Venice , 152. For ideas of nature as both disorderly and orderly, see George Boas, "Nature," in Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas 3:346-51.

state extraordinary in the first place: the employment of reason, the exercise of political virtue, and total identification with the Republic. Remedy was possible only if the ruling class grasped the danger in which Venice found itself and the nobility looked once more to the ideal vision of Venice as inspiration for its political, social, and ethical actions. Just as the mind is nobler and more perfect than the body, so, Contarini asserts, right understanding can triumph over the obstacles posed by the material world. Agnadello and its aftermath, for all the humiliation it brought upon Venice, might prove the impetus for a vigorous renovation of the state, which in turn would depend on rekindling the once ardent virtù of the nobility and restoring consensus among its members.

Contarini might have been worried about the power of the papalisti , the families within the nobility that were closely linked with the papal curia through the holding of ecclesiastical preferments and whose clerical members were barred from state offices. The pursuit of their own interests at the expense of those of the state made families like the Grimani, Cornaro, and Pisani disruptive of harmony and concord. The danger that such divided allegiances posed for the Republic was an important reason for Contarini's call to respect the ideals of the past.^[202] Certainly Contarini, who was in Venice from 1525 to 1528, between his two embassies, at a particularly difficult period of social tensions and economic problems, had no illusions about these matters. He knew at first hand of other disruptive potentialities of the nobility as well: the dangers of the so-called svizzeri , or poor nobles, willing to cast their votes wherever financial compensation was offered, and of the broglio , the maneuvers and deals that preceded elections.^[203] He entered public life during the war period, when the government's need of money was so desperate that it broke with time-honored tradition and consented to the sale of offices.^[204] There was no denying that the laws were not applied impartially to rich and poor nobles, rich transgressors often being able to escape punishment entirely. It would nev-

[202] Gaetano Cozzi, "Lo stato veneziano nell'opera politico-religiosa di Gasparo Contarini a cavallo degli anni '30," paper read at the meeting commemorating the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Gasparo Contarini, Venice, 2 March 1986. On the papalisti , see also Grendler, Roman Inquisition , 30-31; and Pullan, "Occupations and Investments," 397-400.

[203] See the masterly discussion of Venetian social, legal, and economic tensions during the 1520s by Gaetano Cozzi, "Authority and the Law," 293-345, esp. 321-35.

[204] Ibid., 313-14; and Gilbert, "Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai," 284-85.

ertheless be a mistake to regard De magistratibus as glossing over the lack of harmony among those who were "the eyes of the Republic." His strong practical sense, coupled with his expert understanding of how the government actually functioned, is attested by the careful description of offices and procedures throughout his treatise. Although with his insider's knowledge he could have expatiated on the realities of Venetian politics, he deliberately chose to dwell on the perfection of its ideal rather than the realities of corruption and degeneration that he knew disfigured it.

I suggest that he had two audiences in mind, and that he was addressing them on different levels. The first was the audience of educated foreigners for whose benefit he described the workings of the Venetian constitution. The second was his own class, which did not need description so much as reflection on Venice's tradition and values in a time of turmoil and uncertainty. Contarini, like his contemporaries, had passed through the crisis of Cambrai, and he belonged to a generation that had been deeply affected by then-recent events. He was therefore addressing himself primarily to the nobility in his muted admission of the need for reform in the state; he held before their eyes the vision of what Venice had been and ideally might be again, though he knew that a literal return to the past was impossible. The former position of Venice among European states could not be restored, but Venice's political virtue could once more flourish.

How he envisioned a restored Venice is not made explicit save perhaps in a few hints comprehensible only to insiders. One especially significant passage of this kind can be found at the beginning of the discussion of the Council often. According to Contarini, "The Council of Ten has supreme authority among Venetians; it can be rightly asserted that it bears the responsibility for the safety of the state."^[205] We have seen that in practice Contarini, as one of its members, supported the growing power of the Ten. His treatise shows his conviction that reform of the state would entail the tightening of the government by placing supreme authority firmly in the hands of a small elite. This inner circle was for Contarini the nerve center of the state, around which were arranged all the other parts of the governmental and administrative apparatus down to the most minor magistracies.

That Contarini favored an oligarchy of powerful men in control of the government can be seen further in his relations with Andrea Gritti,

[205] "Decemvirum hoc collegium apud Venetos summae est autoritatis, et a quo non immerito quis asserat Reipub. incolumitatem praestari" (Opera , 295).

doge from 1523 to 1538. He judges Gritti to have been a senator of "outstanding wisdom and integrity,"^[206] who brought these qualities to his ducal position. He does not, however, tell the reader that this doge, though admired for the strength and courage he had shown at Padua in 1509, was by and large not popular,^[207] and that his election was due to a remarkable network of alliances among powerful Venetian families that formed an inside group within the nobility.^[208] As doge, Gritti favored the grandi , a narrow oligarchy among the nobles.^[209] During his two embassies, significantly, Contarini was in agreement with Gritti's political objectives. He shared the doge's pro-French sympathies, especially at the court of Clement VII, where he was the spokesman for Gritti's ideas. The thirty surviving letters from Gritti to Contarini between 1528 and 1530 reveal the close contact the two men maintained during this mission to Rome, the often minute instructions the doge personally sent to the ambassador, and the trust he had in Contarini's diplomatic abilities.^[210] Between 1530 and 1535, while occupying ever higher offices, Contarini remained one of Gritti's close collaborators and supporters.

Recently, the period during which Gritti was doge has been the subject of several studies that have opened new perspectives on the man and his times.^[211] It has become clear that membership in the Gritti circle meant espousing, or at the very least sympathizing with, a definite political and cultural program. Gritti championed the reform of the entire Venetian legal system in order to streamline laws and eliminate contradictory and confusing legislation. His schemes had far-

[206] Ibid., 311.

[207] Manfredo Tafuri, "'Renovatio urbis Venetiarum': il problema storiografico," in "Renovatio urbis": Venezia nell'età di Andrea Gritti (1523-1538 ), ed. Manfredo Tafuri (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1984), 11.

[208] Finlay, "Politics and Family;" 107ff.

[209] Tafuri, "'Renovatio,'" passim; and idem, Venezia e il Rinascimento: religione, scienza, architettura (Turin: Einaudi, 1985), esp. 162-71.

[210] VBC, Cod. Cicogna 3477; and Urbani, "Lettere ducali," disp. 1, 19-34; and disp. 3, 7-25. For an expression of Gritti's anti-imperial and pro-French views, see especially his letter of 23 July 1529 (Urbani, "Lettere ducali," disp. 3, 14-15).

[211] Besides the two works of Manfredo Tafuri cited above (notes 207 and 209), see Antonio Foscari and Manfredo Tafuri, L'armonia e i conflitti: la chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna nella Venezia del '500 (Turin: Einaudi, 1983); Leonardo Puppi, ed., Architettura e utopia nella Venezia del Cinquecento: catalogo della mostra (Milan: Electa, 1980). Gaetano Cozzi, "La politica del diritto nella Repubblica di Venezia" (1980), reprinted in his Repubblica di Venezia , 293-313, deals with Gritti's proposed reforms in masterly fashion.

reaching implications for the nobility, for their intent was that magistrates would become experts in the law and part of an efficient, specialized bureaucracy. In the end, opposition from nobles who closed-mindedly defended the status quo proved too strong for Gritti's designs to be realized. But Contarini's association with the doge demonstrates that his endorsement of the oligarchic tendencies within the Venetian ruling class was as much a matter of principle with him as it was personal preference. The Gritti circle prized order in the state even if that meant restructuring traditional relations among the Senate, the doge, and the Council of Ten in favor of the last-named. Contarini, too, believed that a vital, extremely powerful Council of Ten composed of experts who belonged to the most important families of the Republic and had the greatest stake in its welfare was needed for the revival of the state. Such a council, together with its zonta or advisory group, a doge who wielded wider discretionary powers than tradition assigned him, and the doge's six councillors were to be the thirty-two men who in reality governed Venice.

If the Gritti circle in fact had a distinct cultural program, as Manfredo Tafuri has argued convincingly, we can place Contarini's timeless-sounding views of Venice in their immediate cultural context. Tafuri thinks that the men around Gritti shared his vision of the state as a machine, the efficiency of which depended on speed in decision making and a reliable fund of specialized technical knowledge. He further believes that the ruling elite wanted to stimulate a reorientation of thought patterns among Venetians and launch a new image of Venice that would downplay the importance of military power. Venice was to become the cultural and intellectual center of Europe, the seat of philosophic wisdom, artistic excellence, and religious renewal.^[212] For this program to succeed, Venice needed concord at home and peace abroad. In moving to achieve these goals the doge was also concerned with the less lofty but at least equally important task of assuring the grain supply that would keep Venice's own population content while the Republic's new image was diffused abroad.

The Venice of De magistratibus is a city of peace and concord. Time after time Contarini stresses the commitment to peace, a peace that is a positive moral excellence promoting good in the state and its people. While the treatise says nothing of art and touches on the city's archi-

[212] Tafuri, "'Renovatio,'" esp. 23-42.

tecture only in the most general terms, it contributes to Venice's cultural revival in the Gritti period by constructing the ideal Venice as the model for present and future generations. Its constitution, as Contarini describes it, challenges its own ruling class to rise to heights of political wisdom, and invites those dwelling beyond its borders to emulate Venice's singular greatness. The Republic could truly be the education of Europe.