The Decision To Serve the State

The Contarini family was at the center of Venice virtually from the beginning of the city's existence. According to Venetian tradition, the first doge, Paolo Lucio Anafesto, was elected in the early eighth century. The families who later claimed descent from his electors took great pride in their putative ancestry, regarding themselves as superior to others in both dignity and devotion to the state.

One of these families was the Contarini, whose many branches were prominent in Venetian history for centuries. Like many noble clans, the Contarini constructed more or less imaginary genealogies linking them to important ancestors. One version traces the family back to a Roman official supposedly in charge of defending the area where the river Reno flows into the Po—the "Conte di Reno," whence the name Contarini.^[1] Other versions of the family legend mention that the first Contarini came from Constantinople via Capo d'Istria,^[2] from Concordia to Torcello and then to Venice,^[3] or from Concordia via Loreto.^[4]

[1] One such genealogy, is Venice, Biblioteca Civica Correr (hereafter cited as VBC), Cod. Cicogna 2327: "Portione de Huomeni Illustri della Famiglia Contarini di Venetia."

[2] Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter cited as ASV), Marco Barbaro, Arbori de' patritii Veneti , vol. II, fol. 437.

[3] VBC, Cod. Cicogna 1613: "Tute le caxade de zentilhomeni de Venetia dal principio fin al presente, MDVII," fol. 9r.

[4] VBC, Cod. Cicogna 2330 (without title or page numbers), gives brief summaries of family histories together with their coats of arms.

The last two accounts inform us that the Contarini were tribunes characterized by a particular faculty for acquiring possessions.^[5] In historical times the clan gave the Republic eight doges, the first of whom, Domenico, is remembered for supporting the start of the construction of St. Mark's basilica in the eleventh century. There were Contarini among holders of every Venetian political and ecclesiastical office, including twenty-two bishops and four patriarchs of Venice. By the sixteenth century the Contarini had far more members in the Great Council than any other clan,^[6] and their genealogy in the detailed Arbori by Barbaro runs to almost eighty pages.^[7]

The branch of the family to which Gasparo Contarini belonged was neither the wealthiest nor the best known. Its palazzo stood distant from the center of the city, indeed at its very edge, facing the islands of San Michele and Murano. Far from resembling the graceful Contarini Fasan or the imposing Contarini degli Scrigni on the Grand Canal, the palazzo was a large, plain building in a compound of warehouses, artisans' quarters, and smaller rented dwellings. Its distinction still derives from a garden that is unusually large by Venetian standards and from a small mid-sixteenth-century building constructed at its farthest corner, which has come to be known by the romantic name of "il casino degli spiriti."^[8] The proximity of the church of the Madonna dell'Orto gave this branch of the Contarini the name by which it continued to be

[5] The term tribunes was used as the title for late Roman administrative officials, and later became an honorific title signifying elevated social status; see Ernst Rodenwaldt, "Untersuchungen über die Biologie des venezianischen Adels," Homo: Zeitschrift für die vergleichende Forschung am Menschen 8 (1957): 4, who thinks that the Contarini possibly had Germanic ancestors, since a document of 1116, preserved in Venice, was signed by a Berengarius Guntarenus and a Peter Guntarinus, from whom the family name might have originated.

[6] In 1513, 147 families were represented among 2,622 members of the Great Council, of whom 188 were Contarini; the next most numerous were the Morosini with 85; Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (hereafter cited as VBM), MSS It., Cl. VII, 90 (=8029). In June 1527, among 2,708 male members of Venetian noble families in the Great Council listed by Marino Sanuto in his diary, the Contarini had 172, followed by the Morosini with 102 and the Malipiero with 81; Sanuto, I Diarii (Venice, 1879-1903), 45:569-72 (all references to Sanuto, Diarii , are to vol. and col. nos.).

[7] ASV, Barbaro, Arbori , vol. II, fols. 437-516.

[8] The derivation of the name is not certain. The explanation given by Giulio Lorenzetti, Venice and Its Lagoons (Trieste: Edizioni LINT, 1975), is attractive: the building was "at one time the site of mere, parties and literary gatherings" (405), and "the meetings and literary discussions held in the nearby garden overlooking the lagoon in the Casino degli Spiriti . . . were well known" (408). But there is no evidence for such meetings, presumably linked with the fame of Gasparo Contarini as a writer and thinker. The Contarini family must have constructed the casino between 1537 and 1566: it appears in the tax declaration of the latter date only. See below, note 15.

known until its extinction in the male line in 1688.^[9] A small, elegant chapel there with an altar painting by Tintoretto, busts of family members (including that of Gasparo), and funerary inscriptions remains as a memorial to the Contarini "della Madonna dell'Orto" (see figs. 1 and 2).^[10]

Gasparo, born in 1483, was the eldest of seven sons and four daughters of Alvise Contarini and Polissena Malipiero. Alvise also had two illegitimate children, a daughter whose name is not mentioned in the documents (daughters were often anonymous in the records: "a girl") and a son, Angelo. Probably all grew up together, since Contarini's later references to his "fratel natural" and "nostra sorella natural" show the same affectionate concern that he extended to other members of his family.^[11] Three of his sisters and his half-sister married Venetian patricians,^[12] while one became a nun. Of the brothers, only

[9] Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (Venice, 1824-53), 2:250; ASV, Barbaro, Arbori , vol. II, fol. 466; VBC, MS Gradenigo Dolfin 131, fols. 293-294.

[10] For the church, see Ashley Clarke and Philip Rylands, eds., Restoring Venice: The Church of the Madonna dell'Orto (London: Elek, 1977); V. Zanetti, La chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto in Venezia (Venice, 1870); Giuseppe Bigaglia, La chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto in Venezia (Venice: A. Vidotti, 1937); and Lino Moretti, La chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto in Venezia (Turin: Scaravaglio, 1981).

[11] His illegitimate sister was married to Vincenzo Belegno, a Venetian nobleman, in 1514; ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Reg. 106, Cronaca Matrimoni , fol. 1; VBC, Cod. Cicogna 2171, fol. 29. Contarini writes about the wedding festivities celebrated by the family, and mentions that "the whole house was topsy-turvy"; Hubert Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 2 (1959): 59-118; also published separately as a preprint by Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura (Rome, 1953), spanning pp. 3-67, which version I use; see p. 27. His interest in her and her family continued, as can be seen in a letter to his sister Serafina, nun in the convent of S. Chiara in Murano (n.d., but probably 1540 or 1541), in which he asks her to treat their niece Belegnia, daughter of Vincenzo Belegno, as a daughter. She was about to enter the convent, and Contarini wished that she be shown the same courtesy and kindness that would be extended to himself: Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter cited as ASVat), A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fol. 65r-v.
Contarini's illegitimate brother Angelo is the subject of several letters by the cardinal in 1541 to diplomats and the papal legate at the French court; see ibid., fol. 58r; and ASVat, Fondo Borghese, ser. I, 409-10, fols. 200r-v, 201v-202r; Monumenti di varia letteratura tratti dai manoscritti di Monsignor Lodovico Beccadelli , ed. Giambattista Morandi (Bologna, 1797-1804), 1(2):94-95 (hereafter cited as Monumenti Beccadelli ). Although he had lived in Turkish lands for twenty-three years and had a Turkish wife and a son, Angelo was imprisoned by the Turks when war with Venice began, and all his goods were confiscated. Presumably he traded for the family: Contarini writes of "roba sua" and "roba nostra." He asks his correspondents to urge King Francis I to intercede with the Turks and obtain his half-brother's release.

[12] Contarina married Matteo Vitturi in 1502, Laura married Nicolò Grimani in 1511. See ASV, G. Giomo, Indice dei matrimoni patrizii per nome di donne . For Paola's marriage, see below, note 17.

Image not available.

1.
Monument to Cardinal Contarini, Contarini Chapel, Madonna Dell'Orto, Venice. Photo by Sam Habibi Minelli.

Image not available.

2.
Detail: Bust of Cardinal Contarini by Alessandro Vittoria, in the Contarini Chapel, Madonna dell'Orto, Venice. Photo by Osvaldo Böhm.

two married; they also had illegitimate offspring, as did two of the unmarried ones.^[13]

The brothers seem to have been a closely knit group. After the death of their father in 1502 they continued to live together, forming a

[13] See James C. Davis, A Venetian Family and Its Fortune, 1500-1900 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1975), 93-106; and Rodenwaldt, "Untersuchungen," 18-19, for the Venetian custom of having only some brothers in a family marry. Regarding evidence for illegitimate children: Contarini's brother Tommaso mentions in his will a bequest to "Felicita, mother of Bianca, my deceased daughter"; ASV, Arch. notarile, Testamenti , Atti Ziliol, C., busta 1261, no. 885. The will of Gasparo, son of Contarini's brother Vincenzo, mentions "my dearest brother" Hieronymo Contarini, to whom no bequest is made; ibid., busta 1258, no. 409. Hieronymo is not included in any genealogy, since only legitimate descendants were shown. The third brother who fathered an illegitimate child was Ferrigo. His son Giulio became Contarini's successor as bishop of Belluno in 1542 after receiving a papal dispensation from the impediment due to his birth; ASVat, Fondo Concistoriale, Acta Camerarii , vol. V, fol. 64r. Contarini's fourth illegitimate nephew was Don Placido, monk of S. Giustina in Padua, son of his brother Zuan Antonio; Ludovico Beccadelli, "Vita di Monsignor Reverendissimo et Illustrissimo Messer Gasparo Contarino Gentilhuomo Venitiano et Cardinale della S. Romana Chiesa," in Monumenti Beccadelli 1(2):50 (hereafter cited as Beccadelli, "Vita").

fraterna , a family economic unit in which each was a flail partner.^[14] They held real property in common, both in Venice and in the country, as shown by their tax declarations of 1514, 1537, and 1566.^[15] In addition to their own dwelling in Venice, inherited from their father, they owned rental property that in 1537 brought an income of about one thousand ducats, shops, and several hundred campi of land (about eight-tenths of an acre each) in the Po Valley consisting of fields, meadows, pastures, and woods. In Piove di Sacco near Venice the family had a country villa that was the favorite retreat of Gasparo Contarini.^[16] The extent of their commercial wealth is not easy to ascertain, but it must have been considerable, at least in the mid-1530s. The

[14] Frederic C. Lane, "Family Partnerships and Joint Ventures," in Venice and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 36-55; and Davis, A Venetian Family , 7-8. Sanuto, Diarii , repeatedly mentions "Gasparo Contarini et fradelli" as an economic unit: for example, 46:383, 417-18 ["figlioli" mistakenly for "fradelli"]; 47:305; 49:318.

[15] ASV, Dieci Savi alle Decime, Redecima 1514 (S. Marco, Castello, Canareggio, S. Polo), Keg. 363, no. 46; Redecima 1537 (S. Croce, S. Polo), Reg. 366; and Redecima 1566 (Canareggio), BI, 133, no. 763. The first is in the name of Gasparo Contarini and his brothers, the second in that of Tommaso Contarini and his brothers, and the third in that of Tommaso Contarini and his nephews Alvise and Gasparo, sons of Vincenzo. The 1566 declaration is especially informative and detailed. It is briefly discussed by Bernardo Canal, "Il Collegio, l'Ufficio e l'Archivio dei Dieci Savi alle Decime in Rialto," Nuovo Archivio Veneto 16 (1908): 143, who points out the usefulness of the declarations for our knowledge of the everyday life of Venetian families.

[16] The villa is described in the tax declarations as entailing only expenses for the family, unlike their other country property, which was rented. Contarini mentions it in letters to his friend Tommaso Giustiniani; Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 55, 56, 59. The Contarini also owned land near the villa together with Daniele Dandolo; see Redecima 1514 as cited in preceding note. It was later divided; Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 61, 62. In 1518, the Contarini owned at least 445 campi ; Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1980), 166.

brothers traded in Apulia, Cyprus, Alexandria, the eastern Mediterranean, and Spain,^[17] and had one or more galleys of their own.^[18] The commercial involvements of the family declined as brothers died off without leaving sons to carry on the business in their stead. By 1549 only Tommaso, Gasparo's next younger brother, was alive, and his main occupation during the remainder of his long life until 1578 was officeholding.^[19] It is likely that the Contarini gradually concentrated their wealth in land rather than commerce, following the pattern of many Venetian noble families in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^[20]

Of Gasparo's education little is known. Lodovico Beccadelli, his secretary and biographer, states that his precocious intellectual gifts were recognized and encouraged by his father.^[21] Presumably the other sons were given a more practical education as apprentices in the family

[17] The Contarini della Madonna dell'Orto were well off in 1515, when they offered to lend the state 3,000 ducats at a time when the usual amount of loans was under 1,000; Sanuto, Diarii 21:85, 86, 186, 188. They financed two expensive embassies of Gasparo in 1521-25 and 1528-30. In 1521 their sister Paola was married to Matteo Dandolo (ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Reg. 106, Cronaca matrimoni , 1; and VBC, Cod. Cicogna 2171, fol. 87) with a dowry of 8,000 ducats; see Sanuto, Diarii 30:29. The legal limit on dowries was 3,000 ducats in 1505 and 4,000 in 1535. Even if "official limits bore no relation to reality," as Brian Pullan maintains in "The Occupation and Investments of the Venetian Nobility in the Middle and Late Sixteenth Century," in Renaissance Venice , ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 389, the sum of 8,000 ducats was very large. See also Stanley Chojnacki, "La posizione della donna a Venezia nel Cinquecento," Tiziano e Venezia: convegno internazionale di studi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1976), 69.

On the other hand, some evidence points to the opposite conclusion for the later 1530s: Contarini as cardinal had a small household in Rome, in marked contrast to those of his fellow Venetian cardinals Grimani and Pisani, for example; also, at the time of his death, the Venetian Senate petitioned the pope on behalf of the family, referring to it as "ruined" and "poor"; VBC, Cod. Cicogna 1540, fols. 113-114: "1542. Die 26 Aug . Oratori in Curia Gabrieli Venerio. Raccomandazione per la famiglia del Card Contarini." The involvement of the family in overseas trade is mentioned also by their brother-in-law Matteo Dandolo in a sketch of Contarini's life, published by Gigliola Fragnito in Memoria individuale e costruzione biografica: Beccadelli, Della Casa, Vettori alle origini di un mito , Pubblicazioni dell'Università di Urbino, Serie di lettere e filosofia (Urbino: Argalìa Editore, 1978), 174.

[18] Sanuto, Diarii 40:595; 46:357, 383,417-18.

[19] Renzo Derosas, "Contarini, Tommaso," in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960-), 28:300-305 (hereafter cited as DBI ). I wish to thank Dr. Derosas for kindly allowing me to see the typescript of his article before publication.

[20] See Pullan, "Occupation and Investments," 379-408, esp. 381; also Ugo Tucci, "The Psychology of the Venetian Merchant in the Sixteenth Century," in Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice , 346-78, esp. 357-59.

[21] Beccadelli, "Vita," 10.

business. After receiving instruction in grammar, Gasparo studied at the schools of San Marco and Rialto, where his teachers included the humanist Giorgio Valla, the historian Marcantonio Sabellico, and Antonio Giustinian, who eventually left teaching for a diplomatic career.^[22] At the age of eighteen, in 1501, Contarini entered the faculty of arts at the University of Padua. His stay there lasted eight years,^[23] with one brief interruption in 1502, occasioned by the death of his father and the need to settle family affairs. He returned to Venice without a degree in 1509 when the university was closed because of the War of the League of Cambrai.^[24]

Little material about Contarini's ýears at Padua has come to light.^[25] His studies seem to have centered on the works of Aristotle. Bernardo Navagero, one of his friends, declares hyperbolically that Contarini knew Aristotle's works so well that if all of them were lost he would have been able to write them again from memory.^[26] He also studied theology, which at Padua included the traditions of both St. Thomas and Scotus;^[27] however, it is not possible to determine the extent of his

[22] On the two schools, see Bruno Nardi, "La scuola di Rialto e l'umanesimo veneziano," in Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano , ed. Vittore Branca, Civiltà europea e civiltà veneziana, Aspetti e problemi 2 (Florence: Sansoni, 1963), 93-139; and idem, "Letteratura e cultura veneziana del Quattrocento," in La civiltà veneziana del Quattrocento (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), 101-45. Very useful are James Bruce Ross, "Venetian Schools and Teachers, Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio," Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1976): 521-60, with bibliography; and Fernando Lepori, "La scuola di Rialto dalla fondazione alla metà del Cinquecento," Storia della cultura veneta , ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1980), 3(2):539-605.

[23] See Gigliola Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica e riforma religiosa: il 'De officio boni viri ac probi episcopi' di Gasparo Contarini," Studi veneziani 11 (1969): 82n.29, for Contarini's presence in Padua; also Franz Dittrich, Gasparo Contarini, 1483-1542: eine Monographie (Braunsberg, 1885), 13-21 (hereafter cited as GC ).

[24] The university was not reopened until October 1517; see Sanuto, Diarii 23:562; 25:30, 69.

[25] GC , 13-21, discusses Contarini's teachers and the subjects he studied. The evidence for these years is sketchy, and much of what Dittrich suggests is inferred from general works about the university and the curriculum of that period, like A. Favaro, "Lo studio di Padova al tempo di Niccolò Copernico," in Atti del R. Istituto Veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti 6 (1880): 285-356. For more recent works, consult the bibliography of Lucia Rossetti in Quaderni per la storia dell'Università di Padova 1 (1968): 179-311; 2 (1969): 109-88. See also François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles, "L'Università di Padova dal 1405 al Concilio di Trento," in Arnaldi and Stocchi (eds.), Storia della cultura veneta 3(2):607-47.

[26] Giuseppe De Leva, "Della vita e delle opere del cardinale Gasparo Contarini," Rivista periodica dei lavori della I. R. Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti in Padova 12 (1863): 53.

[27] For a survey, see Antonino Poppi, "La teologia nell'Università e nelle scuole," in Arnaldi and Stocchi (eds.), Storia della cultura veneta 3(3):1-33.

training in theology, in which he seems to have been essentially self-taught. Greek, under Marco Musuro, who held a chair from 1503 on, was a subject Contarini took up seriously, as were mathematics and astronomy;^[28] but he did not acquire unusual proficiency in these studies.

The Paduan period saw the establishment of a network of continuing friendships.^[29] The deepest bonds tied Contarini to two Venetian nobles, Tommaso Giustiniani and Vincenzo Querini: "At the center of Contarini's affective life before 1514 there lay, one might say, a triangle, the apex representing Giustiniani, his spiritual mentor and elder by seven years, the other angles himself and Querini, his alter ego , about four years older than himself."^[30] Querini left Padua in 1502 and obtained the doctorate in philosophy in Rome; Giustiniani stayed on at Padua until 1505, when he returned to Venice. Upon his own return to Venice in 1509 Contarini resumed contact with his two friends. To his inner circle belonged also Niccolò Tiepolo, Sebastiano Zorzi, Giovanni Battista Egnazio, and Trifone Gabriele.^[31]

One finds frequent mention of this group of young aristocrats (Egnazio being the only commoner), this "generation" of Venetian nobili who shared experiences of religious crisis at a time of political

[28] GC , 13, 16. On Musuro, see Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), 164-67 and passim; Francesco Foffano, "Marco Musuro, professore di greco a Padova ed a Venezia," Nuovo Archivio Veneto 3 (1892): 453-73; and Deno J. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962). For the teaching of mathematics, see Carlo Maccagni, "Le scienze nello studio di Padova e nel Veneto," in Arnaldi and Stocchi (eds.), Storia della cultura veneta 3(3):135-71.

[29] For these friendships and biographical notices of individuals who were close to Contarini during this early period of his life, see James Bruce Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," Studies in the Renaissance 17 (1970): 192-232. See also Beccadelli, "Vita," 11-12; and Eugenio Massa, "Gasparo Contarini e gli amici, fra Venezia e Camaldoli," in Gaspare Contarini e il suo tempo: atti convegno di studio , ed. Francesca Cavazzana Romanelli (Venice: Comune di Venezia, Assessorato Affari Istituzionali, and Studium Cattolico Veneziano, 1988), 39-91.

[30] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 195. On Giustiniani, see Eugenio Massa, "Paolo Giustiniani," in Bibliotheca Sanctorum (Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII della Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1966), 7, cols. 2-9, with bibliography. Also useful is Jean Leclercq, Un humaniste érémite: le bienheureux Paul Giustiniani (1476-1528 ) (Rome: Edizioni Camaldoli, 1951). There is no modern biography of Querini. See Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane 5:62-73; for bibliography, Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 7n.1; and idem, "Vincenzo Querini und Pietro Bembo," in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1946), 4:407-24, reprinted in Jedin, Kirche des Glaubens—Kirche der Geschichte: ausgewàhlte Aufsätze und Vorträge (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1966), 1:153-66.

[31] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 195nn.9-12, for bibliography on these men; also Ross, "Venetian Schools and Teachers," for Egnazio.

disorder and war.^[32] In fact, however, little specific information exists about the circle that supposedly formed around Giustiniani and met at his house on Murano. The meetings are thought to have taken place between 1505 and 1510, when he left Venice to become a hermit at Camaldoli.^[33] Perhaps we should think of these young men simply as a loosely structured group of friends rather than a more formal "circle." Giustiniani may have played an important role among them not only because he was the oldest but also because of his intense intellectual and spiritual travails during these years, which touched sympathetic chords in the minds and emotions of the others.

The stages of Giustiniani's passage from a Venetian patrician, by his own admission a sensuous and passionate man,^[34] to an ascetic reformer of his order and an advocate of church reform have yet to be told fully.^[35] Judging from the available evidence, he was a charismatic figure

[32] For the first use of the term generation in this sense, see Carlo Dionisotti, "Chierici e laici nella cultura italiana del primo Cinquecento," in Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento: atti del Convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia (Bologna, 2-6 settembre 1958 ) (Padova: Antenore, 1960), 176. The essay appears in a fuller version under the title "Chierici e laici" in his Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), 55-88; the passage on the Venetian group is on 78. Roberto Cessi, "Paolinismo preluterano," Rendiconti dell'Accademia dei Lincei: classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 12 (1957): 3-30, sees (p. 8) the group consisting of Giustiniani, Querini, Egnazio, and Contarini as among the "best interpreters" of a mystical awakening in early sixteenth-century Venice.

[33] Giustiniani himself describes his life on Murano thus in a letter of 20 July 1518 to "two gentlemen, his friends": "I remember my wanting to try the solitary life in a house I had on Murano, and experience showed me that such a life was that of a pagan philosopher rather than of a religious Christian soul. In it there was no drowning out of the world, no mortification of one's own will, no virtue of obedience, no true poverty, while instead there were countless dangers to chastity" (Johannes Benedictus Mittarelli and Anselmus Costadoni, eds., Annales Camaldulenses Ordinis Sancti Benedicti (Venice, 1755-73), 9, col. 595. Of course it is possible that this statement eight years after he left Venice did not reflect his feelings at the time. But it is significant that in thinking back he says nothing about the "circle of Murano." Neither is it mentioned in the extracts from his writings between 1505 and 1509 quoted by Leclercq, Un umaniste érémite , 22-34, or in the letters of Contarini to Giustiniani and Querini. Fragnito speaks of the "group" of which Giustiniani was the "spiritual director," adducing as evidence his later letters, written after he entered Camaldoli, and stating that "they also throw some light on the themes and subjects that were discussed at the meetings of the 'group' itself"; but no exact reference pointing to the existence of this group is given; see "Cultura umanistica," 86. Massa casts doubt on the existence of the "Murano circle" in "Gasparo Contarini e gli amici," esp. 39-53. See also his L'Eremo, la Bibbia e il medioevo in umanisti veneti del primo Cinquecento (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1992), 15-23.

[34] See Leclercq, Un humaniste érémite , 17-22.

[35] His writings and letters are in course of being published in a modern edition by Eugenio Massa. Thus far two volumes of a projected multivolume edition have appeared under the general title Trattati, lettere e frammenti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1967-74). Volume I bears the title I manoscritti originali del Beato Paolo Giustiniani custoditi nell'Eremo di Frascati ; volume 2 is entitled I primi trattati dell'amore di Dio . The work by Leclercq, Un humaniste érémite , while based on the original manuscripts, remains a sketch.

whose opinions strongly influenced his friends. Gradually detaching himself from the social and political activities expected of a young man in his milieu, he repudiated civic life for monastic withdrawal and his humanistic education for Christian learning. His search for a life of solitude led him to consider and reject the Camaldolese monastery of San Michele in Isola, which his friend Paolo Canal had entered shortly before his death in 1508.^[36] Like a latter-day St. Jerome, Giustiniani traveled to the Holy Land in 1509 but did not find there the sort of peaceful retreat he envisioned. Finally, in 1510, he decided to enter the Camaldolese hermitage near Arezzo, not as a layman, as he had at first wanted, but as a monk, assuming the name Paolo. He was joined a year later by Vincenzo Querini, who left Venice and a public career to become Fra Pietro. Contarini called their departure a "loss"^[37] that left him suddenly alone without his "brothers and friends."^[38]

New light on Contarini's inner life at this juncture was shed by the discovery in 1943 of thirty of his autograph letters to Giustiniani and Querini,^[39] which were published by Hubert Jedin ten years later.^[40] The letters begin in 1511, when Contarini was twenty-eight, and span the twelve-year period until 1523, when he turned forty. In them we catch glimpses of Contarini's ideology at a crucial period of his life during which he established his own identity through his choices in religion and career along lines that were to remain characteristic of his thought.^[41]

If it is true that "human nature can best be studied in a state of conflict,"^[42] then these letters provide a unique source for understanding

[36] Giustiniani writes that he hopes to find Canal in heaven, and calls him his "friend beyond compare . . . who, if it is permitted to speak like this, showing one's love, was half and more than half of myself"; Giustiniani to all his friends, Dec. 1510, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, col. 476. For a bibliography on Canal, see Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 87n.48.

[37] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 25 (letter 7).

[38] Ibid., 37 (letter 11).

[39] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 192n.3.

[40] Ibid., 193n.3.

[41] I am using the term ideology here in Erik H. Erikson's sense, as an "unconscious tendency underlying religious as well as political thought: the tendency at a given time to make facts amenable to ideas, and ideas to facts, in order to create a world image convincing enough to support the collective and the individual sense of identity" (Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History [New York: W. W. Norton, 1962], 22).

[42] Ibid., 16.

Contarini's complex personality. They have attracted considerable attention from scholars, and their interpretation has become almost a subtopic of sixteenth-century Italian religious history.^[43] On the simplest level, they evoke a sense of immediacy through their candor and lack of stylistic pretension. To their first commentator, Jedin, the letters seemed to reveal above all Contarini's deep religious crisis and his struggle to find a merciful God, made more acute by his uncertainty about his own vocation, which prompted him to consider whether he too should not embrace the monastic life and join his two friends.^[44] Jedin saw Contarini's crisis as culminating in a religious insight on Holy Saturday 1511, strongly reminiscent of Luther's later "experience in the tower."^[45] While Jedin could not determine the precise moment when Contarini solved his doubts concerning his vocation, he thought that it had happened by the fall of 1515.^[46]

Although most later scholars do not share Jedin's view that Contarini seriously considered entering a monastery,^[47] there is less agree-

[43] In addition to Jedin's "Contarini und Camaldoli," 3-10, see also his "Ein 'Turmerlebnis' des jungen Contarini," Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft 70 (1951): 115-30; and idem, "Gasparo Contarini e il contributo veneziano alla riforma cattolica," in La civiltà veneziana del Rinascimento (Florence: Sansoni, 1958). See further Heinz Mackensen, "Contarini's Theological Role at Ratisbon in 1541," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 51 (1960): 3-57; Cessi, "Paolinismo preluterano"; Felix Gilbert, "Religion and Politics in the Thought of Gasparo Contarini," in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison , ed. T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 90-116; Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," esp. 97-115; Innocenzo Cervelli, "Storiografia e problemi intorno alla vita religiosa e spirituale a Venezia nella prima metà del '500," Studi veneziani 8 (1966): esp. 466-67; Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 192-232; Delio Cantimori, "Le idee religiose del Cinquecento: la storiografia," in Storia della letteratura italiana , ed. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, vol. 5: Il Seicento (Milano: Garzanti, 1967), 7-87; Giuseppe Alberigo, "Vita attiva e vita contemplativa in un'esperienza cristiana del XVI secolo," Studi veneziani 16 (1974): 177-225 (the somewhat shorter French version appeared as "Vie active et vie contemplative dans une expérience chrétienne du XVI siècle," in Théologie: le service théologique dans l'église. Mélanges offertes à Yves Congar pour ses soixante-dix ans [Paris: Cerf, 1974], 287-321); and Giovanni Miccoli, "La storia religiosa," in Storia d'Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), 2(1): 947-55.

[44] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 9.

[45] Jedin, "Ein 'Turmerlebnis,'" does not give sufficient weight to conversion experience as a topos, and makes no reference to what Heiko A. Oberman calls "Turmerlebnistradition." See Oberman's "Wit sein pettler. Hoc est verum: Bund und Gnade in der Theologie des Mittelalters und der Reformation," Die Reformation: von Wittenberg nach Genf (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 93.

[46] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 10.

[47] For example, Felix Gilbert thinks that "Jedin's assumption that Contarini intended to become a monk is erroneous," since it "cannot be reconciled with [his] repeated declarations that he was not suited to a monastic life" ("Religion and Politics," 94). Similar views are expressed by Innocenzo Cervelli, Machiavelli e la crisi dello stato veneziano (Naples: Guida, 1974), 15; and Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 99.

ment on the central thrust of this correspondence between Contarini and his two friends.^[48] The main reason is the variety of themes touched on or implicit in his unsystematic and at times emotional letters.^[49]

Almost at the very beginning of the correspondence we find the account of Contarini's Holy Saturday experience.^[50] Despite his affirmation of love for Giustiniani and gratitude for his friend's affection, Contarini confesses his inability to follow Fra Paolo's example; he knows that he is not cut out for the monastic life. He must have arrived at this conviction before the date of the first letter,^[51] since from the outset he is not arguing with himself as to whether to become a monk. He firmly announces the position from which he does not depart in the entire course of the correspondence: he must seek a way in the world for himself, as a layman, "among the multitude of the city" and among his friends and relatives.^[52] Several references to his hardened heart^[53] sound an almost formulaic note; maintaining that it is preventing him from following the way of truth, Contarini has offered his friend at least an initial reason for his decision.

[48] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," has discussed the correspondence of Contarini, Giustiniani, and Querini in a sensitive manner as showing "the spiritual crisis" of Contarini between 1511 and 1514, followed by its resolution between 1514 and 1516, and states that her analysis "differs from Felix Gilbert's recent treatment . . . in tracing more fully the stages of his affective experience and relating them causally to the bonds of intimacy with Querini and Giustiniani rooted in their earlier Paduan comradeship" (205n.58). Alberigo, "Vita attiva," interprets the letters as revolving not so much around the problem of an active or contemplative life for Contarini as around the question of Querini's monastic vocation and Contarini's refusal to see monastic withdrawal as a privileged state of Christian life. They have been called "letters of confession" that show Contarini's personal and emotional interiority by Miccoli, "Storia religiosa," 948. Cantimori, "Idee religiose," 17, considers them as evidence of a passionate element, mystical in quality, in the religious preoccupations of Contarini, Querini, and Giustiniani, and as Contarini's affirmation of the priority of man's will and emotions over the intellect. Cessi, "Paolinismo preluterano," 17, uses them to argue for a mystical component in Contarini's thought. Eugenio Massa, "Paolo Giustiniani e Gasparo Contarini: la vocazione al bivio del neoplatonismo e della teologia biblica," Benedictina 35 (1988): 429-74, uses the letters as evidence for Contarini's Aristotelian, traditional philosophical and theological attitudes in contrast to the Neoplatonic thought of Giustiniani, less constrained by scholastic presuppositions.

[49] That they lack literary polish was already stressed by Jedin, who stated that Contarini wrote his friends "no epistles with the possibility or explicit intention of eventual publication in mind . . . [but] rather always out of the immediate experience of the moment, frequently in haste because a courier was already waiting, at times on torn-off pieces of paper, since nothing better was handy, in one sitting, as was his habit. What was lost to literary form through this was made up for by a gain in the content" ("Contarini und Camaldoli," 9).

[50] Ibid., 12-15 (24 Apr. 1511).

[51] Ibid., 11-12 (1 Feb. 1511).

[52] Ibid., 13, 15.

[53] Ibid., 11, line 19; 13, line 35; 14, line 42.

The real reason, however, is profoundly personal. Alluding to a now lost letter of Giustiniani, Contarini summarizes what his friend had written him—that even after leading a life of self-abnegation Giustiniani was troubled by fears of not being able to do sufficient penance for past sins. "I see you persisting in this idea and this fear,"^[54] writes Contarini in what is a key phrase for understanding the almost pathological anxiety and depression he himself was enduring.^[55] If someone like his friend, who not only embraced an austere eremitical life but also persistently urged others to do the same, still felt such fear, the problem of finding a way to God's mercy and forgiveness naturally became even more acute for Contarini, determined as he was to remain in the world. Giustiniani's avowal of his fears obviously made a strong impression on Contarini, who repeatedly states that he is comparing his own life with that of his friend. Perhaps on some level he even welcomed these fears as a quasi-logical reason for not becoming a monk himself.

Against this background his confession on Holy Saturday took place. He describes it in a measured, almost dry fashion: "I spoke for quite a while with a monk full of sanctity, who among other topics, almost as if he knew my difficulties, began to tell me that the way of salvation is broader than many people think. And, not knowing who I was, he spoke to me at length."^[56] No sudden illumination occurred during this confession. Only afterward, as Contarini was mulling over the discussion, did his thoughts turn to the human condition before God and to the question of what constitutes man's happiness. "And, in truth, I understood that even if I did all the penance I could, and more, it would not suffice in the least to merit happiness or even render satisfaction for past sins."^[57] From this basic insight flowed Contarini's belief that God loves man with a love beyond human understanding, since he wanted "to send his only-begotten son who through his passion would render satisfaction for all those who desire to have him as their head and want to be members of the body whose head is Christ.... Only we must strive to unite ourselves with [Christ] our head in faith, hope, and the little love of which we are capable. As for the satisfaction for past sins and those into which human frailty continually falls, his passion has been enough and more than enough."^[58] Contarini

[54] Ibid. 13, line 27.

[55] He describes himself as "poco men che quasi disperato" (ibid., 13, line 33).

[56] "Contarini und Camaldoli," 13-14.

[57] Ibid., 14.

[58] Ibid.

concluded that it was licit for him to live in the world, in the midst of the city, since justification before God was not a matter of doing penance in a hermitage but of believing firmly in the merits of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. He restates that he has known fear from experience, especially fear of the day of judgment, to which someone who loves a solitary life would be particularly susceptible. Obviously he is thinking here of Giustiniani, his spiritual guide and mentor in the past. Now a new moment occurs in their friendship, and it is Contarini who gives Giustiniani spiritual advice: "Let all your thoughts be focused on that perfect love [which is Christ], with hope and absolute faith that if we approach him with even a little love, no other satisfaction is necessary because he has rendered satisfaction out of the depth of his charity for the love of us."^[59]

This, the most famous letter in the correspondence, has frequently been singled out for special comment. Contarini's insight has been likened to Luther's and used to explain, at times too mechanically, Contarini's later thought.^[60] In spite of apparent similarities to Luther's "Turmerlebnis," as recounted by the old reformer, Contarini's experience was structurally different. It neither occurred during a specific, definable crisis, nor was it a sudden conversion experience.^[61] Rather, the event of confession to which he went in a somewhat uncertain frame of mind, followed by discussion with the unknown monk, was an emotional stimulus that led to a profoundly significant religious re-orientation.^[62] Contarini had felt the inadequacy of his own insecure position when confronted with Giustiniani's clear choice and was seeking

[59] Ibid., 15.

[60] I am thinking here especially of Mackensen's affirmation in "Contarini's Theological Role at Ratisbon," 53: "This then was the experience and time from which sprang Contarini's doctrine of justification, which came to full flower thirty years later at Ratisbon and received its final formulation in The Epistle on Justification. " Such a view slights the sweep of Contarini's intellectual development between 1511 and 1541, using an inadequate analogy that does not consider what other factors could have helped Contarini to persist in his original insight, and to deepen it.

[61] I am using the term here in William James's sense: "To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities" (The Varieties of Religious Experience [New York: New American Library, 1958], 157).

[62] See Gordon W. Allport, The Individual and His Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 38, who distinguishes three forms of religious awakening: that brought on by a definite crisis, that triggered by a single event or stimulus, and that which occurs gradually without a specific crisis or event.

a rationale for his rejection of the monastic life. His insight on Holy Saturday had both emotional^[63] and intellectual aspects that testify to the intensity of his search for a way to be accepted by God and to resolve his own uncertainties. His belief in justification by faith was arrived at by a process which William James considered as conscious in part only, for it was also the result of "subconscious incubation and maturing of motives deposited by the experiences of life."^[64]

Without giving the episode a purely psychological explanation, one can see that Contarini is rationalizing a position to which he is already committed. He is not simply adding another chapter to the old debate about the relative merits of the active and the contemplative life,^[65] and opting in the end for the former. Rather, he is using his religious insight to construct a model for Christian life different from that of the late medieval church, which taught that the active life of the layman in the world had less value before God than the contemplative withdrawal of the cleric. In his effort to justify himself before Giustiniani, Contarini underscored the validity of Christian vocations both in the world and in the cloister, different though they were. He did not attack Giustiniani's life of contemplation; indeed, he thought that the ability to lead such a life was a privilege granted to only a few truly heroic Christian souls. Yet although he admired contemplative devotion, he insisted on the acceptability and dignity in the eyes of God of his own choice of the life of a Christian layman, the choice made by the vast majority of those belonging to the corpus Christianorum .^[66]

[63] Cantimori, "Idee religiose," 11-17, stresses the "predominance, in those who experienced religious problems, of passionate and sentimental elements, permeated by subjective psychological reactions" (15) and notes the emotional fervor with which Contarini, Querini, and Giustiniani express themselves in their letters of this period.

[64] James, Varieties of Religious Experience , 186. Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 208n.63, has pointed out the relevance of James's chapters 9 and 10 for an understanding of what Contarini describes in these letters. Also useful is James's chapter 8: "The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unification." See also Gordon W. Allport, Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 95-96, for a discussion of man's "ultimate presuppositions" and the "creative pressure" exerted by them on conduct.

[65] Christopher Cairns states that "Contarini was . . . a result of the Venetian political tradition in which . . . the distinction [between active and contemplative life] is perhaps no longer meaningful" (Domenico Bollani, Bishop of Brescia: Devotion to Church and State in the Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century [Nieuwkoop, Neth.: B. De Graaf, 1976], 239n.18). On this subject see also Gilbert, "Religion and Politics," esp. 105-7; and Antonino Poppi, "Il prevalere della 'vita activa' nella paideia del Cinquecento," in Rapporti tra le università di Padova e Bologna: ricerche di filosofia, medicina e scienza , ed. Lucia Rossetti (Trieste: Edizioni LINT, 1988), 97-125.

[66] Alberigo develops this point fully in "Vita attiva," and rightly thinks that Contarini denied the automatic relationship between a given state of life and personal perfection (223). However, I do not fully share his view that Contarini refused to recognize the existence of a privileged "state" of Christian life. Alberigo's wide-ranging article includes a full bibliography on the history of the distinction between the lay and clerical state in the Western church.

In expressing his newfound belief in justification by faith, Contarini did not dissociate his own experience from the life of the church, nor did he reduce it to a purely personal level.^[67] His point of departure was traditional: reception of the sacrament of penance at Easter. Just as traditional was his willingness to accept his confessor's spiritual counsel. It is only in the light of subsequent interpretations of fides sine operibus and the momentous implications of this formula that Contarini's description of the hoped-for solution to his religious problems acquires a more radical tinge.

In 1511, Contarini is writing to a friend who shared his insight. Giustiniani, too, had declared that he could reach heaven only through the merits of Christ's passion, not through his own works.^[68] In fact, belief that salvation was a gratuitous gift of God was common among serious Christians at the time.^[69] It would be a mistake to regard these serious young men as proto-Lutherans simply because they expressed that belief. Contarini and his friends shared a Christocentric spirituality that emphasized the vast reach of God's love compared with the limited powers of man to merit it in any way. Striking in Contarini's case was, first, his unwillingness to follow his friends in seeking closeness to God in the cloister and, second, the unusual combination of a strong commitment to ecclesiastical and political institutions with an absolute conviction that man is justified by faith. Without in any way withdrawing from the institutional church of his time, Contarini sensed that it failed to offer him the ethic of the secular life for which he was groping. He had to formulate this ethic alone, seeking a way through lengthy uncertainty and anguish, but convinced of the validity of his choice of a Christian vocation in the world.

The insight of Holy Saturday 1511 did not suddenly resolve all of Contarini's perplexities, nor could it have done so. While answering

[67] The otherwise thoughtful analysis of Contarini's letters by Miccoli, "Storia religiosa," 948-51, makes the contrary points too strongly.

[68] Giustiniani to all his friends, Dec. 1510, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, col. 476.

[69] "It seems difficult to find during these years men seriously concerned with the search for their own salvation who fail to express vigorously and absolutely their conviction of the total gratuitousness of that salvation," Alberigo rightly observes in "Vita attiva," 187. Besides Giustiniani, Querini also several times mentions his acceptance of the central importance of Christ's suffering for man's salvation; see, e.g., Mittarelli and Constadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, cols. 460, 475, 476.

the question "How shall I be saved?" it left open a correlative question, "What shall I do with the life I will live in the world?" Over the next three years expressions of doubt about finding his way recur in Contarini's correspondence. He describes his condition as ranging from passivity before God, in which he is ready to "receive that impression which seems right to His Majesty,"^[70] to almost pathological states of extreme melancholy and affliction of spirit accompanied by disgust with the mere reading of Scripture.^[71] Yet while his dejection, even depression, persists as an undertone in his letters until 1515, it did not prevent him from exploring new lines of thought.

The second of Contarini's close friends, Vincenzo Querini, entered Camaldoli in the fall of 1511.^[72] Our knowledge of Querini's thought and character is incomplete; as in the case of Giustiniani, no modern work on him exists, and much of his correspondence remains to be published.^[73] Those letters that are available, however, show him to be a much more complex figure than Giustiniani, whom he regarded as his spiritual guide.

After a promising early start in public life as Venetian ambassador to the court of Burgundy and to Emperor Maximilian, he decided to follow in the footsteps of Giustiniani. Yet despite his deep religious zeal, Querini showed a remarkable degree of uncertainty and ambivalence even after he became a Camaldolese hermit on 22 February 1512. His available letters are evidence that he was an emotional, high-strung man who cherished deep affective bonds with friends and family. Often moved to tears, he was not afraid to weep,^[74] and seems to have agreed with Giustiniani that "not weeping does not show strength of mind."^[75] His debate about choices forms the substance of his correspondence with Giustiniani published thus far. His unusually intense, almost relentless self-examination reveals how difficult leaving Venice was for him. In unfolding his thoughts to Giustiniani he signs several letters

[70] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 18 (letter 4).

[71] Ibid., 37-38, 39 (letters 11 and 12). Massa argues that the reason for this disgust was Contarini's inability to read the Bible without employing the "logical-scientific" system he had learned at Padua, whereas Giustiniani could, because he belonged among the "progressives of the human spirit" ("Giustiniani e Contarini," 470).

[72] For bibliography, see above, note 29.

[73] It is among the manuscripts belonging to the Camaldolese of the Sacro Eremo Tuscolano, near Frascati.

[74] See, for example, Querini to Giustiniani, Dec. 1510, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, col. 498; and again 15 July 1510, col. 457.

[75] Giustiniani to Niccolò Tiepolo and Contarini, Mar. 1517, in ibid., col. 590, where Giustiniani writes at some length about his own weeping.

not with his own name but with "Licenope,"^[76] as if that were someone else participating in the debate. Licenope is in essence his better self, who would like to follow Giustiniani into the hermitage and who tries to overcome Vincenzo's doubts, weaknesses, and hesitations. As a professed Camaldolese monk, Querini still expressed views that were closer to those of Contarini rather than of Giustiniani when he wrote:

Let us perform holy works of piety, and walk in this world like pilgrims.... Only with help from above and not otherwise, this can be done equally well in solitude, in the city, among people, while engaged in public administration, or with wife and children .... We should consider only that man to be on the true path of salvation who feels himself loving Jesus Christ from his heart, and who acts in accordance with His will and through Him. If you remain in your fatherland, among your family, who knows? Maybe you will reach your goal before many who go to live in solitude.^[77]

Even as a hermit who, in fact, had gone to live in solitude, he continued to be attracted to Florentine humanist circles and the court of Leo X, where he helped to conduct diplomatic negotiations between Venice and the Holy See in 1514.^[78] At the time of his death shortly afterward, his nomination to the cardinalate was expected, which would have meant a very different stage in his restless life.

With Querini's departure from Venice the second group of Contarini's letters begins, an exchange that continued until Querini's death.^[79] Discussing above all the question of Querini's monastic vocation and then the possibility of his cardinalate, the letters show new dimensions of Contarini's thought. His ideas about the nature of the

[76] For example, in Querini's long letter of 1511 to Giustiniani (no closer date given), ibid., cols. 496-509, he uses "Licenope," probably a play on the Latin form of his name, Quirinus, in the phrase "I said to myself" (col. 505) and as his signature. He signs himself the same way in two letters of 15 July (cols. 454 and 461), a letter of 13 August (col. 517), and a letter of 15 September (col. 518). Throughout the letter to Giustiniani of 1 August 1510 (cols. 461-67) he writes of "Licenope" in the third person.

[77] Nelson H. Minnich and Elisabeth G. Gleason, "Vocational Choices: An Unknown Letter of Pietro Querini to Gasparo Contarini and Niccolò Tiepolo (April, 1512)," The Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989): 18.

[78] Jedin, in "Vincenzo Querini und Pietro Bembo," seeks to explain Querini's behavior and defends him against the accusation of hypocrisy and self-seeking made by Vittorio Cian, "A proposito di un'ambasceria di Pietro Bembo (dicembre 1514)," Archivio veneto 30 (1885): 355-81.

[79] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 19-48 (letters 5-15, from the end of November 1511 to 11 July 1514). To them should be added Contarini's letter to Querini written after 22 February 1512, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, cols. 539-43.

Christian life are stated with increasing clarity and firmness, and one can discern that he is beginning to solve the second of his pressing problems, that of the nature of his own vocation.

Following Aristotle,^[80] Contarini writes to Querini that "solitary life is not natural to man, whom nature has made a sociable animal." He warns that anyone who wants to embrace the eremitical life must possess a "perfection which is almost beyond human nature," attained by extremely few men.^[81] Contarini distrusts Querini's attempt to force his monastic vocation by sheer willpower and sounds a recurring caution: one cannot do violence to one's own nature without running serious risks.^[82] The second argument he uses with Querini is the pull of human affections. Citing his obligations to friends and family, including his grandmother,^[83] Contarini touches a sensitive chord with his warmhearted and effusive friend, who by his own admission keenly felt the force of human love.^[84] The third theme struck by Contarini is that of civic duty. In a rather formal Latin letter he informs Querini that many say he has left his homeland in the hour of need, like a soldier who deserts his unit or a sailor who jumps ship. They think that no republic can last if its citizens behave as Querini did. Contarini reports that his attempts to defend his friend fall on deaf ears; his countrymen roundly condemn what they see as Querini's selfishness. The letter closes with a summary of other criticisms leveled at Querini and Contarini's rather stiff admonition to his friend to defend his honor and his name.^[85]

Not Querini but Giustiniani replied to Contarini's attempts to dissuade Fra Pietro from the monastic life.^[86] Apparently Niccolò Tiepolo had written to Querini in a similar vein, for Giustiniani addresses both friends in a bitter letter that calls them instruments of the devil, miserable Antichrists, wretched souls, and even persecutors of Christ. In their letters "all is falsity, ignorance, impiety, and manifest heresy."^[87]

[80] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," passim, esp. 210-13.

[81] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 23 (letter 7).

[82] He cites the telling example of a monk whose presumption in wanting to lead an extremely ascetic life ended in death; see ibid., 24.

[83] Ibid., 25.

[84] For example, see especially the letter of Querini to Giustiniani, ca. 1511, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses , cols. 496-509.

[85] The letter was written in 1512; see ibid., cols. 539-43. To Jedin's doubt that it was sent ("Contarini und Camaldoli," 30n.29), Fragnito offers a convincing reply; see "Cultura umanistica," 94n.73.

[86] Giustiniani to Contarini and Niccolò Tiepolo, Feb. 1512, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, cols. 544-50.

[87] Ibid., col. 548.

The heresy mentioned here could only refer to Contarini's denial of the superior value of the monastic life, since Giustiniani does not attribute specific doctrinal errors to Contarini or Tiepolo.^[88] Contarini's reply to this torrent of accusations is an impressively gentle letter, reminding Giustiniani that he should not judge everyone by his own example.^[89] But he stands firm in his conviction that everyone has to follow his own way to salvation in accordance with his nature and that the eremitical life is for only the very few. He thinks that Querini "was perhaps presumptuous" in wanting to reach such a rare state of perfection immediately, without prior experience, and shrewdly surmises that Querini's nature "is not much inclined to solitude."^[90] Giustiniani's reply expresses regret for his verbal violence. Apologizing to Tiepolo and Contarini, whom he calls "not only good . . . but most kind," he promises to be more careful in future and to speak more circumspectly with friends and others.^[91] The exchange about Querini's vocation terminates with Contarini's perfunctory acceptance of his friend's choice, accompanied by routine exclamations like "O happy Querini, on what service are you embarked!"^[92] But his own way is different; although his "most beloved friends" are his exemplars, he will go only so far as to come for a visit, but he will not imitate them.^[93]

The letters spanning the period from July 1512 to February 1514 deal more directly with Contarini's state of mind. He barely mentions the upheavals that the War of the League of Cambrai brought to Venice and makes no allusion to his own participation in it.^[94] Rather, he focuses on what he calls his melancholy disposition and states that he is

[88] See Alberigo's informative discussion in "Vita attiva," 206-13 and bibliography in 218n.82.

[89] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 32 (letter 9).

[90] Ibid., 31.

[91] Giustiniani to Tiepolo and Contarini, 18 Apr. 1512, in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, col. 561.

[92] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 34 (letter 10).

[93] Ibid., 35.

[94] Sanuto, Diarii 21:85, states that Contarini was at the siege of Padua in September 1509 with his brothers and twenty men. In 1513, he sent one of his brothers with fifteen men to the defense of Padua; Sanuto, Diarii 17:257, 300. Ross's references should be corrected: "Contarini and His Friends," 205n.51, mentions two men of the same name as if they were one. Sanuto, as usual, refers to our Contarini in Diarii 21:85 as "Gasparo Contarini, qu . sier Alvise"; the Contarini in 9:146, in contrast, who was sent to Padua on 8 September 1509, is "Gasparo Contarini, qu . sier Francesco Alvise." The latter is mentioned among the defenders of Padua in 12:327, 353. Besides these two, there was also a third Gasparo Contarini, son of sier Hironimo, grandson of sier Luca (Sanuto, Diarii 12:326, 327). For the defense of Padua, see Frederic Lane, Venice, a Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 242-45.

again restless, depressed, tormented by dark thoughts, and unable to proceed with a planned program of studies. Even reading the Scriptures is of no help; on the contrary, it causes him vexation.^[95] While holding fast to his belief in the merits of Christ, Contarini tries to understand what is happening to him, and arrives at the conclusion that God permits his afflictions so that he can learn to trust the divine mercy completely, without illusions about his own power to will inner peace or arrange his life according to his own plans.^[96]

Unlike Giustiniani and Querini, Contarini never mistrusted human learning or wanted to turn away from it in order to devote himself entirely to Christian knowledge.^[97] A good case can be made that his inner turmoil and uncertainty about his vocation were caused by conflicting values he accepted both from humanistic culture and late medieval spirituality.^[98] But it is also possible that a medical reason, the exact nature of which we may never know, was at least partly responsible for his anxiety, despondency, and inaction during these years. He began to resolve the inner tensions not by embracing one set of values and rejecting the other, but by seeking to harmonize them as much as possible through the intellect, while leaving also an ample role to the will. This incipient resolution may have coincided with improved health.

Two letters, dated 26 November 1513 and 26 February 1514,^[99] help to establish the time of Contarini's turning point, when he started the process of "unification of a personality sorely divided."^[100] In the first, Contarini indulges in a bit of rhetoric by alluding to the first

[95] Contarini to Giustiniani and Querini, in Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 37 (letter 11).

[96] Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9:38; and Contarini to Giustiniani, in Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 39 (letter 12).

[97] On Giustiniani's and Querini's attitudes toward humanist learning, see Felix Gilbert, "Cristianesimo, umanesimo e la bolla 'Apostolici regiminis' del 1513," Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 976-90.

[98] So Cessi, "Paolinismo preluterano," 8; reemphasized by Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 109.

[99] Jedin dates letter 8 in "Contarini und Camaldoli," 26-29, to 1512. It should be dated 1514 and arranged so as to follow letter 13 (40-43). Contarini writes on 26 February 1514 about the marriage of his illegitimate sister to Vincenzo Belegno, son of Beneto Belegno, which took place "on the day after the feast of the Purification of Mary," that is, on 3 February. Two sources confirm 1514 as the correct year of the marriage: ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Reg. 126: Cronaca Matrimoni, 1; and VBC, Cod. Cicogna 2171, fol. 29. The departure of Querini, mentioned by Contarini (p. 27) and discussed by Jedin (27n.8), probably refers to Querini's trip to Rome; see Jedin, "Vincenzo Querini und Pietro Bembo," 156-57.

[100] Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 217.

canto of Dante and comparing himself, lost and wandering in the deep valley, to his two friends who have reached the top of the mountain. He affirms that he cannot follow them but must remain content with his lowliness (bassezza ). At the same time, and in a different vein, he states that he has begun to read St. Augustine's work On the Trinity and The Republic of Plato, recently published in Greek.^[101] Philosophy and theology continued to occupy him, and he did not perceive them as antithetical. While he occasionally experienced "vain and mad fears" and perturbations, he was nevertheless able to pursue his studies in a more systematic fashion. He acknowledged, however: "I have to be content [with the study] of that morality which the philosophers have grasped by natural light, also a great gift of God."^[102] For the rest, he entered into the speculations of St. Thomas to the extent that he was able. He is not comfortable with the writings of "older" prescholastic theologians who interpret Scripture in a mystical key or counsel a way of life he cannot follow, and states that reading some of their writings is actually harmful to him, since they hold up an ideal of Christian life that he cannot embrace.

This is a new note struck by Contarini. He has arrived at some certainties and gained the courage to state his own convictions clearly. If monastic life is not for him, neither is the striving after perfection according to patristic precepts. He mentions the pleasure he takes in music, the company of friends, and social occasions with relatives.^[103] While he still is not entirely sure about God's will for him, his tone suggests much greater inner peace than he had enjoyed since 1511.

Contarini's focus of attention soon shifts from himself to the possibility of Querini's cardinalate. Having heard the rumor that Querini might be appointed by Pope Leo X, Contarini urges his friend not to refuse but to become an instrument of the pope for the good of the church. For the first time Contarini explicitly mentions his longstanding concern with church reform, writing that the news rekindled in his heart a desire he had harbored for many years: "to see God in his goodness turn his eyes finally to this poor little ship of his which is being buffeted by so many storms."^[104] A conviction is expressed here that will recur many times—that it is necessary for good men to accept the burden of high office for the benefit of the whole church^[105] and to

[101] Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 110, thinks that Contarini's simultaneous reading of St. Augustine and Plato is a sign that he is overcoming his crisis.

[102] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 27 (letter 8).

[103] Ibid., 28.

[104] Ibid., 44 (letter 14).

[105] Ibid., 45.

become active movers of reform. He appeals to Querini to set a good example to other prelates who as a result might change their way of life. While Querini should not actively seek the cardinalate, he should accept it as God's will. And here Contarini unexpectedly reveals his own dreams: he hints at his desire to live together with Querini, to whom he remained deeply attached, as a member of his household and to resume their former intimacy.^[106] The emotional intensity of these idealistic young men's friendship flared up again here, almost for the last time.

Querini's death in Rome on 23 September 1514 shattered this dream. No letter written by Contarini during the following seven months has come down to us. The last group of his letters, fifteen in all, runs from 1515 and 1516, plus one each from 1518 and 1523. A number are merely brief notes sent to Giustiniani shortly after Contarini visited Camaldoli in 1515. For the most part they report Contarini's activities or deal with visitors and family affairs. Obviously he continued to be linked by ties of close friendship to Giustiniani, but the fervent, emotional expressions of the past have almost entirely given way to a calm, more matter-of-fact writing style. There are still echoes of old themes: not only does he have ups and downs, but he also characterizes himself as having moments when, "seized by a certain frenzy," he would like to ascend to the heavens, only falling soon afterward to the level of brute animals.^[107] But these states are transitory. Finally there is the avowal that God has gradually led him "to see a little light, and to discern the fight way."^[108]

That way is Contarini's acceptance for himself of the traditional role of a Venetian patrician. He mentions his interest in government service for the first time in November 1515, recounting to Giustiniani how his brothers and friends urged him to become a candidate for the post of avogador di comun , or public prosecutor and state attorney.^[109] Contarini admits that he was "excited by the stimulus of ambition,"^[110] but professes somewhat lamely to have been glad that he lost the election,

[106] Ibid., 47 (letter 15).

[107] Ibid., 52 (letter 20). This is an echo of Contarini's reading of Neoplatonic works to which he may have been led by his Florentine friends mentioned in letter 19 (51).

[108] Ibid., 53 (letter 20).

[109] There were "three avogadori , elected to sixteen-month terms by the Great Council; they were the state prosecutors in the three supreme courts or Quarantie , and at least one state attorney was required to be present in all councils to guard against violations of the law" (Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice , xvi-xvii).

[110] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 55 (letter 22).

since he could then return to his studies and the quiet life of a "friar without a hood." Lest he be misunderstood, he makes it clear that he is not contemplating a monastic vocation. On the contrary, in the strongest statement yet on this subject he professes to feel horror at the very thought of it, since he is neither called nor inclined to such a life.^[111]

As if to underline that point, Contarini describes his deep enjoyment of life in his country villa and his interest in agriculture. This may mean simply that he was reading the few classical works on the subject,^[112] but it may be that, like Machiavelli in the same years, he went himself to inspect the work in the fields. Family affairs, property matters, and his brothers are mentioned several times. Contarini saw himself as part of a family group and took keen interest in its well-being. The last letter to his Camaldolese friend is written after a break of three years in the correspondence, and exactly twelve years after his insight of Holy Saturday. Contarini affirms his belief in justification by faith in a clear, strong statement that seems like an epilogue to this period of his life:

Truly, I have arrived at the firm conclusion which, though I had already read it, nevertheless I now can understand very well in my [own] mind: that nobody can become justified through his own works or cleansed from the desires in his own heart. We must have recourse to divine grace which we obtain through faith in Jesus Christ, as St. Paul says, and we too must say with him: happy the man to whom God does not impute his sin, irrespective of his works [Rom. 4:6] ... having experienced it, and seeing what I can do, I have taken refuge in this alone. All the rest seems nothing to me.^[113]

These words were written in Valladolid, when Contarini was Venetian ambassador to Emperor Charles V. Despite the rhetorical dismissal of "all the rest," the writer in actuality was embarked on a public career that was to involve him intimately in the inner circles of the Venetian ruling elite. His letters alone do not suffice to give us a picture of the young Contarini, nor do they reveal the full extent of his participation in public life. Other evidence might help us to understand him during this period.

By modern standards Contarini's inner troubles and turmoil occurred late, when he was almost thirty, and continued past the point where he might have been expected to have made his choices. But while the reason for his vacillations is hidden in the makeup of his

[111] Ibid., 56.

[112] Ibid., 59 (letter 24).

[113] Ibid., 67 (letter 30).

personality and in his medical history, contributing circumstances can be adduced for his late entrance into public life. First of all, by Venetian criteria he was relatively young for the holding of office.^[114] If he entered the Great Council in 1508, at the usual age of twenty-five, he would most likely have spent the next few years attending meetings and voting on candidates for office rather than competing for office himself. A patrician theoretically could be elected to the Senate at thirty-two, or to the Council of Ten at forty; however, "deference to the elderly pushed the age of de facto eligibility to councils some ten to twenty years beyond the legal requirement."^[115] A period of political apprenticeship lasting ten to twenty years was not uncommon; during it one would be regarded as young in politics, even though by the usual standards of the time one could be approaching old age. "From the age of twenty-five to about forty-five, a patrician found high offices closed to him, although a host of minor positions, in the city and abroad, introduced him to government."^[116]

The first extant record of Contarini's candidature for an office is from 23 January 1512, when his name was included among those from whom the ambassador to Hungary was to be chosen.^[117] He was then twenty-eight years old, a typical age for being considered for this minor office (though his precocious friend Querini was already ambassador to Duke Phillip of Burgundy in his mid-twenties). Contarini's candidacy implies previous active participation in the Great Council; and though he lost by the sizable margin of 48 yes to 128 no votes, he was apparently willing to serve Venice in a post that would have entailed a financial outlay by his family. His famous letter to Querini, written less than a year before, thus acquires additional value as a personal document. When he reported Querini's detractors as castigating him for deserting Venice in her hour of need, he was probably expressing also some of his own thoughts and feelings.^[118] They were formu-

[114] For a discussion of the age at which early-sixteenth-century Venetians assumed higher offices, see Robert Finlay, "The Venetian Republic as a Gerontocracy: Age and Politics in the Renaissance," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 (1978): 157-78; and his Politics in Renaissance Venice , 124-41. For an illuminating contrast, see David Herlihy, "Vieillir à Florence au Quattrocento," Annales: E.S.C . 24 (1964): 1338-52 (reprinted in Cities and Society in Medieval Italy [London: Variorum Reprints, 1980]).

[115] Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice , 126.

[116] Ibid., 139.

[117] Sanuto, Diarii 13:408. The lists of the times Contarini was proposed for office given by Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 99n.94, and by Ross, "Contarini and His Friends," 219n. 114 and 22 In. 126, should be supplemented; see n. 120 below.

[118] Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9, col. 541.

lated more clearly nine years later when, in a letter to his friend Niccolò Tiepolo, newly appointed ambassador to England, he wrote this about the career of a Venetian diplomat: "Such a life is most beautiful and honorable, most similar to a life of studies; or rather, it is more important."^[119] The very period when Contarini's letters were full of his inner vacillations and uncertainties was also when his name appears frequently on lists of men to be considered for offices.^[120] His identity as a Venetian patrician was being forged in a conventional, seemly fashion, and he was embarking upon a cursus honorum that would lead him to ever greater responsibilities until 1535. In a sense, then, he was a "young man" in the Venetian political milieu until 1516, when he was elected as one of three arbitrators to settle differences that had arisen in a patrician family over property matters,^[121] and 1518, when he finally obtained his first office as provedador sora la camera de imprestidi ,^[122] one of three officials elected by the Senate for a two-year term whose task was to reduce the public debt.^[123]

Between 1518 and 1520 he was in charge of surveying and measuring reclaimed land in the Po delta before it was put up for sale by the government. He was also responsible for drainage and irrigation

[119] Letter of 25 April 1521, in Franz Dittrich, ed., Regesten und Briefe des Cardinals Gasparo Contarini (Braunsberg, 1881), 252 (Inedita, no. 1) (hereafter cited as Reg .); also Sanuto, Diarii 30:217.

[120] After January 1512 the chronology of Contarini's nominations for offices, all unsuccessful, is as follows (parenthetical references are to Sanuto, Diarii , except as otherwise specified): 2 Oct. 1512: ambassador to Florence (15:161); 15 Oct. 1512: ambassador to the duke of Urbino (15:232); 4 Nov. 1512: ambassador to the doge of Genoa (15:315); 5 Sept. 1514: ambassador to France and England (19:21); 2 Sept. 1515: avogador di comun , after his brother offered the government a loan of 3,000 ducats (21:15, 16, 181; and Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 55-56); 16 Sept. 1515: avogador di comun (21:85, 86, 186, 188) (Contarini lost despite the offer of 500 ducats to be added to the existing loan, already among the largest listed; usually loans were under 1,000 ducats; see 21:182, 183, 185, 188, 190); 17 Jan. 1516: ambassador to Milan (21:460); 20 Jan. 1516: avogador di comun (21:464); 7 May 1516: ambassador to Rome (22: 198); 24 Aug. 1516: one of six councillors to the Senate (22:465); 22 Jan. 1517: ambassador to the king of Castile (23: 516); 14 May 1517: ambassador to France (24:236); 19 Nov. 1517: ambassador to England (25:90); 3 July 1518: ambassador to Hungary (25:516); 3 Sept. 1518: ambassador to Rome, followed on the same day by voting for ambassador to Spain (26:12-13); 12 Sept. 1518: one of two censors (26:39); 29 Sept. 1518: savio di terra ferma (26:71); and 2 Oct. 1518: ambassador to Verona (26:90).

[121] The family was the Premarin; see Sanuto, Diarii 22:11.

[122] He was elected on 17 October; see ibid., 26:129. The commission is in ASV, Collegio, Secreta, Commissioni, 1513-1559, fol. 37r-v. It specifies that Contarini is to be in charge of measuring land belonging to the Republic in the Polesine, that he is to determine its exact character and use, and that he is to draw a salary of not more than 1 ½ ducats per day.

[123] Marin Sanuto, Cronachetta , ed. R. Fulin (Venice, 1880), 148-49.

projects and had to deal with complaints and disputes, some of which reached the Senate.^[124] According to a contemporary, Contarini and his brothers made an important investment in the reclaimed land, acquiring twenty thousand campi . Tax records do not substantiate this figure, however; the actual investment was probably smaller.^[125] Still, it shows a respectable level of family wealth, especially after the forced loans of the War of the League of Cambrai.

Contarini discharged the duties of his first office well, if we can believe Agostino da Mula, Venetian podestà and captain of Rovigo, who praised him in the collegio for his work in surveying and measuring land. The doge, too, recognized that work by giving him the customary thanks upon completion of a charge.^[126] More importantly, Contarini's willingness, even his eagerness, to be nominated for other offices argues for his growing interest in a public career, setting him apart from many nobles who shirked the burdens of office in any way they could.^[127] Contarini himself stated that he was ambitious and able

[124] Sanuto, Diarii 28:120, 137, 197, 236, 237, 270, 549, 620-21.

[125] Marcantonio Michiel in his Diarii , which span the period 1511-20, asserts that Contarini and his brothers bought that amount of land; VBC, Cod. Cicogna 2848, fol. 300. See also Lane, Venice , 257, 472. Such a figure seems unlikely, however. One campo was approximately 0.3 hectare or 0.8 acre, and according to Michiel was sold for 70 to 76 ducats. But see Ugo Tucci, "Pesi e misure nella storia della società," in Storia d'Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1973), 5(1):606. The size of campi varied from province to province in the Veneto. An unsavory side of the Contarini acquisition of land, at least for modern sensibilities, emerges from a document of 1528, when the "nuntio et commisso," or agent, of Gasparo Contarini and his brothers bought on their behalf two campi of land in Campolongo Maggiore in the Saccisica for 20 ducats. The small landowner and his son who sold the plot were forced to do so in order to survive: "volentes sibi ipsis subvenire in hac tam magna penuria victus ne fame pereant" (quoted by Paolo Sambin, "Altre testimonianze [1525-1540] di Angelo Beolco," Italia medioevale e umanistica 7 [1964]: 231-32). I am indebted to Professor Linda Carroll for this reference. Michiel goes on to say that the Contarini were important creditors of the state, having previously bought shares in the monte nuovo or funded debt. They probably received at least some of the land in lieu of repayment of their loans. In later tax declarations the figure of 445 campi owned by Gasparo Contarini is mentioned; ASV, Dieci Savi sopra le Decime, Condizione de' nobili e cittadini veneti per beni in Padova e territorio, 1518-1523, Reg. 418, no. 957.

[126] Sanuto, Diarii 29:381.

[127] See Donald E. Queller, "The Civic Irresponsibility of the Venetian Nobility," in Economy, Society, and Government in Medieval Italy: Essays in Memory of Robert L. Reynolds , ed. David Herlihy, Robert S. Lopez, and Vsevolod Slessarev (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1969), 223-36; and idem, The Venetian Patriciate: Reality Versus Myth (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). Contarini continued to be nominated for office without being elected: on 4 Dec. 1518 for ambassador to France (Sanuto, Diarii 26:241); 29 Dec. 1518 for savio di terra ferma and ambassador to France (26:319); 4 Jan. 1519 for savio di terra ferma (26:337); and 24 Jan. 1519 for the same (26:395). On 22 February Contarini wrote to the Senate about his surveying of public land near Rovigo (Sanuto, Diarii 26:483). He is mentioned as having surveyed land in the Polesine (27:111, 154). In April he was nominated three times for ambassador to Rome (27:180, 205, 316), and proposed for savio di terra ferma (27:429) and savio del consiglio (27:461). He spent forty-five days in the area of Bassano supervising the construction of drainage and irrigation ditches (27:462, 466), and was spokesman for the Venetian government in response to local complaints (27:625). On 26 September he was nominated for ambassador to France (27:682) and savio di terra ferma (27:688, 28:392).

to take pleasure in competition for office.^[128] Moreover, his brothers supported him and were willing to invest money in his career, in the hope of gaining prestige and benefits for the family through him. Contarini remained involved in public life during the seventeen years following his initial success. The question of how to lead his life in the world had been fully answered. He assumed wholeheartedly the duties of a Venetian patrician.