Chapter Three
Venetian Reformer at the Roman Court

Contarini's Rise to Prominence: The Consilium de emendanda ecclesia

On 21 May 1535, for the second time in his pontificate, Paul III appointed new cardinals. They included John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, already imprisoned by Henry VIII; Guillaume du Bellay, archbishop of Paris; Nikolaus Schönberg, German Dominican and papal diplomat; two curial officials, Girolamo Ghinucci and Jacopo Simonetta; and Gasparo Contarini. Their selection was ratified in a long and stormy consistory,^[1] testimony not only to the traditional reluctance of cardinals to add to their number but also to the repercussions that the political struggles between the Habsburgs and Valois were having at the highest levels of the church. The pope had to balance his appointees carefully so as not to appear partial. While opposition to Henry VIII played a role in the appointment of Fisher, du Bellay's new rank would reassure the king of France that Paul III was not leaning too far in the direction of the emperor in elevating Schönberg.^[2] The two curialists and Contarini occupied a middle ground.^[3]

[1] Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:102n.5, quotes from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (hereafter cited as BAV), Ephemer. in Vat. Lat. 6978, fol. 137r, stating that the new cardinals were announced only after serious disagreement and altercation in the consistory.

[2] The pope did not announce the appointment of the pro-imperial protonotary Marino Caracciolo until ten days later, keeping his name in petto . This appointment was intended to allay the misgivings of Charles V regarding the appointment of du Bellay; see Pastor, Geschichte der P äpste 5:102n.6.

[3] Pastor, Geschichte der Papste 5:102, calls Contarini pro-imperial on the strength of a letter by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, a partisan of Charles V, which characterized Contarini as "no less a servant of His [Imperial] Majesty" than Caracciolo and Schön-berg were. About the latter Contarini had already reported on 8 March 1530 to the Venetian Senate: "è imperialissimo, e ha sempre tenuto questa fazione" (Albèri, Relazioni , 2d ser., 3:268). Nevertheless, in the light of Contarini's cautious attitude to Charles V, it would be more correct to consider him neutral, but realistic about the emperor's power.

The elevation of these men to the cardinalate received extravagant praise from contemporaries; scholars still describe it as a turning point in the history of the church, the beginning of serious reform in Rome.^[4] In actuality, and leaving Fisher aside, other than Contarini only Schön-berg had shown concern for church reform. And Contarini was known just to a limited number of people, since only one of his treatises had been published.^[5] Still, his friends included some of the most important proponents of reform, and they saw in his appointment a sign that God was coming to the aid of the church at a critical moment.^[6] The pope's choice of these new cardinals formed a striking contrast to the first group of appointments made shortly after his accession, when his two grandsons Alessandro Farnese and Guido Ascanio Sforza di Santafiora entered the sacred college at the ages of fifteen and sixteen, respectively. Benefices were heaped on them, and it appeared for a time that Paul III would continue the extravagant nepotism of Renaissance popes.^[7] His second group of cardinals was therefore a most welcome surprise.

[4] See, for example, the dispatch of the papal nuncio in Venice, Girolamo Aleandro, 24 May 1535, in Gaeta (ed.), Nunziature di Venezia 1:314 (letter 145). Pastor considers the nomination a proof of Paul III's seriousness about reform; see Geschichte der Päpste 5:101, 103. See also Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1951-75), 1:336 (hereafter cited as Jedin, Trient ).

[5] De immortalitate animae , Book I, appeared anonymously together With Pietro Pomponazzi's Apologia in 1518 in Bologna, and under Contarini's name in Venice in 1525.

[6] Pole expressed this sentiment in a letter to Contarini, Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis et aliorum ad ipsum collectio , ed. A. M. Querini (Brescia, 1744-57), 1:450 (hereafter cited as Ep. Poli ). See also the letter of Cosmo Gheri, bishop of Fano, to Contarini, in Reg ., 93 (no. 307); and that of Marcantonio Flaminio, who reported that "cognoscendo et affermando ognuno ch'el suo cardinalato non è proceduto da homini, ma da Dio, meritamente si crede che sua Maiestà voglia usarla per instrumento di qualche effetto novo et segnalato," in Marcantonio Flaminio, Lettere , ed. Alessandro Pastore (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1978), 27. Further testimony is in GC , 321-23; and Reg ., 75-76 (nos. 255-256). Judgments of Paul III differ. Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:17, stresses that his interest in his diocese of Parma and his becoming a priest in 1519 point to a concern with reform; he interprets Paul III's actions in a uniformly favorable light. Jedin, Trient 1:355, considers Paul III not as the first pope of Catholic reform but as its "precursor [Wegbereiter], " leaving open the vexed question of whether it is possible to reconcile the many contradictory aspects of his way of thinking.

[7] Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:100-101n.1. See also the bitter letter of Jan van Campen, later a member of Contarini's household, in GC , 317n.2.

The choice of Contarini is not easily explained, for it raises the larger question of the pope's intentions in regard to change in the church. Paul III, himself appointed cardinal by Alexander VI, had previously seemed a proverbial Renaissance prelate with little concern for church reform. Once elected pope, however, he proved sensitive to the new religious atmosphere with its demands for purification of the church. Intelligent and shrewd as well as deeply political, he began immediately to discuss the need for church reform and the calling of a council, unlike his weak predecessor. His appointments of May 1535 gave heart to those who hoped for Roman action at last. Indeed, the inclusion of Contarini among his cardinals was a deliberate, practical move toward building a bridge to the small but vocal and prestigious group of critical, reform-minded intellectuals in Rome and Italy.^[8]

The possibility of elevation to the cardinalate could not have been completely unexpected for Contarini. His friend Giberti must have told him that Lodovico da Canossa, bishop of Baius, had earlier proposed him to Clement VII for the college of cardinals.^[9] While on his embassy to the Medici pope, moreover, Contarini had become acquainted with the then Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, now pope, who was favorably impressed with the envoy. And Antonio Surian, Venetian ambassador to Paul III, reported to Doge Andrea Gritti, with whom Contarini was in continual contact, a conversation in which the pope inquired about certain of Contarini's views after telling the ambassador he was considering Contarini's nomination.^[10] Nevertheless, the news of the appointment produced confusion rather than joy in Contarini's mind,^[11] for it reopened the deeper question of how best to serve God in this life. After several days of uncertainty and meditation he concluded that his new dignity was God's calling and that he must accept it in order not to act against the divine will or offend his relatives and

[8] Richard Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto, 1477-1547: Humanist and Reformer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 99-100, sees Contarini as "the symbol, if not the inspiration, of those Pauline reformers who by accident or design had remained free from curial venality, bureaucracy, and conservative bias." Jedin, Trient 1:336, thinks that Contarini's elevation to the cardinalate created "a secure support and a firm center" for the reform movement in Rome.

[9] Beccadelli, "Vita," 21.

[10] Reg ., 371-72 (Anhang no. 1). The text should be corrected by VBC, Cod. Cicogna 1540, fols. 115-117. The date of the letter is 20 May, not March.

[11] Contarini to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, 29 May 1535, in Walter Friedensburg, "Der Briefwechsel Gasparo Contarini's mit Ercole Gonzaga," Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 2 (1899): 164 (letter 1).

friends. His brother-in-law and close friend Matteo Dandolo presented convincing arguments in favor of prayerful acceptance.^[12]

A few days' hesitation in accepting the red hat may seem merely good form. Very few, after all, ever rejected the honor in the end. Contarini, however, was making real sacrifices by accepting. He was fifty-one years old at the time of his appointment. Becoming a cardinal meant giving up the high place he had reached in the government of Venice and embarking on a radically different career and way of life. He seems to have made the decision with the same earnestness that underlay his letter about the cardinalate to Querini long before.^[13] The Benedictine Gregorio Cortese, abbot of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice and one of his old friends, discussed this momentous step with him.^[14]

Contarini received his first tonsure and minor orders from Gianpietro Carafa^[15] and, unlike most cardinals, became a priest. In June 1537 Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga congratulated him on the celebration of his first mass.^[16] Yet joined to his seriousness about the clerical vocation was a certain detachment about the cardinalate that enabled him to say to the pope during a disagreement: "I do not consider that the [red] hat is the greatest honor that has [ever] been bestowed on me!"^[17] This, clearly, was the Venetian patrician speaking.

With the reception of that red hat at a consistory held in Perugia on 15 September 1535, Contarini entered the college of cardinals and became part of the society of Rome and the papal court.^[18] While its highest offices were spiritual, it was also a mirror of the secular world with its social gradations. Cardinals, as princes of the church, were often politically powerful men, especially if they had the right connec-

[12] Fragnito, Memoria individuale , 178.

[13] Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 44-45.

[14] Edmondo Solmi, "La fuga di Bernardino Ochino secondo i documenti dell'Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova," Bullettino senese di storia patria 15 (1908): 50.

[15] Beccadelli, "Vita," 22.

[16] Friedensburg, "Briefwechsel," 169 (letter 6).

[17] Beccadelli, "Vita," 47. Both Della Casa, 15, and Quirini, 161, repeat this remark in their lives of Contarini.

[18] ASVat, Arch. Consist., Acta Misc. 18 (1517-48), fols. 259v-260r. On 24 September 1535, still in Perugia, the ceremony of aperitio oris took place (fol. 260r), which conferred on Contarini the right to speak in consistory, to give advice, to participate in papal elections, and to receive a share of the collective income of the college of cardinals. For the ceremony and the form used by the pope, see Guillaume Mollat, "Contributions à l'histoire du Sacré Collège de Clément V à Eugène IV," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 46 (1951): 44.

tions. Among them were members of such princely families as the Gonzaga, Grimaldi, and Lorraine, of papal clans like the Cibo, of wealthy patrician and banker families like the Florentines Salviati, Ridolfi, and Pucci, the Venetians Grimani and Pisani, and other Italian and European aristocratic lines.

That the style of life of cardinals should—indeed must—reflect their social rank was taken for granted by the most complete "mirror of cardinals," Paolo Cortese's De cardinalatu , which drew an analogy between them and Roman patricians. Cortese described the ideal cardinal as wellborn and rich, living in a splendid palace with a household of 120 to 140 persons.^[19] He thought that outward manifestation of wealth was important because it caused men to admire the possessor of such wealth, impressed them with his social eminence, and increased their respect for him. In point of fact the actual number of persons in cardinals' households less than a decade before Contarini's appointment was around 154.^[20] The familiae of rich and noble cardinals were like miniature courts, with members of many social classes: noble relatives and dependents, scholars, artists, secretaries, friends, chaplains, adjutants, pages, guards, musicians, administrative officials, servants, cooks, grooms, footmen,^[21] and even occasional disreputable characters.^[22]

[19] Paolo Cortese, De cardinalatu, libri tres (Rome, 1510), lvi -lvii . For other proposals concerning the size of cardinals' households, see Hubert Jedin, "Analekten zur Reformtätigkeit der Päpste Julius III. und Pauls IV.," Römische Quartalschrift 43 (1935): 111; Kathleen Weil-Garris and John F. D'Amico, The Renaissance Cardinal's Ideal Palace: A Chapter from Cortese's "De Cardinalatu " (Rome: Edizioni dell'Elefante, American Academy in Rome, 1980).

[20] D. Gnoli, "Un censimento di Roma sotto Clemente VII," Archivio della R. Società romana di storia patria 17 (1894): 387, gives figures for 1526. Some households were considerably larger, like that of Cardinal Farnese, the later Pope Paul III, with 306 persons (p. 471) or that of Cardinal Cesarini with 275 (p. 481). There are no comparable figures for the 1530s that might make it possible to determine the effect of the sack of Rome on the style of life of cardinals.

[21] These categories are found in a list of the household of another Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III's grandson, which comprised 277 persons in 1544: BAV, Barb. lat. 5366, fols. 266-267. For the "families" of cardinals, see Gigliola Fragnito, "'Parenti' e 'familiari' nelle corti cardinalizie del Rinascimento," in "Famiglia" del principe e famiglia aristocratica , ed. Cesare Mozzarelli (Rome: Bulzoni, 1988), 565-87, with bibliography; and Pierre Hurtubise, "Familiarité et fidélité à Rome au XVI siècle: les 'familles' des cardinaux Giovanni, Bernardo et Antonio Maria Salviati," in Hommage à Roland Mousnier: clienteles et fidélité en Europe á l'époque moderne (Paris: Presses Universitaires Franáaises, 1981), 335-50.

[22] Paul Maria Baumgarten, Von den Kardinälen des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Krumbach: F. Aker, 1927), 36-38.

These households should not be dismissed simply as excesses peculiar to Renaissance cardinals. They belonged to a time when status in society carried definite duties with it, foremost that of furthering the social and economic standing of one's relatives and dependents. The aristocratic ethos accepted in the papal court meant that princely station was signalized by magnanimity and liberality.^[23] Patronage of artists, architects, scholars, or writers was an important aspect of the magnificentia of rich cardinals, as was the duty of hospitality to important guests^[24] and the employment of numerous retainers.

After the very rich cardinals came a middle group, wealthy enough but not on a scale that would permit them to maintain the large households necessary for assuming a princely or representative function in Roman society. They usually did not have their own houses but lived in rented quarters with smaller familiae than their wealthy counterparts. A good number of this group, such as the curial cardinals, had administrative or diplomatic responsibilities that did not require them to maintain magnificent households. The financial resources of members of this group varied widely,^[25] for although benefices were their main source of wealth, the income derived therefrom could be substantial or relatively small.^[26] Lower still on the economic scale were the so-called poor cardinals, who had none of the lucrative benefices.^[27] They received shares of the collective income of the college of cardinals, and both Pope Paul III and afterward Julius III gave pensions to

[23] The studies of Wolfgang Reinhard on these topics are fundamental: "Nepotismus: der Funktionswandel einer papstgeschichtlichen Konstanten," Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 86 (1975): 145-85; "Kardinalseinkünfte und Kirchenreform," Rö-mische Quartalschrift 77 (1982): 157-94; "Reformpapsttum zwischen Renaissance und Barock," in Reformatio ecclesiae: Beiträge zu kirchlichen Reformbemühungen von der Alten Kirche bis zur Neuzeit. Festgabe fur Erwin Iserloh , ed. Remigius Bäumer (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1980), 779-96. See also his Papstfinanz und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605-1621 ) (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1974), esp. 1:157-60, for valuable observations.

[24] Pierre Hurtubise, "La table d'un cardinal de la renaissance: aspects de la cuisine et de l'hospitalité à Rome au milieu du XVI siècle," Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome, moyen âge-temps modernes 92 (1980): 249-82. The author reconstructs precise expenses for groceries (266-70) on the basis of account books of Cardinal Bernardo Salviati, whose familia in 1563-65 numbered 110 persons (258).

[25] David S. Chambers, "The Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 295. Reinhard, "Kardinalseinkünfte," 185, stresses that the family wealth on which some cardinals could draw is the chief unknown quantity in any attempt to determine incomes with exactness.

[26] Barbara McClung Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), chap. 2.

[27] A document of 1521 defined cardinals as poor if their annual income failed to reach 5,000 ducats; see Chambers, "Economic Predicament," 304.

those whose income did not reach what was considered a necessary minimum.^[28]

Among the poor cardinals was Contarini. After two expensive embassies he was reluctant to draw more on family wealth, which he had described as "middling" already in 1529, stating that he was ashamed to be a further financial burden to his brothers.^[29] As a cardinal, however, he had little choice but to turn to them for his needs.^[30] It is not possible to determine how far their support extended. Contarini's most important source of income was a pension of two hundred ducats a month granted him shortly after his arrival in Rome and drawn from the office of the dataria . A second pension was assigned him in 1539.^[31] In addition he was to receive eight hundred scudi a year from the bishopric of Pamplona, presented to him probably on the occasion of the emperor's visit to Rome in April 1536.^[32] That October the pope nominated him to the bishopric of Belluno in Venetian territory, but the Senate did not accept the nomination until the following May, and even then only after strenuous efforts by the nuncio Girolamo Verallo.^[33] Belluno, one of the poorest Venetian sees, brought Contarini

[28] Reinhard, "Kardinalseinkünfte," 185. For the main sources of cardinals' incomes, see p. 184. Under Paul III eleven cardinals received pensions, while the number of recipients rose to twenty-two under Julius III.

[29] Reg ., 45-46 (no. 126) and 53 (no. 165).

[30] VBC, Cod. Cicogna 1540, fol. 113, contains a copy of a letter from the Venetian Senate to its ambassador in Rome, dated 26 August 1542, mentioning that Contarini's family had to spend money for his needs when he became a cardinal.

[31] Contarini's name as a recipient of 200 ducats monthly first appears in the account books of the dataria , the "libri mastri," on 15 November 1535 (BAV, Vat. lat. 10600, fol. 74r). The records of payments continue regularly through May 1538. Then comes a break of four months when Contarini was absent from Rome, first at the meeting of Paul III and Charles V in Nice, then in Venice and Belluno. In October 1538 the payments resume (fol. 143v), and continue through September 1540 (Vat. lat. 10601, fol. 77r). In 1539 he was assigned a pension drawn from the legation of Bologna (Reg ., 121 [no. 440]). Both were paid for nine months, assuming that the second actually began in December 1539, when it was granted.

[32] GC , 325. That the pension was not paid regularly can be seen from Contarini's letters of 10 December 1539 (ASVat, A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fols. 55, 57r-v [Reg ., 120 (no. 436)]) and of late December or early January 1540 (ibid., fol. 63r [Reg ., 120 (no. 437, erroneously numbered 436)]). Contarini's secretary Girolamo Negri thought the pension was paltry, and wrote on 28 January 1537 that he was ashamed for Charles V at his having granted such a small sum (Lettere di principi , vol. 3 [Venice, 1570], 161v).

[33] Contarini was granted Belluno on 23 October 1536 (ASVat, Arch. Consist., Acta Misc. 18, fol. 271r-v). But the Venetian Senate resisted the pope's appointment of a bishop in its territory, even though one of their own patricians was the nominee. Only after prolonged negotiations involving Venice's request for a levy on the clergy and the mediation of the nuntio Verallo was an agreement finally reached. On 24 May 1537 Contarini was accepted as bishop of Belluno; see ASV, Senato, Delib. Secreta, Reg. 58, fol. 18; and Gaeta (ed.), Nunziature di Venezia , vol. 2: 9 gennaio 1536-9 giugno 1542 , 95, 96, 98, 106, 117.

a little over a thousand ducats annually.^[34] To these sums should be added whatever revenue his titular churches brought in,^[35] which must have been modest, and his share of the distribuzione del cappello , or the corporate income of the college of cardinals, the precise amount of which in his case cannot be known.^[36] On paper his income was increased greatly with his appointment as administrator of the see of Salisbury in 1539,^[37] but the course of events in England prevented him from actually assuming that post. Contarini's income is unlikely to have reached more than half the twelve thousand florins that Cortese in his treatise deems necessary for a cardinal. He continued to be strapped for funds, especially in the late 1530s when poor harvests forced food prices up, but complaints about his financial position are rare in his correspondence.^[38] It is difficult to say how sincere was the preference he expressed in 1535 for a relatively small pension over a lucrative benefice. In any case, he never had the opportunity to choose, for no rich benefice ever came his way.^[39] He seems not to have been greatly concerned with money matters, if we can accept his secretary Girolamo Negri's description of him as a man who "is healthy in body and soul on account of his even-tempered nature as well as his acquired virtues, so that neither the death of his beloved brother nor the poverty in which he finds himself troubles him in the least or distracts

[34] The Senate in 1542 referred to Belluno as "di poca valuta" (VBC, Cod. Cicogna 1540, fol. 114). In 1537-39 its income was 1,800 ducats a year; see Gaeta (ed.), Nunziature di Venezia 2:345.

[35] For Contarini's titular churches, see Fragnito, "Contarini, Gasparo," in DBI 28 (1983): 181.

[36] Chambers, "Economic Predicament," 297; ASVat, Fondo Concistoriale, Acta Camerarii, vol. 4, fol. 31v; vol. 5, fols. 24v, 34r, 46r, 53v, 60r. The Cedularum et rotulorum libri of the Archive of the College of Cardinals, which would show how much each cardinal received from the common income of the college, are missing for the period 1522-65; see ASVat, Indice 1121.

[37] ASVat, Arch. Consist., Acta Misc., 18, fol. 316v.

[38] Contarini wrote of the "strecta fortuna nella quale io mi ritrovo" (ASVat, A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fol. 57r) and that he found himself "per la poca provisione, che io ho al mio vivere, in grande necessità" (Reg ., 120 [no. 437]). Pole, whose household was comparable to Contarini's, stated that it was not possible to get along on 500 ducats a month, which was probably more than the latter's regular monthly income; see Ep. Poli 2:28. For various reckonings of the minimum income for cardinals, see Jedin, "Analekten zur Reformtätigkeit," 108-11.

[39] Report of Lorenzo Bragadin to the Senate, Rome, 2 Nov. 1535, in A. De Leva, "La concordia religiosa di Ratisbona e il Cardinale Gasparo Contarini," Archivio veneto , 1st ser., 4 (1872): 33.

him from his studies."^[40] This poverty was of course relative, since Contarini's household was being compared implicitly with those of rich cardinals. He was, after all, established in the Vatican palace, where the pope had given him rooms, while his familia of forty persons was housed in nearby rented quarters large enough to include stables for about twenty horses. His household lived simply, yet Contarini did not abandon all the tastes of a nobleman, such as riding for pleasure in Rome during seasons of good weather.^[41]

The first year in his new office seems to have been a rather quiet period with leisure for study, especially of Plato and Aristotle. He read unspecified "Christian books" as well, writing:

By the grace of God, I am well, living my customary life with friends, and when I have time, with some Christian books. I am making an effort to attain some [degree of] knowledge of Christian teaching and life, [but] the more I read about the latter the further from it I seem to be, living almost as if asleep and frozen still. I have not yet found a way of waking and rousing myself, unless it be through my hope in God's goodness, which makes ready the way to strengthen, awaken, and inflame man when he is keenly aware of his weakness and the infirmity he cannot overcome or heal by his own efforts.^[42]

Twenty-five years earlier Contarini had written in strikingly similar terms to his friends Giustiniani and Querini, repeatedly mentioning his stony, hardened, and icy heart which he hoped to inflame through reading and study of the Bible.^[43] The echoes of those distant letters can probably be best explained by Contarini's temperament. He was an emotional man who kept experiencing periods of spiritual sluggishness and dryness despite his unshakable belief that man is justified by faith. He struggled against these states through recourse to books as well as through action, in the conviction that "he who wishes to have a

[40] To Marcantonio Michiel, 6 Dec. 1535, in Lettere di principi 3:149v.

[41] Lettere di principi 3:149v; and Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:833, no. 27. In 1535 Contarini's household comprised forty dependents, or "bocche"; see Girolamo Negri, Epistolarum orationumque liber (Padua, 1579), fol. 148v.

[42] To Benedetto Accolti, Cardinal of Ravenna, 1 Jan. 1536, in Archivio di Stato, Florence (hereafter cited as ASF), Carteggio Accolti, Filza 12, inserto 13, fol. 154r: "Io, per la gratia de dio son sano et vivo la vita mia consueta cure li amici, et quando mi avancia il tempo, cum qualche libro christiano, sforzandomi de attingere a qualche cognitione della doctrina et vita christiana, da quale quanto piu ne lego, tanto piu mi pare essere lontano, et vivere quasi adormentato et agelato, ne ritrovo perho via di svegharmi et accendermi sin hora, se non per la sperancia che ho in la benignita divina la quale alhora prepara il modo di fortificare, svegliare et accendere l'homo, quando esso è ben capace della sua debolezza et infirmita, la quale da per lui non puo superare et sanare." The text in Reg ., 263 (Inedita, no. 11), is inaccurate and incomplete.

[43] See Jedin, "Contarini und Camaldoli," 25; also pp. 11, 12, 14, 16.

contented and peaceful mind must engage in activity which is fitting and necessary to it."^[44] But despite this practical attitude he was subject to periods of melancholy. One such period, in the summer of 1536, coincided with a bout of physical illness; his "sadness of soul" was known to his friends,^[45] who tried to cheer him with down-to-earth advice, or by the arguably less effective means of a treatise, "De animi tristitia," which Reginald Pole intended to write for him but did not get around to doing because of the intense heat of the season.^[46]

While the full roster of Contarini's household cannot be reconstructed precisely, the names of several of the men whom he summoned to join him in Rome are known. His first secretary was Girolamo Negri, who later became his vicar in the diocese of Belluno. More prominent was Ludovico Beccadelli, member of an important Bolognese family and later papal nuncio to Venice and archbishop of Ragusa. Beccadelli first joined Contarini in November 1535, eventually becoming his secretary, friend, and biographer. Filippo Gheri, the younger brother of Cosmo Gheri, bishop of Fano, was also a member of Contarini's household, as was the Modenese Filippo Valentini. By the end of 1536 Contarini had prevailed on the Dutch Hebraist Jan van Kampen to come to Rome and enter his familia as well. Another foreigner in the household was the French scholar Pierre Danès, later bishop of Lavaur. Alvise Priuli, a close friend of Pole, and Galeazzo Florimonte, later bishop of Aquino, were with Contarini for a time. As a group these men were scholarly, open-minded, critical of abuses in the church, and interested in Protestant theology. Predictably, several later came under suspicion of heresy. One of them, Filippo Valentini, became a leading figure in Modenese heterodox circles, and eventually chose exile in Switzerland over submission to the Roman Inquisition.^[47]

[44] To Accolti, 14 May 1536, in Reg ., 264 (Inedita, no. 13); complete text in ASF, Carteggio Accolti, Filza 12, inserto 13, fols. 156r-157v.

[45] Pole to Contarini, 24 June 1536, in Reg ., 88 (no. 289).

[46] Pole to Alvise Priuli, 23 July 1536, in Ep. Poli 1:461.

[47] On Beccadelli, see Giuseppe Alberigo, "Beccadelli, Ludovico," in DBI 7: 407-13; Gigliola Fragnito, "Per lo studio dell'epistolografia volgare del Cinquecento: le lettere di Ludovico Beccadelli," Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 43 (1981): 61-87. For Filippo Gheri, see Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto, Il processo inquisitoriale del Cardinal Giovanni Morone (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l'Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1981-89), 2(1):552n.23; for Filippo Valentini, ibid., 1:331-34; and M. Firpo, "Gli Spirituali, l'Accademia di Modena e il formulario di fede del 1542: controllo del dissenso religioso e nicodemismo," Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 20 (1984): 87. For Jan van Kampen, see Elisabeth Feist Hirsch, Damião de Gois: The Life and Thought of a Portuguese Humanist, 1502-1574 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), 98; and H. de Vocht, History of the Foundation and Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, 1517-1550 (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l'Université, 1951-19), 1:503-5, 2:120-22, and 3: passim. For Danès, see Mireille Forget, "Les relations et les amities de Pierre Danès (1497-1577)," Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 3 (1936): 365-83; 4 (1937): 59-77. For Florimonte, see Alberigo, Vescovi italiani , 209. For Priuli, see Pio Paschini, Un amico del Cardinale Polo: Alvise Priuli (Rome: Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore, 1921); and Firpo and Marcatto, Processo inquisitoriale 1:253-54.

Contarini and his household were exceptional in the Rome of 1535, when Pier Paolo Vergerio, papal nunzio to King Ferdinand, thus described other cardinals: "These great lords are so occupied with their pleasures and ambitions that they know nothing which is happening in distant Germany."^[48] Even if this judgment by the critical Vergerio has to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, the fact remains that Contarini, with his deep concern for church reform, stood alone among cardinals until the appointment of Sadoleto, Pole, and Carafa in December 1536. Support and encouragement first came from his friends in Venice, Verona, and his own familia rather than from other cardinals. But most important was the support of the pope himself, who drew Contarini into the preparations for a general council that was to meet in Mantua in May 1537.

The political background of the decision to hold this meeting and the complexities involved in convoking a council have been discussed in masterly fashion by Hubert Jedin.^[49] Paul III, unlike his predecessor, understood that further delay in this matter would harm the papacy and the Catholic church, and so he decided to act. In the spring of 1536 he formed a commission to draw up the bull summoning the council, to which he appointed Contarini.

It is curious that the pope, who had known Contarini as the Venetian ambassador to Clement VII and as a skillful negotiator in Bologna, did not avail himself of the cardinal's diplomatic expertise during the preparatory stages of the council. Instead Contarini was assigned to various curial committees for the next four years. Keeping him in Rome was probably more useful for the positive image of the papacy than sending him on missions to European rulers would have been, since he was the visible rallying point for those who felt the urgency of

[48] Vergerio to King Ferdinand, 27 Jan. 1535, in Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland nebst ergänzenden Aktenstücken , 1st ser. (Rome: Königliches Preussisches Historisches Institut, 1892-1912), 1:327 (hereafter cited as NB ). For Vergerio, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio: The Making of an Italian Reformer (Geneva: Droz, 1977).

[49] On the projected council of Mantua, see Jedin, Trient 1:232-86.

church reform. Paul III was shrewd enough to understand the importance of not alienating the intellectual, liberal-minded ecclesiastics and laymen who regarded Contarini as their spokesman.

Contarini's first significant task was to preside over a commission convoked by the pope in July 1536 and charged with making recommendations for reform measures in preparation for the general council. Such a commission had precedents from the first year of Paul III's pontificate. Already in November 1534 the pope had declared that reform of the curia and cardinals must precede a council.^[50] Within a week a commission for the "reform of mores" was established, followed by a second for the examination of all curial offices and the revision of their practices. Both bodies were to recommend initiatives to the pope for his action.^[51] But the seriousness of the enterprise can be judged by the pope's admonition to members of the two commissions, none of whom had any record of concern with reform, to take into account "the nature of the present times" in their work.^[52] In effect, this meant simply that once more a list of remedies for some abuses would be compiled, dutifully read in a consistory, and heard of no more.

Still, Paul III in 1535 and 1536 did issue several bulls aimed at removing corruption and abuses in the church,^[53] and thus at least kept hope for reform alive. In August 1535 the bull "Sublimis Deus" was published, creating yet another commission, this time for the reform of the curia and clerk, in Rome. As a step toward the council, abuses were to be eradicated and opposition punished, and there was even mention of measures for enforcing reform decrees.^[54] However, the resulting edict of 11 February 1536 was remarkable only for its length. It dealt with the colors of ecclesiastical vestments, the necessity of tonsure, the desirability of having a familia that led an orderly life, the injunction to priests to read the office daily, to celebrate mass properly, to avoid places of ill repute, and similar matters.^[55] The Venetian ambassador to Rome gave this insignificant edict its right name when

[50] Pastor, Geschichte der Papste 5:97.

[51] Stephan Ehses, "Kirchliche Reformarbeiten unter Papst Paul III. vor dem Trienter Konzil," Romische Quartalschrift 15 ( 1901): 154.

[52] In the consistory of 3 March 1535: "Sanct D.N. renuntiavit D R . . . ut temporis conditioni consuleretur" (CT 4:451). The cardinals on the commissions were Piccolomini, Sanseverino, Cesi, Campeggio, Grimani, and Cesarini.

[53] Ehses, "Kirchliche Reformarbeiten," 154-55.

[54] CT 4:451. This bull should not be confused with a more famous one of 4 June 1537 having the same incipit, which incorporates the Amerindians into the human race.

[55] Not incorporated into the consistorial acts; printed by Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:823-27, from a copy in St. Petersburg.

he called it "la bolla della reformatione delli habbiti delli cherici," adding resignedly, "at other times also similar reformations have been made, which have had no effect whatever." Discussion about regulating "matters of the poenitentiaria , the chancery, the dataria , and other offices,"^[56] mentioned by him, resulted in nothing.

The prelates chosen for the commission over which Contarini presided were of a very different stamp from members of earlier commissions. Originally the pope had a group in mind that must have differed considerably from the final one, for it was to include Spaniards and Frenchmen,^[57] whereas the actual commission was composed only of Italians with the single exception of Pole. Paul III accepted Contarini's judgment concerning who was suitable for membership, and the latter did not hesitate to recommend some of the most outspoken advocates of reform and friends on whose support he could rely.^[58] In the summer of 1536 briefs were issued summoning eight men to Rome to assist the pope "with their advice, piety, and learning" in the preparations for the council.^[59] They were Gianpietro Carafa; Gianmatteo Giberti, former datario to Clement VII and now reforming bishop of Verona; Contarini's friends Gregorio Cortese and Reginald Pole; his confessor Tommaso Badia, who as a Dominican also held the post of magister sacri palatii , or the pope's theologian; Federico Fregoso, archbishop of Salerno and bishop of Gubbio; Jacopo Sadoleto, bishop of Carpentras in southern France and former member of the curia under the two Medici popes; and Girolamo Aleandro, best known as a papal diplomat.^[60] The last is the only surprising choice, due

[56] Lorenzo Bragadino to the Senate, Rome, 12 Feb. 1536, in CT 4:453; see also Ehses, "Kirchliche Reformarbeiten," 157-58.

[57] Contarini to Pole, Rome, 12 July 1536, in Reg ., 89 (no. 291).

[58] " . . . [Il papa] propose che si facesse una riforma delle cose più importanti, et volle che 'l Cardinale Contarino li ricordasse quelli, ch' a tal opera li parevano buoni, acciochè presto se ne venisse al fine" (Beccadelli, "Vita," 24). Cf. also the report of the Mantuan agent quoted by Carlo Capasso, Paolo III (Messina: Principato, 1923-24), 1:654n.4; and Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:110n.3.

[59] Briefs to Pole and Sadoleto in CT 4:26-27; to Carafa, in Friedensburg, "Briefwechsel," 221, and Carafa's answer, 222; to Pole in Ep. Poli 1:466; to Cortese in Gregorio Cortese, Gregorii Cortesii omnia quae huc usque colligi potuerunt sive ab eo scripta, sive ad illum spectantia (Padua, 1774), 1:52. That Contarini particularly wanted Cortese on the commission may be seen from Reg ., 89 (no. 292).

[60] For Carafa, see Alberto Aubert, Paolo IV Carafa nel giudizio della età della Controriforma (Città di Castello: Stamperia Tiferno Grafica, 1990). For Giberti, see Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma . Peter Partner ascribes a larger role to Giberti than is usual, and thinks that "the chief minister of Clement VII was in effect Gian Matteo Giberti," The Pope's Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 44. For Pole, see Dermot Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); J.P. Marmion, "Cardinal Pole in Recent Studies," Recusant History 13 (1975-76): 56-61; and Paolo Simoncelli, Il caso Reginald Pole: eresia e santità nelle polemiche religiose del Cinquecento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1977). For Cortese, see Gigliola Fragnito, "Il Cardinale Gregorio Cortese e la crisi religiosa del Cinquecento," Benedictina 30 (1983): 129-71, 417-59; 31 (1984): 79-134; the more recent monograph by Francesco C. Cesareo, Humanism and Catholic Reform: The Life and Work of Gregorio Cortese (1483-1548 ) (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1990), is inadequate. For Badia, see Giuseppe Alberigo, "Badia, Tommaso," in DBI 5:74-76. For Sadoleto, see Douglas, Sadoleto . Little work on Fregoso exists; for a sketch of his life, see Luigi Grillo, Elogi di Liguri illustri , 2d ed. (Genoa, 1846), 1:390-98; also M. Abbondanza, "Federico Fregoso nella storia della diocesi di Salerno e la visita pastorale del 1510-11," Quaderni contemporanei (Salerno) 4 (1971): 7-19. For Aleandro, see Giuseppe Alberigo, "Aleandro, Girolamo," in DBI 2:128-35.

probably to the pope's initiative because Aleandro had the reputation of being familiar with German affairs. He had given little evidence of zeal for church reform, though on occasion he had supported reform measures that he deemed expedient.^[61]

The initial meeting of the commission took place toward the end of November 1536,^[62] with Sadoleto delivering the opening oration. The usually mild prelate violently attacked corruption in the church, squarely blaming it on earlier popes, and calling on Paul III, who was not present, to break with the pernicious ways of his predecessors. Sadoleto painted a dismal picture of the ills besetting the church, most of which he attributed to the cupidity of the clergy. Mincing no words, he spoke of the mistrust and even hatred of the clergy on the part of the people, of disorder everywhere, and of the woes threatening disunited Christendom. He predicted worse things to come unless Paul III proceeded to take his calling as savior of the church seriously. Speaking to his colleagues "with the passion of a Hebrew prophet,"^[63] Sadoleto set the tone for their deliberations. The seriousness and urgency of

[61] Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:111, credits Contarini with the inclusion of Aleandro, a view accepted by Douglas, Sadoleto , 100. But Jedin, Trient 1:583n.44, rightly does not include Aleandro in Contarini's circle; nor does Franco Gaeta, Un nunzio pontificio a Venezia nel Cinquecento (Girolamo Aleandro ) (Venice and Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1960), 115. Aleandro's life had not been exemplary; see Paul Kalkoff, "Zur Charakteristik Aleandros," Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 43 (1924): 212-13, though Kalkoff's final judgment (219) is too negative.

[62] Vinzenz Schweitzer, "Beiträge zur Geschichte Pauls III.," Römische Quartalschrift 22 (1908): 134-35, summarizes arguments for an earlier opening date and makes a good case against them. He thinks that the meetings began between 24 November and 2 December, most likely between 24 and 30 November. Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:117n.4, remains unconvinced and thinks that the meetings began in the first half of November.

[63] Douglas, Sadoleto , 101. The text of the speech is in CT 4:108-19.

their task as presented by Sadoleto was further underlined by his almost apocalyptic picture of the evils awaiting the church should it remain unreformed.

A greater contrast between the spirit in which these nine prelates began their work and the perfunctoriness of earlier so-called reform commissions would be hard to imagine. But it is also necessary to remember that Sadoleto could not have spoken as he did had there not been signals from the pope to Contarini and his group encouraging them to believe that they would be heard. The eulogies of Paul III's virtue and wisdom in Sadoleto's speech may strike a modern reader as too fulsome. Yet Sadoleto well understood the pope's determining role in any future change in the church; he therefore tried by all means possible to make an ally of Paul III, appealing to him as the man chosen by God to bring about the crucial, longed-for reform.

In a consistory on 9 March 1537 the commission's report, its Consilium de emendanda ecclesia , or "Plan for Reforming the Church," was presented to the pope, then read and explained by Contarini.^[64] This was followed by Sadoleto's separate report, which has not been preserved but probably elaborated further on points made in the committee document.^[65] There was no discussion at that time, and the immediate reaction of Paul III is not known. Copies of the Consilium were made available to the cardinals, who were given time to consult with their advisors.

The chief obstacle to grasping the intent of Contarini and his collaborators lies in the lack of documentation of the preparatory work that led up to their final report. An oath of secrecy had been imposed on them, but even after it was lifted no details of the meetings were disclosed, or at least none have survived. The author or authors of the Consilium remain anonymous;^[66] that there was more than one

[64] "Consilium delectorum cardinalium et aliorum praelatorum de emendanda ecclesia S.D.N. Paulo III iubente conscriptum et exhibitum," text in CT 12:134-45. English translation in Gleason, Reform Thought , 85-100. For the date of presentation, see Walter Friedensburg, "Zwei Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Reformbestrebungen an der römischen Kurie (1536-1538)," Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 7 (1904): 260.

[65] Friedensburg, "Zwei Aktenstücke," 255; and Douglas, Sadoleto , 107. Despite his apparent dissent or emendations, Sadoleto signed the Consilium .

[66] The question of authorship has been debated, but not resolved. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste 5:121n.1, discusses the attempts of biographers, especially Carafa, to assign to their several subjects the writing of the memorial; Capasso, Paolo III 1:656n.2, agrees that it is not possible to attribute the memorial to a definite author. See also Jedin, Trient 1:341; and CT 12:132-33.

responsible author seems likely because the document bears the marks of a committee report, with the characteristic ideas of one member or another appearing at different points. For example, there is a similarity between Carafa's memorial of 1532 to Pope Clement VII^[67] and sections of the Consilium , and between the latter document and the reform proposal written long before by Contarini's friends Guistiniani and Querini, the Libellus ad Leonem X ,^[68] which Contarini knew well and with which men from the Venetian milieu like Carafa, Cortese, and Pole were also familiar.^[69] Like the reports of previous commissions, the Consilium drew up a list of specific abuses that had become widespread throughout the church. These abuses, however, had now worked themselves so intimately and pervasively into the church's structure that it is difficult to see how Paul III could have freed himself from the fiscal web his predecessors had woven.

Fees had become customary for many transactions, including plurality of ecclesiastical benefices, reservations, compositions, and arrangements of various sorts which came perilously close to horse-trading, especially in the granting of churches and exceptionally rich abbeys to the "temporary" supervision of well-connected clerics and laymen. There was similarly busy traffic in dispensations from vows and obligations, and a host of indulgences. All had their ultimate origin in the papacy's need for ever more money, especially from Sixtus IV on, the sale of church offices being a particularly important source of income for the Renaissance popes. Indeed, the papal government acted like its secular counterparts in devising means to mobilize further income by various kinds of advances.^[70] The inherited institutional structure of

[67] The text is in CT 12:67-77; English translation in Gleason, Reform Thought , 57-80. See especially the recommendations regarding supervision and reorganization of conventual orders, the tightening of standards for admission to the priesthood, and the examination of candidates.

[68] Text in Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9:612-719. Especially striking is the similarity with sections of part 5, "De Christianorum omnium, qui Romano obediunt pontifici, reformatione," which toward the end (cols. 701-3) discusses the reform of religious orders. Nelson H. Minnich, "Concepts of Reform Proposed at the Fifth Lateran Council," Archivum historiae pontificiae 7 (1969): 222-27, discusses the Libellus . See also Fragnito, "Cultura umanistica," 128-29, for possible links between the Libellus and the Consilium .

[69] Carafa knew Paolo Giustiniani personally; see R. de Maulde La Clavière, S. Gaetano da Thiene e la riforma cattolica italiana (1480-1527 ) (Rome: Desclée, 1911), 12.

[70] For a good general summary, see the following articles by Wolfgang Reinhard, "Ämterhandel in Rom zwischen 1534 und 1621," in Ämterhandel im Spätmittelalter und im 16. Jahrhundert , ed. Ilja Mieck (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1984), esp. 46-47; "Finanza pontificia e stato della chiesa nel XVI e XVII secolo," in Finanze e ragion di stato in Italia e in Germania nella prima età moderna , ed. Aldo De Maddalena and Hermann Kellenbenz (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 353-87; and "Finanza pontificia, sistema beneficiale e finanza statale nell'età confessionale," in Fisco religione stato nell'età confessionale , ed. Hermann Kellenbenz and Paolo Prodi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), 459-504. Still useful is Clemens Bauer, "Die Epochen der Papstfinanz: ein Versuch," Historische Zeitschrift 138 (1927): esp. 476-89 for the period from Martin V to Pius IV.

early modern states hampered the needed regular and predictable flow of resources to the administrative center, so that new ways had to be found to increase and regularize income.

Whatever the ethical and moral dimensions of Roman fiscal practices, historians now see them as part of the trend on the part of popes and curia to organize their finances and administration rationally. But Contarini and his committee saw matters in an entirely different light and judged by different criteria. They looked back to an idealized past of the church when fiscal problems were unknown and therefore regarded contemporary financial practices simply as abuses to be eradicated. Nor were they alone in this opinion, for reform proposals from various quarters regularly attacked papal fiscalism and demanded that the sale of church offices be curbed if not abolished.^[71] For reformers the sale of offices was a scandal, but for investors it was a profitable and safe placement of their money that also conferred status.

The authors of the Consilium mention no specific point in the church's history when financial abuses in their sense of the term did not exist. For all practical purposes, however, there was no venality of offices before the Great Schism. During the Avignon period it had not been possible to buy a position that would make its holder a member of the papal bureaucracy.^[72] But the pattern of expenditure changed sharply between 1378 and 1417, when large-scale borrowing by popes and antipopes made necessary new sources of income for the servicing and repayment of debts. Among these sources were the sale of offices and the exaction of payment for spiritual graces.^[73] Moreover, from the late fifteenth century on the popes became Italian princes on a grand scale, and their courts, armies, navies, administration, building activity, patronage, nepotism, and dynastic policy required large sums

[71] Or even that curial offices be granted according to merit; see John F. D'Amico, "Papal History and Curial Reform in the Renaissance: Raffaele Maffei's Breuis Historia of Julius II and Leo X," Archivum historiae pontificiae 18 (1980): 182.

[72] Walther von Hofmann, Forschungen zur Geschichte der kurialen Behörden vom Schisma bis zur Reformation (Rome: Loescher, 1914), 1:163.

[73] Peter Partner, "Papal Financial Policy in the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation," Past and Present , no. 88 (1980): 20-21; this article contains an excellent bibliography.

of money.^[74] Beginning With Sixtus IV most offices in the papal chancery, camera , and poenitentiaria became venal, as did entire "colleges" or organized subgroups like the apostolic scriptors.^[75] In addition, revenues were derived from increasingly liberal dispensations from impediments to marriage or from monastic vows and other binding obligations.^[76]

The number of venal offices increased from 625 under Sixtus IV to 2,232 under Leo X, at which approximate level they remained under Paul III.^[77] This pope also established papal knighthoods, among them those of St. George and St. Paul, which carried only ceremonial obligations but conferred resounding tides on their holders.^[78] Clement VII in 1526 instituted a funded debt, the Monte della Fede, which produced capital but then required service of the debt. With all their sources of income, traditional and innovative, the popes still had to borrow heavily to cover their current obligations. Paul III was no exception; he borrowed at high interest rates and had to channel revenues from the papal state to the repayment and servicing of his debt.^[79] Papal finances also involved the large Italian banking houses, so that wider and wider circles were directly interested in protecting the existing fiscal system and preserving the status quo. The question was where reform could begin in a system like this. Contarini's commission might in the end prove to be like one in 1497, which one of its members likened to a rider without spurs,^[80] while another had said even more plainly, "The [hot] iron, not the salve, must be applied to the festering sores!"^[81] knowing full well that this would not happen.

The crux of the matter was that Contarini and his colleagues were confronting not merely isolable abuses, but an entrenched economic

[74] Ibid., tables 6 and 7, pp. 50, 51.

[75] Hofmann, Forschungen 1:172-73; and Reinhard, "Ämterhandel," 49.

[76] See the list in Emil Goller, Die papstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zu ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius V . (Rome: Loescher, 1907-11), 2:43-69, for the kinds of dispensations given.

[77] Hofmann, Forschungen 1:173, gives the first figure; the second is from Rein-hard, "Ämterhandel," table on p. 52, where other sources are also indicated. Partner, Pope's Men , 38, considers the figure quoted for Leo X too high, arguing that it multiplies the real number of officeholders because of their pluralism.

[78] See Felice Litva, S.J., "L'attività della Dataria durante il periodo tridentino," Archivum historiae pontificiae 5 (1967): 140-43, for the creation of cavalieri as a means of raising money.

[79] Partner, "Papal Financial Policy," 25.

[80] Léonce Célier, "L'idée de réforme à la cour pontificale du Concile de Bâle au Concile de Latran," Revue des questions historiques 86 (1909): 433.

[81] Ibid., 435.

and social system. Any reform within that system would have threatened existing arrangements that provided for individuals, their families, and dependents, with wide repercussions for Roman as well as Italian ecclesiastical and secular society. The Consilium did not address these problems directly or submit a plan of practical steps toward reform. Yet the concentration of its authors on central theoretical issues gave the document a structure and content that set it apart from such predecessors as the Libellus and mark an advance over reform proposals that were essentially lists of grievances or abuses.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the question concerning the reason for existing evils in the church, posed at the beginning of the Consilium . For Giustiniani and Querini the answer had been that the greed and ambition of secular princes, and the ignorance, superstition, and disobedience of the clergy which spread to the people, were the causes of the woes afflicting Christianity.^[82] Their memorial repeatedly applied the familiar metaphor of a sick body both to the church and to Christendom at large, and demanded the action of the pope as the physician who alone could cure their ills.^[83] For all its outspoken denunciation of specific abuses, however, the Libellus in no way questioned the existing system of papal government either in theory or in practice.

By contrast, the opening section of the Consilium , in seeking an explanation for corruption in the church, raised the central issue of the nature of papal authority and the bounds within which it could legitimately be exercised. Here the similarity with Contarini's De potestate pontificis quod divinitus sit tradita and with his speeches to Pope Clement VII is striking. Papal authority is accepted as divinely instituted. However, the Consilium goes on to state that the popes have surrounded themselves with false counselors who assure them that their will is law and that they are absolute lords (domini ) over the church and its goods, incapable of falling into simony because they sell what is their own, and therefore free to do as they please with the material goods of the church and its spiritual graces. This teaching is pinpointed as the root of all evils: according to the Consilium , the difficulties and ills now besetting the church have sprung from this idea as from a Trojan horse.^[84] As the Consilium's logical structure unfolds, all the abuses mentioned subsequently are seen as having their origin in the exaggerated claims made by curial jurists about the nature of papal power.

[82] Mittarelli and Costadoni (eds.), Annales Camaldulenses 9:670-71.

[83] Ibid., 670, 671, 675, 707.

[84] CT 12:134-35.

The list of specific abuses is a list of symptoms of disease in the church. The prelates on the commission, like many advocates of reform before them, use the traditional metaphor of the sick body crying out for a cure. Their recommendations deal first of all with the administration of benefices and the reform of disorders arising from current practice, then point out the perniciousness of granting spiritual graces, such as dispensations and indulgences, for money. They urge that these practices be stopped in obedience to Christ's clear command: "Freely have you received, freely give" (Matt. 10:8).^[85] This precept, and not elaborate legal theories, should regulate the granting of benefices and graces.

The Consilium then addresses the problem of discipline and order within the hierarchy. Besides echoing several of Carafa's recommendations of 1532, it proclaims the need to reform the entire clergy from the highest levels down to that of the simple cleric. It states that cardinals should reside in Rome, taking part in the government of the church and receiving equal incomes, and should not accept additional benefices, especially bishoprics, which are incompatible with their residence in Rome. Bishops should reside in their dioceses so as to be able to supervise them and to give good example to the clergy, who in turn must fulfill their own pastoral functions. The thorny problem of individuals and ecclesiastical corporations exempt from episcopal jurisdiction must be resolved, since such exemptions contribute to institutional disorder. The memorial closes with recommendations for improving the government and morals of Rome, and for removing public scandals.

The Consilium was neither a complete program for action nor "a major landmark...in the history of the church."^[86] It failed, for example, to consider what measures should be taken against those who refused to follow its precepts. Even more important, it entirely left out of account two problems that underlay many of the specific issues it touched upon: the relations among the hierarchical levels of authority within the church, and the respective roles of pope and princes in matters of benefices and ecclesiastical appointments. Its significance does not lie primarily in its well-known criticism of abuses, but rather in its challenge to the prevailing system of papal government.

In essence, the memorial called for a different conception of the papacy and hence a break with the way business was then conducted by

[85] Ibid., 140.

[86] Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:123.

curial offices and tribunals in Rome.^[87] Contarini had argued in 1529 that a pope without a papal state was conceivable. The Consilium went even further. It did not discuss the pope as ruler of a state but appealed to him as head of the universal church, raising the possibility of a spiritual papacy purged of extreme papalist theories and freed of the dubious financial transactions in which it had become enmeshed. By the nature of the charge given by Christ to St. Peter and his successors, the pope was thought of as shepherd and father, rather than as a lord like secular princes. Restricting pontifical plenitude of power to the spiritual realm, the authors of the Consilium in effect condemned those canon lawyers standing in the long tradition both of medieval thinkers who argued that the pope wielded both swords and of famous jurists like Giles of Rome, Baldo de Ubaldis, or Augustinus Triumphus.^[88] If the pope accepted the major thrust of the commission's report, he would have had to curtail the scope of his power, restructure the curia, and conduct a major housecleaning operation in Rome.

The Consilium brought a new element to the pontificate of Paul III in the emergence of a group of strict—by the standards of the time, even radical—advocates of reform in Rome, with Contarini as one of its chief spokesmen. Already in 1536 the poet Vittoria Colonna wrote him rejoicing that he had sustained the bark of Peter so well by his labors, and concluding: "It is secure from shipwreck, and Your Excellency holds the tiller."^[89] This image of Contarini as the steersman of the ship corresponded to how his supporters perceived his role. Contarini was later to gain further reform-minded allies in the college of cardinals, but in 1537 the significant reformers were the authors of the Consilium , who championed the conception of a spiritual papacy that would initiate curial reform and bring about the restoration of discipline throughout the church.

None of Contarini's letters between July 1536 and February 1537

[87] Wolfgang Reinhard, in calling the Consilium "ein systemkritisches Dokument" ("Reformpapsttum," 788), is in my opinion the only recent scholar to assess its significance accurately.

[88] For a helpful summary of the entire issue of papal power in temporal affairs, see G. Gléz, "Pouvoir du pape dans l'ordre temporel," in Dictionnaire de thèologie catholique 12(2), cols. 2670-2772, esp. cols. 2713-51. The Summa de potestate ecclesiastica of Augustinus Triumphus (d. 1328), which contains an uncompromising defense of the positions of Boniface VIII, was one of the earliest printed books to be published in Rome (1469).

[89] Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller, eds., Carteggio delle lettere di Vittoria Colonna , 2d ed. (Turin, 1892), 127 (letter 76).

are known to exist. His one dated piece from this period is a short treatise on free will in the form of a letter to Vittoria Colonna.^[90] While the essay testifies to their friendship, it offers no direct clues to Contarini's ideas on reform. Contarini duly summarizes philosophical, mainly Aristotelian, distinctions between unfree and free will in the first part of the treatise, then proceeds to a brief discussion of theological issues, or "Catholic truth" as he phrases it. His biographer asserts that the theology of justification, touched upon very briefly in the treatise, is unequivocally Catholic,^[91] without explaining what this meant in the pre-Tridentine period. The letter shows Contarini's familiarity with the issues of the controversy on free will which divided Catholics and Protestants, and some knowledge of Protestant thought. His ideas are expressed without much energy, in a dry pedantic way, as if he had written an academic exercise; it concludes with this declaration: "All that I have said or written here I always submit to the judgment of those who are better informed."^[92] At a time when Contarini was grappling with abuses in the church and criticism of existing conditions, he found the all-sufficient remedy to lie in "Catholic teaching, to which we are almost led by the natural light [of reason],"^[93] and discussed free will without a trace of contentiousness or originality. He was anxious to preserve the image of man totally dependent on God, whose mercy alone could incline the will toward himself, but in such a manner as to stop short of Luther's formulations and leave room for man's own decisions. One can only wonder what Vittoria Colonna thought of this perfunctory letter, which virtually ignored Protestant theology.

While the commission was meeting Contarini continued to work on a treatise begun the preceding summer that summarized the achievements of the most important councils and synods in the history of the church. It was intended as background for the pope in preparing for the coming assembly. The Conciliorum magis illustrium summa ,^[94] despite occasional inaccuracy and lack of clarity, makes a valiant attempt to present the main issues facing the early councils, their most notable decrees especially in regard to heresies, and the role of papal authority. Contarini enlisted the aid of Cortese and other friends, who searched through Venetian libraries for works on the councils and collections of their decrees, while Contarini himself had access to the

[90] "Del libero arbitrio," dated 13 Nov. 1536, in Quattro lettere , 57-76. The Latin version is in Opera , 597-604.

[91] GC , 456.

[92] Quattro lettere , 76.

[93] Ibid., 75.

[94] Opera , 546-63.

Vatican library.^[95] His treatise, completed in 1537, reveals more about the author's thought in its omissions than in what it actually says. Less than one page altogether is devoted to the councils of Constance, Basel, Florence, and the Fifth Lateran! Avoiding any mention of the great controversies confronting the fifteenth-century councils, Contarini barely hints in half a sentence at the existence of conciliarism.^[96] Instead of dwelling on disputes, he directs the reader's attention to the reconciliation with Greeks and Armenians in Florence, perhaps as a model of how to approach the Protestants. He affirms that it is up to the pope as "head . . . from whom governance and jurisdiction flow into the universal church, and on whom they depend,"^[97] to call the bishops to the council. Again, the pope is pictured as physician to the sick church, who alone has the power to heal it.

Neither this short piece nor the letter to Vittoria Colonna deals directly with the questions before the commission Contarini was chairing. Yet they do evince certain attitudes consonant with those of the Consilium . The Conciliorum magis illustrium summa , like the Consilium , stresses the need for order in the church, which could only be attained by the strict upholding of the hierarchy and by the affirmation of the pope's power, legitimately exercised. Contarini in his personal tract shared the commission's view of the central, crucial role of the pope in the process of reform, likened to the healing of a sick body. Both works assume the possibility of the exercise of papal will with far-reaching results, as if that will were quite independent of economic and social conditions. Neither engages in polemics with Protestants; both documents stress instead the need for charity. The letter to Vittoria Colonna also reveals an open-minded, thoughtful Contarini, willing to add his ideas to one of the great debates of the Reformation. Those ideas are derivative, to be sure, but they are presented by their author as outgrowths of his personal religious development. Taken together, the treatise on councils and the letter on free will demonstrate his set-fled outlook and sense of mission. He hoped to guide Paul III toward his own understanding of the lessons offered by earlier councils, and Vittoria Colonna toward his ambiguous views on free will.

Among the proposals of the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia which

[95] Reg ., 87 (no. 288) and 91 (no. 299).

[96] "Post Constantiense concilium, ut servaretur Decretum de congregatione conciliorum, indictum fuit concilium, quod fuit Basileae coactum" (Opera , 563). Contarini does not mention the decree Frequens by its title.

[97] Opera , 547.

provoked disagreement in the college of cardinals was one stating that the pope could not derive material benefit from the exercise of his spiritual power. Soon after the presentation of the memorial Contarini addressed a short letter to Paul III, explaining his views on that point in greater detail than could be done in the Consilium .^[98] He argued that free bestowal is of the essence of spiritual graces, since they belong ultimately to God. Men, even bishops and popes, are only his stewards, not empowered to sell their master's gifts. At the time of writing this letter Contarini had not taken a firm position regarding compositions, but was beginning to make distinctions between the legitimacy of money payments for penalties imposed by ecclesiastical authorities and payments for spiritual graces. The brief letter does not go into detail on these matters, but its last paragraph urges the pope not to be concerned if his income should drop by twenty or thirty thousand gold ducats as a result of his reform measures. Contarini paints the picture of a pope second only to St. Peter, honored by the entire grateful church as another god for turning the tide of abuse, and merely hints that the pope could easily make up "in many ways," unspecified, any financial loss he suffered. The idea of a general outpouring of approval for the pope's actions that would translate into willingness to support him financially was now taking shape in Contarini's mind; it would be set forth more fully later on.

The reception of the Consilium by both Catholics and Protestants showed the difficulties that faced reform emanating from Rome, and dispelled any idea that the pope could cure the church simply by deciding to do so. The college of cardinals was badly divided.^[99] An inert conservative majority, mainly concerned with preserving the status quo, had no intention of supporting Contarini and his associates, who

[98] De usu potestatis clavium , in CT 12:151-53. The editor dates the piece to April 1537 (but adds a question mark). Dittrich, GC , 374, dates it to the day after the consistory in which the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia was read, identifying the consistory with the "conventus R cardinalium" that met "hesterna die," mentioned in Contarini's letter, CT 12:152. Jedin, Trient 1:584-85n.56, thinks it was written in October 1538. I accept 1537 as its date. It is most likely to have been written in the two months after 9 March 1537, when the Consilium was presented. The most important argument for the spring 1537 date to my mind is Contarini's own statement that he is not familiar with how compositions work ("Nescio quidnam fiat in compositionibus"), CT 12:153. After he began working on the reform of the dataria in April 1537 he could not have made that statement (unless his words should be read, "I am not an expert in the matter of compositions, but..."; the former translation fits the context better).

[99] Douglas, Sadoleto , 110, describes the situation succinctly.

formed too small a group to be effective alone. The opinion of the conservatives, moreover, was voiced by a small group of articulate and intelligent curialists who had the great advantage of fighting for what most cardinals and curial officials wanted anyway: no radical change. Paul III asked the whole college to review the Consilium and then listened to the objections of those who stood to lose most if its recommendations were put into effect. Their predictable opposition, however, was not so effective as that offered by more subtle opponents such as the curial prelate Bartolomeo Guidiccione and probably also Cardinal Nikolaus Schönberg.

According to Paolo Sarpi, Schönberg delivered in consistory a long speech in which he sought to convince the pope that the time was not yet right for initiating sweeping reforms. He is reported to have argued that the sorts of changes urged by the Consilium would put additional ammunition into the hands of the Lutherans by virtually conceding that their charges of corruption in the church were well founded.^[100] Because the speech is not extant, it is not possible to assess it more fully. Nevertheless, Sarpi's statement seems plausible, for Schönberg, as a German, would have been sensitive to how the memorial would strike Lutherans. Equally in character is the reply that Sarpi reports Carafa as making, that good must not be omitted out of fear that evil would result from it.^[101]

In the response of Guidiccione we are on more solid documentary ground. Guidiccione was no merely reactionary prelate but an experienced lawyer who raised some hard-hitting points in his mordant attack on the reformers.^[102] He had been for nineteen years the vicar-general of Cardinal Farnese in the diocese of Parma before retiring in 1528 to his country villa near Lucca. When Farnese became Pope Paul III he summoned Guidiccione in vain to return and work on the Consilium . But in 1539, when he was seventy, Guidiccione accepted an

[100] Paolo Sarpi, Istoria del Concilio Tridentino (Bari: Laterza, 1935), 1:134. Stephan Ehses, "Zu den kirchlichen Reformarbeiten unter Paul III.: der deutsche Kardinal Nikolaus von Schonberg," Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft 29 ( 1908): 601-3, defends Schönberg against charges that he opposed reform of the church and for that reason opposed the Consilium . Schönberg was influential with Popes Clement VII and Paul III; see Albèri, Relazioni , 2d ser., 3:268 (Contarini's relazione of 8 March 1530) and 317 (relazione of Antonio Suriano, 1535).

[101] Sarpi, Istoria 1:135.

[102] "S.D.N. Paulo III Batholomaeus Guidiccionus de ecclesia et emendatione ministrorum eorumque abusuum per generale concilium facienda," in CT 12:226-56. This memorandum is part of a longer unpublished work entitled De ecclesia .

appointment as vicar of Rome, became a cardinal, and participated actively in church government until his death ten years later.^[103] He knew the new pope well enough to be quite blunt in the congratulatory letter he sent him on his accession. He urged him to try first to bring about peace among princes, and only then to turn his efforts to reforming abuses in the church, the body of Christ, which he saw as diseased from the soles of its feet to the crown of its head.^[104] Guidiccione had established his reputation as a prelate seriously interested in reform^[105] who would not oppose initiatives in that direction without good reason.

Now Guidiccione turned sharply against the central idea of the Consilium , which attributed all problems in the church to the doctrine taught by papal counselors that the pope's will was law. Guidiccione as a young man in the households of Cardinal Galeotto della Rovere, nephew of Julius II, and of Alessandro Farnese, had had a close-up view of the most martial if not the most famous Renaissance pope, and he understood what a profound attack on the prevailing theory of papal authority the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia had launched. In defense of papal plenitudo potestatis he affirmed that true Catholic doctrine taught the supremacy of the pope over the entire church. He charged that the authors of the Consilium had misunderstood Christ's injunction, "Freely have you received, freely give": "That . . . was not said about benefices, which did not exist at that time . . ., but about the power of binding and loosing, of casting out demons, of powers, miracles, and sacraments," he argued.^[106] Regarding the desire to purify the church in accordance with some nebulous ideal that was worse than utopian, actually harmful, Guidiccione stated firmly that nothing in the church's organization required to be changed. He therefore thought the Consilium unnecessary and answered it skillfully point by point, citing canon law at every step. His main contention was that reform of

[103] For a sketch of his life, see Vinzenz Schweitzer, "Kardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccione (1469-1549)," Râmische Quartalschrift 20 (1906): 27-53, 142-61, 189-204. His writings for the most part are still unpublished. For a description of the manuscripts, see Hubert Jedin, "Concilio e riforma nel pensiero del Cardinale Bartolommeo Guidiccione, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 2 (1948): 34-35.

[104] BAV, Barb. lat. 1173, fol. 152r.

[105] That he was thought of as a reformer can be seen from the letter by his nephew Giovanni Guidiccione, bishop of Fossombrone, who warned his uncle not to come to Rome thinking he could change everything. The letter is a fascinating series of counsels on how to survive and succeed in the curia; see Giovanni Guidiccione, Le lettere , ed. Mafia Teresa Graziosi (Rome: Bonacci, 1979), 2:14-19.

[106] CT 12:231.

abuses could be accomplished only within established tradition, not through a sudden break with it. To him the Consilium , rather than proposing the reformation of the church and the restoration of its order, advocated its destruction.^[107]

Guidiccione's views were diametrically opposed to those of Contarini and the rest of the reform commission. As a canon lawyer he was concerned in his way with the welfare of church and papacy, yet he showed a complete lack of sympathy for the Consilium . What gave his views particular weight were his proven devotion to Paul III, the consistency of his position, and the absence of personal motives in his tract. He saw the key to solving the church's problems as lying in the strict observance of existing laws and norms that were already on the books but not enforced. Predictably, he showed no glimmer of understanding for the ideas advanced by the Protestants. As far as he was concerned, they were merely reviving ideas of already condemned heretics,^[108] and their spokesmen should be cited before a council and brought to justice.^[109] There was no point in giving their criticism a heating. Gradual removal of gross abuses in the church would be enough to answer the clamor of critics and presumably to quiet the authors of the Consilium as well.

The unequivocal expression of Guidiccione's position gives a revealing insight into the mentality of men who opposed almost everything Contarini and his supporters wanted to accomplish. Throughout his career as cardinal Contarini had to contend with numerous critics and adversaries like Guidiccione. He must have expected this. In any event, his Venetian government career had thoroughly prepared him for the intricacies of curial politics; he was no naive outsider in continual danger of being outmaneuvered by canny insiders. The major difference for him between Venice and Rome was the support networks on which he could count. In Venice he was a completely accepted member of the establishment, sharing its loyalties and part of a strong group of patricians who held decision-making posts of great influence. In Rome, in contrast, he was a member of a distinct minority that was critical of the prevailing system. Moreover, there was structurally a great difference

[107] Ibid., 233. Jedin, "Concilio e riforma," 56, thinks that Guidiccione saw the radical principles of the Consilium as leading to revolution, not reformation.

[108] CT 12:233-41. Guidiccione lists twenty specific Lutheran errors without having read a single work by Luther, relying instead on the writings of Luther's adversaries. But he did know Melanchthon's Loci communes; CT 12:234.

[109] Ibid., 243.

between the positions of those he served, the Venetian doge on the one hand and the Roman pontiff on the other. In Venice, oligarchic government functioned to a great extent regardless of the doge's views, while in Rome everything depended on the pope's support. In Venice, Contarini had been a close associate of Andrea Gritti. At the papal court he was never to achieve special closeness to Paul III, who kept his own counsel and admitted few men other than members of his own family to his inner circle.

The effectiveness of Contarini and his commission was also hampered by the Protestant reaction to the Consilium . If Cardinal Schön-berg in fact predicted another debacle like the backfiring of Adrian VI's confession in 1524, he was proved correct. In 1538 the Consilium appeared in three or possibly four Italian editions, three German editions, and one edition in the Netherlands.^[110] Schönberg may well have sent the confidential text to Germany for reasons that are not altogether clear.^[111] There it was eagerly read, and Luther himself provided the German translation of the memorial published in 1538 with an introduction and extremely caustic marginal comments.^[112] On the title page was a woodcut showing three cardinals trying to sweep the church with foxtails, effectively symbolizing Luther's estimate of the authors of the memorial. He found them hypocrites whose only object was to help the pope in misleading Christianity further. Whatever their veneer, the reformers on the commission remained for him scoundrels and liars.^[113]

Better known, and worthier of attention, is the more measured evaluation of the Consilium by Johannes Sturm in his preface to the translation published in Strassburg in 1538. He welcomed the memorial as marking a change for the better in papal policy and thought that the proposed correction of abuses should be applauded by all Christians. However, since the whole church was diseased, he said, it was not enough to remove the external symptoms of the malady without get-

[110] For bibliography, see Ibid., 131-32. The publication and diffusion of the Consilium met with disapproval, as reported by the Mantuan agent in Rome, 3 June 1538: "Here there is universal and strong disapproval that [the Consilium ] was allowed to be printed, because if it is not carried out the priests will seem to have confessed their sins and made them known everywhere, without wanting to correct their errors" (Solmi, "Fuga," 32). On the same page is mentioned a Milanese edition of the Consilium , thus far not found.

[111] Ehses, "Zu den kirchlichen Reformarbeiten," 600.

[112] Martin Luther, The Career of the Reformer , vol. 34 of Luther's Works: American Edition (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 231-67.

[113] Ibid., 290.

ting at its cause.^[114] Sturm applauded the Consilium's criticism of exaggerated claims for papal power^[115] but accused its authors of passing over in silence the greatest abuse in the church, which was the neglect of the gospel. Charging that the authors did not give an honest assessment of the situation for fear of offending the pope, he treated them to some bitter invective.^[116] In the last analysis he doubted the readiness of Catholics to break with the past, and he expressed his apprehension that what was billed as reform would turn out to be only cosmetic change.

With the comments of Protestants ringing in the ears of irenic Catholics and the cardinals divided among themselves, Paul III was guided by the majority opinion that the recommendations of the Consilium not be put into effect. The pope thus prevented Contarini from assuming leadership of the movement for reform at a critical juncture when it seemed possible that the attitude and practice of church officials at the highest levels might change, and that the removal of abuses might begin to address the difficult questions raised by Protestants. The often-praised prudence of Paul III in this case amounted to stonewalling, and the Consilium produced no practical results. The critical, open-minded majority of the commission's members were too far ahead of what was acceptable to the general run of curialists and cardinals who were Roman organization men.

The Theory of Reform: the Commissions of 1536-40

In a consistory on 20 April 1537 the pope announced that the opening of the council would have to be delayed until November.^[117] The recommendations of the Consilium , drawn up in preparation for the council, thus lost their urgency. Still, Paul III determined to proceed with what he called reform of curial offices, thus showing

[114] Walter Friedensburg, "Das Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, Kardinal Sadolet und Johannes Sturm yon Strassburg," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 33 (1936): 17.

[115] Ibid., 30.

[116] Sadoleto answered Sturm, as did the German theologian Johannes Cochlaeus; see his Aequitatis discussio super consilio delectorum cardinalium (1538 ), ed. Hilarius Walter, O.S.B., Corpus Catholicorum 17 (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1931). For bibliography, see Remigius Bäumer, "Johannes Cochlaeus und die Reform der Kirche," in Bäumer (ed.), Reformatio Ecclesiae. Festgabe Iserloh , 333-54.

[117] For the background, see Jedin, Trient 1:264ff.

some goodwill and satisfying Contarini and his group at least in part. He appointed a commission of four cardinals for reform of the dataria , balancing Contarini and Carafa with the conservative curialists Simonetta and Ghinucci.^[118] On 12 May, Contarini wrote an optimistic letter to Pole, informing him of the new commission and adding, "Almost all cardinals favor reform; the appearance of the consistory has begun to change. Things which are proposed have started to be no longer expedited so routinely. [Now] canons are quoted, and what should or should not be done is carefully weighed, so that I cherish great hope (I do not say I conceive a great hope, for I have never despaired) that our affairs will proceed better every day."^[119] Although the pope's political tactics gave neither side preponderance on the commission, Contarini hoped to sway the minds of those experienced curial cardinals who were not mere obstructionists and gain their support in effecting change in the dataria .

By the sixteenth century the dataria had evolved into a key curial office.^[120] While there are differences of opinion concerning its origins, there are none concerning its growth in importance from the time of Sixtus IV onward. By the pontificate of Paul III it collected fees and taxes for large categories of compositions (originally agreed-upon settlements of disputed claims by means of some financial arrangement, though by the sixteenth century the term had come to be used of almost all fees paid to the dataria ), dispensations (the granting of exemptions from norms and regulations of canon law in return for fees), and resignations (in effect, transfer taxes) connected with benefices. The head of the dataria (the datario ) was also in charge of selling venal curial offices. The dataria had its own bank of deposit, and its income was managed separately from that controlled by the papal

[118] Paul III's enigmatic stance, his indecision, and his compromises are puzzling, even to Hubert Jedin, who concluded that Paul III "cannot yet be considered the first pope of the Catholic Reformation, but rather its precursor," leaving the meaning of "precursor" in this context open; see Erwin Iserloh, Josef Glazik, and Hubert Jedin, eds., Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1963-79), 4:477.

[119] Reg ., 98 (no. 325).

[120] See Nicola Storti, La storia e il diritto della Dataria Apostolica dalle origini ai nostri giorni (Naples: Athena Mediterranea, 1969); and Litva, "Attività della Dataria," esp. 85-112. Still useful is Léonce Celier, Les dataires du XVIsiècle et les origines de la Daterie apostolique (Paris: Fontemoing, 1910), which on pp. 8-9 illustrates the business practices of the dataria by following an imaginary petition through the required steps before it was definitely responded to. For a brief orientation on the place of individual offices in the structure of the curia, see Lajos Pásztor, "Histoire de la curie romaine, problème d'histoire de l'église," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 64 (1969): 353-66.

depository general.^[121] The datario was responsible to the pope alone, who allotted the dataria's revenues. During the thirty years beginning with the reign of Paul III, the office's annual median revenue was 141,000 gold scudi.^[122]

At issue before the commission of 1537 were the theoretical, legal, and practical aspects of the dataria's operations, most importantly the justification for payments exacted for spiritual graces and the fees fixed for various categories of compositions. Unfortunately, the surviving documentation does not illuminate the workings of the commission clearly, and vexing problems of chronology remain,^[123] since none of the tracts and memorials that issued from it are dated. Contarini's participation in this commission produced several short writings that are most valuable in revealing both the strengths and the weaknesses of his position and way of thinking.

For one of their first meetings the four cardinals received a description of the dataria's categories of business, ranging from major matters concerning benefices to relatively minor ones.^[124] Contarini, chosen as secretary, was asked to summarize what presumably were the initial discussions of the commission and to add his own reflections. He did this in a document of the late spring or early summer of 1537, a combination of minutes and his own comments, which shows clearly that he was unfamiliar with canon law and innocent of legal terminology.^[125] He and his colleagues had before them intricate legal issues arising from dataria practices with long precedents. Contarini's way of dealing with these was to cut the Gordian knot by repeating what he had

[121] See the charts of curial financial organization in Partner, "Papal Financial Policy," 19; and Reinhard, "Ämterhandel," 60. Still valuable is BAV, Vat. lat. 13461, "Della Dataria Apostolica," of the later seventeenth or early eighteenth century, especially ff. 18r-53r, listing the most frequent categories of business in the dataria . However, since it postdates the curial reforms of Pope Sixtus V it cannot be used as a precise description of practices in 1537.

[122] Litva, "L'attività della Dataria," 157. Paul III's total annual income was about 375,000 gold scudi: Partner, 54. The figures in Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste , 5: 124 should be corrected.

[123] Jedin, Trient 1: 584-85, n. 56, has suggested the most detailed chronology. thus far, which however stills leaves considerable uncertainty. I differ from it in several respects, noted below.

[124] Contarini refers to this description or list from the dataria as scheda scripta : Friedensburg, "Zwei Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Reformbestrebungen an der römischen Kurie (1536-1538)," Quellen und Forschungen 7 : 263. So far it has not been found, but it can be reconstructed in outline from Contarini's notes.

[125] Friedensburg, "Zwei Aktenstücke," 263-67. Contarini's secretary Beccadelli in describing Contarini's studies and reading makes no mention of law: "Vita," 40-44.

written before: that the pope (and, by extension, the officers who reported to him) could not sell spiritual graces. But even this short document exposes his difficulty in keeping spiritual matters separate from temporal, and in deciding whether in a given case the pope would be acting in his capacity as pope or prince.^[126] Contarini's lack of legal training was a serious obstacle that in several cases prevented him from expressing his opinion clearly and led him to evade the need for a definite statement by using such phrases as "Your lordships must decide," "I am uncertain," and "This matter causes me great difficulty."

An illustration of his amateurishness is seen in his attempt to deal with the problem of avaricious confessors: "It would be scandalous for a confessor to hear confession, grant absolution, and then oblige the penitent, as a part of the penance, to give him money. Beware of any appearance of evil, says the Apostle Paul. [However,] the confessor might tell how poor he is, leaving the decision up to the penitent."^[127] Here an impractical side of Contarini becomes evident, as if he never seriously considered the situation about which he was writing or just where the fine line lay between openly directing a penitent to pay and merely putting pressure on him to do so. A similarly unrealistic attitude is found in the beginning of the document, where Contarini speaks of the weighty charge laid on the four members of the commission to "give Christian and faithful counsel to [the pope], on which in my opinion seems to depend the betterment and reform of the entire church and the whole Christian people."^[128] He expresses a narrow view that equates Rome with the church, as though repeating the old adage, "Purga Romam, purgatur mundus!" Yet these two passages are not so much evidence of Contarini's naïveté as of his deep-seated belief, seemingly impervious to diplomatic experience, that human beings were rational and would surely respond properly to a situation once its true import was understood. He consistently advocated honesty in human relations and openness that should pervade all of life, from confessor and penitent in the confessional to papal government in all its intricacies. Men should be willing to admit the existence of abuses, set about correcting them, and give a good example to the entire Chris-

[126] For example, in the section on protonotaries (in Friedensburg, "Zwei Aktenstucke," 265), and in the quite confused final section (267), concerning the incomes of temporary appointees on the diocesan level.

[127] Ibid., 267.

[128] Ibid., 263. The idea that reform must begin in Rome and spread from there was a commonplace; see, for example, the letter of Cardinal Benedetto Accolti to Contarini, 20 Oct. 1538, in Reg ., 106 (no. 369).

tian world. Then everywhere the church would change for the better, spurred on by Rome.

Contarini's optimism about human reasonableness is expressed repeatedly in writings belonging to this period. He believed that a growing number of cardinals was ready to support reform, and that the pope's "honorable and noble" mind would prove steadfast. Bishops, too, were beginning to show themselves, he thought, as men "who carry a bright light before us; so that I think we need not doubt that God's grace will overflow in the place where once transgression abounded."^[129] A year later, Contarini praised the German theologian Johannes Cochlaeus for his gentleness and restraint in dealing with the Protestants, and encouraged him to refrain from attacking them: "Let us show that the false things they preach and have brought to their assemblies contradict our fathers and the teaching of holy scripture. [Let us do this] not with bitter words or insults, but with great benevolence, friendly words, and such gentle and mild comportment as befits a Christian."^[130] Here again we see Contarini's deep belief that people will respond to the force of good example and to serious, non-polemical appeals to reason. While this outlook no doubt made his personality attractive, it also introduced a utopian element into his ideas on reform, and prevented him from making an acute assessment of the situation the church confronted in the Protestant challenge. In his desire to believe in the victory of good over evil, order over confusion, and reason over irrationality, Contarini sometimes minimized serious problems. The Mantuan agent sensed some of this when he reported to Cardinal Gonzaga that Contarini was "considered a man devoted to study rather than to affairs. When reform or such matters are discussed he seems to take them seriously. It is thought that he sincerely believes the talk of implementing [reform measures], notwithstanding the fact that despite the many discussions in the past no [specific] provisions have been made. This stems from his goodness."^[131]

But this goodness or outward kindness did not come naturally to Contarini according to his secretary, who mentions that his patron overcame his natural irascibility by sheer willpower.^[132] His gentleness was due not to blandness but to conscious self-fashioning, rooted in

[129] To Isidore Clarius, 23 July 1537, in Reg ., 278 (Inedita, no. 22) (cf. Romans 3:20 for the allusion). The text should be corrected by ASVat, A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fols. 32r-33r.

[130] Reg ., 297 (Inedita, no. 30). For the date, 8 November 1538, see GC , 272n.4.

[131] Nino Sernini to Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 26 Feb. 1539, in Solmi, "Fuga," 83.

[132] Beccadelli, "Vita," 48.

his view of man as able to control his inclinations by his reason. There was determination in Contarini's position on the curial reform commissions as well; he operated not just with good intentions, but with a definite strategy, one that becomes evident in his memorials and occasional pieces.

In a brief address to the members of the reform commission during one of their early meetings,^[133] Contarini made his position clear in a lapidary sentence: "Simony is the willingness to buy or sell a spiritual thing or something connected with it." Referring to both Gratian and St. Thomas, he emphasized that any exchange of a spiritual benefit for a temporal one was simony, period.^[134] The principle admitted of no exceptions, even if the end envisioned in the transaction was good. Spiritual graces must be given freely; principles of natural reason, the Scriptures, (unnamed) famous doctors, and the teaching of the fathers all agree, he concluded, that it is not permissible to withhold spiritual graces until the petitioner has made a payment.^[135] Contarini's simple, radical position precluded the possibility of distinctions, exceptions, or mitigating circumstances. This uncompromising stand was his platform to which he returned over and over again, making it the basic premise for all he wrote on the subject of curial reform.

His moralistic absolutism and refusal to engage in legal argumentation conferred on Contarini an aura of purity and incorruptibility that undoubtedly appealed to some persons, including Carafa; but it also led to the splitting of the commission into two factions that shared no common intellectual habits and could not work harmoniously together. Ghinucci and Simonetta understood clearly the financial implications of doing away with all compositions and, despite Contarini's impassioned pleas, could not accept his view. They sought the help of another experienced curial official and lawyer, Tommaso Campeggio,^[136] who drew up a short summary of the arguments against Contarini's position.^[137] Despite its brevity it shows the cautious, basically conservative, but thoroughly informed mind of its author, who de-

[133] CT 12:153-55. The meeting probably followed the one to which Contarini's minutes in Friedensburg, "Zwei Aktenstücke," refer.

[134] Summa theol ., I II , qu. 100, art. 1.

[135] CT 12:155.

[136] On the career of Tommaso Campeggio, bishop of Feltre and brother-in-law of the better-known cardinal Lorenzo, see Hubert Jedin, "Campeggi, Tommaso," in DBI 17:472-74. Especially useful is Jedin, Tommaso Campeggio (1483-1564): tridentinische Reform und kuriale Tradition (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1958).

[137] CT 12:155-57. It is addressed to an unnamed cardinal, probably one of the commission members.

ployed arguments from canon law expertly and effectively. By emphasizing twice that he could tolerate and excuse compositions without necessarily approving of them, he prudently avoided being labeled a mere defender of the status quo and thus losing effectiveness with the moderate cardinals and the pope. The prevalent tone in Campeggio's memorandum is far different from that of Contarini's pieces: in Campeggio we see a trained administrator open to limited change but confident of the basic justifiability of existing practices.

The reformers Contarini and Carafa also looked outside the commission for support, turning to two men with whom they had worked on the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia , Tommaso Badia and Girolamo Aleandro. Their choice made good sense: the former was Paul III's personal advisor in theological matters and thus a channel directly to the pope, while the latter was an ally valuable for his political acumen, even if his commitment to reform was less than enthusiastic. The four prelates drew up a separate memorandum for the pope, "Consilium quattuor delectorum a Paulo III super reformatione S. R. Ecclesiae."^[138] The document was signed by all four, but Contarini was its author,^[139] as can be seen from the many similarities with his previous address to the commission, particularly in the philosophical arguments and examples used and in the impatience with legal points.

If the pope picked up this memorial expecting to find a careful discussion of specific issues touching on dataria practices, he must have been taken aback. No attention was given to the arguments of curial lawyers. Contarini reiterated that all compositions constituted simoniacal practices when exacted in return for permissions or dispensations in spiritual matters. He scorned with unusual vehemence the argument that the fees were in compensation for the expenses connected with drawing up the documents connected with a particular case, and not for the dispensation itself, which was given free.^[140] He thought that such sophistry in itself constituted a scandal; it gave Lutherans cause to curse the Holy See, and would make it possible to commit the worst irregularities in the granting of favors and benefices throughout the church. Flagrant simony could always be called the payment for documents. The image of the sick church reappeared, and the pope was

[138] Ibid., 208-15.

[139] Stephan Ehses, "Ein Gutachten zur Reform des päpstlichen Gnadenwesens aus dem Jahre 1538," Römische Quartalschrift 14 (1900): 107. Ehses (108) dates the document between 24 September 1537 and 13 March 1538.

[140] CT 12:210.

urged to put an end to its diseases without regard to practical considerations. The repetition of some of Contarini's characteristic ideas is significant: if the pope acted fearlessly for reform, then the Lutherans would be confounded and the entire Christian people would return to its former veneration of the papacy. Contarini added a fresh and star-fling thought by calling on Paul III not to feel he had to defend everything his predecessors did: "It would be an enormous and endless undertaking to defend everything that all former popes have done!"^[141] If Paul III cleansed the church, his pontificate would witness an outpouring of love, and the faithful would make voluntary contributions to support their head.

The curious mixture of earnest and even passionate pleading with nebulous generalities about finances that we saw in Contarini's appeals to Clement VII appears again in the "Consilium quattuor delectorum." It was not difficult for the conservative members of the commission to answer Contarini and his allies effectively, especially after they added another formidable adversary of reform to their ranks as an advisor. Dionigi Loreri, general of the Servite order and later cardinal, replied to the memorial of the four prelates in a tract addressed to Paul III. This reply showed considerable tact, an understanding of the pope's character, and an appreciation of the psychological problems that acceptance of the "Consilium quattuor delectorum" would involve.^[142] Loreri freely admitted that much could be improved in the practice of curial institutions, but offered no fundamental criticism. He favored the removal of abuses connected with compositions but not the compositions themselves. His case was built on the distinction between the pretium , or fee for a favor granted, and the stipendium , or offering that the faithful were expected to make for support of the clergy. While he agreed that the former was reprehensible, he emphasized that the latter had been sanctioned by many doctors of the church, including Pope Gregory the Great himself, all of whom based their opinion on Christ's words, "The laborer is worthy of his hire."^[143] Loreri's presentation of his case was effective because it was clear,

[141] Ibid., 214.

[142] "Fratris Dionysii ord. Servorum postea cardinalis S. Marcelli ad Paulum III Optimum Pontificem Maximum compositionum defensio," in ibid., 215-26. For a summary of Loreri's main arguments, see "Ragioni di fra Dionigi dell'ordine de' servi, che fù poi il Card. S Marcello a Papa Paulo 3° per difesa delle compositioni," BAV, Barb. lat. 5362, fols. 188r-189r. The original document was written no earlier than the latter half of October 1537, since Loreri mentions that Paul III has been pope for three full years.

[143] Luke 10:7, quoted and explained in CT 12:221.

learned, and rhetorically skillful. He was at pains to establish a link between his position and the tradition of the church from the fathers down to more recent theologians and canonists like Scotus, Aquinas, and Bonaventure. His graphic picture of how Protestants would react to the abolition of compositions was carefully calculated to contradict Contarini's and win the pope over. He argued that the Lutherans would exploit the admission of errors and corruption in the Catholic church, because such an admission would prove them right. Paul III must have winced as he read that if the Contarini group's recommendations were accepted Lutherans would point at him as tolerating abuses and committing simony for forty-two years as a cardinal and three more years as pope. Loreri besought him not to allow his predecessors to be charged with heresy and simony and thus destroy the authority of the Holy See.^[144]

Loreri's tract, as impassioned in its way as Contarini's appeals were, could not fail to impress the pope, especially as it expressed views similar to his own. The pope must have been confirmed in his feeling that Loreri was fight by the additional support of Campeggio. At a point in the controversy that cannot be dated with precision, Campeggio wrote a succinct memorial setting forth once again the arguments for the legitimacy of compositions.^[145] Some years later he wrote yet another memorial for the pope that has been called "a classical summary of the reflections about curial reform on the part of a curial prelate open to reform but thinking along conservative lines."^[146] Although the later report is not directly connected with the debates about the dataria , it makes clear Campeggio's steady conviction that reform as envisioned by the authors of the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia or the "Consilium quattuor delectorum" would be impracticably radical. Campeggio's solution was that the reform decrees promulgated in the eighth and ninth sessions of the Fifth Lateran Council, which had remained a dead letter, be revived.^[147] He recommended making modifications to the existing system, respecting the fights that had been conferred in accordance with then-prevailing practice but introducing for the future a series of gradual adjustments that would avoid too sharp a break with the past. In the short as well as the long run, this was the approach that

[144] Ibid., 224-25.

[145] Ibid., 157-58.

[146] Hubert Jedin, "Eine bisher unbekannte Denkschrift Tommaso Campeggios über die Reform der römischen Kurie," in Festgabe Joseph Lortz , ed. Erwin Iserloh and Peter Manns, vol. 1 (Baden-Baden: Bruno Grimm, 1958), 409.

[147] Ibid., 413-14.

Rome actually took to reform,^[148] for Campeggio's moderate, basically conservative measures could muster the support of the majority of cardinals and curialists, as Contarini's could not.

After the "Consilium quattuor delectorum" Contarini found himself in a strange position. Once the defender of papal power in the Venetian Senate, he now appeared to conservatives to be attacking it, or at least urging its retrenchment. Contarini was much too practiced in politics not to realize that he and his handful of supporters could be effective only if they received decisive help from the pope. As the debates over reform of the dataria dragged on into 1538 without definite result he appealed one last time to Paul III for support. This most personal and moving of his tracts is a cri de coeur , stripped of all rhetorical flourishes and legal niceties.

Contarini's "Letter to Pope Paul III Concerning the Pope's Power in the Area of Compositions" in all likelihood belongs to the summer or fall of 1538.^[149] It deserves a closer analysis than it has received; indeed, it is not just another tract, but a most revealing piece of evidence for Contarini's state of mind at the time. Like many of his writings the tract begins with a philosophical discussion of the issue to be considered, in this case the limits of papal power. Contarini draws on Aristotle and Aquinas to demonstrate once more the irrationality and moral wrong of the thesis that the will of the pope is law. The Con-silium de emendanda ecclesia had warned the pope of false counselors whose exaggerated view of papal authority had brought the papacy into disrepute. Although Contarini now reiterates his favorite idea that such false counselors deserve blame for their wrong theories, he builds his theory on something far more substantial than a mere attack on canon lawyers, by analyzing the nature of papal power and in so doing drawing an exalted image of it. He argues that a close correspondence exists between papal and the princely power, in fact between all forms

[148] Campeggio continued to think about the issues of papal power in relation to benefices, as can be seen from his later writings, collected in Opus Thomae Campegii Bononiensis, Episcopi Feltrensis, de auctoritate et potestate Romani Pontificis . . . (Venice, 1555). "An Papa labem simoniae incurrere possit," fols. 162r-169r, examines the limits of the pope's power to grant benefices and stresses that he is their steward, not their lord. See also Jedin, "Analekten zur Reformtätigkeit," 135-36. The second part of this article has been reprinted under its original subtitle, "Kann der Papst Simonie begehen?" in the author's Kirche des Glaubens 2:264-84.

[149] "De potestate pontificis in compositionibus epistola," in Jodocus Le Plat, Monumentorum ad historiam Concilii Tridentini illustrandam spectantium amplissima collectio (Louvain, 1781-87), 2:608-15.

of power exercised in an ordered society: such power is by its nature necessarily rational. Because no power on earth is superior to the pope's, his must be the most rationally exercised.^[150] To argue, however, as some lawyers have done, that the pope's will is absolute is idolatrous, for it ascribes to the pope qualities that are God's alone.

Contarini's explanation of just why papal power is and must be rational follows, and the demonstration is striking in its deeply personal tone. Human beings have freedom of choice, and they can make bad choices or good. Only divine grace, given us because of our faith in the merits of Christ's blood, can ensure that we make right choices. Contarini here restates his view, so crucial in his own religious development, of man's utter dependence on God's grace. Divine grace guides the will to true freedom, and precludes arbitrariness. The vast power given to the pope by God, if exercised in accordance with its nature, can never degenerate into the sort of abuses that do harm to the people of Christ. The lawyers who have hitherto encouraged the popes to regard their own will as absolute have shown their ignorance of what papal power is by their false teaching: "That position is so very false, so repugnant to common sense, so contrary to Christian doctrine, as to deprive the whole Christian people of [good] government in such a way that nothing more pernicious could be found."^[151]

Contarini's own basically Aristotelian views on human nature constitute one element in this discussion. A second, as we have seen, comprises his ideas of the relation between man and God. The third is his sense of due order in society and politics, rooted in his Venetian background and experience. With high approval he paraphrases Aristotle to the effect that making only one man prince is tantamount to giving the power to rule to a man and a beast, since in the human soul are also animal passions and inclinations. Laws, not the will of the ruler, make for good government. The pope is bound to follow the dictates of natural reason, divine precepts, and the mandate of charity. Subjection of Christians to arbitrary papal government would be contrary to the law of Christ, which frees man. The pope is not free to grant dispensations as he pleases, but only in accordance with existing laws and with due regard to all the circumstances of the petitioner. The justification of

[150] " . . . Nulli potest esse dubium, quin auctoritas et potestas haec pontificis sit rationalis, seu rationis potentia, a Deo optimo, beatissimo Petro ejusque successoribus collata. . . . Haec potestas est omnium maxima in terris, qua etiam inter homines nulla superior" (ibid., 610).

[151] Ibid., 613.

arbitrary papal power has given Lutherans understandable cause to write about the Babylonian captivity.^[152]

Contarini concludes his letter with this plea to Paul III:

Holy Father, you have received from Christ the highest power for governing the Christian people: [but] that [power] is a power founded in reason. Your Holiness should make every attempt to exercise that great power together with the freedom of the will to the greatest extent possible in order that, thanks to divine grace and your own effort, you may stand firmly by the rule of reason, as I have discussed above, and not turn toward the powerlessness of the will by which it chooses evil, or to the servitude by which it chooses sin. This is the liberty, this is the power of the will, which when joined to the pontifical authority committed to you by Christ will make you truly most powerful and free, and the source of life for the whole of Christendom. When you rule and govern thus you will manifest on earth as it were a heavenly example of how to live.^[153]

This piece was no mere outpouring of utopian sentiments. It was an attempt to transfer to the government of the church some of the best aspects of what Contarini prized above all in the government of Venice: rationality, order, and the rule of law that made it impossible for one man to exercise arbitrary or tyrannical power. Contarini wished to reform Rome in the image of an idealized Venice, whose constitution he considered to be based on reason, equity, and concern for the common good. The question of compositions provided the occasion for the expression of his beliefs, since he was concerned here with general ideas rather than specific reform measures. This little tract remains indispensable for understanding the fusion of personal, Christian, and Venetian values that stamped his thought. If the tract lacks a well-defined systematic basis in either philosophy or theology, it nevertheless breathes a moral and ethical radicalism that centuries later makes it still accessible and attractive in an age more used to emotional appeals than to the patterns of thought characteristic of Contarini's time.

In a letter to Pole of November 1538, Contarini describes the pope's excursion to Ostia during a spell of Indian summer weather.^[154] En route the pope, who had read Contarini's tract on compositions, called him to his side to discuss the question privately. Contarini admitted to Pole that he had despaired of any real action on reform, but

[152] Ibid., 614.

[153] Ibid., 615.

[154] Ostia, 11 Nov. 1538, in Ep. Poli 2:141. Contarini describes the excursion and the pleasant weather in attractive detail. A short extract from the letter is in Reg ., 107-8 (no. 373).

now he "again became full of hope that God would bring about some good result and that the gates of hell would not prevail against the spirit of the Lord." On this occasion too, however, Contarini failed to fix the pope's purpose and spur him on to deeds instead of words—even though, as he reports, Paul III discussed many matters "in a Christian manner" with him. A week later Contarini and Pole were visiting Vittoria Colonna. When she asked why reform measures were not being implemented "they shrugged their shoulders, meaning to answer her (she has a quick mind) by their silence rather than by telling her openly the reason."^[155] In the dataria , for all the desultory talk of reform, nothing changed, nor were there any definite plans for change.

In the spring of 1539, Paul III enlarged the original reform commission of Contarini, Carafa, Ghinucci, and Simonetta by doubling its membership. The four new appointees were Tommaso Campeggio and Cardinals Cupis, Cesarini, and Ridolfi, all four of them unsympathetic to sweeping change. It is easy to imagine what Contarini thought as he listened to Paul III remind the commission "how he had always desired reform, and now desired it more than ever, but wished that the compositions of the dataria be settled first, without any regard to [difficulties in the way]."^[156] Although the pope's words were not to be taken seriously, Contarini continued to act as if he believed in the possibility of effective reform by continuing to insist on his strict interpretation of compositions that precluded any payment at all for the conferral of spiritual graces. At this point one of his most important supporters parted company with him. Gianpietro Carafa could no longer agree with Contarini's uncompromising position, "adducing many arguments in the opposite sense," according to the Mantuan agent Sernini, who obviously had excellent connections among the cardinals and knew details of the commission's discussions. The enlarged commission could come to no agreement, and eventually reform of the dataria fizzled out without any final decision.

The enlarged reform commission was also charged by the pope to reform the administrative tribunals—the rota , the chancery, and the

[155] Report of the Mantuan agent De Plotis, Rome, 18 Nov. 1538, to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga; quoted in Aldo Stella, "La lettera del Cardinale Contarini sulla predestinazione," Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 15 (1961): 416n.22. He corrects the text given in Solmi, "Fuga," 33.

[156] Report of the Mantuan agent Nino Sernini to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 19 Mar. 1539, in Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:132n.3, correcting the text in Solmi, "Fuga," 35.

poenitentiaria , in addition to the dataria —with two members of the commission assigned to each office. Contarini and Carafa were to investigate the workings of the poenitentiaria , one of the oldest curial offices and the central agency for granting absolutions and dispensations of all kinds throughout Christendom.^[157] When Protestant reformers attacked corruption at the Roman court, they most frequently had in mind the abuses of the poenitentiaria in the commutation of vows, the sanctioning of gross irregularities in discipline, and the resulting confusion and breakdown of order on the local level—all for a fee. But Protestants were not alone in attacking this office. Catholics, too, were highly critical of it, and many saw it as destroying the church. Among them Carafa stands out for the bluntness with which already in 1532 he charged the Venetian Franciscan Fra Bonaventura to transmit his message to Pope Clement VII: "Beg His Holiness for the honor of God, the welfare of Christendom, and most of all for his own well-being and honor, to muzzle those mad dogs of the poenitentiaria , so that their profit should not cost afflicted Christendom and the soul of His Holiness so dearly."^[158] Now, seven years later, Carafa was called to Rome to take part together with Contarini in an effort to remedy what they both considered a scandal.

Little precise information exists for the work of the reform commission during the year after it was enlarged in the spring of 1539.^[159] Jedin is right in saying that the new appointees brought about a change.^[160] They were conservative men, and their proposals were not likely to threaten the status quo.^[161] Contarini now had no illusions about the situation in which he found himself. He wrote no more memorials to the pope analyzing the basic problems, for they were apparently in-

[157] For the history of the poenitentiaria , see Göller, Päpstliche Pönitentiarie . See also Gene A. Brucker, "Religious Sensibilities in Early Modern Europe: Examples from the Records of the Holy Penitentiary," Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 15 (1988): 13-25.

[158] Gianpietro Carafa, "De Lutheranorum haeresi reprimenda et ecclesia reformanda ad Clementem VII," in CT 12:70. English translation in Gleason, Reform Thought , 57-80.

[159] Pastor, Geschichte der Papste 5:133, attributes the absence of information to a policy of keeping the deliberations of the reform commission secret as much as possible in order to obviate attacks by Lutherans.

[160] Jedin, Trient 1:347: "Es begann das zweite Stadium der Reformtätigkeit Pauls III.: eine allgemeine Kurialreform aufkonservativer Grundlage."

[161] Hofmann, Forschungen 1:307, thinks that they understood reform in the medieval sense, as a return to existing norms, "together with the utmost regard for current practices."

soluble for the time being, and in any case he had already said what he had to say about them. To judge by the few references to curial reform in his letters or in the reports of ambassadors and agents in Rome, the pope did not press the commission to expedite its work. He was preoccupied with questions of the council, of war and peace. If meetings of the commission were held, they did not produce concrete results. Contarini had some satisfaction in the inclusion of his friend Federico Fregoso and the reform-minded Marcello Cervini (the future Pope Marcellus II) among the new cardinals named in December 1539,^[162] but none in the progress of curial reform.

Not until early 1540 was there some sign of change. Papal legates and nuncios to Germany and France in that year reported mounting impatience with the dilatory ways of Rome and urged Paul III to action.^[163] In March reports describing the current practices of the Roman tribunals were submitted to the pope, prompting the Mantuan agent to write: "There is no more talk about the dataria . Seriously speaking, everything will be reformed slightly, without touching the root of the matter."^[164] In April, however, the pope seemed to take renewed interest in reform, enjoining the commission to accelerate and complete its work.^[165]

Whatever efforts Contarini and Carafa made to comply with the pope's wishes were hampered by the highly resourceful and experienced Antonio Pucci. A member of a Florentine family long connected with the curia, Pucci had succeeded his uncle in the office of grand penitentiary and was determined to defend his turf. Made suspicious by the talk of reform, he had asked and received from Paul III already in 1538 a confirmation of the privileges conferred on the grand penitentiary by Sixtus IV.^[166] How Paul III could grant Pucci's request and then urge Contarini and Carafa to proceed with reform of the poenitentiaria must remain one of the unanswered questions about that pope. Under the existing circumstances, Contarini and Carafa could

[162] Fregoso to Contarini, Gubbio, 23 Dec. 1539, in Reg ., 120 (no. 438); and Contarini to Cervini, Rome, 27 Dec. 1539, Reg ., 120-21 (no. 440).

[163] Ludwig Cardauns, Zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Unions- und Reformbestrebungen von 1538 bis 1542 (Rome: Loescher, 1910), 59.

[164] Nino Sernini to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 13 Mar. 1540, Archivio di Stato, Mantua (hereafter cited as ASM), Carteggio Gonzaga , Esteri, 1540, fol. 410 (Cardauns, Zur Geschichte , 58, quotes the last sentence.) I wish to thank Professor Aldo Stella for obtaining this document for me.

[165] CT 4:454, consistory of 21 April 1540.

[166] Göller, Päpstliche Pönitentiarie 2(2):93-94, 82-85.

do little. Even the politic Aleandro, usually careful not to give offense, could not contain his anger when the subject of the poenitentiaria was brought up in consistory. He begged the pope not to require him to speak about it, for otherwise he would say things that would darken even the sun; he attacked Pucci so furiously as to leave the latter stunned.^[167] Contarini and Carafa concentrated on Pucci. Their sessions were stormy at times; Contarini described them as combats,^[168] while Pucci was enraged by what he saw as Contarini's stubbornness. He told the Mantuan agent: "Write to your lord [Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga] that he has never known a more passionate man or a worse judge than Contarini, who, disregarding everyone, wants his opinion to prevail over all others. He maintains that his conscience tells him to do this; however, I hope to God that reason will triumph."^[169]

Pucci succeeded so well in defending his interests that many cardinals agreed with him. Contarini alone continued to attack him, prompting Pucci to ask that the pope decide between them.^[170] Still, the grand penitentiary was under enough pressure to make him issue a series of reform decrees in the course of four years. The decrees are rather technical, however, bearing on protocol and minor matters (such as marriages during Lent) and leaving the principal issues untouched.^[171] Paul III did not openly take sides in the dispute between Pucci and Contarini; but suddenly and unexpectedly a brief note appears in the consistorial acts: "In Rome on Friday, 6 August 1540, there was a secret consistory in which the reform of the sacred poenitentiaria was settled and concluded."^[172] This reform amounted to nothing, though, for abuses in the poenitentiaria were not effectively dealt with until Pius IV's constitution In sublimi of 1562, followed by the transformation and reorganization of the whole office under Plus V in 1569.^[173] Equally insignificant was the appointment in August

[167] Pietro Ghinucci to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 28 Apr. 1540, ASM, Carteggio Gonzaga , Esteri, 1540, fol. 84v.

[168] To Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 10 Apr. 1540, in Edmondo Solmi, "Lettere inedite del cardinale Gasparo Contarini nel carteggio del cardinale Ercole Gonzaga," Nuovo Archivio Veneto 7 (1904): 263.

[169] Bernardino De Plotis to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 14 July 1540, in Edmondo Solmi, "Gasparo Contarini alla Dieta di Ratisbona secondo i documenti inediti dell'Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova," Nuovo Archivio Veneto 13 (1907): 12.

[170] Contarini is described as attacking Pucci vigorously ("a spada tratta"); see ibid., 11.

[171] Pucci's decrees are printed in Goller, Päpstliche Pänitentiarie 2(2):43-69.

[172] CT 4:454.

[173] The curia was restructured only in 1588 under Sixtus V; see Niccolò Del Re, La curia romana , 3d ed. (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970).

1540 of Contarini, Carafe, and Loreri to a new commission for putting into effect Pucci's reform decrees and supervising their execution.^[174] The plain fact was that for all the efforts of Contarini and the handful of like-minded men curial reform had not advanced, and there were no significant changes.

It would be tempting to assign the whole blame for the failure of reform in Rome between 1536 and 1540 to Paul III, but such a conclusion would be far too simple. The pope was maneuvering in an extremely complex political situation, as the first volume of Jedin's History of the Council of Trent amply demonstrates. While Paul III sought to be peacemaker between the emperor and the king of France, he had also to face Protestant strength and increasing militancy. After the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia backfired in Germany, the pope was understandably reluctant to heap more ashes on his own head in public; Guidiccione's representations had made their impact on him. By comparison with war, peace, the approaching council, and the Protestant challenge, curial reform was of only secondary interest to the pope. Contarini's perspective was different. He continued to insist on his ideas, though at times he was unfortunate in the moment he chose to do so, as in 1538 while Paul III was preoccupied by wider issues.

Another factor contributing to Contarini's failure to move the pope was the economic situation. In 1540 prices rose steeply. Contarini himself felt the inadequacy of his income and had to remind the bishop of Pamplona that a pension he was to receive from the income of that bishopric was overdue.^[175] At this point nothing could have been less welcome to curial officials than a plan like Contarini's that would decrease curial revenues, since they, too, were pressed for money. Determined opposition to reform came from associations of minor curial officials such as scribes, secretaries, and abbreviators, and they drew up memorials explaining their various positions regarding proposed changes that would affect them.^[176] Paul III was too politic to disregard their opinions, especially since men he trusted, like Tommaso Campeggio, urged him to respect the rights of curial officials.^[177] Indeed, the pope seemed to need little urging, for on seven occasions between 1535 and 1540 he confirmed their privileges, which for most

[174] CT 4:454. The commission was again enlarged, this time to twelve members.

[175] Cardauns, Zur Geschichte , 62.

[176] For examples of these objections, see CT 4:471-79.

[177] For Campeggio's views on this subject, see Jedin, "Eine unbekannte Denkschrift," 409-10.

officials included the right to dispose of their offices as their property, even through their wills.^[178]

The pope's actions of course had the effect of almost completely negating the effectiveness of the reform commission's work. But then again, Paul III had no realistic alternatives. There was no possibility of abolishing venal offices, since to do so would require that they all be bought back from their holders. Contemporaries were well aware of this fact. The astute Cardinal Gonzaga, for example, in writing to Contarini of his desire to see the poenitentiaria reformed, raised two uncomfortable questions:

What benefit will Christianity derive from the correction of abuses in the poenitentiaria if the same documents that it currently executes are executed by some other office at the [papal] court? It does not seem to me that anything would be accomplished in that case except to take the profit away from Santiquattro [Pucci, whose titular church was Santi Quattro Coronati] and give it to someone else. The second thing I want to know is what will be done with the officials of the poenitentiaria who bought their offices in good faith from those entitled to sell them, in order to get a certain percentage [as return on their investment]. How will it be possible not to injure them?^[179]

Cardinal Gonzaga expressed here what many even of those sympathetic to reform must have thought, especially since more conservative cardinals insisted that officials who had bought their offices must be reimbursed before changes could be initiated.^[180]

Contarini was unable to give answers to Gonzaga's questions or come up with practical alternatives. But then, his concern with reform was of a theoretical order; finding new sources of papal revenue was not an issue. His firm conviction was that details of papal finances would be taken care of in the wake of serious actual reform of curial offices, and that change would have to begin with the pope himself. Only he could break with the financial policies of his predecessors by refusing to agree with canon lawyers who maintained his freedom to decide in financial matters.

It was a strangely paradoxical situation in which Contarini called on

[178] See Hofmann, Forschungen 2:68, for these confirmations. He mentions (1: 315) the possibility that Paul III dealt with the curia in this way in order to break the resistance to reform as such, but this explanation seems improbable since the confirmations did not lessen opposition to reform in the least. Jedin, Trient 1:338, mentions the toughness of curial officials in defending their rights and privileges.

[179] Friedensburg, "Briefwechsel," 204-5.

[180] Pietro Ghinucci to Ercole Gonzaga, Rome, 5 May 1540, ASM, Carteggio Gonzaga , Esteri, 1540, fol. 87r.

Paul III to assert his independence of the curia and his authority over it by denouncing extreme papalism and the exaggeration of his power. Behind all the debates in which Contarini had engaged, the proposals and memorials he had written, lay something of great significance for the church: a radical concept of reform. Contarini and his partisans saw clearly that it was no longer possible to define reform, as for example Guidiccione or Campeggio had done, as a return to the observance of existing decrees and laws. Open to the new spirit of their own age, Contarini and sympathizers with his view understood the gravity of Protestant attacks on existing ecclesiastical authority and wanted to redefine it with respect not only to the past but also to the future. Contarini's constant message to the pope during the years he was a member of various reform commissions had an elegant simplicity and austerity. He urged Paul III to cut the Gordian knot of technicalities, verbiage, custom, and abuse, which had come to obscure the true nature of his power. That power was spiritual and paternal. There was no need to feel trapped in the web former popes had spun, or to excuse their aberrations. Look to the future, Holy Father, Contarini urged Paul III again and again, and make use of your authority in full charity for the good of all men!

Contarini did not live to see meaningful reform in Rome. The results of his work were ultimately disappointing, attempts to attribute importance to the reform commissions notwithstanding.^[181] He did not succeed in swaying the pope, who throughout his reign remained the great compromiser, unwilling to throw in his lot with any one group. His court remained entangled in nepotism and dubious political and financial deals. Girolamo Seripando, general of the Augustinians, summed up his reform activities epigrammatically: "Dixit et non fecit"—he talked but did nothing.^[182] Even the conservative Ghinucci warned the pope of the danger he ran by talking about reform without following up his words by deeds.^[183]

Contarini, despite the setbacks he experienced in Rome, was objective in appraising the success of reform at the papal court. King Ferdinand of Austria complained to him in 1541 that the pope had

[181] Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste 5:150-52; and Ehses, "Kirchliche Reformarbeiten," 167. Both overestimate the importance of curial reform under Paul III, especially Pastor, who compares the Farnese pope with Adrian VI in stating that both "aimed at the same lofty objectives"—an excessively favorable judgment of Paul III by any standard.

[182] CT 2:449; and Jedin, Trient 1:588n.92.

[183] Solmi, "Fuga," 37.

promised reform many times without any result. Contarini gave a wise answer:

First of all I said His most wise Majesty knows that it is not possible to do everything at once, and that it is necessary to go forward according to the nature of the issues. The reform [of the curia] had not reached perfection, but I pointed out to him that many things were reformed, reminding him of episcopal residence,^[184] which he praised highly. I mentioned that many highly worthy men had been promoted to the rank of cardinal, and he agreed with the truth of that. I concluded [by saying] that His Majesty could see for himself, if he examined the ways of the [Roman] court, how different they are from the practices that existed in times past under other popes.^[185]

Here we see another side of Contarini, that of the realist familiar with the situation in Rome who seeks to defend Paul III by putting his few positive actions in a long-term perspective and arguing for their significance.

Nevertheless, the Habsburg brothers were not impressed with the progress of curial reform, and their attitude was reinforced by Granvelle, who in a report some months later to Charles V said bluntly that Paul III's aim was to retain all the spiritual and temporal powers of the papacy and to forget reform as soon as it was no longer talked of.^[186] Contarini's defense of the pope's reform activities was, however, a sensible and, as it proved, correct assessment of the situation in Rome. His judgment still stands: the one notable achievement of Paul III in furthering church reform before the Council of Trent was that he drew outstanding men to Rome and appointed enough of them cardinals so as to begin changing the Sacred College for the better. He invited reform-minded prelates to speak their mind, giving them a forum for their views and treating them with respect. In the end, though, he failed to support them or to create an environment in Rome in which they could put their ideas into practice. The concrete proposals made by Contarini and his friends during their work on the reform commissions were important only insofar as they survived in the thought of others who came after them.

[184] Contarini is referring to attempts by Paul III to require bishops to reside in their dioceses; see CT 4:454 and n. 5; and Cortese to Contarini, San Benedetto, 29 Dec. 1540, in Reg ., 138 (no. 523).

[185] Ludwig von Pastor, "Die Correspondenz des Cardinals Contarini während seiner deutschen Legation (1541)," Historisches Jahrbuch der Gorresgesellschaft 1 (1880): 487.

[186] Friedensburg, "Das Consilium de emendanda ecclesia," 4. The report was of 28 November 1541.

The Practical Cardinal

The best-known aspect of Contarini's curial career before his mission to Germany in 1541 is his work on the reform commissions, and their failure has led to a distorted image of him as an outsider battling entrenched interests in Rome. While there is some truth to this view, it should be stressed that Contarini was no impractical dreamer among seasoned curial hands, or the proverbial Venetian sheep among Roman wolves. He took an uncompromising stand on the nature of papal power, but he did not break with those of his colleagues who thought otherwise. His diplomatic training stood him in good stead, and on the whole he managed to retain the goodwill of men with whom he disagreed. Pucci's sharp words about Contarini's manner are an exception; in other quarters there was general praise for his kind ways. The pope and his ever more important grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, were not alienated by Contarini's occasional criticism, as when he openly disapproved of a pageant organized during the carnival of 1539 by Paul III to please Margaret of Austria, the wife of his grandson Ottaviano.^[187] Toward both men Contarini consistently maintained a respectful attitude whatever his private reservations may have been, and they reciprocated by displaying their esteem for his person.

Contarini participated actively in the day-to-day business of the college of cardinals, involving himself in numerous practical problems. His career had a large and perfectly ordinary component of routine activity, and there is no reason to think that he considered himself or was regarded by others as an outsider. Paul III put him on committees other than those dealing with reform, for example one "for matters pertaining to the council" made up of nine cardinals.^[188] Contarini wrote about it to Cardinal Gonzaga: "We have met together many times. [Lorenzo] Campeggio is in charge of German problems [gravami ], and I of theological matters [materie della fede ]. Therefore I have formed a separate [sub]committee of theologians and we often meet together. If everyone has good will there won't be many issues."^[189] Nothing is known about these meetings (they are not

[187] Report of the French ambassador Grignan, Rome, 19 Feb. 1539, in Guillaume Ribier, Lettres et memoires d'estat, des roys, princes, ambassadeurs, et autres ministres, sous les regnes de François premier, Henry II et François II (Paris, 1666), 384.

[188] On 7 January 1537; see CT 4:142.

[189] Rome, 8 Feb. 1538, in Friedensburg, "Briefwechsel," 188 (letter 20).

mentioned in the very few surviving letters of Contarini from 1538) or about the theologians he consulted. But the fact that the pope gave him discretion to chair such a subcommittee and drew him closely into the preparations for the council is indicative of the confidence Paul III felt in him.

Contarini's other offices in the curia included the important position of treasurer, or camerarius , of the college of cardinals for the year 1540, in which post he succeeded a notable curial insider, Cardinal Simonetta.^[190] He had the assistance of two clerks of this college in the discharge of his responsibilities. One of his main functions was to oversee the division of the collective income of the cardinals; but although the dates on which this was done are recorded, the sums involved are not mentioned.^[191] He was succeeded as camerarius by Carafa, elected for 1541.^[192] That both these prominent reformers held this high elective position argues strongly against their being considered outsiders by their colleagues.

Further proof of Contarini's good standing with Paul III was his inclusion in the papal train at the meeting in Nice between Francis I and Charles V in May and June 1538. Again, extant documents do not indicate the extent of Contarini's involvement in the diplomatic negotiations for a ten-year truce between the Habsburg and Valois rulers; yet he fully supported any effort by Paul III to bring about peace and considered the pope as potentially the most effective peacemaker among European princes, as we have seen. Contarini was regarded highly at both the French and imperial courts. Francis I spoke with him at length, and the king's sister, Margaret of Angoulême, literally overwhelmed him with her affectionate greeting and kisses;^[193] meanwhile, Charles V asked him to explain his position regarding war against the Turks to the Venetian government, thus to act as a trusted intermediary.^[194] Paul III empowered him to negotiate with the Signoria regarding the perennially troublesome question of taxation of church property.^[195] All these instances show that Contarini was an important and respected member of the papal court; the idea that he was on its fringes is simply not tenable.

[190] ASVat, Fondo Concistoriale, Acta Camerarii, vol. IV, fol. 24r.

[191] Ibid, fol. 31v:

[192] Ibid., vol. V, fol. 22r.

[193] Beccadelli, "Vita," 29.

[194] Ibid.; Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane 2:231.

[195] The nuncio Verallo to Cardinal A. Farnese, Venice, 9 Aug. 1538, in Gaeta (ed.), Nunziature di Venezia 2:183.

Among Contarini's practical concerns during his years on the curia was the administration of the diocese of Belluno. There is no way of reconciling his position as absentee bishop with his earlier pronouncements on episcopal residence and his unequivocal condemnation of pastors who abandoned their flocks, including the sharp words on the subject in the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia written while he himself was an absentee bishop. Did he remember what he had written twenty years earlier about absentee bishops?

They really feel they are adequately fulfilling their duties if they hand over the government of their city to a procurator while they receive the income. They swell the train of some great figure in the Roman curia, and concern themselves with matters of statecraft and war, but as to the people over whom they rule they do not so much as send a messenger to find out whether they are making progress or going backward in their practice of the Christian religion, and they completely neglect the poor of their flock. Is this what it means to be a bishop? Is this the imitation of Christ's disciples and the observance of gospel precepts?^[196]

The author of these words was bishop of Belluno for over five years, during which time he paid a single visit to his diocese in the summer of 1538. Evidently he accepted the bishopric for financial reasons: it increased his revenue by over a thousand ducats a year and after his death passed to his nephew Giulio, illegitimate son of his brother Ferigo, thus remaining in the family.^[197] We see Contarini behaving here remarkably like those whom he had castigated, but with one important difference. He chose serious and able vicars for Belluno, among whom Girolamo Negri stands out, and to that extent showed concern for the spiritual welfare of his flock. But the fact remains that his actions contradicted his words, a discrepancy that did not go unnoticed by his contemporaries. Even his adulatory biographer Dittrich could do little more than note that Contarini "did not suspect, as he wrote this [the passage about absentee bishops quoted above], that he too would be among the bishops to whom it was not granted to reside in the midst of their flock. Of course, his work on the curia and later during his legation to Germany served the interests of the whole church to such

[196] Opera , 412-13. See also Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma , 303, for Giberti's preoccupation with residence as shown in his testament.

[197] ASVat, Fondo Concistoriale, Acta Misc., vol. VIII, fol. 318v. Nilo Tiezza, "I vescovi di Belluno Giulio e Gaspare Contarini e il Concilio di Trento," Dolomiti 2, no. 6 (1979): 7-10, exaggerates both Contarini's role as bishop and his influence, and offers no new information.

an extent that he could justifiably have a tranquil conscience."^[198] Dittrich refused to see that for Contarini financial considerations outweighed scruples in this case; he concentrated on the advice and guidance Contarini gave Negri, and the clergy and people of Belluno, rather than on his absenteeism.

What emerges from Contarini's letters to Belluno is another illustration of his temperament and outlook. He highly prizes peace and concord among the citizens, and he is most anxious to restore order in what must have been a particularly dissolute cathedral chapter. At the same time, he realistically realizes the limits of his power to check abuses. A continuing source of disturbance lay in the scandalous goings-on of a convent of nuns just outside the town. Contarini's two earlier experiences with disorderly convents, Corpus Domini in Venice and S. Mafia Maddalena in Verona,^[199] had shown him how difficult it was for civil or ecclesiastical authorities to deal with recalcitrant nuns who were supported by their families. Now he was faced by a nunnery exempt from his jurisdiction. All he could do was issue an edict against those who frequented the convent without his or Negri's permission and declare them excommunicate.^[200] This measure failed to have the desired effect, however, and the matter dragged on, creating unrest in the town that drew a reproof from Contarini and finally his threat to call on the Venetian government for assistance.^[201]

There is no doubt that Contarini was solicitous for his diocese and concerned for the clergy and people.^[202] But the fact remains that he never had pastoral experience there except for his single visit of two months. His letters, thus, are an extension of De officio episcopi rather than the fruit of direct involvement. They convey his self-image of a paternal spiritual guide, but this, however admirable, gives no basis for

[198] GC , 414.

[199] In February 1537 Pole was sent as papal legate to France, and Giberti accompanied him. During the latter's absence Contarini was entrusted with the government of the diocese of Verona; see Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma , 170-71. For Contarini's indignation at the behavior of the nuns of S. Mafia Maddalena, see Reg ., 266-67 (Inedita, nos. 32, 33). The text should be corrected by ASVat, A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fols. 5lr-52v. Contarini called on the doge of Venice to punish male relatives of the nuns who offered armed resistance to the bishop's agents seeking to restore order in the convent.

[200] Reg ., 298-99 (Inedita, nos. 32, 33). Again the text should be corrected from ASVat, A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fols. 69r-v, 68r-v.

[201] ASVat, A.A., Arm. I-XVIII, 6461, fol. 92v; and Reg ., 302 (Inedita, no. 38).

[202] See GC , 411-22; and Reg ., 268-70 (Inedita, nos. 18-19), 297-304 (Inedita, nos. 31-40), and 305-9 (Inedita, no. 42).

judging how effective he would have been in a small diocese with complex social and economic problems.^[203] His letters to Belluno, although incomplete, form a great contrast to his correspondence as papal legate in Bologna in 1542, where he dealt with very down-to-earth matters.^[204] The former are mini-sermons, while the latter are succinct business letters.

In accepting a bishopric Contarini was merely inconsistent, given his own previous statements on the subject of absentee bishops. But another, more serious example of his accommodation to existing practices at the curia is not so easily explained and presents a challenge to the modern imagination. Beginning in November 1535 and continuing throughout almost the entire time he was working on the reform commissions, trying in vain to change the practices of the dataria and the poenitentiaria and vigorously attacking prevailing ideas concerning compositions, he himself was receiving a monthly pension of 260 scudi from the income of the dataria . The pension was increased to 500 scudi in April 1541, when he was papal legate in Germany. His close associate in reform efforts in Rome, Gianpietro Carafa, also received a pension of 100 scudi a month from the dataria beginning with June 1537, which was increased to 200 scudi in November; the same holds for Reginald Pole, who had joined the dataria pensioners for the first time in December 1536 with 100 scudi a month.^[205]

The hard facts from the account books help to illuminate the narrow parameters within which the commissions for reform of the curia could be effective. Figures make it possible to understand better Paul III's vacillation and his ultimate neutralizing of the commissions. He cannot be interpreted as turning his back on reform at the curia for political reasons alone, reasons that included a profound desire not to split the college of cardinals into sharply opposed factions and not to play into the hand of Protestants. By a fortunate chance the registers, or libri mastri , of the dataria are preserved for the entire reign of Paul III,

[203] Ferruccio Vendramini, Tensioni politiche nella società bellunese della prima metà del '500 (Belluno: Tarantola, 1974).

[204] Alfredo Casadei, "Lettere del Cardinale Gaspero Contarini durante la sua legazione di Bologna (1542)," Archivio storico italiano 118 (1960): 77-130, 220-85.

[205] For Contarini, see BAV, Vat. lat. 10600, fols. 74r, 77v, 79v, 81v, 83r, 85r, 87r, 89v, 91v, 93r, 94v, 96r, 99r, 100v, 102v, 104r, 106r, 108r, 110r, 111v, 114r, 115v, 116v, 119r, 121v, 124r, 126v; 129r, 131r, 133v, 135r, 143v, 116v (at this point the foliation begins again with 116, which follows 145), 119v, 123r, 126v, 128v, 132r, 134r, 137v, 140r, 142v, 145r; Vat. lat. 10601, fols. 46r, 49r, 55r, 59r, 61v, 64r, 68r, 70v, 73v, 77r. For the first payment to Pole, see Vat. lat. 10600, fol. 100r; to Carafa, fol. 109v.

permitting a summary of income and expenditures from that key office.^[206] They permit insights into papal finances such as Contarini and his supporters never had, since the books were meant only for the datario and the pope.

The registers show first of all that if fees for compositions had been abolished, as Contarini proposed, the pope would have lost almost half of the dataria revenues,^[207] and the door would probably have been opened for an attack on the other half, derived from the sale of offices. This income was the basis for the pope's running expenses, of which monthly pensions to members of his immediate family formed a large part. For the years 1540-41, for example, pensions to members of his family amounted to 81,438 gold scudi, or more than one-quarter of the total income of the dataria , whereas sums for charity came to a meager 6 percent of the total. In addition, Paul III gave his family extra sums for unusual expenses or costly presents. Thus for January 1540, for example, we find these entries: to the master of the household of Ottaviano Farnese, the pope's grandson, 1,500 scudi; to his wife, Margaret of Austria, 500 plus 700 more for the purchase of a pearl.^[208] Among the entries for January 31 is this: "On the last day of the month, 600 gold scudi to his Lordship Ottaviano Farnese, prefect of Rome, to spend for his pleasure during this carnival."^[209] By contrast, Michelangelo, then working on the Sistine Chapel, is listed for an occasional 100 scudi. Another cluster of entries in March for clothing, extraordinary expenses, and the households of Ottaviano and Margaret comes to a total of 1,647 scudi.^[210] Almost every month large, even exorbitant sums are listed, as in January 1541, when Margaret received 4,000 scudi, or July, when 4,600 scudi went to Ottaviano.^[211] To these amounts were added others from different sources. Thus two account

[206] Seven volumes are preserved, covering the period 1 March 1531-7 February 1550, and 1 March 1554-31 March 1555. While not unknown, they have never been analyzed in detail. The best recent study, by Litva, "Attività finanziaria," makes extensive use of them for statistical purposes without, however, offering the systematic examination of payment records that would be of particular interest to historians. Hallman, Italian Cardinals , also uses the libri mastri extensively as part of her evidence, though not as the focus of her inquiry.

[207] From 1534 to 1564 the annual average of dataria revenues was 141,500 gold scudi. The annual median derived from compositions was 63,000 scudi, while that from the sale of offices was 78,300 scudi.

[208] BAV, Vat. lat. 10601, fol. 52r.

[209] Ibid., fol. 53v.

[210] Ibid., fols. 57v, 58r, 59r.

[211] Ibid., fol. 104v. Hallman, Italian Cardinals , 151, has calculated that the subsidies to Ottaviano and Margaret from the dataria came to 23,246 scudi in 1539, 25,747 scudi in 1540, and 34,833 scudi in 1541.

books of the secret treasury during this period list twenty-three persons bearing the surname Farnese among the recipients of monetary gifts.^[212] Only a thorough prosopographical study, yet to be done, would reveal the extent of patronage to the pope's relatives, in-laws, and dependents of various sorts.

Paul III was the center of an extensive network of dependents whose income and social station derived from him. Indeed, nepotism was a key reason for the pope's inability to accept the proposals of reform-minded cardinals, for to do so would have threatened the complex structure that in the eyes of Italian society of the time involved absolute obligations. Nepotism and patronage formed part of the ideas, norms, and patterns of behavior involved in familial pietas, the safeguarding and advancement of family wealth, honor, and prestige expected especially of powerful family members.^[213] For the papal clan nepotism was the crucial vehicle for building fortunes and ascending in the social scale. The libri mastri of the dataria give us evidence of the process by which the wealth of the Farnese was accumulated—to be supplemented, of course, by other and more important records, such as lists of the benefices conferred on the family of the reigning pope. When Contarini called on Paul Ill to reform the curia without worrying about loss of income, he had no precise conception of what such a loss would have meant for the Farnese and how inconceivable it was for the pope to accept his radical proposals.

Barbara Hallman has argued that sixteenth-century Italian cardinals before the Council of Trent were enmeshed in the problems of accumulating, maintaining, and passing on to their families wealth derived from the church and that therefore any reform touching their vested interests was bound to fail. Reform efforts are thus thought to have been limited to areas that did not threaten property, such as matters of doctrine, education, or the suppression of heresy. These observations are helpful in elucidating an important aspect of the Roman situation

[212] Léon Dorez, La cour du Pape Paul III d'après les registres de la Trésorerie secrète (Paris: E. Leroux, 1932).

[213] For the best analysis of nepotism as a sociocultural phenomenon, see the studies of Wolfgang Reinhard: "Äanterlaufbahn und Familienstatus: der Aufstieg des Hauses Borghese," Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 54 (1974): 328-427; "Nepotismus"; and "PAPA PIUS: Prolegomena zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Papsttums," in Von Konstanz nach Trient: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kirche von den Reformkonzilien bis zum Tridentinum. Festgabe für August Franzen , ed. Remigius Bämer (Munich: Schöningh, 1972), 262-99. Although it deals with a later period, there are many valuable general observations in the same writer's Papstfinanz und Nepotismus .

and offer one answer as to why no sweeping, comprehensive Catholic reform occurred during the pontificate of Paul III. But it is necessary to go still further. The Italian cardinals do not bear the main responsibility for the failure of reform. They, along with the popes, the entire curia, indeed anyone of social and economic consequence in Rome, from these men's dependents down to the simplest clerks of the offices and tribunals, were part of a specific society that had evolved over the centuries, taking its final shape under the Renaissance popes. Only a revolution could have changed that society suddenly and drastically, an upheaval akin to the restructuring of institutions and patterns of property holding in the areas or states that became Protestant. In the Catholic church of the 1530s, that sort of change was unthinkable. The only other alternative was that which was actually realized: gradual change from within the existing system, far-reaching and sweeping in its effects but masked by the rhetoric of continuity with tradition.

During his years at the papal court Contarini and his supporters should be seen against the actual circumstances of the Roman ecclesiastical society to which they belonged, rather than set apart in a category labeled "reformers." Historians have judged Contarini by his writings and his efforts for reform of the curia, which certainly formed a sharp contrast to the inertia and obstructionism of most cardinals at the time. But his tracts on institutional reform were entirely theoretical, consistently exploring the principles according to which popes ought to act and culling arguments to support his views from philosophy and theology. If we examine what Contarini actually did as cardinal, not only what he said, it becomes much more difficult to distinguish him from the others. Granted that he and his friends were working toward an ideal and that as advocates of reform they were admirable men. But they were also practical and understood that, given the system, radical changes were not very likely. Pending the hoped-for but far distant reform, they still had to live, and they showed no qualms about receiving income from the sources that were available, sources their contemporaries did not consider unusual, let alone unacceptable. Contarini and Carafa, with no substantial family wealth on which to draw, depended on what the pope granted them. While on the theoretical level they worked for reform of the dataria , in practice they were its pensioners. Neither man should be accused of hypocrisy, nor should Pole, who behaved similarly. They simply did not think in our categories but accepted the standards of their world, separating quite neatly what existed in reality from what should have existed but

was confined to theory. Contarini's technical pluralism after he was appointed administrator of the see of Canterbury is further proof that what he condemned in his writings could nevertheless be part of his actual practice. He was not Mr. Smith going to Washington, but a man with a good grasp of how government and fiscal affairs were conducted in actuality, and he benefited from the system to which he belonged without what most Italian contemporaries would have regarded as too many scruples. Fundamental change in church government had to come from the top, from the pope himself, and not from reform commissions that were empowered to do no more than make recommendations. Meanwhile, reform commissioners had to live too.

In a very clear way the ineffective commissions and the unsuccessful reform of the dataria expose some nuts and bolts of the concrete situation at Rome, practical matters that should be given greater weight than they have been by historians attempting to elucidate the nature and limits of reform within the Catholic church. We are faced by pieces of a puzzle that demands a clearer explanation than has yet been given of both the thought and ideas of advocates of Catholic reform. Together, the pieces offer clues to the much larger question of why the church and the popes moved so slowly in matters of reform, and why that reform was so cautious and gradual when it finally did begin.