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THE ITALIAN REFORMERS 1534-1564
THE I T A L I A N R E F O R M E R S I
5 3 4 ~ I 5 ^ 4 B Y
FREDERIC
NEW YORK COLUMBIA
C.
CHURCH
M'CM'XXXII UNIVERSITY
PRESS
COPYRIGHT
1932
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
PRESS
Published April, 1932
PRINTED I N T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE BANTA P U B L I S H I N G COMPANY, MENASHA, WISCONSIN
TO FREDERIC CORSS, M.D. 1842-1908
PREFACE If any justification be required for resurrecting old controversies, it is that, since anything has been written on the topics which form the subject of the following pages, less and less water has flowed under the bridges separating the confessions, and it is now almost possible to cross without wetting the feet. It is no longer possible to claim for either side in the great doctrinal controversies of the sixteenth century a monopoly of the spirit of persecution, and it is no longer possible to deny that both were actuated by the conviction that it was better to burn here than hereafter. But the interest of these controversies is increasingly in another aspect of them than the one which concerned the Age of the Reformation, when there were relatively few who were able to discern the message of mercy in the New Testament. Unquestionably the minds of statesmen—or, at any rate, of rulers of states—played with the political implications of heresy, and more than once exhibited an intolerance which was rooted in material considerations. The mutual interdependence of politics and persecution, so generally emphasized in the history of Lutheranism in Germany, must be brought out for the movement elsewhere, for they were knit even more closely, if possible, in the time of Calvin and in the Romance lands. In the web that was spun by Valois against Hapsburg, the fate of reform hung on politics in France and Italy no less than in Germany, and the thwarting of the reformers in the south of Europe was due to politicians as much as popes, just as was the victory of the reformers in the north. This study of the Italian leaders in the contest grew out of the perusal of the letters of Boniface Amerbach at Basel, and led straight to the Frari in Venice. For help in amplifying and annotating and arranging the material which accumulated, I recall a long line of friends and acquaintances, stretching back through twenty years, each of whom has his place in the picture, though but a temporary one. Such are those obliging and appreciative correspondents, Miss Margaret Stahelin of Basel, Dr. Tiirler of the archives of Bern, M. Galabert of the archives of Toulouse, Mr. Alfred de Burgh of the library of Trinity College, Dublin, Sig. Soncini of the Queriniana of Brescia, the Rev. Bartolommeo Valimberti of Chieri, Cav. Nicola Barone of Naples. I recall generous cooperation at the libraries of Basel, Zurich, Paris, and Geneva, and at the archives of
viii
PREFACE
Bern, Basel, and Zürich. Italian libraries and archives are consistently pleasant recollections, and a special place must be accorded the Frari and the Marciana at Venice. The British Museum is in a class by itself. But there is one guide and friend who has played no transitory part in all this, for his spirit and example kept me at work as the years brought new duties and responsibilities not easily reconciled with research. Testimony like this of mine to George Lincoln Burr is coming to be unavoidable in works of this kind; and it is called for here, although this subject has shaped itself differently from the theme he once set me at developing. Neither he, nor those other cherished Mentors, Professors Walther Köhler, now of Heidelberg, and Nathaniel Schmidt of Cornell, has ever seen these pages, nor can be held responsible for their shortcomings. It must be added that leisure to rewrite the work, as I had come to conceive it, was first afforded when President F. J. Kelly and the Regents of the University of Idaho permitted me to take a leave of absence and accept an invitation from the University of Chicago to teach there during the spring quarter of 1929. With a teaching schedule framed to give incentive to write, I was able to recapture the spirit of research and profit by access to a notable library. The manuscript has been read, at different stages of its progress, and excluding the final revision, by three people, Professor Roland H. Bainton of Yale, Professor James Westfall Thompson of Chicago, and Professor Austin P. Evans of Columbia, whose idea it was to submit it to the Columbia University Press. I trust I have profited by the suggestions of each of them; and if I have not always followed them, let the consequences be on my head. I am grateful to the editorial staff of the Press and to Mr. Charles G. Proffitt, the business manager. To Professor Arthur Sylvester Howe of the University of Idaho, I seize this occasion to acknowledge obligation for help afforded on the proofreading. The spelling of Italian names has been difficult even for one who has a fairly wide acquaintance with Italy and Italians. Lelio Sozini, for example, departed from the spelling employed by his own father, Mariano Sozzini, and employed today at Siena. But he had as much right to do so as I have to spell my first name the way I do, or my middle name in a way which does not betray its identity with a once familiar New England cognomen. And of all Italian names borne by the dramatis personis of my tale, there is the eternal question of the termination—Gribaldi or Gribaldo, Grataroli or Gratarolo, Madruzzi or Madruzzo, Alciatz or Alciato, Stancari or Stancaro. I have adopted consistently the spelling with "i" when the name seems to be a patronymic, suggesting the Latin genitive, and I think I have followed the usage of the sixteenth century.
ix
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I use "Caraffa" and not "Carafa" with all deference to Professors Croce and Pastor and other modem writers. It is open to investigation how many of our spellings of foreign words are traceable to German or French or other outlandish students who sought to domesticate a name foreign to their own vernacular. I prefer "Curione" to the "Curio" of the German authorities, and "Vergerio" to their "Vergerius." These forms are their own signatures in Latin. I prefer "Butzer," the vernacular form he used himself, to "Bucer," which ought to be pronounced the same and rims the risk of not being. I prefer "Basel" to "Basle," especially if the latter be pronounced as if it were a French city. When it can be done without affectation, surely the best form of a name is the way a man wrote it himself in his own language; but it would be affectation to talk of Pope Paolo and King François and Jehan Chauvin. FREDERIC CORSS C H U R C H
Moscow, IDAHO February, 1932
CONTENTS I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
SUMMARY, 1 5 3 4 - 1 5 6 4 The Italian Reformation in General Hapsburg and Valois
1 10
BEGINNING OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION, 1 5 3 4 - 1 5 4 4 The Policy of Conciliation under Papal and Imperial Advisement Abandonment of the Policy of Conciliation
20 34
ITALIAN REFORMERS IN THE HALL OF FAME Valdes and His Circle at Naples Ochino and Vermigli the Preachers Curione the Scholar and Teacher Vergerio the Lawyer-Bishop Maggi the Diplomat
SO SS 61 71 74
THE ITALIAN DIASPORA The Rhetian Leagues; Negri the Poet The Swiss Cantons and the Leaders There; Bullinger, Pellikan, Amerbach The South German Neighbors and the Strassburger Butzer
86 98
T H E ITALIANS AND THE EPOCH OF REPRESSION AFTER THE PEACE OF CRESPV, 1 5 4 4 - 1 5 4 8 Francis I and Religious Intolerance; Gribaldi the Jurist Pope, King, and Emperor during the Initial Efforts at Trent Francis I and His Italian Agents, Vergerio and Maggi
VI.
79
105 114 119
THE ITALIANS AND THE LAST ATTEMPT OF CHARLES V TO COERCE THE PROTESTANTS, 1 5 4 8 - 1 5 4 9 Reaction in the Swiss Cantons to the Success of Charles V The Consensus Tigvrinus and Its Significance Reaction in Italy to the Success of Charles V
VII.
129 139 144
FIRST EFFORTS OF VERGERIO TO SECURE LEADERSHIP OF THE ITALIANS, 1 5 4 9 - 1 5 5 3 Vergerio in the Leagues and in the Cantons Politics, Heresy, and Inquisition under Julius n i Politics, Heresy, and Inquisition under Henry I I
VIII.
THE
ITALIAN
PROTEST
AGAINST
THE
EXECUTION
155 164 174 OF
SERVETUS, 1 5 5 3 - 1 5 5 5 Maggi a Fugitive in the Leagues and again in the French Service; Christoph of Württemberg and the Exiles The Question of Toleration Raised on the Eve of the Execution of Servetus; Grataroli the Physician Death of Servetus and the Reaction to It
187 194 201
rii
CONTENTS IX.
T H E ITALIANS ACQUIESCE IN THE CONDEMNATION OF GRIBALDI, 1 5 5 5 - 1 5 5 7 The Inquisitions of 1555 and thereafter The Letters from Poland; Lismanini The Trial and Condemnation of Gribaldi
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
T H E ITALIANS T U B N TO MAXIMILIAN AND SIGISMUND 1557-1559 The Last Coalition against the Spanish Power Ferdinand I and Pope Paul IV Ferdinand I and the German Protestants Sigismund II of Poland and the New Refuge of the Italian Exiles
241 2S0 255 261
T H E MARCHESE D'ORIA, 1 5 1 7 - 1 5 5 8 Bonifacio of Oria, the Amateur Protestant Dissensions among the Italians at Basel Bonifacio Persona non Grata at Basel Trial and Condemnation of the Marquis and His Friends at Venice
273 282 290 296
T H E ITALIANS WEAR OUT THEIR WELCOME, 1 5 5 8 - 1 5 6 2 Growing Antipathy to the Italians in the Swiss Cantons The Eve of the Council of Trent; Last Sessions The Italians and the Last Sessions of the Council of Trent . . . .
304 318 328
VERGERIO'S FAILURE TO SECURE THE LEADERSHIP, 1 5 5 8 1562 Controversies Excited by the Italians in Poland and in the Rhetian Leagues The Last Years of Gribaldi Vergerio and Sozini after Their Journeys to Poland; Death of Sozini
XIV.
XV.
INDEX
216 229 23 S
EPILOGUE, 1 5 6 2 - 1 5 6 4 The End of the Council of Trent Calvin and Lainez Exit of the Italian Controversialists BIBLIOGRAPHY Sources Unprinted Printed Authorities General Special Periodicals
337 346 351
359 366 373
387 390 393 394 399 401
ABBREVIATIONS REQUIRING EXPLANATION CSP
Calendar of State Papers, vide Brown, in Bibliography.
KS
Kausler and Schott.
PSO
Processi di Sant'Officio.
OC
Opera Calvini, vide Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, in Bibliography.
OM
Opera Melantonis, vide Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, as above.
QSG
Quellen zur Scweizergeschichte, vide Schiess, in Bibliography.
SGM
Sankt Galler Mittheilungen, vide Arbenz and Wartmann, in the Bibliography.
CHAPTER I SUMMARY,
1534-1564
T H E ITALIAN REFORMATION IN
GENERAL
The Italian Reformation is not properly the history of the penetration of Lutheran or Calvinist or Zwinglian ideas there, any more than the German Reformation is the advance of Calvinism down the Rhine, or the Swiss Reformation the growth of Lutheran influence in the Cantons. Even if it be considered as the solution of religious problems in the period of the Renaissance, and without reference to earlier movements like that of the Waldenses, it is the contribution of Italy to the spirit and program and achievements of the reform of the church, as the German Reformation is the contribution of Germany. Italy formulated through Marsiglio of Padua new conceptions of popular sovereignty, representative government, and constitutional monarchy which were moulded by Calvin and the Puritans into a new conception of the state. But she had no Huss or Luther to translate her program into action, nor, especially after the Captivity, any desire to disembarrass herself of the papacy, to be the seat of which was a unique distinction. Italian bishops had no national leader to force them to consider another allegiance than that to Rome, as in England, France, and Spain; and even after the reduction of one state after another to be dependencies of Spain or France, the Italian hierarchy continued to depend on the pope. The flagrant non-residence of the bishops contributed to the absence of particularism among them. Italy formulated through the humanists' study of Plato and Aristotle new conceptions of the Christian religion, of immortality, and of private judgment; and the Reformation in Italy shows evidence of intellectual emancipation more complete than elsewhere, along with a consistent defiance of other creeds (by those who are indifferent to their own) which has not yet achieved a positive result. The Reformation in Italy is to be distinguished from the Italian Reformation, for the Italian reformers were far more important for their work abroad than at home. Indeed Italian genius—with the notable exception of art—has always been more productive, seemingly, elsewhere than in the land of its birth.
2
SUMMARY
Students of the opposition to the Roman church in Italy must take account of the Italian mind, with its lack of reverence for the written word and for tradition as such, and its disposition to bring everything to the touchstone of reason. What it could accomplish in the service of the church is appreciated by remembering what Thomas Aquinas, an Italian born, means to Catholic theology; but Italian logic was not generally systematic nor employed in the service of the church, and the author of the Summa theologiae was not a typical Italian product. Scholasticism was alien to the Italian spirit and did not flourish on Italian soil, where there were no rules about the use of the "data of revelation." Rather are the academies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, together with their modem counterparts in student groups to be found in university centres, illustrative of the approach to religious problems of Italians who discount authority. In the academies—of Naples, of Florence, of Rome, of Venice, of Modena—dissent from orthodox theology was developed sooner or later, and was sooner or later found to be dissent from the new theology being taught by Luther and Calvin. T h a t new theology was itself, according to the thesis once developed by Paul Wernle of Basel, the product of humanistic studies pursued in Italy. Marsiglio Ficino, chosen by Cosimo de' Medici to direct the study of Plato inaugurated at Florence during the Council and trained from childhood to that end, was led from the study of Plato to that of the Christian Neoplatonists and ultimately of St. Paul. His lectures on the Pauline epistles, which he delivered at Florence, are the beginnings of the Christian Renaissance, and contact with the Academy of Ficino during their trips to Italy is the source of the interest manifested in justification by faith by Colet in England and by Lefevre in France—indirectly, then, by Erasmus and Luther. 1 If the work of the Academy of Florence laid the basis of a new theology—as that of the Brethren of the Common Life, that of a deeper spirituality 2 —opposition to the outward forms of piety took another form in a different quarter of Italy. At Naples, the "Academy" founded by Beccadelli, and often ctilled by the name of Pontano, its second president, was only one of a number of groups which came under the influence of Erasmian Christianity. These were indeed the starting point for many who later and under other influences became declared Protestants; but they were fundamentally mystic, and the disciples of "Wernle, Die Renaissance des Christentums (Basel, 190S). ' H y m a , The Christian Renaissance (New York, 1926).
SUMMARY
3
Valdes believed in justification by faith because convinced of the worth of personal religion, the religion of the Enchiridion, Erasmus's widelydiffused manual of the spiritual life. Valdes was a Spanish alumbrado, and his followers, especially Giulia Gonzaga, who carried on some part of his work after his death, imitated him more or less successfully. At Viterbo, too, in the house of Cardinal Reginald Pole, when he was papal legate there, members of the Neapolitan circle met after the death of Valdes, and the poet Teofilo Folengo may have been of the number, to judge by his Commentary on the Psalms.' It is not just to speak of the efforts of these earnest spirits as abortive; but their success within the borders of Italy was seriously circumscribed by the Inquisition. It was circumscribed too by having nothing to offer as a popular movement. No change in the spirit which left the forms untouched could alter the character of the church in the popular mind, untutored as it was in the south of Italy; and there was no wealthy and cultured middleclass to receive and transmit the impetus. Only the preaching of Vermigli seems to have stirred for a moment a popular interest at Naples; even Ochino appealed more to the educated and well-bom; the movement was, and remained, aristocratic. Upon the movement of religious reform in Italy which called forth the Roman Inquisition, the most important foreign influences were not Lutheran and Calvinistic, but Spanish. It was these which gave the Italian Reformation its peculiar character, not the indigenous movement, as the teaching of the Platonists at Florence may be called. It was in Spain that the leaders of the church took the initiative in attempting to root out the evils of clerical misconduct (while Spanish popes were contributing to the increase of these scandals in Italy); in Spain the mystics developed the doctrine of passive disobedience to the sacraments; in Spain opposition to the accepted doctrine of the Trinity was born. Spain produced not only Juan Valdes, but also Ignatius Loyola and Michael Servetus, the three most potent influences on the Italian reform movement, the first for the revival of piety he effected in the cultured classes, the second for the regeneration of religion in the rank and file, the third for giving that interpretation of the theology of the Reformation for which the Italian reformers came to stand. The Italian * De Leva, Storia documéntala di Carlo V. in relazione all' Italia, III, 371 n. Cf. Gothein, Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegenreformation, pp. 114-16. On Cardinal Pole: Gasquet, Cardinal Pole and his friends (1927); F. G. Lee Cardinal Pole (London 1883), and K. B. MacFarlane, Cardinal Pole (the Stanhope Prize Essay 1924).
4
SUMMARY
Reformation was, then, a blending of Italian logic (not scholasticism) and Spanish mysticism.4 If Italian humanism was directly responsible for Pauline studies and hence for the doctrinal revolution beyond the Alps, its influence seems to have been negligible at home, at any rate in a positive way. But that blending of logic and humanism could take place only in trained minds. Popular education could have made it a popular movement, but the simple acceptance of authority in religious matters, especially when supported by the eloquence of the companions of Loyola, proved more grateful to the masses in a land where popular education lagged; and it was in Italy herself that the Italian Reformation, imported as well as indigenous, was least felt. The knowledge of Luther's attack on indulgences and of the works by which the progress of the Lutheran movement was registered, step by step, penetrated first of all to the Venetians, into whose territory the routes of trade from Germany led; the Milanese enjoyed a similar contact with the Swiss, and the Piedmontese with France and Geneva. It was inevitable, therefore, that from the beginning the direction of anticlerical thought should be more "protestant" in the north than in the south, even if we disregard the Waldenses and the tradition of Claudius of Turin (ninth century), together with the probability that the Waldensian organization persisted in Lombardy and Venetia and served as an agency of propaganda. The circles bent on a more spiritual religion were, in the north of Italy, of such a character as to be called Lutheran, even though the impulse to their studies and discussions may have come from Naples. It was probably due to the enterprise of the German printers that they continued to be so called, for so well advertised were the Lutheran opinions that Luther must have loomed larger in the minds of Italians than the other transalpine reformers. The soldiers of Charles V in the war with the League of Cambrai may have contributed, though their conduct was not adapted to increase the prestige of Lutheranism in Italy. Zwingli, in setting his face against the Swiss going abroad as mercenary soldiers, would have deprived the movement in Switzerland of a valuable advertising agency if his efforts had been successful; and Calvin, absorbed in the organization of the theocracy at Geneva, made his appeal largely to the industrial classes, who were won by his approval of the particular virtues they practiced. These were not the most numer4 The most recent studies of the Spanish mystics are those of E. Allison Pears, Spanish Mysticism (1925), and Studies of the Spanish Mystics, I (1928). First of the biographies included in the latter is that of Ignatius Loyola.
SUMMARY
5
ous in Italy. Neither Calvin nor Zwingli were very well known south of the Alps. Yet Zwingli, says De Leva,8 was the only one of the foreign reformers who approached Italian philosophers with his bold criticism beyond the limits of revelation. He had brought the doctrine of the Eucharist into agreement with the testimony of the senses; he had deprived original sin, at least in Christians at birth, of every effect of harm; he had reproduced in the profession of faith which he formulated before he died the thought of Pico della Mirandola, of saints and sages of all times reconciled in the presence of God. A step further, and we have the Sozini proclaiming reason alone competent, denying the Trinity, original sin, and predestination.
Of the circles in the north of Italy, only Ferrara was considered Calvinistic because its nucleus was the French suite of the Duchess Renée and because far-reaching effects were attributed to the obscure visit there of Calvin in 1S36. But it is hard to say how far heresy and how far marital difficulties of another sort caused the perturbed relations between Duke Ercole and his royal wife. The circles of Florence and Siena and Lucca were early stamped as Lutheran, though Ochino and Vermigli, most famous of the Tuscan heretics, were disciples of Valdes; and the circle of Vicenza (if circle there was) betrayed the operation of more radical influences. At Modena was a group of humanists apparently uninfluenced by Valdes unless something is to be inferred from the statement that their evangelist was a Sicilian ; it was certainly in close connection with the German and Swiss reformers. Their interest is scholarly and there is nothing of the mystic about them. They missed the opportunity of leading a popular movement much as did Valdes and his friends. The chief doctrinal questions concerned the sacraments, in Italy as elsewhere. That these should have become the subject of debate at the outset of the reformation was logical, for they were connected with the earliest in point of time of all questions of reform, the reform of the clergy. The pivot on which all the sacramental questions turned was the character of the clergy, the validity of their work if tested by the criterion of personal fitness as evinced by their behavior as men. Of their work the cardinal importance really rested on their performance of the sacraments, their competence for which task was considered to be transmitted in an unbroken line from the apostles. Of the sacraments, oily Baptism and the Eucharist had survived the criticism of the re' Op. cit., Ill, 317-18.
6
SUMMARY
formers. T o the mystic all seven were indifferent; he had means of his own by which to reach God. He needed no priest or sacraments, nor in the last analysis a mediator. The questioning of the sacraments came then from the mystics, to whom they were nothing if not aids to that state of absorption in the divine which was to them the end of religion. They were not acts having virtue in themselves as the inception or renewal of a covenant with God; they were contributory, if indeed that much, to the intimately personal state of blessedness which the mystic yearned to attain. As part of a ritual which also included set prayers, candles, incense, vestments, and chanting, they were nothing to him, and mystic may be taken to mean a kindly sort of anti-ritualist. But the mystic was more than destructive; otherwise he would take his place with the other iconoclasts of the age of the Reformation; and mere iconoclasts have wrought more harm in the cause of religion than in any other cause. The mystic would have each work out his own salvation, his own attitude to the sacraments, crux of the whole matter. This was the attitude of Valdes. The questions asked by Camillo Renato and by Lelio Sozini on the subject of Resurrection entailed as their conclusion the futility of thought and reason on such matters. Lelio's questions on baptism and marriage betray another influence, that of Gribaldi the rationalist, pupil and elaborator of Servetus; he has not the indifference which should mark the mystic. He thinks one violates the sanctity of marriage by marrying one of a different faith; that one violates the sanctity of baptism unless one is baptized publicly; that one dishonors the Mass by being present when he condemns it. The sacraments are now subject for speculation and not at all indifferent, and the speculation of the school of Gribaldi feared not to go where reason led. That mysticism which yielded to rationalism in the keen mind of young Sozini had yielded earlier to the rational impulse in Erasmus and Luther and Calvin, and may have yielded in Valdes, to judge by what came to be said of his theology. Works like the Enchiridion and the Freedom of the Christian Man and the Benefit oj Christ's Death give way to products of the new scholasticism among the disciples of Erasmus and Luther and Valdes. Calvin's Psychopannychia, confuting the thesis which Camillo was later to support, shows even Calvin as touched with mysticism soon after his conversion, when he wrote it. Only the Anabaptists, however, represented, at the time the council of Trent met first, the spirit of the early reform; and with opponents easier to apprehend on the vexed sacramental question, namely the Lutheran and Calvinistic expon-
SUMMARY
7
ents of a new theology with much of the mysterious but little of the mystic, Rome found compromise impossible. In the propagation of the doctrinal reform, the university of Padua has an importance to be contrasted with that of the scholars of Florence. The toleration of the Venetian republic, in whose territories it was situated, attracted to it a host of students from beyond the Alps; and the German students especially constituted a power in themselves, protected by their own laws. Scarcely a single one on the roll of names prominent in the Italian reformation (whether "Catholic" or "Protestant") but is found to have studied at Padua, or taught there, or worked. A distinct impetus was given to analysis and speculation there, moreover, by the presence of Pietro Bembo, former secretary of Leo X, intellectual arbiter of the city and not far from pagan in his religion; and by the teaching, between 1488 and 1S09, of Pietro Pomponazzi, philosophical agnostic and interpreter of a revived Aristotle who was no support of the orthodox theology. His book denying the immortality of the soul was published in 1516 at Bologna, where he spent his last years. It was Bembo who countersigned the papal bull which, two years later, summoned him to retract his opinion without actually bringing him to book." Padua, because of the presence of Bembo, reflected more than other intellectual centres the spirit of the rule of Leo X, who like an Ommiade caliph, was head of a religion to which he was indifferent. The atmosphere was one to which the Italian students were particularly sensitive; and it weakened the faith of many of them when they came to confront the problems which the Reformation of the sixteenth century presented. At Padua, the writings of Servetus must have been known at least as soon as at Venice, where Melanchthon complained of their early spread. They would find congenial soil. From Florence the pupils of the Platonic Academy may have carried to France and England justification by faith in an Idea, though in Italy itself the traditional pioneer in the teaching of that doctrine (Pietro Speziali of Cittadella) 7 is not demonstrably connected with them. But the alumni of Padua had ' On Pomponazzi, vide A. H. Douglas, The Philosophy and Psychology of Pietro Pomponazzi (Cambridge University Press, 1910), and Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi; studi storici su la scuola bolognese e padovana (Firenze 1868). ' H e appears to have taught justification by faith in 1512 (and was not unique at that date, had he but known it). De Leva finds that he upheld free will however, and prized good works, including those imposed by the priests, providing they do not diminish the honor due to God (op. cit., p. 338). Vide also Comba, I nostri Protestanti, II, 221-55, where his treatise De gratia Dei is analyzed.
SUMMARY
8
no faith in an Idea; Pomponazzi taught them to doubt, Sozini cast a spell over them, and Matteo Gribaldi did much to make modern realists of them. Not a few associated themselves with the thought of Servetus, and became the pioneers of the modern school which would reconcile reason and revelation while asserting individual freedom of conscience and protesting against coercion in matters of belief. It is open to question whether those alumni of Padua who kept within the requirements of Protestant orthodoxy after abandoning Rome 8 rendered more than lip service and that from a profound conviction that thereby they gave God the greater glory. They fall into the category of "reformers" in the mind of a historian intent on establishing their connection with Lutheran, Calvinistic or Zwinglian theology; but here it might be preferable to discard the ancient word with its connotation. "Controversialist" better describes their character and their significance for the great question of freedom of belief. "Propagandist" would do, but for its present flavor, undeserved though that be. Of the struggle for toleration of belief, the Italian controversialists were the most prominent proponents, and the degree to which we have attained it today is in no small part their achievement. It is only open to question whether those who contributed most were the violent and unruly or the quiet and unostentatious. These extremes are represented as well as intermediate shades of interest. Why have the Italian controversialists assumed their prominent position in the struggle for religious toleration? In the first place, they felt most deeply on the subject of persecution, for their native impatience of restriction, of which Italian political history gives plenty of evidence, was now increased by a curtailment of religious freedom. Moreover they were primarily humanists, with whom it was a tradition whether disciple of Ficino or of Pomponazzi to balance philosophy over against religion. Third, circumstances made them missionaries; indeed it was inclination and not pressure in more than one case which sent them abroad to observe and compare. Lastly, a certain clannishness among the Italian reformed (practically all of them from the north) bound them together, while an organization continuous with that of the medieval Waldenses probably made their propaganda more effective than that of any other radicals. That their work bore fruit chiefly in lands outside their own is ordinarily attributed entirely to the activities of the Inquisition. In the present state of our knowledge, it would be rash 8 For
example Vergerio, Vermigli, Grataroli, Martinenghi, Zanchi.
SUMMARY
9
to make aught but tentative statements regarding that historic tribunal, but it is doubtful whether, if the archives of the Holy Office at Rome should be at last thrown open to scholars, its prestige would be greatly enhanced. The Inquisition projected by Cardinal Caraffa certainly fell short of the mark. So far from being Catholic, it became Roman; took its place beside the other territorial inquisitions in Italy, the Spanish and the French; and commanded deference from neither. Universal prestige the universal church could now command as little as could the universal empire; and the pope could punish heretics in his own dominions as could Philip of Spain or Henry of France in theirs. But not elsewhere. Outside the papal states, not even the device of subordinate tribunals could inspire fear of Rome in the rest of Italy, where Philip of Spain, ardent Catholic as he was, looked askance at papal interference in Naples or Milan; where the Venetian republic rendered ineffective so many prosecutions; and where Henry of France conducted his own inquisition in Piedmont. Only when the political situation recommended deference to the Holy See was the outcome of a trial by the Holy Office to be greatly feared. Thus the recent failure of the Regensburg colloquy rendered particularly sinister the prospect of a reorganized inquisition in 1542; the downfall of the Schmalkaldic League gave significance to the branch tribunals organized in 1S48; the alliance of Julius III and Henry II of France and the accession of Mary Tudor in England show why submission and retraction could be exacted, in 1554, of the duchess of Ferrara, most prominent of Italian heretics; the reconciliation of Philip II and Paul IV inaugurates the real activity of the Inquisition in 1557. But political situations were changing so rapidly up to the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis that no pressure could be brought to bear for long, and the activity of the Holy Office is spasmodic and intermittent. Far more effective in curbing freedom of thought and driving its advocates abroad was the Spanish rule, under which the national inquisition, like that of the Middle Ages, regarded heresy as first and foremost a crime against the state and accorded to it the confiscated property of heretics. It was thoroughly dreaded, for its procedure, no less than its penalties and purpose. Hence the difficulties attending the establishment of a new inquisitorial tribunal in Naples when it became Spanish territory. It was in Venice that Italian patriotic sentiment— religious, literary, artistic, political—took refuge; for after Spain became entrenched in Naples and Milan, the other states of the north (Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, Urbino, Florence, Siena, Piedmont) were deferential to Spain or France. When Venice in her turn conceded a measure of
10
SUMMARY
control to the pope, and the Veneto was likewise no safe haven, the Italian reformed turned to the Gray Leagues, within whose borders they had earlier learned to expect a welcome, and to the Swiss. But here too, a standard of orthodoxy was set up in the Consensus of Zurich (1549) and the confession exacted of Camillo Renato (1551); and the Italians, with few exceptions, were found to be as recalcitrant members of the new church as of the old. Swiss theologians were as slow as were the Catholic to see the bearing of the new theology, and after the execution of Servetus, disapproval of Calvin was shared with the Italians by not a few men of latitude. Therefore, when the prosecution of Gribaldi distinguished them as heretics in Protestant as in Roman eyes, new soil was sought by them on which to plant a church. It was soon found, for their missionaries had been active. The hopes of the Italians had been pinned on two princes of the time who seemed inclined to religious toleration, Maximilian of Austria and Sigismund of Poland. But Maximilian made his peace with the church of his fathers for political reasons, and Sigismund received the exiles until he was brought to decree banishment against the innovators in 1564. Hapsburg and Valois
The reformation in Italy, like that in France and Germany, was conditioned by the political situation. From the defeat and capture of Francis I by Charles V at the battle of Pavia to the treaty of CateauCambresis, Italy was the principal theatre in which the rivalry of Hapsburg and Valois was played, and the political role of the pope was such as to obscure his spiritual one, clouded as that already was by the absorption of the popes in humanism and nepotism. In Italy, the pope had succeeded to the post left vacant by Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, and his task was to preserve the balance of power in a land where a balance was the most that could be achieved between states which might combine against a threatened hegemony, but would make no concessions to the cause of a permanent union. Thus the diplomacy of Cosimo il vecchio had maintained in the beginning the alliance of Milan, Florence, and Naples against Venice and papacy; and Lorenzo il magnifico, after a brief excursion into a Venetian alliance, had kept peace in Italy until his death in 1492, along the lines laid down by his grandfather. With the conquest of Milan by France in 1500 and that of Naples by Aragon in 1504, foreign dynasties stepped into the place of native rulers, and the Florentine republic which had been erected after the expulsion of the Medici was impotent to accomplish what
SUMMARY
11
would have been difficult for a Cosimo or a Lorenzo. The alliance to be negotiated now against the most dangerous state was one against Milan (with a Valois instead of a Sforza duke), and the task was undertaken by Pope Julius II, who enlisted in the Holy League not only the other Italian powers, including Venice which he had all but crushed with the League of Cambrai, but also Maximilian of Austria. The knell of the French power in Milan had already sounded before the young Charles V grew up to confront his rival with the combined power of Aragon and Austria (not to mention his other realms), the ancient rivals of France. The Swiss forces retained by the Holy League drove the French from Milan in 1512, restored the Sforza there, and imposed once more the Medici rule on Florence. For three years it was the Swiss who held the balance of power in Italy, while the Austro-Spanish power against which the states of Italy were to contend fruitlessly, matured in the capable hands of the guardians of the young Charles of Austria. The Swiss defeat by Francis I at Marignano in 1515, brought him the ducal coronet of Milan a year before Charles of Austria, by the death of Ferdinand the Catholic, added the crowns of Aragon and the Sicilies to his paternal inheritance in the Low Countries. Leo X, successor of Julius II, was preparing to play the role now traditional with the pope, and had concluded the Concordat of Bologna with Francis I as a prelude to the curbing of the Hapsburgs when the appearance of Luther and the approach of the imperial election drew his attention across the Alps. He failed to prevent the election of Charles V, with whom he ultimately joined in the new expulsion of the French from Milan just before his death in 1521, and he was at once forced by the emergence of problems of reform to cooperate with the emperor while he permitted through indifference the growth of a spirit of reform at Rome with which Luther would have had more sympathy than its exponents (members of the Oratory of Divine Love) with him. Henceforth the best laid schemes of pope and emperor may not reckon without Protestantism. It lurks in every chancery; it is the skeleton at the feast at every conference; it is the impalpable force which wraps itself about the emperor at every turn, paralyzing his efforts. Clement VII, second of the Medici popes, was ready when Francis, prisoner in Madrid since the battle of Pavia, was released and threw to the winds his promises to his captor, to engineer the League of Cognac, last but one of the great papal combinations in emulation of Cosimo de' Medici and magnified in scope by the induction of the Hapsburg and Valois rulers into the ranks of Italian sovereigns. Its consequences were
12
SUMMARY
the siege of Rome by the imperial army and the restoration of the republic at Florence when that siege had made possible a new repudiation of the Medici rule (1527). Its failure was signalized by the treaties of Charles with the pope (at Barcelona) and with Francis at Cambrai (paix des dames), which left him free to treat Florence as he had treated Rome. The siege and capture of Florence, in 1530, like that of Rome, was a terrific blow to the humanists; but still more a blow to the balance of power in Italy, never stable since the death of Lorenzo de' Medici. It was the beginning of the Spanish supremacy there. To recover his place in Italy after the failure of the League of Cognac, Francis employed the efforts of his best diplomats, approaching impartially the pope, the sultan of Turkey, and the republic of Venice. He was endeavoring to strengthen the hitherto intermittent relations with the Turk when the death of Clement VII (1534) and the fall of Wolsey in England weakened his position. The marriage of his second son with the heiress of the elder line of the Medici had been designed to undermine Hapsburg influence in Tuscany and that of his sister-in-law with the duke of Ferrara to give him a foothold in that important fief of the papacy. It was not, however, Naples or Milan, his ultimate objectives, over which much blood had been shed, which was destined to serve as the base of French military operations in Italy. To these indeed Francis and his son Henry continued to press their claims; but it was to the territories of the duke of Savoy that the French claim was actually made good; and that not so much through the strength of France as through the weakness of Charles of Savoy. The latter, although the brother-inlaw of Charles V, had to give way before the invasion of Francis I, who, alleging his right to the duchy through his mother and taking advantage of the situation created by the attack of Charles on revolted Geneva (to whose aid came the armed forces of Bern), forced the duke to retire to Vercelli and occupied Turin on April 3, 1536. Charles V was at the time on his way from Naples to Rome on his return from the expedition to Tunis. The settlement of the question of Milan was undoubtedly the immediate purpose of the French invasion; for though the muchcontested duchy (just left without a ruler by the death of the childless Francesco Sforza) had been offered to the third son of Francis I, it was not the intention of Charles to increase French influence in Italy, but rather to insulate the young man from French contacts, keeping Milan as before a Hapsburg dependency. The French conquest of Savoy and Piedmont alarmed Venice and prompted her to hold aloof from the alliance into which Francis was
SUMMARY
13
now entering with the sultan. But Venice was the keystone of French diplomacy and the channel through which Francis communicated with the Orient. To keep that channel clear was essential to the new alliance, and when Venice allowed herself to be involved in the war of 1538-40 with Turkey, it became the object of French diplomacy to restore peace between the republic and the Porte, binding Venice to France by the conditions exacted in return for the mediation. In fact, the treaty concluded between Venice and the Porte on October 2, 1S40 signalized the substitution of French for Venetian influence at Constantinople; and in return for the mediation the Signory of Venice was obliged to serve as the medium of communication between Turin and the Porte. Venetian ships had to transport French couriers; Venetian protection had to be accorded French agents against pirates by land or sea.9 The French ambassador at Venice moreover (Guillaume Pellicier, bishop of Montpellier) now became head of the army of spies maintained (as the accounts of the tesorier de l'épargne show) by Francis. The cardinal de Toumon succeeded him. The accord of 1535 between Francis and the Sultan had been strained when the mediation of Paul III brought about the peace of Nice between the Christian rivals in 1538. But rivals they again became ere long. When Charles settled the question of Milan by investing his son Philip with the duchy in 1540, he reopened the breach, and next year gave further provocation to Francis by the assassination of Rincon and Fregoso, French envoys to the Porte who were passing through imperial territory. The ensuing war was necessarily indecisive; for whatever the strength of the French position in Italy, commanding as Francis did the passes over the Alps by his possession of Piedmont and his friendly relations with Venice, Charles, who disposed of the resources of the Netherlands could (and did) threaten Paris. But Charles was at a disadvantage in view of his repulse before Algiers (as conspicuous a failure as his attack on Tunis had been successful) and of the straits of his brother Ferdinand, whose hopes of regaining Hungary on the death of Zapolya were dashed by the occupation of the country by Solyman, the ally of Francis. These were the years moreover of notable additions to the ranks of Lutheran princes in Germany, those of Württemberg, Ducal Saxony, and Brandenburg; and of the efforts of Charles to strike a balance between the parties which were only in part the result of a conversion to the policy of compromise in which the pope 'Zeller, La diplomatie française au seizième siècle, p. 210.
14
SUMMARY
had taken the lead. 10 T h e Scottish alliance of Francis hardly balanced the English alliance of Charles since it was soon made nugatory by the death of James V, but the French won a victory at Cerisoles (April 14, 1544). Their cause however was discredited by their ally Barbarossa, nominal Turkish admiral, who devastated the islands of the Mediterranean and the coasts of the kingdom of Naples. Mutual concessions accompanied the treaty of Crespy (September 18, 1544), but they were nullified when the death of the duke of Orleans, prospective duke of Milan, made it impossible for Charles to fulfill his part of the compact and furnished Francis with excuse for retaining Savoy and Piedmont to the bitter grief of young Emanuel Philibert, who steeled himself from this time to regain his inheritance. Charles's preoccupation with the Lutherans between 1536 and 1541 was the chief impediment to his successful prosecution of the war. T h e y were a force to be treated with consideration since the organization of the League of Schmalkalden in 1531; and the creation of a Catholic League of Nürnberg b y the imperial chancellor Held in 1538 presaged war if n o accommodation were found. The failure of the colloquy of Regensburg was then of ill-omen for the cause of peace in Germany as for the reconciliation of the religious parties, and the conclusion of the treaty of Crespy signified that the stage was cleared for what Charles meant to be the last act of the Lutheran drama. T h e triumph of Charles a t the battle of Mühlberg in 1547 was in fact hardly less significant for the Catholic than for the Lutheran princes, who might seem the only ones who had lost their independence. Moritz of Saxony realized the danger to territorial sovereignty; and his alienation robbed Charles of the fruits of his victory. The battle of Mühlberg made Paul I I I also the well-wisher of the Protestants in Germany (though he took advantage of the occasion to strengthen the Inquisition in Italy), and the last veil which concealed his disaffection from the emperor was torn away when his son, the notorious Pierluigi Farnese, was slain in a conspiracy fomented b y Ferrante Gonzaga, the new viceroy of Charles at Milan. H e no longer tried to placate Charles in the matter of the council (transferred to Bologna shortly before the battle of Mühlberg), and he accepted the overtures of H e n r y I I of France, who tried to draw Ercole of Ferrara into the alliance. Paul's decision to annex P a r m a and Piacenza to the papal states, to the prejudice of his grandson Ottavio (son-in-law, however, of Charles V) and his " Vide infra, pp. 24 ff.
SUMMARY
IS
overtures to the emperor on account of Piacenza (seized by Gonzaga on the death of Pierluigi) had embroiled him in war with his grandson when he died on November 10, 1549. The cause of the Famesi was espoused by Henry, who undertook to get Parma and Piacenza for them in spite of the pope and emperor. In 1552, Pope Julius III, Henry II of France, with whom he had just made peace, and the German Protestants are all arrayed against Charles V. The result for Germany was the peace of Passau, which cleared the way for the final compromise at Augsburg in 1555. The result for Italy was the French occupation of Siena, which took precedence of the favorite project of the Guise, an expedition to Naples, and decided the pope to take a stand of neutrality. The result for the council was its suspension. And the most important result of all was the abdication of Charles V, conceived, as he himself tells us, in the depression which followed his failure to dislodge the French from Metz in 1552, but not carried out till three years later. Once more a pope engineered a coalition against the Spanish power when the Spaniard Philip II was sovereign of Milan and the Two Sicilies, the Frenchman Henry II of Savoy and Piedmont, and the Neapolitan Paul IV wore the triple crown. Henry and Charles had concluded the truce of Vaucelles shortly before the emperor's abdication, and the matters to be settled by a permanent treaty (the territorial questions of Naples, Milan, Savoy, Siena) were in suspense when the negotiations in which the pope's nephew, cardinal Carlo Caraffa, was engaged with France reached a conclusion. Their object was the promotion of the Caraffa family interests with the aid of the power which had formerly protected the Farnesi; and that object would be defeated if France and Spain made peace. Therefore Caraffa induced Henry to break the truce, and in this he was aided by Francis of Guise and his brother, the cardinal of Lorraine, who now saw prospect of realizing the longcherished plan of making good the claim of their house on Naples. But the Italian states no longer combined as formerly against the enemy of their liberties. Only Ferrara joined the league of 1557. Parma wavered but finally remained true to Spain, while Venice declined, though tempted with the bait of Apulia and the control of the straits of Otranto. As for Florence, her Medici ruler required only to be put into possession of Siena, from which the French had been driven in 1555, to remain as before the henchman of the Hapsburgs. The league collapsed then with the news of the Spanish victory in the other war zone, Flanders, where Egmont bore away new laurels from St. Quentin, and with the
16
SUMMARY
recall of the French troops from Italy. Paul, left defenseless, made terms with the Spanish general Alva, Philip's viceroy in Naples. At Rome, in September 1557, the conqueror kissed the foot of the conquered and accorded him favorable terms of peace. The capture of Calais by the duke of Guise next year (for England had been involved in the war of her queen's husband) did something to neutralize the effects of the Italian campaign and of the disasters in Flanders. But the Italian wars which began with the French invasion of 1494 were over. The treaty of Cateau Cambresis in 1559 marked the surrender by France of the claims to Naples and Milan as of the lands she occupied of the duke of Savoy, Emanuel Philibert. There remained indeed in French hands Turin, Chieri, Chivasso, Pinerolo, and Villanova d'Asti; but with the surrender of Chieri and Pinerolo in 1574 the last of these strongholds had been renounced by France. Something like unity is henceforth given Italy by Spanish rule. Outside the radius of it remained only the republic of Venice, while the duchy of Savoy vacillated as before between allegiance now to Spain, now to France, according to the family connections of the ruler of the moment. Not the least important result of the conclusion of peace between the Catholic powers was the prospect of joining forces against the revolutionary forces of Protestantism, now in its second, or Calvinistic phase. Whatever the measures to this end adopted by Philip and Henry and carelessly revealed by Henry to the young William of Orange—henceforth the "Silent" for his discretion on this occasion—they were frustrated by Henry's accidental death from Montgomery's pike thrust. The death of Paul IV, in August 1559, reawakened the hope of a solution by means of a council. It was the subject of debate just then at the diet of Augsburg, where the ecclesiastical reservation, most serious of the shortcomings of the peace of Augsburg, was already a bone of contention between the parties, and where the internal dissensions of the Protestants were giving way before the able leadership of the elector palatine Friedrich. The election of Pius IV, the third Medici pope, was followed by debates whether the council should be a new one, or the resumption of the old one. The Germans maintained that it was impossible, in view of the peace of Augsburg, to carry out in Germany the decrees of the council of Trent. Catherine de'Medici, whose accession to power in France coincided with the accession of Pius IV, was influenced in her opposition to a renewal of the council less by the traditional "Gallican" mistrust of Rome than by the necessity of molli-
SUMMARY
17
fying the Huguenots in the interests of the throne. Only Philip II supported the pope. The council had been a political no less than a religious issue from its inception, since in the doctrinal questions upon the discussion of which the pope had always insisted was involved the whole matter of papal supremacy over the territorial churches in matters of administration as of belief. The rulers of Spain and of France regulated the church within their dominions by virtue of the concordats of 1482 and 1516; this last, concluded between Leo X and Francis I, had been designed to disarm the principal reliance of the bishops in their denial of papal supremacy, the power which repeatedly had brandished before the papal eyes the threat of a council called by the French king in French territory. If Charles as ruler of Spain urged that doctrinal questions be subordinated to the question of clerical reform—the reform of the Spanish clergy was thought to have been accomplished by Ximenez and that of the German was demanded by the Protestants,—he objected as emperor to the meeting of the council in Italy. Paul III had originally summoned it to Mantua in 1537; then to Vicenza; and it had hardly met, after many postponements, at Trent in December 1545 when he began trying to transfer it to Italy. The Schmalkaldic War gave him the pretext he wanted, and he declared it removed to Bologna in March 1547. But he had already gained the advantage he sought from an Italian council by packing the assembly with Italian prelates, by securing the initiation of measures to the papal legates and the decision to vote by heads. Imperial opposition to a thoroughly Italian council had just brought him to the point of suspending the sessions at Bologna when his death postponed the reassembling of the body at Trent. The pope, from 1536, when France again became an Italian power, should have maintained the French alliance as best conducing to the peace of Italy. Florence, Milan, and Naples, were in alliance as in the days of Cosimo de' Medici, and the pope and France, together with Venice, constituted a natural entente. But the pope deferred to France no more than to the Emperor once the council was in session, and his friendly relations with his natural ally were confined to the intervals between sessions of the council; it may therefore be surmised that papal regard for France played more part than papal aversion from a council in the long intervals that separate the meetings of the council of Trent. The council was the most serious obstacle to the pope's successful manipulation of the balance of power in Italy. Thus in the years of
SUMMARY
18
Charles's triumph following the battle of Miihlberg, an alliance between Henry and the Holy See would have anticipated the imperial reverses of 1552, when Moritz of Saxony was arbiter of the situation; but Henry became the protector of Ottavio Farnese first against Paul III, and then against Julius III, while the pope complied with the wishes of the emperor and recalled the council to Trent in 1550. When pope and king made peace in April 1552, it was the day before the suspension of the council, which Henry had refused to recognize until alarmed by the strength of his party, which all but brought the French church to the point of separation from Rome.11 The council was suspended for two years, but it was ten before it came together again. In those ten years occurred the Catholic reaction in England under Mary Tudor (1553-1558), when the island kingdom, in the event of a council called by the pope, would have been called upon to take a stand in the matter of relations between the Anglican church and Rome. There occurred also the peace of Augsburg and the abdication of Charles V, which left Ferdinand the heir of the imperial as well as the German opposition to the Italian council and Philip II the heir of the Spanish opposition to its concentration on doctrinal questions. In France, the brief ascendancy of the Guise brothers followed the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis and the withdrawal of the French from Italy, and the Huguenots became identified as a national party because of the friendly relations of their opponents with Spain. That the council resumed its sessions in 1561 was due to the apprehension with which the pope regarded the policy of Catherine de' Medici. Ferdinand wanted a council in a German city, in presence of the pope; the diet wanted a council, but not a resumption of the old one; the French states-general, in session at Orleans after the death of Francis II in December 1560, wanted a council. But in France the queen-regent, while hoping that her government and that of Ferdinand could combine to defeat the pope's intention to recall the council of Trent, called the colloquy of Poissy; and Pius, fearing this a prelude to a rival council to the one he contemplated, issued the bull of convocation, November 29, 1560. The ambiguity on the main question (council redivivus or council de novo) was preserved in the phraseology employed. The German Protestant princes met at Naumburg and repudiated it; Catherine delayed the publication of the bull until she could secure from the 11
Romier, La crise gatticame.
SUMMARY
19
pope an explicit statement on the moot point; Philip of Spain demanded a statement that the council was to be a continuation of the old one. But Catherine gave way when the colloquy of Poissy achieved nothing on which she could base constructive opposition. Ferdinand promised to send legates, and the last sessions of the council were held at Trent where it had first come together eighteen years before.
CHAPTER I I
T H E BEGINNING OF T H E COUNTER-REFORMATION, 1534-1544 T H E POLICY OF CONCILIATION UNDER PAPAL AND IMPERIAL ADVISEMENT
The term "Counter-Reformation" implies a reformation of the church intended to offset that of the Protestants. Such a reformation was not seriously undertaken (except for the abortive efforts of Adrian VI, in 1522-1523) until the time of Paul III, and not carried to a conclusion until the time of Pius IV, thirty years later. Its beginning at Rome corresponds in point of time not with the posting of the Theses in Germany but with the posting of the Placards in France in 1534, and its end with the bull Benedictus Deus in 1564, which carried the papal approval of the decrees of the council of Trent. If the posting of the Theses brought to the front their author Martin Luther, that of the Placards was the immediate occasion for the publication of John Calvin's Institutes of Christianity. That it was the occasion of the Counter-Reformation can hardly be said; but the affair of the Placards in France was one of an accumulation of events which showed clearly that the time for temporizing was past. Most important of these events was the separation of England from the Holy See, which was contemporary with the accession of Paul III in 1534. The pope was now disposed to agree with the emperor that the situation called for more than local anaesthetics. Neither knew, of course, that the future of the reformed church lay not in the hands of Luther or even Melanchthon, author of the confession of Augsburg, but in those of Calvin, whose name was new when Paul became pope. The thirty years in which the Counter-Reformation took shape were the age of Calvin, and the following century was that of the so-called religious wars, first in France and the Netherlands, then in Germany and England. Paul III inaugurated a reversion to the type of the nepotist popes of the Quattrocento; papal policy was now again to be swayed by the ambition of a pope regarding his offspring. The son, Pierluigi Farnese, was as unworthy a papal "nephew" as ever the fortunes of the church
THE
COUNTER-REFORMATION
21
turned upon. Ferdinand (brother of Charles V, and king of Bohemia and as much of Hungary as the Turks had left him) said of Paid that he was more interested in his family's advancement than Clement had been; that the tithes granted him by the French king would be used as subsidies to the Turks in their attacks on himself; that the pope's lukewarmness would be the ruin of the world.1 Yet Paul, at the outset of his reign, showed willingness to deal with the question of church reform, being spurred on, it may be, by evidence of coming unanimity among the reformers north of the Alps. The Strassburg theologians Butzer and Capito had become the advocates of an agreement between Lutherans and Zwinglians after the failure of the conference of Marburg in 1529. The Wittenberg Concord, a compromise "more verbal than real" of May 29, 1536, was the work principally of Butzer, and mitigated somewhat the Lutheran conception of the Eucharist. The south-German towns, who had submitted their Cortjessio tetrapolitana to the diet of Augsburg in 1530, were now won for the Augsburg Confession, all but Constance; but the Swiss withstood efforts to draw them in, and stood by the "First Helvetic" (or "Basel") confession, which had been drawn up in February 1536 in the Augustinian monastery at Basel by Bullinger and Myconius, heads of the reformed churches of Zürich and Basel respectively, assisted by delegates from Bern, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen and Mühlhausen, as well as Zürich and Basel. The pope was indeed reluctant to call a general council of the church, as the emperor wished, and for years postponed as he called it; but he forbade the Roman clergy to visit taverns, theatres, and gambling dens; and in July 1536, while Michelangelo was furiously painting the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, appointed a commission of nine prelates to draw up a plan of reform as a basis for the council which had just been called. Cardinal Gasparo Contarmi, whose suggestion inspired the plan and who was chairman of the commission, was a famous Aristotelian scholar who had studied with Pomponazzi at Padua from 1501 to 1509 and had later taken issue with his teacher, like a new Abelard, in a De immortalitate animae. His choice by the government of Venice, his native city, as ambassador to Charles V made him an eyewitness of the dramatic events of the Diet of Worms in 1521. He won such regard at Rome when ambassador of Venice to Clement VII that the red hat was accorded him by Paul III in May 1535. He was yet a layman, and the appointment drew from Alvise Mocenigo, patrician like himself, 'Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V, I, 320.
22
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
the lament: "Those priests have stolen from us the finest gentleman whom the city possesses."2 The members of the commission de emendanda ecclesia, as it was called from the title of the report they submitted, were all Italians except Reginald Pole. Three of them besides Contarini became cardinals with the elevation, at the end of 1536, of the Neapolitan Giampietro Caraffa, of Jacopo Sadoleto, who held a French bishopric, and of the Englishman Pole. Of the group, Sadoleto and Giberti and Caraffa had been members of the Oratory of Divine Love, an informal society of devoted Catholics who had aspired, in the decade before the sack of Rome, to initiate a reform of the church by reforming themselves. Their spirit was not diverse from that of John Wesley. Gregorio Cortese, as abbot of Lerins on the Riviera and later (in 1532) of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, had striven to make the Benedictine monasteries a species of scholarly academies, restoring to them a position in the world of which the universities had deprived them;3 Girolamo Aleandro ("Aleander") was the well-known opponent of Luther at Worms, but he was before that the pioneer of Greek teachers at the university of Paris. The language of the memorandum drawn up by the novemviral commission and submitted to Paul III in March 1537 is very frank indeed, and it is no wonder that the pope did not intend to make it public. The ruin of the church is attributed to the popes, who have chosen to the curia, not counsellors as to their duties—as Paul had done—but servants to minister to their every desire. The abuses of the papal government are specified as the ordination of ignorant and unworthy clerics, the inconsiderate appointments to benefices, the accumulation of these in the same hands, the renunciation of sees conditional on getting pensions and reservations, the institution of provisors, the dependence of cardinals on the princes for the income of churches held by them, and the union of the dignity of cardinal with that of bishop. Clearly the source of evil is indicated as the traffic in those wares which had become the stock-in-trade of the papal Dataria, the Trojan horse from which the abuses issued. Let the successor of Peter follow the example of Paul, whose name he has taken, and take thought that the name of Christ be reestablished in the hearts of men. Two contemporary letters of Contarini to the pope are cited by De ' D e Leva, Storia documentata di Carlo V, III, 353. For Contarini, vide Dittrich, Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) and his Nachträge in the Historisches Jahrbuch, No. 865, Vin. *Cf. Gothein, Ignatius von Loyola, pp. 110-16.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
23
Leva as still more indicative of the criticism being levelled at the Holy See in Catholic circles.4 Contarmi, who had been appointed chairman of a commission of four to reform the Datarìa, when the council was postponed in April 1537, admonishes Paul not to employ his office for wordly gain, even though he lose twenty or thirty pieces of gold a year. Instead of blaming his predecessors, let him seek to leave behind him a better reputation than they. De Leva notes that Contarmi takes the standpoint of Luther and plainly states the doctrine of justification by faith, while denying subjection to original sin after baptism; that he upholds the celibacy of the clergy while deploring the entrance into their ranks of children, of the poor and ignorant, and of the discouraged. Dittrich8 says that he had not studied Luther's teachings deeply, and judged them too uncritically. In any case, similar sentiments are expressed in the writings of Sadoleto and Cortese and Pole, and it is evident that we have to do here with a reform on the lines laid down by Erasmus, whose death took place at Basel just when Paul III at Rome was appointing the commission of July 1536. Preparation for that reform had been made in the gardens of San Giorgio Maggiore under the leadership of Cortese, in the villa of the humanist Giangiorgio Trissino at Vicenza, and in the house of Alvise Priuli at Treville (near Treviso), as well as in other places where the humanists gathered, after the fall of Rome in 1527, to deplore the disastrous government of the people of Christ.9 In spite of the intention to keep the plan of reform within the circle of those commissioned to deal with its problems, there appeared in print of the commission's report not merely the edition of Milan and Rome in 1538, which was not intended for public consumption, but also one at Strassburg, centre of the mediating theologians of Protestantism. To this last there was a preface by Johann Sturm, the schoolmasterreformer, addressed to the cardinals, its authors. It was flattering in many of its references to Contarmi and carried a tone of admonition and reproach toward Sadoleto, who did not fail to defend himself. Luther published it in German. The Protestants received the book as evidence of coming surrender on the part of Rome, not to the convictions of some of her noblest sons, but to the peril of Protestantism ; its admissions were a tribute to their own strength. It is not quite true, as is often said, that the report of the commission was shelved as a result 4
De Leva, op. tit., pp. 3S6-S8. They were published in Cologne in 1538.
5
Gasparo Contarmi,
pp. 308
ff.
' De Leva, op. tit., pp. 344, 36S.
24
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
of its unexpected publicity, for Pastor traces the efforts up to the meeting of the council of Trent, of Paul's committees of reform at Rome;7 but certainly the measures suggested would have crippled the papal treasury. From this point, the matter of the council takes increasing importance, and one is at liberty to see, in the protraction of the efforts to get it together, the reluctance of the pope welcoming the intrusion of war as justification for the postponements, or the intransigence of the emperor seeing only the German aspect of the situation. The assembling of a council had been announced in June 1536 for Mantua on May 23, 1537—the consistory, from which issued the bull of convocation, met on the day the Wittenberg Concord was signed—and the invitation issued to all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and abbots, to come in person preferably; if not, to send envoys. But the reopening of the war between Charles and Francis interrupted; France controlled the passes by which foreign envoys would come. The prospective host, the duke of Mantua, refused to be responsible for the safety of the body. Vicenza, in the territory of Venice, was then fixed upon in a new summons issued in October 1537, but it was not until after Paul had concluded the truce of Nice between the rivals, who would confer with the pope but not with each other,8 that there was hope of anyone coming to the council, the summons of which to Vicenza was reiterated, and the new date fixed for Easter 1539. As it was opposed by Charles, Ferdinand and Francis, and as Venice, which had at first consented to the holding of the council there, withdrew her permission before she concluded with the Turks the peace of 1540 (lest the Sultan misunderstand), the pope on May 31, 1539 suspended it again. Because of the delays in the assembling of the council, the idea took shape in Germany of holding a synod, whose findings would make easier the work of the council. The idea, which was suggested to Ferdinand by the elector of Brandenburg in May 1538,® indicated that Germany was seeking "self-determination" in ecclesiastical matters and needed only a leader to take a position like France or Spain, or more likely like England. Ferdinand, anxious to settle the difficulties in Germany and give his whole energies to the Turks, favored the plan. Indeed his advisers were almost openly Lutheran, and the Lutherans (influenced 'Pastor, History of the Popes (ed. Kerr), XI, chap. III-IV. ' T h e y met later at Aigues-Mortes (infra p. 105). •Pastor, op. cit., X I , 118, 372.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
25
by Luther's Schmalkaldic Articles of 1536) had rejected the council. Consulted by his brother the emperor, who sent his vice-chancellor Matthias Held for his opinion, Ferdinand advised the settlement of German affairs in Germany and recommended the concessions which he thereafter steadfastly upheld, the marriage of the clergy, the communion in both kinds, together with the modification of the doctrine of mortal sin—concessions which reflect the demands of Ferdinand's Bohemian subjects, with their Hussite traditions. Paul was willing to await the result of a German diagnosis of the situation, feeling doubtless that no prescription could be more heroic than the one made up at Rome and unluckily become public property. Not so the young Giovanni Morone (son of the famous Milanese statesman in the days of the Sforza), who had been accredited in October 1536 as nuncio at Vienna. He saw in Charles's policy the evident intent to find a working agreement between the parties and the inevitable victory of the Protestants. He pressed the pope to go forward with his project of a general council, and girded himself for the conflict with the imperial plan. He knew Ferdinand's hostility to Paul, for the king of Bohemia had declared in conversation with the nuncio that it was because of the pope's example that he was unable to find a confessor who was not a fornicator, a drunkard, or an ignoramus. 10 In the method of solution proposed by Charles and agreed to in principle at Frankfurt on April 19, 1539 ("Frankfurt Suspension") by the princes, a conference of theologians of both sides, together with representatives of himself and of Francis and the pope, should settle the points in controversy with Rome before the council met. The hierarchy was bound to suffer if questions of doctrine were taken out of her hands and discussed by laymen as well as clerics; and the first conference thus contemplated never met because Morone was successful in delaying the response of the pope, without which Charles would not proceed. It had been called for Nümberg on August 1, 1539. At Ghent in April 1540 the matter was again discussed by Charles and his advisers, and a second conference projected in connection with the diet, which was to meet at Speyer. It was attempted at Hagenau in Alsace in the months of June and July 1540—the diet met there because the plague made Speyer impracticable then—but its purpose was thwarted by Morone. Charles V was not present, for it was the time of the unfortunate expedition to Tripoli. Of the few Catholic princes 10
Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V, I, 321.
26
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
in attendance, a great part inclined to compromise with the Protestants; the elector of Brandenburg, indeed, who voted on the Catholic side out of regard for his subjects, was really a Protestant. There was tension because of the zeal of Held, who had canvassed the Catholic courts and organized the league of Nümberg to oppose the league of Schmalkalden. The Protestant delegates had come prepared to exclude a papal representative from all discussion. And Ferdinand nominated among the spokesmen ("mediators") the bibulous though popular old elector palatine Ludwig, who openly leaned to Protestantism. Morone sought at first to influence the discussions, from which he was excluded, by privately insinuated suggestion that the Catholic teachings be not called into question and that the decision as to questions of ritual be left to the council or the pope. Then, to defeat the certain victory of the Protestants in a national council to be held on the basis of discussions in which only a Protestant point of view was represented, the nuncio unfolded to Ferdinand on July 7, 1540, a plan for an international conference to which some sixty scholars of various nations should be called.11 Ten weeks after the dissolution of the diet at Hagenau, the new conference was to meet in Worms, and papal plenipotentiaries might come. In November 1540, accordingly, the colloquy of Worms met under the presidency of the emperor's representative, the elder Granvella, the Catholic attitude toward whom is suggested by the characterization of him by Held, as quoted by Janssen.12 "In matters of belief he must have the upper hand—bargain, buy, and sell as if God had committed the faith not to the successors of Peter and the other apostles, but to ministers, jurists, and pettifogging lawyers." It did not realize in its composition the international character that had been suggested, for the humanists, ablest critics of the church, were not represented at all. The poet Marcantonio Flaminio, friend of Cardinal Caraffa, who did not hesitate to have him up for reading heretical books, though he never knew he was part author of the Benefit of Christ's death, and the Benedictine Gregorio Córtese, member of the commission de emendando, ecclesia, had been invited, but Flaminio had refused at once on the score of health, and Córtese was ill at Brescia when the time came. Piermartire Vermigli, the Augustinian canon and head of the house of that order at Naples, was to have come, but was allowed to drop out, as was Lorenzo Spada, general of the Franciscans, when the pope expressed a " Cardauns, Nvntiaturberichte aus Deutachland, V, 444. "History of the German People (18th ed.), III, 624.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
27
wish that fewer monks attend. From Basel came Simon Grynaeus, who presided over the Augustinian college there; he arrived with the Strassburg delegation composed of Capito and Butzer the preachers, Calvin, pastor of the foreign congregation, and Sturm the schoolmaster. Boniface Amerbach, another noted humanist, the heir of the great Erasmus, was to have accompanied Grynaeus from Basel, but when Grynaeus set out for Strassburg on October 23, 1540, it was with a letter from the town council of Basel to the Thirteen of Strassburg saying that Amerbach was at that time indispensable to them, and would follow in about three weeks. He had said that he was not prepared on the matters to be debated; he was no theologian and should have been told of the matter some time before. Butzer had himself reinforced with a personal letter the reiterated request of the Strassburg theologians—who represented the mediatizing tendency, it must be remembered,—and it had been agreed that Amerbach, who had come to Strassburg, in December, to argue a case—he was a famous lawyer—should proceed thence to Worms. His sending was made superfluous by the closing of the roll of delegates before he could arrive. 13 Paul appointed as legate for this occasion Tommaso Campeggi, bishop of Feltre, a sympathizer with the religious movement among the Roman clergy and an effective speaker, but no diplomat. Contarini, whose sending to Hagenau had been considered and then rejected by the pope," was the delegate first proposed, but not dispatched because it was learned that Charles wanted at Worms a simple prelate, though one well qualified. Morone was not pleased with the colleague with whom he as nuncio was supposed to work, and the greatest efforts were made to placate him, even to the extent of sending a papal brief addressed to them jointly; for he was regarded by the pope with the greatest favor, and his oftrepeated requests to be freed from his post went unheeded. Morone was anything but optimistic regarding the situation, and in the difficult game he had to play felt himself impeded by the incompetence of Campeggi, to whom he insisted, because of his rank as legate, on leaving the principal role. He was not jealous of his colleague, as Cardauns implies ; ,B he was jealous of papal prestige, which was at stake, rather than Wernle, Calvin und Basel, pp. 30 ff. Because it was feared that a papal legate would be insulted (Pastor, op. tit., XI, 389) or because Contarini was a Venetian, whose sending might not be satisfactory to the emperor (Ibid., 389). Cf. De Leva, op. tit., p. 398. " Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, V-VI, Einleitung, pp. xxxiv-xxxv. 14
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
28
of his own dimmed light in presence of a superior. He was the bitterest opponent of the emperor's policy of union and he recognized that the papal plans for a council could be successful only with the permission and assistance of the emperor and of France, between whom it was necessary to make peace. With Campeggi went Tommaso Badia, former member of Paul's commission of reform and subsequently one of his commissioners of the Inquisition, and Pedro Ortiz, who had served Charles V in the matter of the English divorce and had been proposed by Aleander as a check on Contarini. 10 With him as theologian was Peter Faber, earliest of the companions of Loyola. Eck, Luther's old opponent, was the Catholic leader from Germany, Melanchthon the Protestant. The curia invited three other German theologians to work in its interests at Worms— Ludwig Bär, who like Flaminio refused on the score of ill health, the younger Granvella, whom his father would not permit to act, and the Netherlander Albert Pighius. There were in all twenty-two deputies, eleven of each party. T h e Protestants were confident in the success of their cause since three of the Catholic deputies, those of the electorpalatine, of the elector of Brandenburg, and of the duke of Cleves were of doubtful loyalty. Melanchthon was supported by Calvin (to whom there came, at Worms, the first invitation from Geneva to return thither), Butzer, Cruciger, professor at Wittenberg, and Brenz, future author of the confession of Württemberg. Eck's lieutenants were Cochlaeus of Cologne, to be known for his hostile biography of Luther, and Gropper, known for his moderation. Morone did his best to obstruct open discussion, hoping to prevent the lack of unity in the Catholic ranks from becoming apparent. Granvella, the president, decided that only one should speak on a side; then, coming to share the apprehensions of Morone, permitted the Protestants to comment freely and to contradict their spokesman, without granting the same liberty to the Catholics. Under these conditions, the colloquy finally began on January 14, 1541, with the debate between Eck and Melanchthon on original sin. At the end of three days, Eck and the suffragan-archbishop of Mainz on one side, and Melanchthon and Butzer on the other, came to an agreement on the article which satisfied both parties. At this point, the efforts of Morone were finally successful; and at the command of the emperor the discussion was relegated to the diet of Regensburg which was to meet in April under the presidency of Charles himself. The actual col" Gothein, 287.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
29
loquy had lasted four days. Before he left Worms, Morone invited to his house Melanchthon, Capito, and Sturm, and convinced himself in conversation of their opposition to union; and to Campeggi, departing to report at Rome, he said in farewell that he need report to the pope one thing only, not to expect anything of the coming meetings at Regensburg." The outcome at Worms was of satisfaction to the representative of Francis I, Ippolito d'Este, commonly called the cardinal of Ferrara, for Francis regarded with uneasiness these attempts to restore harmony in Germany ; they threatened to deprive him of one of his political bulwarks, the Schmalkaldic princes. With Ippolito was a former papal nuncio, Pierpaolo Vergerio, bishop of Capodistria in the territory of Venice. He understood German affairs well, and had made a disturbing report of them to the newly-elected Paul III in 1534, recommending a general council. Reappointed nuncio in February 1535, he had returned to Germany to sound out opinion relative to the council and met with a favorable reception almost everywhere until at Wittenberg in the electoral castle, which had been assigned to him for a lodging, he met Luther. The Saxon reformer was challenging in his attitude, and his point of view was expressed with his characteristic vehemence: "we of the Holy Spirit need no council, but Christendom has need of one . . . I will appear there and uphold my cause against the world." 18 It was on this occasion that Luther desired to look as young as possible, "since," said he, "the pope's messenger, seeing my youthful appearance, will exclaim: 'The Devil! If Luther, before he is an old man, has made us so much trouble, what will he do by the time he reaches old age?' " But Luther, as well as the Schmalkaldic princes, insisted uncompromisingly on a council within the limits of Germany. The speech De unitate et pace ecclesiae, delivered by Vergerio at Worms on January 1, 1541 and published at Venice in 1542, advocates the council as the way of peace and is in sharp contrast to the orator's polemical writings against the council when, at a later time, he had abandoned Rome for Wittenberg. That abandonment is probably traceable in no slight degree to Vergerio's attendance at the colloquy of Worms. At Regensburg, where Charles's efforts at union made shipwreck, the chairmen were the elector-palatine Friedrich and, as before, the elder Granvella (Nicholas Perrenot, imperial councillor). Both were " Pastor, op. cit., pp. 422-23. "Pastor, op. cit., pp. 67-68.
30
THE
COUNTER-REFORMATION
eager for peace. The only fighting-man, Eck, soon had to retire on account of illness; and there were left on the Catholic side Gropper and Pflug (bishop of Naumburg), besides the papal legate Contarini, at whose sending there was no longer reason to demur. With this most conciliatory, because most single-minded of the Catholic reformers, his colleagues met every morning, before the sessions of the congress began, being joined sometimes by Morone and Granvella. The Protestant representatives were also moderate men, Melanchthon, Butzer, and the Hessian preacher Pistorius. The conference sat from April 27 to May 22, 1541, to consider the Book of Regensburg, provisional draft of a compromise drawn up by Gropper, Veltwyck (imperial secretary), Butzer, and Capito, in secret conferences in December 1540 at Worms. In it a compromise on original sin and justification seemed to have been attained. Contarini, on looking it over, had made some twenty emendations, without showing offense that he had not seen it before the beginning of the Regensburg meetings, and had responded with a sharp reproof to the objections of Eck. In the course of the controversies which arose out of the fifth article of the Book oj Regensburg, Contarini, Morone, Pflug, and Badia all approved on May 2 a formula which embraced the Lutheran conception of an "imputation" of the merits of Christ, and eliminated quietly the Catholic conception in accordance with which human works can be considered by God as meritorious. Contarini wrote jubilantly of this achievement to the pope; he believed he had discovered the inner accord of the Protestant and Catholic conceptions. The difference lay only in the expression. He now obtained the postponement to the end of the colloquy of the reform of the hierarchy, because he hoped to bring about agreement on the questions he thought more susceptible of adjustment. In preparation for the ultimate discussion, he prepared two formulas in which neither the competence of the council nor the power of the pope is explicitly stated. 19 It was the question of the Eucharist, the fourteenth article of the Book of Regensburg, which proved insuperable. Here Contarini held to the doctrine of transubstantiation and was astonished at the importance which the Protestants attributed to this question and the cognate one of the adoration of the Host, since both were matters to which the Augsburg confession presented no invincible opposition. On original sin, freewill, and justification, agreements had been reached which satisfied both parties, but in the legate's opinion compliance could go no further. He " Cardauns, op. cit., VII, xxl.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
31
wrote on May 13, 1541: "Unless God works a miracle, the opinionatedness and intransigence of the Protestant theologians will make agreement impossible."20 His hopes of reconciliation in fact ebbed away and he finally recommended to Rome the reform of the bishops, the communion in both kinds, and the reorganizing of preaching and teaching. The marriage of priests and the communion in both kinds, though permitted in Germany, were not to be encouraged. On May 13, the Eucharistie discussion had to be suspended. Unity, Contarini now saw, was not to be found in words. Whatever the willingness of the Protestant theologians, he recognized that they were dependent on the princes who sent them. Not only was there failure to find a working agreement between the parties. The accord, strictly limited as it was, constituted a source of friction inside the ranks, particularly of the Protestants. This is especially true of the compromise on justification. Melanchthon was henceforth an object of suspicion to Luther and to the elector Johann Friedrich, who had refused to be present at Regensburg and had instructed his representative to reject any accord with "murderous and idolatrous princes." He was eager for a French alliance, and had he been present would probably have met the overtures of the agents of Francis I, of whom two were present at the colloquy of Regensburg, one to encourage the Protestants with specious promises not to let themselves be talked over, the other to dissuade the Catholics from supporting any religious conference other than the council. Contarini, it was hinted, was working for the cause of the Emperor, and the Pope himself revealed to the legate the rumors current in France of this nature. 21 Charles, according to Armstrong,22 "never before or again so definitely suggested the principle of toleration as at this time." He protested his sincerity to the Saxon envoys; he declined to use his authority when agreement seemed hopeless, as Contarini begged him to do. When the conference was over—the diet went on till the end of July,—the Emperor promptly proposed that the articles agreed upon should be regarded as binding upon both parties, and that there should be mutual tolerance on other points until a final oecumenical or else national settlement. The Protestants, under the influence of Saxony, refused. Urged by Contarini to join the league of Nürnberg, Charles refused to ally himself with so-called Catholics, who sought only their own advantage; 30
Pastor, op. cit., pp. 446-47. " De Leva, op. cit., pp. 427-28. ™ The Emperor Charles V, I, 336.
32
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for he knew that the dukes of Bavaria were bent on settling the matter by an appeal to arms and expected to achieve something for the house of Wittelsbach at the expense of that of Hapsburg. The real reason for the failure was, as at every crisis in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, the fear of a unified monarchy which would curb the authority of the princes in their own states. The outcome of the colloquy was to detach Contarini from the party of compromise. He evolved a new formula regarding papal authority and sought to have it incorporated in the Book of Regensburg. He who had formerly favored the concession of the cup to the laity now begged the pope to concede nothing and urged on the emperor the suppression of the whole book. Only to his doctrine of justification did he cling. He no longer supported the imperial policy of toleration, but employed himself to have the question brought before the council.23 Contarini did not suffer for his ill success, as might have been anticipated from the criticism to which he had been subjected. Paul received him in Lucca as he returned to report, and made him legate of Bologna. He had been designated on a new mission to Charles V just when the war with France again broke out in consequence of the murder of Rincon and Fregoso, but only a few days after his nomination he died at Bologna (August 24, 1542) largely of the depression following his failure in Germany, it is alleged. "I know," says Beatus Rhenanus the Alsatian humanist, writing of the Regensburg colloquy to Boniface Amerbach, who had been at pains to avoid going to the colloquy of Worms, "that you, engaged in the study of law and letters, despise the trifles of this time; but nevertheless, I could not refrain from telling you something of the colloquy at Regensburg, on which every good man has placed such hopes." And on a blank sheet of the letter, Amerbach has written, punning on the names of the leaders Eck, Gropper, Pflug, Butzer, Pistorius, and Melanchthon:" Angulus et fossor, iungentes foedera aratro Vincula contendunt imposuisse Jovi. Luminis emunctor pistorque et amator equorum Contendunt vinclis erupuisse Jovem. Liber enim cum sit, non fert bene Jupiter Quae sunt humana vincula facta manu. 23 Cardauns, op. cit., VII, xxii-xxiii. "Johannes Pistorius (c. 1503-1583), pastor in Nidda and active in the Hessian Reformation.
33
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION Germanice Man pflügt, man eckt, man grubt darzu, Das Babell blyben mag by rúw. Man mälts, man butsch, man bechst dargleich. Das Zion bestehe bei irem reich. Ein streyt haben die zwo parthey; Rath welcher theyl Gott näher sey?
Had Amerbach known English (or been acquainted at that time with John Foxe, author of the "Book of Martyrs," as he was later), he would have added, doubtless: Anglice With plow and harrow and hoe they strain The tower of Babel to maintain, While butcher, baker, and chandler strive That Zion's kingdom may arrive. In this debate between the two God grant the right have naught to rue. Of t h e original m e m b e r s of t h e consilium
de emendanda
ecclesia,
two
—Fregoso and Aleander—were already dead when Contarini succumbed to his disappointment. Giberti died in 1543, having instituted in his diocese of Verona reforms which served as a model for those of the council of Trent. Sadoleto's French contacts were utilized at the close of the congress of Regensburg by sending him to make peace between France and the Emperor 25 and to prepare for the Council. He died in 1547; Córtese (who with Badia was made a cardinal in 1542) in 1548. Badia became a member of the new Inquisitorial board; Pole survived to suffer from the suspicions of his former colleague Caraffa when the latter became pope as Paul IV. The council, which Paul III was finally induced to call for All Saints' day 1542, did not meet for three years, for Paul prorogued it when Charles refused him Milan and Siena, and did not defer to the Emperor and summon the council to Trent for March 1545 until Francis and Charles, at the treaty of Crespy, had agreed on a joint suppression of heresy. He had abandoned, if he ever sincerely entertained, the hope of finding a common ground between the parties; and whatever the earlier idea of the work of the council, he would not now consider clearing the docket of matters connected with the reform of the clergy before proceeding to the discussion of doctrinal questions. The most that he would concede was that the two be considered together. " C f . Benoît, La legation du Cardinal Sadolet auprès de François I" en 1542 (Monaco 1928).
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THE COUNTER-REFORMATION ABANDONMENT OF T H E POLICY OF CONCILIATION
The year which saw the accession of Paul I I I to the Holy See, the separation of England from the papacy, and the posting of the Placards in France was also signalized by an event witnessed by none but the participants, the vow in the church on Montmartre on August 15, 1534 of Ignatius Loyola and his six companions at the university of Paris. They were the pioneers of the most remarkable student volunteer movement ever inaugurated, one which only an accident prevented from spending itself in the Moslem Orient, goal of modem missionary effort. The companions, their number now increased to ten, proceeded after the completion of their studies to Venice, and the city of the lagoons became a point of departure not indeed for the Holy Land, as they had intended —the war made the sea unsafe till the treaty of 1540 between Venice and the Turks, and the Capitulations of those days, moreover, had been conceded only to France—but for a career of service in the cause of the papal supremacy. At Venice and then at Rome they attracted attention for social service and revival preaching recalling the mendicant orders of an earlier day. For them this attention was a stepping stone to higher things, and it was another activity with which they became particularly identified when Paul III, overcoming his reluctance to multiply orders by such an addition as this, confirmed the society in the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae (September 27, 1540). 20 It was Contarini who obtained from the Pope the approval of the Society of Jesus, endorsing them at the colloquy of Regensburg, where Vauchop, the blind archbishop of Armagh, one of the Catholic theologians, expressed to Morone the advantages of distributing such missionaries over Germany.27 The beginnings of the new order were modest indeed. No more than sixty members could be received—a limitation removed in March 1543 by the bull Iniunctum vobis;—the term of office of the "general" was set at three years, a regulation never urged except by Paul I V ; — and the Spiritual Exercises which Contarini wrote off for Loyola were not the same as the elaborate document which the Pope approved in 1548 and which represented the development of Loyola's ponderings throughout a quarter of a century. What was implied in the vow of passive obedience to the Pope lay still in the womb of the future.28 * Printed in Tacchi-Venturi, Storia delta tompagnia di Gesu in Italia, pp. 556-66, parallel with the memorandum submitted to Paul III on September 3, 1539 and by him approved. IT Cardauns, Nuntiaturberichte, VII, xxiv-xxv. " De Leva, op. tit., p. 384.
THE
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35
Besides preaching and confession and ministering to the "sick and in prison," there was for the followers of Loyola in Europe a special field of activity in combating the growing secularization of education, an agency by which heresy in the sixteenth century was more potent than in the thirteenth or fourteenth. In face of this peril to authority there was constructive work to be done; and to it the Company of Jesus set itself that Christian education might not perish from the earth. Not merely to live lives that should speak of Christian piety, like the Barnabites, Capuchins, Theatines, and others of the emulators of the Oratory of Divine Love; not merely to preach to the crowd, winning them back to piety even as the reformers had won them away; but to fight as soldiers handling the sword of the spirit and trained to its use. To develop a new dialectic (founded on Aquinas until friction developed between the Dominicans and Jesuits), to meet the arguments of their opponents with arguments drawn from the same authorities, which the thoroughness of their intellectual tempering enables them to construe differently; to bring mental efficiency to a point where it dominates the will and subordinates the individuality; to found schools and give a definite direction to the education of the youth whose fathers had been trained in the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life—a factor in the education of Loyola himself 29 —and to accomplish this by a discipline recalling that of the camp and the field except that it is mental and not bodily. Arduous days and weeks and months of drill, "spiritual exercises" to fit the warrior for the fray. The program savored more of the mystic who inspired it than of the dogma it was designed to serve; much contemplation of the person and attributes of the Captain of our Salvation and less of the sacraments and priesthood of the church. Loyola's having been a soldier while Valdes was a scholar is that which differentiates the work of the Jesuits from that of the spiritual progenitor of the reform in Italy. Their approach was the same, that inner way to light which it was the practice of the church to oppose. With the Inquisition the followers of Loyola had nothing to do, although their leader approved the institution as if to mollify Caraffa, who had opposed the Company of Jesus, by looking with favor on the organization with which the Neapolitan was identified. Jacob (Diego) Lainez was the third of the followers of Loyola, and the one who left the greatest impress on the rising organization. He 20
Hyma, The Christian Renaissance, p. 272. On Jesuit education, vide J. B. Herman, Là pédagogie des jesmtes au XVI* siècle: ses sources et ses characteristiqves (Louvain 1914).
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THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
was a Castilian—five of the ten companions of the founder were Spaniards—born of Jewish stock in 1512 at Almazan near Siguenza; and a Master of Arts from Alcalá when he came to Paris. It was the university to which Loyola had vainly attempted to be admitted at an earlier period, and where Lainez and Alfonso Salmerón of Toledo were fellow students. When the followers of Loyola distributed themselves over the towns of northern Italy, waiting for the opening of the way to Palestine—if indeed that was still the intention of Ignatius, unmodified by the years in Paris, Lainez went, with Faber and the chief himself, to Vicenza, where the council was to be held; thence, in the same company, to Rome, when the plan of a mission to Palestine had been openly abandoned. 30 At Rome, Paul I I I assigned Faber and Lainez, both scholars, to chairs in the Sapienza, the Roman university. They, as well as Loyola, lived at the Spanish hospital, gradually attracting attention by their good works and appealing to other elements than the students. They combined Dominic and Francis to such good purpose that they were assigned a house and church of their own. They turned the house into a hospital in the severe winter of 1538-1539 and did much to silence the critics, who ranged from those who identified them with the usual type of monastic reformer, as did the pope, to those who scented a new and dangerous type in the rumors that were afloat of their differences with the Inquisition. Most aggressive of these last were the adherents of the Augustinian Eremite Agostino Mainardi, member of an order under suspicion for their treatment in the pulpit of justification, free-will, and predestination. He was preaching at Rome doctrines which the alert Jesuits recognized as Lutheran. 31 In 1539, Lainez was sent with Faber "Brouet and Salmerón went to Siena; Xavier and Bobadilla to Bologna; Codure and Hozes to Padua; Rodriguez and Le Jay to Ferrara. Summoned to Rome as soon as the way had been prepared by Loyola and his two companions, they all participated in the activity of the famine winter 1538-39 and were again sent on mission. Xavier and Rodriguez went to Portugal (and Xavier thence to the Indies); others were assigned to posts in Italy, which was from the beginning the field in a special sense of the activities of the Company of Jesus and Faber went to the colloquy of Worms. The name had been adopted by the followers of Loyola during the conferences of that winter; it had occurred to Ignatius on the journey to Rome, according to Lainez. " The conflict resulted in a hearing before the papal legate at Rome, and when it appeared that Ignatius and his followers had given no cause for offense, his comrades wanted to drop the matter. Ignatius however sought out the pope, and telling frankly of his earlier experiences with the Inquisition, obtained a formal hearing which resulted in unconditional acquittal. For the papal anxiety about the Augustinians, vide Pastor XII, p. 493.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
37
to Parma, and their work won such regard from the magistrates of the city of Correggio that letters from them contributed in no small degree to the pressure brought to bear upon cardinal Guidiccioni to withdraw his opposition to the new order. 32 Lainez himself testifies to the success achieved among the parish priests, who attend regularly now to communion and confession; to the response which his preaching has met with in the richest nunnery of the neighborhood; and to the enthusiasm of the countryside, where the villages vie with each other for his services.33 He went thence to Rome for the election of Loyola as general, which took place on April 4, 1541. Faber had gone to the colloquy of Worms. In 1542, Lainez was sent by the pope to Venice, where the doge Pietro Landò had requested his services. He stayed three years, and made the city a headquarters from which he visited Verona, Vicenza, Brescia, Bassano, and other towns of the Veneto. His letters to Loyola tell of his services to the sick and of his invitations to preach in various churches; of the hospitality offered him by Andrea Lippomani, a wealthy noble and brother of the bishop of Verona; of his acceptance of that hospitality after he had refused to live in the palace of the doge and had gone, as usual, to stay at the hospital. Lippomani enabled Lainez to found at Padua and at Venice the first colleges of the society and thereby make his first distinct contribution to the work of the Order. The idea of colleges was due to Lainez. The preaching of Lainez at Venice drew crowds to the doors of the church as to a theatre, and even had a perceptible effect on the license of the carnival. André Desfreux ("Frusius"), one of the first students of the college of Padua, heard him preach at Florence later, and gives the impression that he spoke in clear and restrained fashion, with use of homely illustrations. From Florence too it was reported that since the time of Savonarola no preacher like Lainez had been heard. 34 His skill as an orator stood him and his order in good stead at the council of Trent, and Ignatius, though he treated him harshly, thought highly of him and destined him for his successor, as he eventually became. He apparently cultivated with more success than some of the others colleagues of Ignatius the virtue of humility which the leader enjoined. " T h e letters (to the ambassadors of Parma at Rome and to the pope's daughter Costanza Farnese, duchess of Santafiore) are to be read in Tacchi-Venturi, pp. 568-79. "Letter to Ignatius, Parma, June 2, 1540 (H. D. Sedgwick, Ignatius Loyola, pp. 226-28). " Gothein, op. cit., p. 317.
38
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
On July 21, 1542, by the bull Licet ab initio,36 Paul I I I ordained the institution of a congregation of six cardinals to seek out and punish heretics. In an introduction followed by thirteen paragraphs are set forth the cause of instituting the new board, the names of the members with the churches of which they are titularies, the jurisdiction and powers, to enforce which the aid of the secular arm can be invoked, and its distinctly coercive character. The institution of the congregation of the Holy Office (familiarly, the Roman Inquisition) marks the end of that disposition to compromise with the reformers which still shaped papal policy when the Company of Jesus was established in 1S40, and would still be revealed in Catholic circles until the condemnation of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith at the council of Trent. The immediate occasion of the step was not so much the failure of the conference of Regensburg as the reports from Modena. Giovanni Morone had at various times called attention to the penetration of Lutheranism into his diocese of Modena; it was one of the reasons for his repeated demands to be freed from his onerous position as nuncio. Thus he writes to cardinal Farnese from Worms on December 27, 1540: 36 "At Prague in Bohemia there is not so much discussion about heresy, I am told, as here in Modena. In the shops they speak against purgatory, the mass, the power of the church, the invocation of the saints, and other articles, just as they do in Germany." He speaks too of certain Augustinian preachers obtained through members of the board of conservatori who are inclined to the "sect." In the archives of Naples is a memorandum cited by Cardauns 37 of the bishop of Modena to Famese, begging him to advise whomsoever is necessary that two boxes of Lutheran books have been brought into Bologna disguised as two boxes of grain. The memorandum was forwarded to the pope, as appears from a note on the sheet in another hand than the writer's. Very well known is the story of the "academy," as it was called, which was composed of a number of cultivated men, including the physician Giovanni Grillenzone, a student of Pomponazzi, and the scholar Ludovico Castelvetro, and which engaged at Modena in classical studies together, 38 under the tuition of the Cretan Francesco Porto. This group, or " The bull is to be found in the Bullarium romanum of the Turin editors (Turin I860), Vol. VI, no. XLIII.
" Cardauns, Nuntiaturberichte, vol. V-VI, no. 91. " Op. cit., V-VI, xvii.
" Cf. Tiraboschi, Bibliotheca modenese III. 24 and Cantu, Gli eretici d'ltalia, II, 1S4 ff.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
39
individual members of it, were led into Biblical studies, and drew upon themselves the suspicion of responsibility for the booklet El sommario delta sancta scriptura, which had appeared without name of author or date at Modena in 1537. It had been burned at Rome on May 28, 1S39, but the ferment of opinion of which Morone had reported to cardinal Farnese in 1540 continued. When Morone returned from the colloquy of Regensburg, he found it only intensified by the presence there in the February preceding of the great preacher Bernardino Ochino; and in view of the danger he demanded the revival of the Inquisition. In Milan, the viceroy Del Vasto demanded from the curia more rigorous measures than he could employ, the existing Inquisition being so lax. A consistory held on July 15, 1541 decided to use as pattern for Italy a bull once issued for France, in 1525, which subordinated the bishops to the Inquisition and excluded all appeals, and to put the reorganized tribunal into the hands of Aleander and Caraffa. The duke of Ferrara (whose wife, Renée of France, was a. factor to be reckoned with where heretics were concerned, and whose city of Modena had become notorious) was requested not to put obstacles in the way of these delegates in the exercise of their office; and his ambassador, to whom the request was proffered, rose to his lord's defense by reminding the pope of the trial and imprisonment for life of a monk who had been preaching heresy in Modena. He meant the Minorite Paolo Ricci, called a Sicilian and possibly the evangelist of the circle of Grillenzone.39 By the bull of January 8, 1542, the Roman Inquisition was renewed and reinforced. It was an attempt to centralize again at Rome the prosecution of heresy as contemplated under Gregory IX, in view of the " Cardauns, op. cit., pp. xxiii-xxiv. Ricci, who callcd himself Fileno, when he abandoned Rome, is possibly identical with Camillo Renato, who was called Fileno according to the testimony of a witness at the trial of Aonio Paleario in 1567. The testimony runs: "Aonio era amico di certo Cammillo Renato napoletano che chiamavasi il Fileno eretico, vecchio et orbo, che aveva composte opere contra la santa fede cattolica, e che insegnava il luteranismo nella terra di Morbegno," etc. It is a certain Luigi Fontana of Como who speaks (Morpurgo, Un umanista martire, Aonio Paleario, p. 150-51). The abjuration of "Lisia Fileno, alias Paolo Riccio siciliano" is quoted by Cantù (II, 1S6-57) from the diary of Alessandro Tassoni. One of his heretical opinions he disavows by affirming "che l'anima de' santi et altri giusti defunti, che con grazia del Signore sono passati di questa vita, sono entrati in cielo a fruire le delizie del Paradiso." While this confession of Ricci or Fileno is no more an index to what he believed than most of the confessions of this period (or of any period), it is no far cry from the opinion implied in his disavowal to that of Camillo Renato on the resurrection (vide infra, p. 132).
40
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
gravitation of that authority in the centuries that had elapsed since then into the hands of the territorial princes, notably the king of Spain. But it does not follow the bull of 1525, for it omits all reference to the bishops (who, presiding over the ecclesiastical courts, had the first responsibility for heresy) and contains no prohibition of an appeal. Appeals were enjoined, indeed, when the board of cardinals was erected on July 21 following, and with the organization of the Holy Office by the bull of April 1, 1543, the inquisitors-general were clothed with authority on both sides of the Alps to try all cases of heresy; to apprehend and incarcerate suspected persons and their abettors, of whatever estate, rank, or order; to nominate officers under them; and to appoint inferior tribunals in all places with the same or limited powers.40 It may be suspected that due regard had to be maintained more than once to suspects of high rank, and it must be regard for the king of France rather than for Ercole of Ferrara which lies back of the papal brief published by Fontana, dated July 5, 1543 from Bologna and putting the duchess Renée under the particular protection of the cardinal-inquisitors at Rome. She was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the inquisitors, bishops, and their vicars, cardinals, and nuncios. The six cardinal-inquisitors named in the bull Licet ab initio were the cardinals of San Clemente (Giampietro Caraffa), San Sisto (Juan Alvarez de Toledo), Santa Balbina (Pierpaolo Parisio), San Cesario (Bartolommeo Guidiccioni), San Marcello (Dionigio Laureo), San Silvestro (Tommaso Badia) ; of these only two survived into the period which marked the Roman Inquisition, as their activity was termed, as a force in the Counter-Reformation—Caraffa and Toledo.41 Their functions were to be delegated where they pleased to ecclesiastics, but they were always to be the court of appeal from the decisions of their delegates. The competence of the ordinary ecclesiastical courts was set aside in matters under the jurisdiction of the new papal board, and all ranks were supposed to be subordinated to it. Its task was to punish attacks on the articles of belief, not to interpret or modify them. A condemnation once pronounced, only the pope could grant pardon. The Roman Inquisition was intended to resemble in machinery the Spanish Inquisition, but to transcend it in scope. It was to be a universal corrective in matters of belief. Giampietro Caraffa, called the cardinal Theatine, its real founder, had once imagined bringing the heretics back to the fold " Maccrie, op. cit., p. 226. "Toledo died Sept. 14/15, 1557. Caraffa, of course, is the future Paul IV.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
41
and confuting their innovations by the precept and example of a society which should hold forth the ideal of Catholic piety; he had founded as bishop of Chieti the order of the Theatines. But the purpose of that society had not been realized, and its field had been invaded by the organization of the company of Jesus. Caraffa turned his attention from conversion to repression of the heretics, and acquaintance with the methods of the Spanish Inquisition when he was papal nuncio in Spain in 1536 gave him his idea. There the Dominicans, whose provincials were entrusted with the prosecution of heretics in accordance with the medieval system established by Pope Gregory IX, had been set aside in favor of a special board of magistrates exercising their authority by means of local courts and headed by a general-inquisitor nominated by the sovereign and confirmed by the pope. He was president of a supervisory body, the council general of the Holy Inquisition. Together with the cardinal of Burgos, Dominican like himself, Caraffa pressed Paul III to establish a supreme tribunal at Rome which should supersede the old Dominican as well as the episcopal and the Spanish inquisitions. In point of fact, the first two persisted after Paul III, yielding to the pressure of Morone, Del Vasto, and Caraffa, had set up the Roman board, though in Italy at any rate the Dominicans no longer concerned themselves with heresy; and the Spanish Inquisition received repeatedly the acquiescence of successive popes. In Italy, however, the Spanish was hated for its methods and dreaded for its efficiency; and the suggestion of such a tribunal excited apprehension. It could not be extended to the Spanish possessions there, and in 1547, when there was question of setting up at Naples a tribunal subordinate to Rome, nobles and populace joined in a revolt against what nobody doubted was the inauguration of the system of suspicion, denunciation, torture, and confiscation which prevailed in the territories of Charles V elsewhere. Nor was popular estimate so far wrong. Only in practice was the new tribunal less terrible than the older one, and that because no central authority, political or religious, was yet possible. Its theory can be read in the numerous manuals published for the use of the inquisitors, from one of which Cantù quctes extensively.42 According to these, he says, for every heretic under indictment counsel is retained, with whom he can freely communicate and form his defense. A record is kept of all the acts and depositions and the notaries are not permitted to give a copy of the acts of the Holy Office for any reason whatsoever except to the "Gli
eretici d'Italia,
II, 340, 362, note 63. Cf. Rodocanachi, pp. 131 ff.
42
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
accused, and then only when the trial is pending; it must not include either the names of the witnesses or any particulars by means of which the accused might come to know them. If these manuals, with their repetition of forms of trial where witnesses for the defense are conspicuously lacking, were published frequently, as they were, we must suppose that the procedure was not greatly different in the ordinary courts. But a different spirit was, and always should be, expected of the church. Even torture, concerning the recourse to which Cantu speaks in connection with the trial of Galileo, 43 was not an unusual means of extracting evidence. The indignation which the Inquisition excited only shows that, reason and judgment being now awake, more humane standards were expected of the church than of the state. In its practice, Amabile acknowledges a difference in the application of the extreme penalties due to the different motives from which the two institutions arose, the Spanish from that of exploiting if not exterminating other races in favor of the dominant one, the Roman from that of devising a more efficient means of combating heresy and of curtailing the power of the bishops. He finds that examples of slaughter and spoliation, of burning both the living and the dead, of condemnation to the galleys, of incarceration, of the imposition of an infamous garb, all attested in the case of the Spanish Inquisition, were common to both institutions; that at the time of the controversies over the Inquisition, when the Roman and Spanish methods were compared, the Roman was adjudged more severe. Thus the Spanish Inquisition always demanded from the accused a list of the individuals held suspect by him as his enemies, and obtained similar information from the informant and the witnesses, while the Roman confined itself to a few simple interrogations on this point. T h e Spanish, before proceeding, never failed to inform the one whom it wished to convict of the imputations laid to his charge and to admonish him to make a confession or retractation in order to avoid a process always painful and long; the Roman gradually abandoned this principle. The Spanish assigned from the beginning an advocate chosen among the legal counsel of the Holy Office, familiar with the subject and competent even to reject the inquisitor and demand the substitution of another for him; the Roman often assigned any cleric whatsoever to compile the interrogatories on the part of the accused in the taking of testimony, and only as a last resort invited him to choose for himself a defender. Moreover, in the case of books to be prohibited, " Op. cit., m , 202 ff.
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43
the Spanish Inquisition gave to the accused the main points in the indictment and permission to defend himself, while the Roman did not trouble itself on this score. Mitigation of penalties too, he finds, were more frequent in the Spanish than in the Roman, and those condemned to perpetual imprisonment were liberated by the Roman Inquisition, if they had conducted themselves well, after ten years, as a rule; in the Spanish three years sufficed for the liberation.44 But the practice of the Roman Inquisition was at most times less severe than these prescriptions to its agents imply; and it seems to have been greatly dreaded only if the trial took place at Rome, which might demand the presence of the accused himself and not only the minutes of the trial always sent her by local and dependent tribunals. Buschbell is able to cite one instance, however, in which a suspect under indictment actually requested that he be sent to Rome for trial; 48 and that prisoners were no more closely watched there ordinarily than in Venice or Bologna is suggested by the fact that a student heretic sent to Rome by the inquisitor of Bologna could employ himself in seeing the sights of the eternal city. 46 It has been remarked that, "in contrast with the medieval theory that the church condemned heretics and the state executed them, the clergy had with the institution of the Roman inquisition to conquer their aversion from bloodshed. Delinquents were now tried by the pope as ruler of the church and burnt by the pope as ruler of the state." But it must be remembered that the pope was also an Italian prince, ruler of the papal dominions in Italy; he could always have burned heretics as a secular ruler whom he had condemned as a spiritual ruler. "Relaxation to the secular arm" was still the principle which technically cleansed the clergy of the taint of bloodshed; but whereas the heretics so "relaxed" by the agents of the medieval inquisition were condemned in the last analysis because their teaching and practice were subversive of the social and economic order (Waldenses, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Apostolic Brethren), the victims of the Roman Inquisition were held accountable for their very thoughts, these being more dangerous because they so easily found expression on the printed page. The practice of the Roman Inquisition could be illustrated more conclusively from its archives, were these accessible to scholars; but the opening of them might yield small returns for the early years of the u
Amabile, Inquisizione m Napoli, II, 5-6. "Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition m Italien, pp. 219-20, " Ibid., pp. 205, 220.
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THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
activities of the commissioners, since doubtless much valuable manuscript material perished in the burning of the palazzo of the Inquisition after the death of Paul IV, and Pastor says he was told that the records are lost of all the heresy trials during the pontificate of Paul III. 47 A copy sent by the pope to Catherine de' Medici and preserved in private hands, of the trial of Camesecchi in 1568 enabled Manzoni to give to the world in 1870 precious details of the circle of Valdes at Naples; and by permission of the Vatican, Cantu could in 1866 publish the original minutes of the trial of Cardinal Morone. 48 The documents from the archives of the Inquisition which somehow became detached from the main body of those records during their jaunt to Paris in the time of Napoleon and found their way to the library of Trinity College, Dublin, have to do with a period subsequent to those early years.48 The general decrees of the Roman Inquisition from the year 1SS5 were obtained by Pastor from the archives of the Barberini family and published in 1912. From them "the personnel of the tribunal and a number of important decisions may be gathered." 50 The records of the local tribunals established later than the central office are the source of most that we know about the activities of the Roman Inquisition, and of these the archives at the former Franciscan monastery at Venice (the "Frari") have been of particular interest to foreign scholars. There is also the Joppi collection at Udine, on which Battistella drew for his studies on the Holy Office.51 As to these documents, he notes that they probably belonged to some notary or assistant of the Holy Office at Udine. "They are copies," he proceeds, "of authentic acts and must have constituted a species of manual for the use of employees of the sacred tribunal. Five of the fascicles contain notes on the 'Santa Inquisizione nello Stato Veneto,' of which several refer to the Holy Office of Bergamo and Brescia." Of these, some concern the trial "History of the Popes, XII, 507, note 3. Cf. Buschbell, 174-175. " Tacchi-Venturi published (pp. 533-49) the two depositions of Salmeron in this prosecution, from the family archives of Prince Gallerati-Scotti. " T h e Dublin MS no. 1161 (in Abbott's catalogue of 1900), concerning which I have courteous letters from the assistant-librarian, Alfred de Burgh, contains only biographical sketches of notable Italian heretics tried by the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. The longest are those of Francesco Betti, Giacomo Aconzio, Guglielmo Grataroli, Agostino Mainardi, and Massimiliano Martinenghi. 50 Pastor, op. at., XIV, 262. " Battistella, "Alcuni documenti sul santo officio in Lombardia. . . ." (Archivio Storico lombardo, Ser. 3, III., 116 ff.)
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of the physician Grataroli, and serve to supplement the documents on the subject in the archives at Venice. The originals are not all found in busta 10 at the Frari, as might be expected; but that of June 23, 1551, in which the tribunal declared Grataroli a heretic, is presumably from the document at Venice. Contemporary opinion of the Inquisition is illustrated by the exordium which the publicist Vergerio addressed to Edward VI of England in November 1550 on the accession of Julius III. Vergerio, a recent fugitive from Italy, gives vent to his indignation over the Inquisition. It is his own attitude as a jurist that he reveals, for it is as a tribunal that he criticises the institution of Caraffa. The judges are fanatical and often completely uninformed on religious matters. He is not stressing their lack of religion, morals, and charity—after all, they are priests or monks,—but they accept any evidence whatever, be it ever so clearly the product of ill will, ever so unfounded, ever so obviously from persons who know so little of religion and theology that they do not know what their testimony means. The accused, often simpleminded folk, are led before crafty inquisitors, who ask them misleading questions. Witnesses for the defense are not conceded, as is the case in all other trials; indeed in well-ruled states, these are paid from public funds. The records are falsified too, and things are written on them which the poor victims have never said, in order to throw the more discredit upon them and bring the cause of the gospel into disrepute. Vergerio does not fail to depict with all his skill such a judgment-scene, with the callous inquisitor, covering his ignorance with self-confidence and reviling the child of God, the brother of Christ, learned, modest, dead to the world, pale with the prison-pallor, bound with raw cords. 62 A book which from its title promises more than it fulfils on the Roman Inquisition is mentioned by Gerdesius,53 and the date of its publication suggests that it is meant to imply comparisons between the Roman Inquisition and the Protestant Inquisition developed by Calvin. But the work (Girolamo Massario's Eusebius Captivus, stve modus procedendo in curia romana contra Lutheranos, published at Basel in 1553) offers no more for the student than the more famous and nearly contemporary Acta et monumenta of John Foxe, the "Book of Martyrs" prominent on the bookshelves of an older generation. It is a work of controversy " Hubert, Vergerios publizistische Thatigkeit, p. 140.
"Specimen Italiac riformatae, p. 296.
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THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
rather than history,5* in which the trial of a certain Eusebius Uranius is recounted. It lasts three days, and the prisoner, who does most of the talking, produces familiar arguments against the Roman church. The most important field over which the Holy Office was given sway was the printing press, the most decisive factor in the diffusion of heresy in the sixteenth century and one which contributed to the secularization of education which the Company of Jesus combated. The church was long in establishing control. To possess, to read, or to have written prohibited books made one liable to inquisition. Of the works of the German reformers, there occur in the trials of Italian heretics examined in these pages above all Butzer's "Sopra li evangelii" and "Sopra S. Matteo," Melanchthon's De Anima, Sebastian Miinster's In Evangelium Mathei, and the anonymous "Lo Interim," 85 as read in spite of prohibition. In Lombardy the books of Luther, received from the printer Froben in Basel, were distributed to the customers of the evangelical bookseller Francesco Calvi of Pavia—a native of Menaggio on Lake Commo—and travelled incognito in wine casks and bales of cloth, books masquerading as wine affording a neat contrast with a day and place in which wine seeks the protective coloration of books. In the Veneto, the works of Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and Butzer, circulated under more or less transparent noms de guerre, of which Melanchthon's (Ippofilo di Terranegra) is the most transparent, Butzer's (Aretius Felinus) the most witty, and Zwingli's (Coricius Cogelius) the most ponderous. The bookseller Giordano furthered the diffusion of them. Whole libraries "Maccrie, La Réforme en Italie, 449. Cf. Cantù, op. cit., I l l , 159, and note 43. The date should be 1SS3. " T h e Ennarationes perpetuae in sacra quatuor evangelia of Martin Butzer is originally of 1S30. The second edition of 1536, following the Wittenberg Concord achieved by the author, has as an appendix the retractation on the Lord's Supper. Butzer's exposition of Matthew xviii was published in English at Emden in 1566 (British Museum Catalogue) ; there is included an address to the reader "about the wearinge of popish appareil" and "an answer to the question that was movyd whi the godly men wold not weare a surples." It is plain to see that Butzer was drawn after his death into the difficulties of the Elizabethan establishment; but not so plain whether a favorite book of Italian evangelicals is here to be recognized. Melanchthon's Commentarius de anima went through many editions at Wittenberg (1540, 1553, 1560, 1565, etc.) Sebastian Miinster (professor of Hebrew at Basel) is known best for his Cosmography. Of his Evangelium secundum Mattkaeum in lingua hebraica cum versione latina alque succintis annotalionibus, the British Museum Catalogue lists editions of 1537, 1557, and 1582.
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47
were transported to Italy at the time of the last fair, wrote Melanchthon to Georg of Anhalt, in spite of the edicts which the pope has just launched. 56 Of the printers at Basel, Pietro Perna undertook trips to Venice in person, during which, being an Italian by birth—he was of Lucca, where a list of prohibited books had been drawn up in 1S4S— he could doubtless elude observation when necessary; but he doubtless experienced in the territory of Venice, which protected her book trade, the minimum of difficulty. After the flight of Vergerio in 1549, his famulus Menucrino Venturino attended to the delivery of the products of his prolific pen to his agents in Venice and Istria." In 1563, they are travelling through those regions in balls of silk. But the names which recur again and again in the trials of the middle years of the century are works of Italian evangelicals; and of these the Benefizto di Cristo is the most important single work of the Italian reform, a product of the circle of Valdes and not, as was long believed, the work of Antonio della Paglia ("Aonio Paleario"), the Roman humanist who suffered the death penalty for heresy in 1570.58 It was not known to have survived in a single exemplar when Ranke wrote, but three copies were discovered in the nineteenth century, the earliest in 1852 in the Cambridge university library. 59 Like the Sommario della santa scrittura, a close second to the 'Beneficio' in the extent of its influence on the Italian reform, it maintains the doctrine of justification by faith as one would expect of a disciple of Valdes, who translated the thoughts of his master into familiar phrases. But its spirit of mystic devotion made it a great favorite of the enlightened body of cardinals which surrounded Paul III and the subject of discussion by Pole and his friends at Viterbo. The 'Sommario,' if not Italian in origin, as was thought at the time it brought into suspicion the physician Grillenzone and his friends at Modena, certainly held a place in the Italian reform which the Dutch origin now attributed to it does not satisfactorily explain. The Tragedia del libero arbitrio of Francesco Buonamente, called Negri when he abandoned Rome for the reform, is a well-known book, often analyzed; 60 " Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., pp. 307-18. Maccrie, 209. " Cf. the trial of Vincenzo Maggi, infra p. 188. " Beheading and then burning of the body, the penalty of the heretic w h o abjures but not publicly. M For these literary products of the Italian Reformation, vide for hasty résumés Rodocanachi, La réforme en Italie, I, 146-69. B y Cantù in the Eretici d'ltalia, for instance, III, 154-56; and b y Comba, I nostri Protestanti, II, 310-16.
48
THE
COUNTER-REFORMATION
and the Pasqutno in estasi of Celio Secundo Curione likewise. Both are satires reminiscent of the earlier attempts (as of Erasmus, Brant, and Hutten) to entertain as well as instruct, the first in the form of a mystery-play and the latter of a dialogue such as those which wags affixed at Rome to the ancient statue at the corner of the palazzo Orsini (now Braschi) when the curia laid itself open to comment. 61 Against the discrediting of her doctrine and practices and the ridiculing of her hierarchy by these and similar works, Rome was spurred into action. Cardinal Farnese, writing to the nuncio Delia Casa, who was pressing the matter of a censorship there in June 1549, says that the commissioners of the Inquisition at Rome long since entrusted a theologian with the task of scanning the catalogues of all the booksellers there, and of eliminating from the shops the books of which he disapproved. His duties included being present when cases of books from abroad were unpacked. No case could be opened without his presence. Moreover a catalogue of forbidden books, based on the old ones of Paris, Louvain and elsewhere, was being compiled. 62 The censorship of books in Italy began properly with the publication at Naples of the edict of the viceroy Pedro de Toledo (brother of the cardinal who was Caraffa's colleague at the establishment of the Inquisition) commanding the giving u p of infected books. There followed the burning in front of the cathedral of San Gennaro of a quantity of the books disapproved b y the preachers whom the viceroy had summoned to put to flight the followers of the new doctrines; among these books were the Benefizio della morte di Cristo and the Sommario della santa scrittura. Then came the edict of October 15, 1544, which forbade the printing, possessing, or selling books of theology written within the preceding twenty-five years, unless they had first been shown to the chaplain of the king. Anonymous books and books of authors who have been disapproved and condemned are also blacklisted. 63 Nearly contemporary The Trattato vtilissimo del beneficio di Giesu Cristo crocifisso is printed by Paladino, Opusculi e lettere di rijormatori italiani del cinquecento (Ban 1913), I, 1-60.
"Cf. Barraconi, I rioni di Roma, pp. 299-301; Cantu, II, 212-30, and Story, Roba di Roma (in English). This now mutilated bust was originally Menelaus in the gToup "Menelaus with the body of Patroclus," familiar to visitors at the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. "Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition in Italien, p. 32. The edict of the inquisitors was of July 12, 1S43 (Tacchi-V'enturi, p. 311 and note 2). "Amabile, II santo officio della Inquisizione a Napoli, I, 195.
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49
with the beginning of regulation of books at Naples was that at Venice, where on February 12, 1543, a decree of the Council of Ten forbade the printing and sale of books which reflect on the honor of God and the Christian faith. This was supplemented on May 17, 1547, with a law designed to catch those who introduced heretical books from outside. The culprit, in such a case, sustained the loss of the volumes (as did Flaminio at the hands of Caraffa), which would be publicly burned, and also paid fifty ducats fine, to be turned over to the secret author of the denunciation. But the law was consistently evaded." Meanwhile, the destruction had commenced in obedience to the policy now declared. In January 1543, bonfires of the works of Ochino and others had been lighted at Milan,65 and in July 1548 the smoke of similar fires arose from the Rialto at Venice, from which the nuncio Delia Casa had been reporting to Rome the appearance of the Pasquino in estasi and the Tragedia del libero arbitrio. It was Delia Casa who in May 1548 published the catalogue of prohibited books which led directly through successive editions to a Roman index realizing the intention of a papal control over the press which had first been expressed in the bull Inter multiplices of Innocent VIII in 1487. The Council of Trent had taken the responsibility by the decree of April 8, 1546. Delia Casa's list of 1548 is published by Comba from the edition of Vergerio, but without his comments.68 "Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., p. 312. "As to the burning of books of Luther and Erasmus at Milan on January 29, 1543, vide the letters of Merbeglio, secretary of Francesco Sforza, to Beatus Rhenanus (Horawitz and Hartfelder, Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, 490) and that of Rhenanus to Boniface Amerbach (ibid., 492). Ten days previously, a bonfire had been made of the writings of Ochino and others (Meyer, Evangelische Gemeinde zu Locarno, I, 150, citing letters of Merbeglio to Pellikan). " 7 nostri Protestanti, II, 692-95.
CHAPTER I I I ITALIAN R E F O R M E R S IN T H E HALL OF
FAME
VALDES AND HIS CIRCLE AT NAPLES
In the summer of 1541, just as the diet which had survived the colloquy of Regensburg was drawing to a close, died Juan Valdes in Naples. It was a decade before his work there was really apparent to others than those who had enjoyed intimacy with him, and much longer before the bearing of it on the Italian Reformation was appreciated. Only, it may be, the curia at Rome was cognizant of the spirit pervading the group receiving spiritual stimulation from him, and in yielding to the pressure of those who urged the reorganization of the Inquisition recognized the danger to the church of Rome which his teaching portended. Eight years in succession he had lived in the city of Parthenope, and in that brief time had become the most constructive force for spiritual religion in Italy. His followers, scattering to the farthest comers of Italy, developed each according to his genius the conceptions born of association with him. Mysticism was an exotic bloom on Italian soil, and none of them quite understood him with his fundamental emphasis on that individual conscience which shows the way to God, independently of priest or pope. "Justification by faith" expressed his teaching in terms of the time; but Valdes was in fact only preparing each of his neophytes to enter upon a religious life of his own and not defining for them any creed which they could invoke. He was the skillful surgeon who carefully prepares for an operation by insulating from the diseased part every source of infection, who lightly but firmly probes the wound he makes, and when he has dealt with the trouble leaves the rest to nature to restore and rebuild. He numbered among his followers a Vergerio, who fitted among the followers of Luther; a Vermigli, who identified himself with Calvin; an Ochino who, when the proper influence was brought to bear, became an Antitrinitarian; a group of humanists whose personal and individual beliefs were, and have always remained, their private affair; and a bevy of lovely ladies who seem to have sensed his meaning by a certain feminine intuition much more sure than the rational minds of their masculine conjrbres. But Valdes was not destructive of a formal
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SI
belief resting on authority. It is conceivable that his pupils might have come out from under his influence with their faith strengthened in the religion of their fathers, had the question of doctrine or even ritual been the only issue; but in turning away from the world, they found it difficult to take the hierarchy with them. He was a great teacher, and his pupils reached conclusions by themselves which it is futile to try and trace to him, who was not a Lutheran or a Calvinist or an Antitrinitarian because certain of his friends and disciples became such. He was not quite an Erasmian, though perhaps he was such as far as a Spaniard can be like a Dutchman. He was also a scholar; with his twin brother Alfonso (whose separate identity was established in no small degree by the fact that Erasmus distinguished between them) he had been a pupil of the Milanese humanist Piermartire d'Anghiera ("Peter Martyr the elder") and had cultivated a love not merely for the classic pursuits of his time but for his native language, his services to which can be compared with those of Dante to Italian—Valdes's Dialogo della lengua castellana with Dante's De volgare eloquentia. Of the events of his life we know but little. It may have been uneventful, for that matter; but at any rate there is little to help the student in the interpretation of his works, and these in turn shed little light on his life. A mature man when we gain our first glimpse of him, he was on the threshold of middle age when he died. He was a great soul in what on the evidence of his friends we know to have been a frail body. It was in the days of the great viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo, who consolidated the Spanish power in Naples. The insolence of the nobles was checked, whether of the great Spanish families who had identified themselves with the country so long ruled by Spanish kings or of the native nobility like the Caraffa or the Caraccioli whom the newcomers overshadowed. Thus Toledo advised Alfonso of Avalos, Marchese del Vasto (later the viceroy of Charles V at Milan and the assassin of Rincon and Fregoso), when he was on the point of returning to Naples laden with the honors he had received for services rendered the crown of Spain, that 'up to that time he had honored the Marchese as his master, but for the future the Marchese should obey him as a subject.' At the coronation of Charles at Bologna in 1530, the prince of Salerno (representative of the feudal house which had most seriously menaced the old Aragonese monarchy) took it ill because he was not permitted to carry any of the insignia, which were all entrusted to great Spanish dignitaries. And when Charles came to Naples after the expedition to Tunis he would
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not listen to the claims of the Neapolitan nobles to remain covered before him (a privilege which even Ferdinand the Catholic had recognized) and one by one the barons yielded. 1 Toledo secured the coasts against the fleets of the Barbary corsairs and built the so-called "Saracen towers" of which Torre del Greco and Torre Annunziata at present recall the original purpose of policing the bay. Toledo enlarged the city, driving the Via Toledo (now the Via Roma) along what were then the outskirts of the city, beyond which stretched vineyards up to the summit crowned by the castle of Sant' Elmo and its neighbor the Carthusian monastery. Vice was restrained and public buildings erected. It is a factor not to be left out of account in estimating the Italian— and not merely the Neapolitan—Reformation that Italian life and thought were in the sixteenth century permeated by Spanish influence. 2 Among the Spaniards of noble birth resident in the city was Juan Valdes, of Cuenca in Castile, who had come thither as archivist of the city iii succession to his brother Alfonso (who died of the plague in 1532) and who remained in a private capacity when his office was abolished to avoid giving a civic position so important to a foreigner and at the same time avoid giving offense to that foreigner. Valdes may have left his native land on account of the Inquisition, for he was associated with one Pedro Luis de Alcaraz, leader of a knot of alumbrados (mystics) in the household of the Marqués de Villena in 1524 3 ; and Alcaraz was severely handled by the Inquisition. Loyola, it will be remembered by students of his life, was imprisoned for the same cause at much the same time. The friends of Juan Valdes at Naples were in later years to recall the Sunday promenades along the Riviera di Chiaia, sometimes as far as the Mergellina and the tomb of Sannazzaro. It was on these walks that Valdes taught his companions to question a religion of form and emphasize one of faith. Not so celebrated are the talks which Valdes delivered to the group which gathered in the house of Señor Bernardo Guasta, at San Giovanni a Carbonara; but their theme was the Epistles of Saint Paul, on which Valdes, in common with the leading humanists in every land, wrote commentaries. There is evidence of another group which met at the house of Giovanni Maria Bernardo. These gatherings 1
Benedetto Croce, Storia di Napoli, p. 100. On this subject, Benedetto Croce, La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la rinascenza (Bari 1917). "Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish dependencies, p. 68, citing Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Rivista di Archivos for Feb. 1903, p. 129. 1
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S3
cannot have come under the condemnation meted out to the academic societies which were dissolved by the viceroy in accordance with the decree of Charles V in 1536 forbidding all commerce with those infected with heresy or suspected of Lutheranism, for some of the most noted of the followers of Valdes came to Naples after that date—such as Carnesecchi, Marcantonio Flaminio, and Piermartire Vermigli ("Peter Martyr the Younger"). Nor was the academy of Naples which Beccadelli had founded and in the direction of which Pontano and Sannazzaro had succeeded him, suspect as yet of heresy. Not till after the establishment of the Holy Office of Rome and of course subsequently to the death of Valdes occurred the dismissal of Scipione Capece, its host after the death of Sannazaro. Capece, who was professor of civil institutions at the university of Naples and the one who had formally greeted Charles V, returning from Tunis, in the name of the city, was deprived of his office of royal councillor on February 26, 1543, on suspicion of heresy attaching to him because of association with Ochino. Valdes spoke to wider audiences through the great preacher Bernardino Ochino, who, as Charles V said, would make the stones weep; for he furnished him with the themes of those tremendous sermons which the Capuchin delivered in San Giovanni Maggiore, writing the suggested topics on slips of paper and sending them to him the night before. And the effect of Ochino's preaching is known. It stirred the emperor Charles V, who, returning from the expedition to Tunis, was in Naples during the Lenten season. It gravely perturbed a lady of high degree, the duchess Giulia of Fondi, of the Gonzaga family which was just then being asked to be hosts to the council at Mantua. As they issued one day from the church after the sermon, she opened her heart to Valdes, and the result was the Abecedario cristiano, the "Christian alphabet," which Valdes wrote for Giulia. With a new interest in life, Giulia retired presently to the monastery of San Francesco delle Monache, hard by the old Angevin church of Santa Chiara, not as a nun—for her teacher discountenanced monastic vows—but as a kind of resident patroness, privileged to such an extent that for thirty years she was able to foster the spirit of genuinely saving souls which Valdes had inculcated. The sermons of Ochino moreover gave rise to a free discussion of the sacred writings, to the study of the gospels in particular, and to disputes about justification, faith, works, papal power, purgatory, and a whole panoply of other matters theological rather than mystic within the meaning of Valdes. These, says one who heard it all with avidity, "are matters for great theologians and
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not to be treated by laymen and especially when these have little learning and less culture. . . . Difficult passages in St. Paul's writings are discussed by the tanners in the market-place. It behooves the princes and prelates," he concludes virtuously, "to procure preachers of holy life and doctrine, and not ambitious ones (i.e. who go about—ambire—campaigning)." 4 One has the impression that the movement gave promise of being a popular one. It was felt within the monasteries too. In his cell in a Benedictine house near Mount Etna, Don Benedetto da Mantova, from San Severino at Naples, wrote the Benejizio della morte di Cristo crocifisso, a handbook of the teachings of Valdes as understood by him. The association of the author with his teacher was not known until long afterward. It was this booklet, the most influential of the literary products of the Italian reform, which the zeal of the Inquisition all but effaced, though its appearance was greeted with enthusiasm by such loyal Catholics as Cardinal Morone.5 At San Pietro ad Aram also, the prior Piermartire Vermigli, who was a great friend of Valdes, explained the epistles of Saint Paul as they were explained in the walks along the Chiaia and at the house in San Giovanni a Carbonara. Prominent among the noble adherents of Valdes were representatives of the old Neapolitan families like Giangaleazzo Caraccioli, son and heir of the márchese di Vico. Of the Spanish nobility was Doña Isabella Briseña, whose husband, Don Garcia Manriquez, was governor of Piacenza, and whose brothers-in-law, Alfonso and Pedro, were archbishop of Seville and bishop of Cordova respectively. Both were cardinals, and Alfonso was grand-inquisitor of Spain. The subsequent flight of Caraccioli and of Doña Isabella was directly caused by their association with Valdes. Most of the other friends of Valdes had to undergo one or more citations before the Holy Office. The work of Valdes was made known across the Alps not by disciples who had enjoyed the closest contact with him, but by Vergerio and Curione, of whom the former apparently never met Valdes, though he was in Naples early in 1536 to meet Charles V, but knew him through Carnesecchi at Venice. He is credited with having carried out of Italy the manuscript of the One Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations, which Curione gave to the press (at Basel in 1550) in an Italian translation.® * Antonino Castaldo, htoria (ed. Gravier, Napoli 1769), p. 74. ' Vide supra p. 47. ' T h e y are to be read in English translation by John T. Betts (London 1865) in a volume of which the first part is Benjamin Wiffen, Life and Writings of Juan de Valdes. Curione's preface is pp. 201-06, and is printed in Italian in Paladino, Opusculi e lettere di riformatori italiani del cinquecento, (Barí 1913), I, 67.
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55
OCHINO AND VERMIGLI THE PREACHERS
The most prominent names on the roster of the Italian reformers, considered, as has generally been the case, as the apostles of Lutheranism in the peninsula, are those of Ochino and Vermigli, Curione and Vergerio, all of whom, alarmed into flight from the homeland by the Inquisition, were incapacitated from carrying on their work in the spirit of Valdes and within the limits of the church. In evangelical lands they became identified with one or other of the state churches, and once in the field of Christian polemics, excelled all others in the keenness of their dialectic. Except Curione, they were trained in theology, Vergerio but superficially, while Curione's theological knowledge amazed his Swiss friends, who knew that he was not a professional; and they brought to the question of a reformation of the church minds which had already been steeped in formal doctrines. The mysticism which characterized Valdes was transformed in followers like these, or failed to communicate itself to them, and they became assertive and dogmatic. Perhaps this was the result of contact with the orthodoxy of the Lutheran and Calvinist champions; perhaps it was the natural outcome when rational minds like the Italian are brought to bear on spiritual matters. Certainly those who carried on the gentle, sympathetic, and considerate modus operandi of the Spaniard were the humanists—and Italian humanists were not all skeptics and atheists,—and the spirit of Erasmus, whose real successor was Valdes, lived again in Curione. A group united by a common bond these four men could hardly have felt themselves before they came to be at the close of their Wanderjahre the leaders of the exiled Italian reformed. Yet their acquaintance must have been then of long standing, and a certain intimacy may even have existed between Curione, Vermigli, and Vergerio during their student days at Padua. Ochino was not as yet the greatest preacher of his day, and the fame he won for the Capuchin order Vermigli attained in a more modest degree for the Augustinians. The association of Ochino and Vermigli began at Naples when Vermigli was prior of San Pietro ad Aram, a convent of Lateran canons. San Giovanni Maggiore, where Ochino preached on his first visit to Naples, belonged to the same order of clerics, and the prior of San Pietro, which claimed to have been founded by the prince of the apostles himself while on a visit to Naples, had an importance all but episcopal.7 1 Giuseppe de Blasiis, "La chiesa e la badia di S. Pietro ad Aram" storico per le Provincie napoletane, X X I I I , 211-50).
(Archivio
S6
IN THE HALL OF FAME
Piermartire Vermigli, scion of a wealthy noble family, was born at Florence in September 1500, and as a boy had been educated in the humanities with the sons of prominent families. Reumont informs us that he was a pupil of Marcello Virginio Adriani,8 and Cantu enumerates his famous fellow-students.* He had become an Augustinian canon just about the time when an Augustinian friar was beginning his lectures on the Pauline epistles at the university of Wittenberg. His entrance into the cloister was not an abrupt break in the career of a boy of sixteen as was that of Luther at twenty-two; but Piermartire, like Martin Luther, was a favorite with his companions, and the family seems to have been averse from his choice of a career, notwithstanding the piety they betrayed in naming him. His promise—he was very scholarly—pointed in another direction, as did Luther's. After his novitiate (passed in San Domenico, at the foot of the hills of Fiesole), he took up his studies again at Padua, living in the convent of San Giovanni a Vergara in the neighborhood of the city. In his family the memory persisted of Savonarola in the pulpit of the Duomo; and as one of the preachers whom the Augustinians furnished to stir the piety of the multitudes at Lent and Advent, young Vermigli developed a talent in exhortation which did much to reconcile his parents to his vocation. But he was hardly installed in the new and important position at Naples when his fame was overshadowed by the appearance of a greater than Savonarola, Bernardino Ochino of Siena, who now swept from city to city, winning extraordinary encomiums everywhere and provoking a veritable contest among princes and city-fathers to secure his services. No rich man's son was Bernardino. His father was an obscure dweller in the Oca quarter of the city of Santa Catarina and of the famous revival preacher of the fifteenth century. His very name was a nickname which caused his own cognomen to be forgotten, "Ochino" from the Oca quarter. He steps into history just before the contest began between Pope Clement and the new Capuchin order, which the pope was bent on dissolving. Already forty-eight years old and with long years behind him in the ranks of the Observantists, strictest sect of the Franciscans, Bernardino Ochino had seceded to the Capuchins because they promised to approach even more closely to the ascetic ideal which he was resolved to follow. Mysticism of an unhealthy sort, spiritual contacts which are the " Vittoria republic.
Colonna,
'Op. cit., I I , 69.
p. 145. Marcello Virginio was secretary of the Florentine
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57
product of undernourishment, seemed to be indicated in the conduct of the young order; and the Holy Father, with an eye to the usual consequences of such manifestations, subversion of papal authority and clerical privilege, expelled the Capuchins from Rome as a prelude to their annihilation as an order. Public opinion and the prompt intervention of Vittoria Colonna and of Catarina Cibo, with their powerful connections, compelled him to yield, and the accession of Alessandro Farnese as Paul III heralded the growing prestige of the Capuchins. Not the least of their titles to consideration was now the mounting reputation of their preacher, Fra Bernardino, at whose earliest sermons, during the Lent of 1S34 at Rome, most of the college of cardinals were in daily attendance. His voice is characterized as perjettissima; his gray hair, his beard which one imagines from his portrait rose and fell with his impassioned utterance, his pale ascetic features, and the impression he conveyed of bodily vigor unaffected by fasting, all filled his hearers with a delicious discomfort and a profound awe. The churches would not hold the crowds, and scaffolding was erected within to utilize more space, while outside tiles were torn from neighboring roofs by listeners in the attics. 10 He seems to have worked by preference in Venice, which had been the first theatre of the activities of Loyola and his companions. Here he preached Lenten sermons in 1538, 1539, and 1542. Venice, which had escaped such experiences as had been the lot of Rome and of Florence at the hands of the soldiers of Charles V and was just beginning to find in the French alliance a safeguard against the Turk, had drawn to herself with her wealth and prosperity the wistful eyes of all Italy. Never was she more brilliant than in this period preceding her long slow decline, and, on the evidence of contemporary writers, vying with that depicted in the Arabian Nights. The paintings of Titian, Giorgione, Veronese, as well as the earlier Bellini confirm their descriptions. Materialism, the preachers would have us know, had stifled conscience; and Ochino on successive visits mourned over the pleasure-loving city. 'He would have had more fruit for his labors in England or Germany or among Turks and heathen.' 11 But the Venetians would have been more than human could they have executed a complete volte-face each year after the delirium of the Carnival, which at Venice began on St. Stephen's day and lasted until the beginning of Lent. Appreciative listeners Ochino found, at any rate among the intellectuals, and this class included since the sack of '"Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, p. 21. 11 Beniath, op. cit., p. 19. The quotation is from his first Lenten sermon in 1539.
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Rome and the reduction of Florence the disheartened letterati of the one and the exiled republicans of the other. Pietro Bembo, who kept open house for the Ciceronians, "opened his heart to him as he would have done to Christ himself." Contarini, Pole, Gregorio Cortese, Caraffa, were of those who were attempting to reestablish at Venice the associations begun in the Oratory of Divine Love at Rome and doubtless mingled more than once with the crowd at the Santi Apostoli when Fra Bernardino was preaching. A year before the first engagement of Ochino at Venice, Loyola and his companions had come thither and, as they remained to study the Theatines, may well have made the acquaintance of Ochino. If not then, Loyola must surely have become acquainted with Ochino during the summer or fall of 1S40 as Ochino, returning from Palermo, lingered in Rome while his native city of Siena besought him to come home for the Advent season and he waited for the papal permission, since Paul had by this time constituted himself the booking agent of the famous preacher. Four times was Ochino in Naples, in the Lenten season of 1536 at San Giovanni Maggiore, in 1539 at the cathedral on his way to Sicily, and in 1540 on his return; and at Pentecost of 1541, when he was elected for the second time general of his order. It was not long before something new began to be felt in his sermons. Perhaps it had been there all the time; but its novelty passed unnoticed by those held by the spell of his oratory, except at Naples, where his words (subtly modified under the influence of Valdes) provoked comment from the first, and in 1539, a denunciation by the Theatines to Cardinal Caraffa in Rome. At Modena in 1540, it was observed that he no longer preached as formerly; that he spoke too much of Christ and no longer mentioned San Geminiano.12 The pope was evidently in a quandary; and Ochino, anxious to respond favorably to the insistent invitations from Siena, felt that it was something besides consideration for his health which prompted Paul's desire to keep him in Rome. When the pope finally despatched him to Siena, which in despair had finally chosen another preacher, 13 he may well have thought that he was being humiliated intentionally. Ochino was reelected general of the Capuchins in the following year (1541), and it was no time to cast suspicion at the man whom his own order had so honored. Even when the suspected preacher (whom popua
Letter of Grillenzone to Moroneof July 3, 1542 in Benrath, Bernardino p. 69 and note. " Paolo Negri, Bernardino Ochino, p. 9, ibid, app., Doc. III.
Ochino,
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larity bade fair to render immune from attack) received a new invitation from Venice, the city where heresy was all but unhindered, Paul gave no sign. But he charged the nuncio Mignanelli to watch him. Perhaps he wanted to bring matters to a crisis, for steps had already been taken looking to the reorganization of the Inquisition. It was but a few weeks after Ochino's last sermons at Naples that Vermigli left Naples. His departure was not precipitate; he was ill with malaria; but he had been within an ace of having to flee. An explanation of 1 Corinthians 3: 10-15 in a spirit apparently dissonant with that of the church drew upon him the suspicion of denying purgatory, an offense all the more serious since an important part of his auditors was constituted of the bianchi di giustizia, a society composed of Neapolitan gentlemen, lay as well as ecclesiastical, who were dedicated to the service of those condemned to death. Only his powerful protectors and the protectors of his order saved him from the wrath of the viceroy. Toledo forbade him to preach, but he appealed to Pope Paul and was permitted to continue. Like Ochino, he left Naples in good standing with the church in spite of criticism. Spite of the preaching, the spirit stirred by Valdes found permanent harbor only in the upper ranks of society, for the arrival of the Jesuits Salmerón and Bobadilla was decisive for the CounterReformation among the rank and file. Salmerón worked in Naples, except for brief interruptions, until his death. 14 Frá Bernardino preached his last Lenten sermons at Venice in 1542. He had hardly begun when the case of Frá Giulio of Milan coming to his attention, he could not refrain from an indignant protest from his pulpit in the Santi Apostoli against the imprisonment of those who proclaim the truth. The prisoner in question had been the Lenten preacher of the previous year, occupying the pulpit of San Cassiano. His name in the world had been Giuseppe della Rovere, and perhaps his assumption of the name of "Julius" was in homage to the pope of that family, Julius II. He had preached at Tortona, at Monza, at Bologna, and at Trieste, "defending the doctrine of justification by faith with the authority of Saint Augustine and of the canons of the synod of Cologne." He preached extemporaneously, evidently letting his feelings carry him away. As he said in his trial on June 10, 1541, "io piglio sempre la prima intention del evangelio et sopra quella predico et mi diletto," one suspects that he was more eloquent than learned. The bishop of Trieste, Pietro Bonomo, " Vide Gothein op. at., pp. 563-64.
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wanted preachers like Giulio, not of the old school of dialecticians, "in order that the work might go forward in that city, clogged with materially-minded men, canons who kept concubines, and usurers."16 In the Lenten sermon of 1541, he preached predestination, denied confession the force of a sacrament, questioned the cult of images, and admitted as sacraments only baptism and the Eucharist. He was suspected also because he had lived in the house of Curione, who was at Venice in 1539. He had been incarcerated since August 1541 when Ochino took up his cause; the discovery of suspected books in his quarters had brought about his citation before the tribunal of the nuncio on the suspicion of holding the dangerous doctrine of justification by faith; and his public recantation in January 1542 had not availed to give him his liberty. Ochino had probably known Giulio in Naples, where at some time he had mingled with the circle of Valdes. His partisanship for him provoked the nuncio, mindful of his instructions from Rome, to forbid the Sienese to preach; the city authorities clearly remained neutral; and the populace insisted on the lifting of the ban. But the crisis had been reached. If Paul, at this juncture, summoned Ochino to Rome merely on business of the order, as he said, he chose an unfortunate time. The bishop of Veropa (Gian Matteo Giberti, member of Paul's commission of nine), to whom Fra Bernardino had gone for a rest after his labors at Venice, suggested that it would be better to wait until gossip had died down; and Ochino himself had no doubt as to the object of the visit. With the first diplomatic missive from Cardinal Famese, dated July 15, 1542, came doubtless news of the new inquisitorial tribunal; and the papal brief which followed was written six days after the publication of the bull Licet ab initio. Recollection of Luther's triumphal progress to Worms and futile condemnation there by his enemies would have been enough to make the pope refrain from committing himself. But Ochino did not put his head in the lion's mouth and become a national hero. He was persuaded by Giberti to give a stunning example of obedience to constituted authority by submitting, and set forth from Verona in midAugust 1542. Something however which the dying Contarini, whom he ' s D e Leva, op. cit., I l l , 372 ff. Tacchi-Venturi publishes (op. cit., pp. 507-09) the letter from the papal nuncio at Venice, Giorgio Andreassi, to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese at Rome (August 13, 1S40), concerning the preaching of Giulio della Rovere of Milan. Cf. Paul III to Andreassi, November 21, 1541, ordering that the dossier of Frà Giulio be sent to R o m e (ibid., p. 514).
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stopped to see at Bologna, 16 told him in response to his account of his errand, joined to the unambiguous advice of Vermigli," whom he encountered at Florence, determined him to leave Italy forthwith. He proceeded to Mantua disguised as a soldier—surely the choice of such a disguise is a comment on his bearing and stature—and, although he was recognized on the way by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, 18 he reached safely the Valtelline and was at Morbegno on August 31. 1 9 B y November, Cardinal Gonzaga had heard from Rome that a Florentine merchant coming by the post from Lyons and passing by Geneva had met Ochino eating in a tavern with one of his convent brothers. T h e former Capuchin was dressed in a cotton mantle with a leather coat over it and wore a cap with lappets. 20 Entering into conversation with the strangers because they spoke Italian, he learned their identity from Ochino's own lips. Perhaps it was because it was to Calvin that the fugitive betook himself, and because it was at Geneva that the new edition of his sermons which obtained a great vogue in Italy was now printed, that Ochino was described as having gone from Mantua to Aosta and over the Saint Bernard, with Geneva as his objective. It is not likely that he had any such definite plan and he took no such route. It was Heinrich Bullinger, antistes or ranking pastor of the reformed church at Zurich, who directed him to Geneva, where Calvin was now reestablished after his exile. He would hardly have gone by way of Constance if he were going to Geneva; and when we hear the nuncio at Venice, Mignanelli, reporting to Cardinal Farnese that he was seen there "in a mantle of black stuff lined with fox-fur and a barett," we suspect that eager spies discovered Fra Bernardino in every tall and grizzled stranger they encountered. CURIONE THE SCHOLAR AND TEACHER
Vermigli had preceded his friend across the Alps and was followed promptly by Curione. The one in the cloister school of San Frediano at Lucca, of which he became prior after leaving Naples, and the other " B e n r a t h , op. cit., p. 9 9 ; Solmi, La fuga di Bernardino " Benrath, p. 105. '* Solmi, op. cit., p. 54.
Ochino, p. Si.
" Letter to Giberti, Aug. 31, 1542. Benrath, 109-10. " Letter of a certain Pandolfo della Stufa probably to Giberti (no date) in Negri, Bernardino Ochino, Doc. X I I I , 25. Cf. Ercole Gonzaga to Girolamo Vida, Mantova, Nov. 7, 1542 in Solmi, p. 75. For the other Capuchin, whom Benrath takes to be a blood-brother, vide infra, p. 96.
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as tutor in the home of Niccolo Amolfini, patrician there, employed the method of personal instruction, as had Valdes, in teaching what each now conceived to be the way of life; while Vermigli in the pulpit and Curione in the university supplemented lessons to their pupils by an appeal to wider audiences. When Vermigli came under suspicion, his case as that of a churchman of virtually episcopal importance naturally came before Rome; the demand to judge Curione there also showed the small confidence which the commissioners of the Holy Office at Rome had in the authorities of Lucca and their cooperation with archbishop Guidiccioni. Celio Secundo Curione must have derived his name from some older brother who died in infancy—for "Junior" or Secundo was not the name derived from his father Giacomino—unless, since he was the youngest of twenty-four, the same name had to do double duty in the family. His surname was explained by himself as derived from the castle of Cuori, near Cirié in Piedmont, where he was bom in 1503.21 Chieri, the birthplace of Matteo Gribaldi the jurist, with whom he was to be closely associated in later years, is not far away; and both are about equally near to Turin, where he would naturally have attended the university. To his aunt Maddalena at Turin, at any rate, he was sent as an orphan of nine, after a childhood spent at Moncalieri; and there his family connections—for his mother. Charlotte de Montrotier, who died at his birth, had been maid of honor to the Duchess Blanche—doubtless furthered his interests. The list of his teachers at the university of Turin, Giorgio Carrara, Domenico Machaneo, Giovanni Bremi, and Sfondrati of Milan, contains names which meant more to his friend and biographer who enumerates them than to us.22 Thus "Domenicus Machaneus" is a com* Certain notes in Curione's own hand in a manuscript of the Basel library give other particulars, especially concerning the family, which Streuber gives for what they are worth. His father "Jacomino" was the son of a sister of the father of Ms. Janello and of Möns, de Novalesa, of the ancient Pronana of Cirie. A sister of Jacomino was married in Castel de Faccole to Ms. Antonio Pronana, and their son was Ms. Luis Pronana, who married Augustina, sister of Ms. Nicolo Pronono of Laini, who was Master of the Stables to Madonna Bianca, who lived in the castle of Cargnano. " Johannes Nicolaus Stupanus, colleague at the university of Basel, whose Oratio panegyrica de Celii Secundi Curionis vita et obitu, delivered at Basel in 1570, is printed in Schelhorn's Amoenitates literariae, XIV, 325 ff. It furnishes material for the study by C. Schmidt in the Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie 1860, pp. 571-634. Streuber, in his Curio und seine Familie (Basler Taschenbuch for 1853)
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mentator of Suetonius to whom Celio doubtless owed part of his interest in "polite" learning. But Francesco Sfondrati was a well-known name. Not indeed at Turin, but at Bologna, Pavia, and Rome, where he taught jurisprudence before he abandoned the law for the church in consequence of the death of his wife (as did Vergerio), became a cardinal (1544) and legate to Charles V at the time of the battle of Muhlberg. It may be suspected that his contact with the Piedmontese was of a later period and probably at Pavia. An illuminated manuscript Bible willed to Curione by his father figures in the account of his early adventures with which in later years he regaled his friends at Basel, and prompts us to speculate over possible Waldensian leanings in the family. At all events, at the age of twenty— that is in 1523—he was reading works of Luther put in his hands by the Augustinian friars at Turin, to consult whom it may be that reading of the Pauline writings led him. We are informed that the works in question were those on the Indulgence and on the Babylonish Captivity, and that he read also Zwingli's De falsa et vera religione and the Loci communes of Melanchthon, which had already gone through seventeen editions in two years. Celio is said to have received instruction also from the Carmelite Pallavicino at Chieri.23 That would have been in 1528, when the Carmelite was preaching there. From the Bible to the works of the reformers and thence to the reformers themselves were logical steps for what was certainly an inquiring mind; but the projected trip to Germany was thwarted. The young student and his companions, who all under ordinary circumstances might have proceeded with the freedom of students to Wittenberg (as the Vergerio boys were doing just at this time), were arrested by the Bishop of Ivrea, and the ringleader at least allowed to cool his heels first in the citadel of Caprianna and then, after two months, in the convent of San Benigno, to which relatives succeeded in having him removed. It is open to suspicion that his relatives were treating him somewhat as those of the great Erasmus served that unlucky child—always supposing that the famous story is to be believed,—for Celio is mentioned as the favorite son of the three who survived their father, and as having inherited the Bible on that account. A few years later, furthermore, he was in litigation with a sister over the paternal estate, much as was Bonifacio of Oria with his used the letters of Curione preserved at Basel, as did also Schmidt. Celio's son Leo also wrote, in French, a memoir of his family, used by Streuber. " F o r Pallavicino, vide infra, p. 114, and note 2.
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sister.24 A prank of the sort with which Curione's name became synonymous caused his flight from his native Piedmont. In a reliquary at San Benigno were found, during divine service, a Bible instead of the saint's bones which it usually harbored, and the substitution was traced to the student from Turin, who was being detained there under suspicion of heresy. Celio fled successfully this time, but not to Germany. The French had been driven now from Milan, and we are on the eve of the battle of Pavia, if indeed it had not already been fought. Duke Charles of Savoy, Curione's sovereign, had been in alliance with the French since the accession of Francis I. He had permitted the French to pass through his territories in 1515 and again in 1521, furnishing them the last time with provisions. In 1524, the Duke and the King made an agreement by which Charles was to get a pension of 1200 livres a year. But the hope of Francis to regain Milan was dashed when he was defeated and captured by Charles V at Pavia in 1525. Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan since 1522, remained an imperial vassal. Charles of Savoy married the emperor's sister-in-law. The chronology of Celio's life is now very uncertain, resting as it does on the personal recollections of those who had heard him tell of his adventures, an art in which more than one of the Italian exiles excelled. He went to Milan, where he distinguished himself for his courage during an outbreak of the plague, but whether it was that of the summer of 1524, when the epidemic certainly raged at Milan, or of 1528, when we hear of it in places as widely separated as Bergamo (where the physician Pellegrino Grataroli, father of a future associate of Celio, died of it) and Toulouse (where it turned to medicine the thoughts of a young Spanish law-student, Miguel Servet), is uncertain. It is more likely that of 1528, for room must be found at this point for a Studienreise in Italy, during which he enrolled at the university of Padua, 25 the place where for many a year students were almost immune from interference in matters of belief, and where, in just these years, Vermigli was a student and Vergerio a legal practitioner. There seems to have been also a visit to Rome, which cannot have been a place for tourists either just before or just after the siege by the army of Charles V. In Milan he presently settled, attracted by the neighborhood of his old teacher Sfondrati (imperial podestà of Pavia from 1527 34
Vide infra, p. 278. "Papadopoli cites him (II, 22) among the alumni in Arts.
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to 1528), unless indeed this was their first acquaintance. He married Margherita Isacchi, daughter of a family with which he had taken up his residence at Barziago in Brianza. On account of the conditions of the Spanish occupation, the Isacchi, like other Milanese families, had retired to an estate in the country. 26 He took up the profession of teaching and the study of civil law with Sfondrati, until, apparently disgusted by the confusion which the war wrought in his class-room, even as was Alciati at Pavia about that time,27 he accepted an invitation from the count of Montferrat to Casale. Since his eldest child Violante (later the wife of the reformer Girolamo Zanchi), was born at Ceva in Piedmont on November 8, 1S33, and his second child, Orazio the future diplomat, first saw the light at Casale in 1534, the removal to Montferrat may well have taken place in 1533 and at the invitation of Gian Giorgio, who had been summoned from a bishopric to the rescue of his failing line, and died on the day of his bride's arrival at Casale. It was at Casale that Curione made the acquaintance of Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, formerly professor at Ferrara and tutor (15221533; 1538-1548) in the Este family when Renée of France came to Ferrara as a bride; he is qualified in the registers of the court as grammaticae professor or maestro di scuola or preceptcre, and taught the future cardinal Ippolito d'Este. Since 1533 he had been public professor at Vicenza in succession to Giovita Rapicio, and came during the holidays to his country place near Vercelli in Piedmont. There Curione and he seem to have found much in common and to have exchanged views more especially upon religion. On Morato, the influence of Curione was decisive; and he later confessed that as Ananias to Paul, so was Celio to him.28 Later he was to exert a similar influence on Olympia, his friend's daughter, who was tutor of the little Este princesses, daughters of Ercole and Renée, and who has always been a favorite subject for the historians of martyrdom. In 1536, a complaint in regard to Morato reached the Ten at Venice, with instructions to proceed against him and investigate his heresy. Meantime Curione, after some years in Montferrat, ventured to return to Piedmont when the question of the family property was raised by the death by the plague of all his father's five surviving chilM
Cantù II, 204 and III, 34. " Vide infra, p. 112. **Letter of Morato to Curione in Opera Olympiae
Moralae
(Basel 1SS8), p. 315.
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dren save himself and one sister. He was glad not to press his claim when his brother-in-law was discovered to have already begun proceedings against him for heresy; but almost immediately he rendered his stay unprolongable by coming out openly in defense of Luther against a popular preacher of the Dominican order in the little village of Castiglione near Vercelli, where he had found employment as a tutor after failing—so it would seem—of reengagement at Casale by the new government of Montferrat, that of the Gonzaga of Mantua, whose claim was finally made good to the succession. Denounced to the bishop of Perugia, at that time administrator of the bishopric of Turin, he was lodged in the episcopal prison, while the bishop journeyed to Rome to pursue the case. From the prison he escaped by the ruse which he describes in the rôle of "Probus" (in the dialogue of that title printed as an appendix to the Pasquino in estasi and by Cantù II, pp. 209-12) and fled back into the Milanese. At Salò, on the lake of Guarda, his wife joined him, and there their sons Leo and Agostino were born in 1536 and 1538. Now he taught in Pavia for three years, and Andrea Alciati was one of his colleagues. Tacchi-Venturi speaks of his association with the bookseller Calvi in the propagation of Lutheran writings.29 At Pavia the popularity of the Piedmontese with his students protected him from the efforts of the Inquisition, as did the precaution they took in forming a guard to accompany him about the city. 30 Only when the Senate of Pavia was threatened with the papal excommunication did Curione retire from the Milanese, now the object of negotiation between Francis I and Charles V after the death of Francesco Sforza. This time he went to Venice, after remaining for a time under the protection of Galeazzo Trezio in his castle near Sant' Angiolo.31 This was in 1539, during the Lenten season of which year Ochino preached his first Lenten sermons there. Curione remained two years, entertaining at his house Giulio of Milano and possibly contributing to his defection from the orthodox ranks. He was in correspondence with Morato, who had returned to the court of Ferrara and who procured his engagement there by the duchess Renée. After a year, during which he was preceptor of Olympia, his friend's daughter, Curione went to "Op. at.,
308.
* Maccrie, p. 117. Cf. the popularity of Gribaldi, injra, p. 194.
" Vide injra, p. 166 and students just mentioned.
Maccrie
395. He was probably one of those enthusiastic
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Lucca to teach there in the university and give private lessons, as has been said, in the Amolfini family. Lucca has the distinction of being the only one of the Italian states where the idea of political revolution was joined with that of religious reform; that idea, however, was not in the mind of any of the reformers under consideration, but in that of Francesco Burlamacchi, a Lucchese patrician who could not forget Savonarola's Florentine republic and its brief resurgence in 1527-1530. His plan was the overthrow of Cosimo de' Medici and the creation of a federation of Tuscan cities as a step toward the restoration of Italian autonomy. T h e emperor, who certainly would not look with favor on the annihilation of the Spanish hegemony in central Italy, was to be conciliated by supporting a council of church reform under his influence instead of the Pope's and the temporal power was to be abolished. Burlamacchi was gonjaloniere, first magistrate of the republic of Lucca, when his plan was revealed by a traitor to the magistracy and these were charged with the plot by Cosimo, to whose ears it had also come. They dared not refrain from bringing him to trial. It was not indeed till 1546, at the outset of the Schmalkaldic war, that prison and torture were first meted out to Francesco Burlamacchi, and not till February 1548 that he was beheaded at Milan. But in 1541, when Curione came to Lucca, Burlamacchi had taken the first step toward realizing his plan when he carried in the council the institution of a special body of militia of which he proposed to be the commander. 32 Burlamacchi was no adherent of Luther or Calvin, but it was apparently a state-church independent of the pope which he contemplated. What might have been the relation of his plans to those of Vermigli and of Curione had not their activities in Lucca been so suddenly curtailed? What Cardinal Antonio Pucci thought of the latter, he expresses in a letter to Cosimo de' Medici from Perugia, a month later. 33 T h e duke must not think what he has written is without cause, for it seems to him that a plot has been spun which recalls Fra Girolamo (Savonarola) in the time of Piero de' Medici, which he well remembers. T h e heretical influences at Lucca were Lutheran in the first instance, and consisted of the ideas brought back by the merchants of the city whose business carried them beyond the Alps. What Rome thought of her on this score is seen in the letters written by Cardinal Guidiccioni, the absent bishop, threatening that if ™ Masi, I Burlamacchi, p. 40. "Sept. 16, 1542 (Cantù, II, 443, note 18).
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the government did not take steps looking toward the mending of her ways, somebody else would. More ominous was the report of the Lucchese Balbani, whose fortune it had been, while in Brussels on business, to overhear a conversation between Charles V, the papal nuncio, and the ambassador of Cosimo de' Medici, the purport of which was that Lucca would lose her liberty if she continued to give umbrage in matters of religion." De Leva 85 says that at Lucca despite for law and morality were prevalent after the democratic rising of the Straccioni and the attempted parricide of Pietro Fatinelli. It was a period when even prostitutes were admitted to the citizenship; and the work of canon Vermigli, who came to direct the priory of San Frediano in June 1541 (soon after the death at Naples of his friend Valdes), was directed first of all at raising the standards of moral and civil law. Vermigli's purpose, then, in his lectures—on the gospels during Lent and Advent, on the Pauline epistles continuously, and on the Psalms at times—was a practical Christianity like that of Calvin at Geneva; they were both humanists with the end of Christian education in view, though we cannot imagine Vermigli ruling at Lucca like Calvin at Geneva. It was the church fathers whose perusal he recommended to the youth, especially St. Augustine, whom presumably he knew best. He was able to attract colleagues of distinction and promise,—Celso Massimiliano Martinenghi of Brescia, Girolamo Zanchi of Bergamo, Paolo Lacize of Verona, and Emanuele Tremellio of Ferrara. Ostensibly the school opened by Vermigli with the aid of these was to train novices for the canonicate, but it was really for the study of the Bible. Of the new arrivals, Zanchi and Martinenghi, count of Barco, were close friends as early as 1536, when the former was a student in the monastery of the regular canons of St. Augustine at Bergamo. The latter was of a house which still bears an honored name in Lombardy. Together they had been received among the canons of the Lateran congregation and together they came to Lucca.38 Paolo Lacize was from the circle of Giberti at Verona. Tremellio was a Jew, trained in the university of Padua and converted in 1540, while an inmate of the house of Cardinal Pole. " Masi, op. cit., p. 84. " Op. cit., I l l , 378. Cf. Cantii II, 466 and 475, note 2. " Of Zanchi, later the son-in-law of Curione, we have a Vita by Gallizioli (Bergamo 1781) and a study by Schmidt in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken for 1859, pp. 625-708.
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The lectures at San Frediano were attended not only by the novices but also by prominent townsfolk and by scholars like Curione and Robortello, colleagues at the university. Even the protests of Cardinal Guidiccioni37 did not at first disturb the group. Perhaps the protection was accorded them, Masi suggested,38 of cardinal Contarini, who came to Lucca just then on his return from the colloquy of Regensburg to confer with Vermigli, who, like himself, had been obliged to forego taking part in the abortive meeting at Worms in 1540. Nor did the stay in Lucca of Charles V and Paul III, who met there for conference at this point, interrupt their studies. Soon afterward, however, the city fathers, who had been charged by Guidiccioni with having granted exemptions from Lenten obligations, dispensed the gonfaloniere and anziani from attending divine service, and furthered laxity of worship in other ways,39 yielded. Vermigli, summoned to a chapter meeting of his brotherhood at Genoa, fled with Lacize and Tremellio and his jamulus Giulio Terenziano. He went to Florence on August 12, 1542, compared notes with Ochino, bound to Rome on a similar errand, and recommended flight to him as his best course. Soon afterward, the city government ordered to give up Curione to Rome, gave him the hint to flee. He escaped to Pisa, where he found new employment as a teacher. On August 26, 1542, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese conveys to Duke Cosimo from Rome the pope's command regarding "un pessimo spirito, chiamato Celio da Turino"; let Cosimo hasten to have the heretic imprisoned by his commissioner in Pisa and keep him fast until he can be tried.40 But Celio as well as Vermigli and his companions were by that time far away,41 and Celio was installed in a new post, the academy of Lausanne. It was in vain that cardinals Caraffa, Alvarez de Toledo, Parisio, and Guidiccioni, of the newly constituted inquisitorial board at Rome, wrote to Cosimo42 to arrest Vermigli "quanto honestius et cautius fieri possit" (without attracting too much attention), together with the "alio fratre lucensi"—seemingly Curione, though he was no friar. Vain too that Cosimo, who evidently obeyed the in81
Cantu, II, 467-68 and Pastor, X I I , 499. " Op. cit., 84-85. M Pastor here quotes Bonghi, Inventario dtgli archivi di Lucca, pp. 352 ff. 40 Cantu, II, 422 and 443, note 19. 41 It is likely that Vermigli and Curione were the "due frati" w h o m Paul told Pucci he had caused to be taken in Lucca, and of whom one had fled to Pisa (Letter of the Florentine ambassador at Rome to Cosimo, August 11, 1542. Pastor X I I , 663). ° Cantu II, 422 and 442, note 17. The date is Sept. 15, 1542.
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structions of Famese and gave the requested orders to his commissary at Pisa, enclosed a copy of the report of the latter when he wrote to Cardinal FHicci, who acknowledged receipt of the communication on September 16, 1542.43 Pucci was clearly alarmed at the political implications of the disaffection at Lucca, but spoke only of "quello frate Cilio da Turino," of whom he has been telling the duke. The city government of Lucca now sought by a display of zeal to avert wrath. Already in July 1542, measures had been taken with regard to forbidden books, and the church festivals, which had been abolished, were restored.44 On May 12, 1545, the senate renewed a law of twenty years before, ordering that within eight days there be committed to the anziant every Lutheran book or writing.45 Spite of these and other decrees which the city, threatened with the inquisition and preoccupied with the conspiracy of Burlamacchi, issued in these years, Lucca continued to be a foyer of reform, and Vermigli wrote from Strassburg a letter to congratulate his "brothers" on their increasing numbers. 46 Curione returned in October to fetch his family, and did not linger; but Martinenghi and Zanchi remained at San Frediano, and in 1545 there came to Lucca one tried already for heresy, the famous humanist Antonio della Paglia ("Aonio Paleario"), who remained there nine years.47 In his charge was Curione's infant daughter Dorotea, who alone of all the family remained in Italy. When Lucca was invited to become the seat of the council, which Paul III persisted in wanting to hold in Italy even after he had agreed on Trent, she declined the honor for six reasons, in which material considerations weigh heavily. They are, according to a note in the Medici archives at Florence, cited by Cantu, 48 the expenses to which she would be put in providing for the military defense, the disturbance of trade, the food supply and the lodgings, and public opinion, which regarded unfavorably the prelates who came without women and which would not welcome such a meeting.
"Ibid., p. 443, note 18. 44 Pastor, X I I , 500. "Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., p. 310 and note S. Printed in his Loci Communes, pp. 750-52 (Maccrie, 222). " F o r Aonio Paleario, vide M. Young, Life and Times of Aonio Paleario (London 1860) and G. Morpurgo, Un umanista martire, Aonio Paleario (Città di Castello. 1912). " Op. cit., n , 466.
IN THE HALL OF FAME VERGERIO THE
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LAWYER-BISHOP
The years 1519-1527 were those spent in Padua by Vermigli. In 1522, there returned to the university as professor of criminal jurisprudence a young alumnus who had taken his degree four years previously and had been practising law at Verona. Pierpaolo Vergerio ("Vergerio the younger," to distinguish him from a fifteenth-century humanist of his own name and family), two years older than Vermigli, five years the senior of Curione, was a native of Capodistria, one of the Istrian cities which had acknowledged Venice as its protector when the Marquisate of Istria had devolved upon the Patriarch of Aquileia and become only a name. His family was noble in blood and distinguished for accomplishment in the field of letters, and he could look forward to preferment in the services of the state. Then, less than a year after their marriage, his young wife Diana Contarini died;4® and Pierpaolo turned to the service of the church. Not at first as a clergyman but as a diplomat; but a bishopric was the logical recognition of services such as he soon performed. The first indication of the new bent is in a speech delivered before a congress of jurists at Venice in 1528 to congratulate the newly created cardinal Marino Grimani; 50 in it Vergerio declares the most important task of the time to be the rehabilitation of the sorely stricken church. The fall of Rome had taken place the year before, and Venice was well aware from the reports of fugitive humanists what a disaster had been wrought. The young lawyer indicates earnest study as the best means of combating the heretics in the very year that Loyola began his studies at the university of Paris. A fundamental piety can be discerned in Pierpaolo, thinks Hubert. 51 Bom in a city rich in churches and monasteries (but what city was not, in the sixteenth century?) his father Giacomo sincerely devoted to the church, two of his brothers (Giambattista and Aurelio) churchmen, he had perhaps a penchant in that direction. He had come to the notice of the relic-hunter of the elector Frederic the Wise, Burckhardt von Schenck, at Venice in 1521, and been encouraged to go to Wittenberg to continue his studies with his brother Giacomo, the more so as he outshone his fellow-students in scholarship. To have gone to Wittenberg just then would have been to anticipate his destiny; but the boys fell "Benrath, Reformation in Venedig, p. 47. Her will is dated April 23, 1527. Bibl. marciana latcl. ix, cod. 63, fol. SI. " Hubert, Vergerios publizistische Thätigkeit, pp. 4-5. " Ibid., pp. 1-2.
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sick on the way and had to come back. Pierpaolo remained a lawyer, as has been said, and only after his wife's death sought advancement in the church. For a time he was secretary of Roberto Maggi, the papal nuncio in Venice. Then at Rome, where his brother Aurelio (died 1532) had been secretary to Clement VII, he obtained an appointment as nuncio to Germany in 1533. King Ferdinand liked him, or at least thought fit to show him honor, and caused him, with the archbishop of Lund and the markgraf Georg of Brandenburg, to be godfather of his little daughter Catharine (born at Vienna, September 25, 1533), whom Vergerio was to meet again, twenty-four years later, as queen of Poland. Nor did the death of Pope Clement affect his fortunes for the worse. His report of the nunciate, together, it may be, with the prominence of Gasparo Contarini (not yet cardinal), a relation of his dead wife, won him a reappointment from Paul III, who moreover acquiesced in his verdict that the only recourse now was a council, summoned one at Mantua, and despatched Vergerio to Germany to prepare for it. To Germany then Vergerio returned in February 1535, and in November had the interview with Luther at Wittenberg. He was as unsuccessful with Luther as with the Schmalkaldic league, which insisted uncompromisingly on a council within the limits of Germany. Vergerio returning at this point to Rome to make his report, was sent to Naples to meet Charles V, just returning from his expedition to Tunis, and may have heard for the first time the eloquent Lenten sermons of 1536 delivered by Bernardino Ochino in San Giovanni Maggiore. He now made way for Giovanni Morone as nuncio and accepted a bishopric, that of Modrus in Croatia, receiving consecration from his brother the bishop of Pola to remove the deficiency of never having taken orders. He was now committed to a career as a cleric when but slightly beyond the mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, which signalized the change for Dante; it was destined to last just about as long as his legal career had lasted, and like that legal career proved to be only a stage in his preparation for the real work of his life. Presently, as bishop of his native city, Capodistria, he plunged into an activity in which his restless energy for the first time declared itself. He proved not to be of those bishops whose persistent non-residence was soon to provoke action from the council of Trent. His activities show clearly that the bishop of Capodistria, no less than the bishops of Modena (Morone, who had succeeded Vergerio as nuncio in Ger-
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many), Verona (Giberti), and Bergamo (Soranzo), was identified with that moderate party whose spokesman was Cardinal Contarini and which willingly met the Protestants on what had once been the main issue, justification by faith. But what distinguished Vergerio from the others was that, once convinced by his studies of the truth of the Protestant contention, he proceeded to preach it the length and breadth of his diocese. His efforts and those of his brother Giambattista, bishop of Pola, made the whole peninsula, in the years following his return from the diet of Worms, seethe with rebellion against the church. "At Capodistria, at Pirano, at Rovigno, at Pola, the letters of St. Paul and the gospel passages which best lend themselves to the new interpretations are read and interpreted by the bishops themselves in a way not in conformity with the Catholic doctrine." The bishops it was who procured the diffusion in the family circle, in the schools and monasteries, of books from Germany which, at Rome and Naples and Venice, were of interest only to the people of culture, to the upper ranks of ecclesiastical society, and to partisans of the papal cause.52 Not merely the reform of doctrine did Vergerio undertake, but also that of discipline. And here he encountered opposition. It was not long before he was summoned to Rome, even as Ochino and Vermigli had been. The pertinacity with which Vergerio for five years resisted the summons and the promptness with which, when the time had come, he emigrated like the others across the Alps is almost certainly not to be explained entirely by the ease with which the prescriptions of Rome were set at nought in Venice. Vergerio is not the first, nor yet the last, among the Italian reformed who were summoned to the aid of the king of France in the war of intrigue which Francis was waging from Venice as headquarters. Vergerio was enlisted in the French service with the particular purpose of combating a council such as the pope desired; and his trial was not allowed to reach a climax until it was at least an even chance that he could accomplish that object better outside of the church than within. Those relations with France began in 1540. At this time the failure of Paul III to bring together the council had confirmed Charles V in his resolve to bring about the reconciliation of the religious dissidents in a conference called by himself in Germany. It was a plan which pleased Francis as little as Paul; but it was not "Negri, Note e documenti (Torino 1910), p. 11.
per la storia della riforma in Italia. I. Venetia e Istria
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because it displeased Paul that Vergerio opposed the idea at Worms in January 1541. Vergerio's alienation from the pope had already begun in April 1540, when he went to France with Cardinal Ippolito d'Este whose house-prelate he had been in Rome, 53 as counsellor in the religious troubles. The lack of attention paid by the curia to a request for the freeing of his bishopric from a pension filled Vergerio with bitterness against the pope, and his expressions on the matter came to the ear of the nuncio Ferrerio. But he was sent to France with the magnificent cardinal of Ferrara (the son of Lucrezia Borgia), and probably received his first commission. At that moment there was at the French court, waiting for the despatches he was to carry to Venice and Constantinople, a countryman of Vergerio, the Brescian Vincenzo Maggi, with whom the association to be cemented in later years may well have begun. Maggi could have told Vergerio something of the French diplomatic service and most likely did. The bishop, on the completion of a mission to Brussels in September 1540 in the interests of Cardinals Bembo and Salviati, was advised by Cervini to return to his bishopric, but he went to France instead and proceeded thence to Worms in November 1540. There at the colloquy—where he was without official character since- Francis had not been invited to send a representative, but received the respect to which a former papal nuncio was entitled—he made the speech in January 1541, opposing the imperial plan. MAGGI THE DIPLOMAT
Vincenzo Maggi is a name well enough known in the annals of humanism as that of a scholar who had a long and apparently untroubled career at Padua and Ferrara as professor of Philosophy,54 and was not untouched by the reform, in two such healthful abodes of heresy was his life spent. But it is not with the humanist that the student is concerned who seeks acquaintance with the alluring figure among the fuorusciti who served Francis I as "Vincent de Massy, gentilhomme de "Pamphlet addressed to the cardinal of Ferrara in Feb. 1562 (Hubert 211). " At Padua 1528-43 (Facciolati, Fasti gymnasii patavini. II, 279, 283—Papadopoli, Historia gymnasii patavini, I, 305). At Ferrara 1544-64 (Borsetti, Historia almi Ferrariae gymnasii, II, 161—Pardi, Titoli dottorali conferii; dallo studio di Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI, passim). He was the teacher of Pigna (Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese, IV, 135) and figures in the old biographical dictionaries as those of Ghilini and Jocher and Rossi's Elogi historici di Bresciani illustri. Vide Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, Book III, chap. LIV.
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Bresse," who appears as "Vincenzo de Mazy" in the letters of Rincon, and who was tried before the Venetian inquisition (in absentia, it should be added) as "Vincenzo Mazy." As a reformer, he almost certainly played little part; he was only one of that increasing minority among the reformed whose deepest conviction was everybody's right to his own. Among groups representing every theological camp, he went his busy way, far more engrossed in the absorbing game of politics, where he was a by no means negligible though subordinate figure, than with the doctrinal debates. Vincenzo Maggi the diplomat—for the variants given above and a bewildering variety of others 55 have no authority beside his own signature "Maggi" and the consistent reference to him of Bishop Pellicier as "Maggio"—was connected with the well-known Ghibelline family which there exercised the sovereignty at the beginning of the fourteenth century. And although he played his part on another stage from that of his native city, account must be taken of the traditions on which would have been nurtured a countryman of Arnold of Brescia and those early advocates—Patarenes, Humiliati, Waldenses—of a return to the church of the apostles. Moreover, he possessed property in Brescia at the time of his trial by the Inquisition, which was apparently administered by a brother, Tolomeo, and after the latter's death, by a nephew Federigo Maggi. Vincenzo Maggi may well have been bom a French subject, for Brescia was wrested from Venice by the French in 1509 and remained in French hands until the peace of Noyon in 1516 returned it to Venice. He may have been old enough in 1512 to appreciate the horrors of the siege by the gentle Gaston de Foix, who quelled the revolt of that year. He may have heard of the gentler chevalier Bayard, who owes no small part of his fair fame to the episode of his wounding and convalescence under three high-born nurses at Brescia. But his first appearance in history is in 1530 when he is wearing the black garb of a monk of St. Benedict. It was during the Lent of 1530 that Francesco Negri of Bassano, not yet the author of the Tragedia del libero arbitrio and the friend of Curione and of Camillo Renato, returned to Italy to tell of his intercourse with the evangelical leaders beyond the Alps; and scouring "e.g. "Vincent d'lmagy" and "Vincent Dymagy" (in the French treasury accounts) ; "Vyncenso de Mayo" and "Vincencio de Magy" (in the British Calendar of State Papers); "Mayus" and "Maius' (in the archives of Basel); "de Madiis" (in the Venetian archives).
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Venetia and Lombardy and the Trentino, visited "brothers" whose diffusion and evident organization would be surprising at that date were it not remembered that Lutheranism found in those regions not merely a hearing but also, in all probability, the machinery of a reformed church in survivals of the Waldensian congregations of the Middle Ages. He records that among others he debated in Brescia a whole day with Don Vincenzo de Masi.56 It is evident that Negri's message was of more than ordinary interest to one of the leaders, a monk; it is evident too that the latter, who is not otherwise qualified, was a person sufficiently well known to Venetian evangelicals like Roselli, to whom Negri was writing. Of Lutheran agitation in Brescia, there is evidence as early as 1527. One night in March of that year, a company of rowdies ranged the environs of the city, singing a ribald parody of the litany. 87 At an expiatory service held in consequence in the cathedral on March 26, the Carmelite Giambattista Pallavicino preached; and evidently made himself a vehicle, if he was not in fact the apostle, of Lutheran opinions in the old Patarene joyer. His open apostasy must have followed, for on July 13, 1528, Pope Clement VII sent a bull to the bishop of Brescia and the inquisitor with instructions to proceed against the ex-monk who had preached Lutheranism the preceding Lent, and to take no account of his appeal to Rome. In the meantime, an inquisitorial court has evidently been organized; Clement praises those to whom the letter is addressed, as well as the council of the city, for their zeal in keeping for Brescia the name of a good Catholic city. Three burghers, the bull says, have been chosen to search out adherents of Luther and bring them to punishment. The way in which witnesses may be coerced by fear of ecclesiastical penalties and how, when found guilty, they are to be treated, is then described.58 It is not improbable that the long debate between Negri and Don Vincenzo turned upon the question of monastic vows, for Negri had left his monastery and was on his way back to Padua to regularize his position. The Vincenzo Maggi whom we subsequently meet in the company of the Swiss evangelicals has been revealed in his trial before the Inquisition as a former monk, and that this is the same Don Vin" A s to Negri (originally Buonamente), vide infra, pp. 84-86. " Tacchi Venturi, Storia della compagnia di Gesù in Italia, p. ,">30. The author cites the Memorie di Pandolfo Nessuno, MS of the Queriniana at Brescia, C I., 1S, 60. " Benrath, Reformation m Venedig, pp. 103-5 (From Cantù, Gli eretici d'Italia, IV, 74, with date July 13, 1S27).
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cenzo with whom Negri conversed is shown by the dedication of a poem printed at the end of Negri's Rhetia (Basel 1549) to "Vincentium Madium suum." For a starting-point in the story of Vincenzo Maggi we must begin with the mysterious interlocutor of Francesco Negri, who evidently soon followed the example of his mentor. Maggi apparently left the cloister to enter the service of the French king, and it is not probable that exit was difficult, to judge by the cases of Negri and Folengo and without referring to much better-known instances. It need not be regarded even as apostasy.*9 Francis I, having lost Italy in war, sought to regain it by diplomacy and found plenty of Italian agents in the cities which like Brescia, had forgotten the disasters of French rule and regarded the Valois as the mainstay of Italy against the Hapsburgs. If the misfortunes of his country had driven Maggi to the monastery, they may similarly have drawn him from it. Venice emerged from the wars of the league of Cambray with a loss of political prestige for which her recovered territory could not compensate. Not in her service, but in that of her ally France was there hope of lifting the Hapsburg incubus from Italy. In March and May, 1538, the treasurer of Francis I is ordered to pay a Brescian gentleman in whose name we recognize Vincenzo Maggi sums for secret services and "advices." The Brescian gentleman, overtaking King Francis at La Côte St. André, on his way to the interview with the pope and Charles at Nice, is sent by the king to Constantinople with letters to Antonio Rincon, the ambassador of France there, and arrives at the Porte on June 8.60 From that time until his sudden eclipse in May 1542, Maggi was actively employed first in the effort to explain away the rapprochement between Charles and Francis at Nice, which was not regarded by sultan Solyman with favor since Francis was his ally, and then in the accord between Venice and the Turks brought about by France in October 1540; finally as chargé d'affaires at Constantinople when Rincon left Constantinople in November 1540 on the joumey to France from which he was never to return. In the last capacity he reported to the French ambassador at Venice, Guillaume Pellicier, bishop of Montpellier, from whom he learned in ** Gothein, Ignatius Loyola, p. 114. Catalogue des actes de François I, VIII, nos. 29550, 32066, and 32076. On French diplomacy in the Levant, vide Charrière, "Les negotiations de la France dans le levant" (Documents inédits sur l'histoire de France), I—Ursu, La politique orientale de François 1—Bourrilly, "Les diplomates de François I" (Revue historique for 1913, pp. 64 B.). M
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J u l y 1541 of the ambush into which Rincon and his companion Fregoso had fallen. Even before the news of what h a d actually happened, that the two envoys had been assassinated, was known at Constantinople, Maggi h a d begun to expect the appointment as his successor; but he h a d somehow fallen into t h e bad graces of the sultan and made himself unacceptable. Rincon's successor must be, according to Pellicier—are we to infer that Maggi did n o t fulfill these specifications?— full of patience, modesty, and prudence, knowing statecraft and even military affairs in order to have some opinion of them. He must have the prestige of years (quelque autorité pour son eaige), a ready wit for word and deed to suit the emergency, command of the Italian language, in order to be understood by the dragomans out there, who do not know any other Christian language, 81 and above all, a plentiful supply of money and of presents; for otherwise he will not be welcome and will find himself handicapped. 62 Maggi was actually in charge of French interests at Constantinople for ten months, until the arrival of Rincon's successor. W h e n Vergerio came to the French court with the cardinal of Ferrara, Vincenzo Maggi, who h a d returned from his first mission to Constantinople, was waiting for his letters of credit before setting out again, a n d his expenses during t h e enforced leisure and for the journey from Elboeuf to Constantinople, were paid on April 10 and April 19, 1540. 63 W h a t passed between them, if anything, is not known b u t it is at least possible t h a t Maggi was instrumental in drawing Vergerio into the French service, and t h a t t h e contacts began then and there which were continued in Venice a n d then beyond the Alps. Vergerio says later, in a pamphlet addressed to Ippolito d'Este, 6 4 that after the colloquy of Worms, he was commissioned by the cardinal to represent French interests in Venice. Maggi left Venice for Constantinople on M a y 29, 1540, 65 and reached there with his companion, the sieur de Vaulx, on J u n e 20, a f t e r tedious delays due to the difficulty of obtaining post horses; they h a d finally solved the problem by purchasing outright a horse apiece, leaving their baggage to be sent after them. 6 8 " For "s'empeschent" we must probably read "s'emparent," notes the editor. " Tausserat-Radel, Correspondance politique de Guillaume Pellicier, 358. Catalogue des actes de François h'r, IV, no. 11472 and VI, no. 21996. " F e b . 1562 (Hubert, Vergerios publizistische Thàtigkeit, 211). 01 C S P Henry V i l i , X V , p. 361. His despatch had been reported as imminent by Cromwell on April 8, preceding {ibid., p. 203). "Tausserat-Radel, op. cit., pp. 5-6. Pellicier has this news from a letter of Maggi to the archbishop of Ragusa.
CHAPTER
IV
T H E ITALIAN DIASPORA T H E R H E T I A N LEAGUES, EARLIEST R E F U G E OF T H E E X I L E S NEGRI THE POET
The greater part of the fugitives from the Roman Inquisition sought refuge in the territories of the Rhetian Leagues, where, first of all evangelical lands, the principle of religious toleration was officially laid down. The declaration was provoked from the diet of the Leagues by the Swiss cantons, who demanded as the condition of their mediation between these allies of theirs and the marchese di Musso (leader of condottiere forces in the service of Milan) in 1525, that the former take measures for the repression of heresy in their territory. 1 When, however, the matter came before the diet, that body after deliberation decreed that every individual of whatever sex and condition in the territory of the Leagues should be permitted to choose, embrace, and profess either the evangelical or the Catholic faith as he pleased; and that no one might, without making himself liable to punishment, take another to task either in public or private on the subject of religion. Clearly the spirit of reform had made great progress in the Rhetian Alps within less than a decade from the time Ulrich Zwingli began to attack the cult of Rome, and within three years of the time it was set aside at Zurich; and the spirit of tolerance had made greater progress still, for at Zurich in 1525 began the persecution of the Anabaptists. Indeed the grievances in the Leagues were not different from those which were felt among the Swiss, including the exploitation of the young mountaineers by the pope and other Italian princes who attracted them to enlist for pay in their wars. There were moreover similar complaints 1
For the Reformation in Graubünden, vide Meyer, Die evangelische Gemeinde zu Locarno, I, chap. 1; also McCrie, The reformation in Italy. Both accounts are founded on Rosius de Porta, Historia reformations ecclesiarum rheticarum. The manuscript sources of the last are for our period the letters in the Quellen zur Schweizergeschichte X X I I I to X X I V ("Bullingers Correspondenz mit den Graubündnem"), the basis of the biographical sketches of the reformers, native as well as Italian, with which the editor, Dr. Schiess, prefaces his volumes.
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of evil living among the clergy, whose lack of training unfitted them for the work of preaching and shepherding souls. The Leagues were peculiarly apt to be victimized by vagrant priests who, furnished with papal bulls, wandered in every direction in search of vacant parishes. And the evil was very similar after the establishment of the reformation; for, the news spreading that the Rhetians were almost without preachers, the valleys were inundated with Swiss and Germans of more than doubtful qualifications who presented themselves as candidates for the vacant positions. With the difficulty of language these in general could ill cope; and the reception of the Italian refugees can be explained largely by their possession of a language closely akin to that of their hosts, when it was not identical with it. These willingly became their parishioners. They were well trained as well as gifted men, and their coming must have done much toward the settlement of the problem of the foreign preachers. Already on January 14, 1537, the diet of the Leagues had instituted a national synod with the right of calling before it all such, verifying their credentials, and demanding from them certificates of morality. Its purpose was also to examine those who should be chosen to the ministry and exercise a supervision over them. 2 To the Italians was due the evangelization of the Engadine and of the southern Rhetian lands, where little progress had been made u p to 1542, when the chief influx of Italians began. 3 T h e quality of the pastors in the valleys was also higher after Bullinger, the successor of Zwingli at Zürich began to make his influence felt there, and young Zürichers like Johannes Fabricius or Tobias Egli, or village boys sent to Zürich for their education, became pastors in Graubünden or the Zehngerichten or the Gotteshausbund. And the work of education was pushed in the Leagues by these, with the result that a seminary was established at Chur in 1542 with the aid of funds from the suppressed monasteries.'4 Between the territories of Venice and those of the Rhetian Leagues lay the districts of Chiavenna, Valtellina, and Bormio, which the Rhetians had detached from the duchy of Milan and added to their lands in 1512 as the price of their restoration of Massimiliano Sforza to his inheritance. Through these regions was a route well trodden in the halfcentury thereafter by the horses of Italian evangelicals fleeing for the most part from the reorganized Inquisition. It leads out of the territory 'Macerie, p. 369. 'Ibid., p. 362. ' Materie, op. cit., p. 366.
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of Bergamo by the Veil Camonica to Chiavenna (Romanic clavena, "key" to lands transalpine). The Italian reformers in their flight profited immeasurably by the door thus opened into Rhetia and Switzerland. North from Chiavenna extends the Valle San Giacomo, narrow, deep, and wild, through which the Liro tumbles between bare mountain masses. Over the Splügen pass it affords access to the valley of the infant Rhine and its tributaries and thence over the Via Mala (recently constructed at that time) it was possible to reach Thusis and Chur. At Chur the exiles found friends in the reformed pastors Comander and Galicius,5 although the enthusiasm of these for their guests and would-be coworkers sometimes flagged when the racial or personal characteristics of these cropped out to their discredit. Eastward from Chiavenna stretches the Val Bregaglia, down which comes the river Mera, fed by three glaciers, its banks clothed first with pines and later with chestnutgroves. Thence over the Maloja pass one enters the Engadine, the valley of the Inn, which is a chain of lakes as far as St.Moritz and which, at Samaden, connects with the shortest route between the Valtelline and Chur, albeit over the highest pass, the Bemina. This route, which descends after traversing the pass, to Tirano and the bed of the seasonallyvarying Adda, is approximately the shorter leg of a right triangle of which the Engadine and Val Bregaglia form the other leg and the Valtelline (the valley of the Adda) the hypotenuse. North of the pass is Pontresina and south of it Poschiavo with its blue lake; both were important in the story of the Italian exiles. In the mountain communities of this triangle these worked; with greater success, it seems, in the Engadine and in the Val Bregaglia than in the Valtelline. The Valle di San Giacomo, the route indicated from Chur to Chiavenna in the time of the Antonines and the one used by Frederic Barbarossa before and after Legnano, attracted only those who were headed for the Swiss Cantons; it was not a field for missionary labor and it must have been a region unattractive to the Italians in comparison with the valleys farther east, with their verdure and their prosperous communities. The evidence as to the routes by which the refugees betook themselves into Switzerland has never been properly assembled. It must be that the most obvious road over the Alps was that by the Val d'Aosta and Saint Bernard, for that is the one Ochino is said by the contemporary historian of his order to have taken in his flight from Italy. Yet, as has ' F o r Galicius (1504-66), vide Kind in the Zeitsckrift 1868, pp. 313 ff.
für die historische
Theologie
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been seen, the evidence of his own and other letters shows that he went by way of the Valtelline. It is indeed uncertain whether he was going east or west when he was at Morbegno on August 31, 1542. 6 Curione also, whose projected flight in 1523 or soon after was by the Val d'Aosta, according to the account, travelled on his second flight, in 1542, by way of the Valtelline, at any rate on his return from fetching his family; for Camillo Renato was the companion of his flight at that time, and Camillo remained behind in the Valtelline when Curione proceeded to Zürich and Basel; he was writing to Bullinger from Tirano in November 1542, thanking him for his efforts in behalf of the Italian exiles. There is no reason to suppose that Vermigli, whose arrival in the Swiss Cantons is described by Bullinger and Amerbach in similar letters, followed any other route. Vergerio in 1549 must have reached Tirano by the same route (the Val Camonica), and proceeded thence to Poschiavo, where he was in August of that year in the company of Baldassare Altieri. In October he was at Chiavenna. T h e jurist Gribaldi, returning to his lecture-room at Padua in November 1553 speaks of stopping at Chur and Poschiavo, and is plainly taking the Bernina route, which cannot in a normal year have been open very much longer than then. 7 He proceeded across Lago d'lseo to Brescia (doubtless to pay a visit) and then to Verona and Padua. 8 The Venetian Diputolli, disgruntled servant of the Marchese d'Oria and informer against him to the Inquisition, describes the route he took with the Marchese from Chur in May 1558. I t was that over the Splügen to Chiavenna, and thence by way of the "via dei Grisoni" (i.e. the Valtelline). It was at "Losana" (Luzzana) that they stopped to enable the Marchese to buy the right of citizenship and avail himself of the protection of the Leagues as he issued from their territory upon Venetian soil.9 The physician Grataroli of Bergamo anticipated the summons before the Venetian Inquisition in 1550 by flight and writes to the inquisitors from Tirano in the Valtelline. 10 Vincenzo Maggi knew the route well before he used it in his own flight from Venice if on his missions he followed the route by which Rin* Vide supra, p. 61. ' C f . the letter of Denys Lambin (Chur, Aug. 30, 1SS2), the companion of the cardinal de Tournon on his return to Italy after concluding the peace between France and the pope. H. Potez, "Deux années de la renaissance" (Rev. d'hist. litt, de la France, X I I I , pp. 460-62, 1906). "Gribaldi to Boniface Amerbach, Oct. 23, 1553. Vide infra, p. 205. 'Processi di Sant'Officio at Venice, Busta 13 "Doria." Vide infra, pp. 298-99. 10 Vide infra, p. 197.
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con returned from Venice on his return from Constantinople early in 1541. He came by way of Iseo, Tirano, Chur, and Zurich (and thence to Solothurn, Lausanne, Geneva, and Lyons, on his way to the French court). 1 1 Calvin proceeded by way of Chiavenna and Chur on his return from Italy (not by the Val d'Aosta), and had come that way moreover, according to Masi. Not all among the Italian exiles dedicated themselves to the ministry of the pulpit and altar. Besides Giulio of Milano (who had escaped from Venice subsequently to Ochino's defense of him) and Agostino Mainardi of Saluzzo in Piedmont, 12 pastors at Poschiavo and Chiavenna respectively, there were men of fine humanistic training who found employment as tutors in the families of local magnates. Their work was furthered by the decree of the diet of Davos in 1544—inspired by Hercules von Salis of Chiavenna, a great friend of the reformers—authorizing inhabitants of Chiavenna and the Valtelline who had embraced the evangelical faith to entertain in their houses preceptors for the spiritual instruction of their families. The same decree goes on to assure freedom of worship to refugees for the sake of religion anywhere in the territories of the Leagues, provided they subscribed to the reformed confession and gave the guarantees required by the laws. 13 Into the educational field thus opened pressed men of wide culture and philosophic mind whose theological opinions soon called for the action of the synod established 11
Tausserat-Radcl, op. cit., p. 355.
For Mainardi, vide the biographical sketch by Schiess in QSG X X I V and the same writer's sketch of the Reformation in Graubunden in QSG X X V . pp. X L I to CXX. Mainardi was a preacher of prominence, though not the equal of Ochino or of Vermigli. Already in 1532 the bishop of Asti, Scipione Roero, had selected twelve propositions from his sermons which had to do with predestination, grace, and original sin; and sent them to Clement VII. Tommaso Badia, Master of the Sacred Palace, returned them to the bishop with orders to compel Mainardi to retract them. The preacher went to Rome on the accession of Paul III, obtained the withdrawal of the censure from Badia, and a papal brief recognizing his doctrine as sound. He might continue to preach. In 1538, he was in the pulpit of Sant'Agostino in Rome during Lent, and encountered criticism from St. Ignatius and his companions (Cf. Fontana, Documenti vaticani, pp. 130-34 and 146-48). Tacchi-Venturi prints (op. cit. pp. 515-16) a letter to him of Paul III (dated Piacenza, April 14, 1543), giving him safe-conduct for eight months in the papal states. It does not appear that Mainardi availed himself of this permission to return from his safe refuge in Rhetia to revisit Rome. " Maccrie, op. cit., pp. 380-81. u
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seven years before. Such were Camillo Renato the Sicilian and Francesco Negri of Bassano. The first is known as the teacher of Lelio Sozini, who gave his name to the sect which recalled the ancient Arian heresy; the second is the well-known author of the Tragedia del libero arbitrio, first printed in 1546 and after the Benefizio della morte di Cristo the most famous literary product of the Italian evangelical movement. Francesco Buonamente,14 whose family name was forgotten when he assumed, or was given popularly the name Negri, was born of a noble family of Bassano in 1500, the same year as Vermigli. His poetry when he was only fifteen is praised by a friend Giovanni Roberti and his poem Rketia, sive de situ et moribus Rhetorum proves him to deserve a place in the fraternity of the Apulian Galateo Ferrari.15 He became a monk at Santa Giustina in Padua under the name of Simone, choosing the tonsure for a reason which does not appear but naturally entering Santa Giustina, which was the mother-monastery of the Benedictine abbey at San Fortunato near Bassano and the place where many Bassanese had already taken their vows. His name appears at Santa Giustina among the nomina congregatorum in 1521. He soon developed an aversion to the monastic life, the reason lying in the judgment of Zonta not only in his mystic disposition and humanistic training but also in his forthright nature, which rebelled against the buying and selling and litigation inseparable from an ecclesiastical career in general and a monastic one in particular. In the Libero arbitrio (ed. 1550, p. 191) he inveighs against monasteries as no longer schools but prisons, no longer retreats for respectable men but dens of thieves. In the Veneto it was easy to procure the works of the reformers beyond the Alps and these he studied for light. His father learned of his perplexities and commissioned his brother Girolamo to assure himself how far he had gone in his thinking; the letter of Girolamo (Padua Feb. 18, 1524) assures the old gentleman that brother Simone had not adopted Lutheranism but only partook of the uncertainty felt by others on religious matters; and a good thing it was. Nevertheless it was but a year afterward that brother Simone threw off the cowl and with fatal results to his father, whose death was caused by the grief he felt at his son's apostasy. That his action had anything to do with an un" T h i s account of Negri is derived from the study of Giuseppe Zonta "Francesco Negri l'eretico e la sua tragedia del libero arbitrio" in the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, L X V I I , 265-324. 1916. The second part ( L X V I I , 108-60) does not come into consideration here. u Vide infra, p. 281.
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fortunate love affair rests on no basis but tradition and is inconsonant with Negri's character, to the sterling worth of which friends and enemies bear witness. The story however was enshrined in the romantic poem of Antibon (1854) and has been repeated by every biographer of Negri. The years 1529-1531 were spent by Negri in Strassburg,1" and he had perhaps already made an Italian translation of Luther's Address to the German nobility, but he was evidently drawn to the teaching of Zwingli and was an ardent disciple of Capito and Butzer. He had taken up the trade of a weaver to support himself and the family whom he had already acquired. In the Lenten season of 1530 he returned to Venice—probably to regularize his relations to the monastery, says Zonta—and talked with friends at Padua and at Brescia; it was on this journey that he conferred so long with "don Vincenzo de Masi" and may have influenced him to leave his monastery. He is back at Strassburg in August 1530, and writes thence the letter to Luca Paolo Roselli at Venice giving an account of his trip. 17 At Strassburg he presumably remained, except for a brief excursion to the Rhetian Leagues to look into the matter of a position at Tirano. In the summer of 1537 he translated Giovio's Commentari delle imprese turche; but what else he did to deserve the encomiums of the reformers and the medals preserved in the musum of Bassano is not known. In 1538, Negri was professor of classic languages at Chiavenna, where he was, if not the founder of the evangelical community, at any rate the author of the close relations between that congregation and Zürich. At about the same time as the arrival of Negri must be dated the coming of the first pastor, Mainardi. The school of Negri was not under the commune, but was a venture of his own, to be abandoned when a better opportunity offered. His friends at Bassano were confident that he would return to them to metar li vostri panni in un jorno caldo, per netarli dali pedochi (put your clothes in a hot stove to clean them of the fleas), as one of them said.18 He made a meager living in spite of his teaching, his friendly relations with the Swiss reformers, and his standing with prominent families of the Valtelline whose children he taught; " Capito to Zwingli in Zwingli's Werke, VIII, 608. "Negri to Roselli, Strassburg Aug. S, 1530. The letter is excerpted by Comba, Rivista cristiana for 1874, pp. 122-23 and printed in full by Zonta in the study named, on pp. 286-88. " Comander to Zwingli, Aug. 8, 1531.
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and in the spring of 1546 is on his way to Bullinger at Zürich with his little son. 1 ' T H E SWISS CANTONS AND THE LEADERS THERE
It has been said that Luther loomed larger in the minds of Italians than the other transalpine reformers partly because of the enterprise of German printers and partly because of the presence of Lutheran soldiers in the army of Charles V, though these were not of a sort to do his cause much credit. But when the epoch of repression seemed about to begin with the reorganization of the Inquisition by Pope Paul III, it was not to Germany that the Italian evangelicals who crossed the Alps betook themselves. When the more ambitious of them sought a wider field of activity and a more remunerative means of livelihood than the Leagues afforded, it was to Zürich and Basel and Bern and Geneva that they looked. None went directly to Geneva at this point. Thither Calvin had returned in September 1541, three weeks after leaving the colloquy of Regensburg, to take up again at the invitation of the authorities at Geneva the work interrupted by his forced withdrawal three years before. He was not known in Italy, except through the members of the circle surrounding Renée de France, where he had made a flying visit just after the publication of his 'Institutes' in 1536; but that circle included at one time or another Celio Secundo Curione, Pierpaolo Vergerio, and Piermartire Vermigli. Calvin was thought to have come by the Val d'Aosta, just as Ochino was said later to have escaped from Italy that way; and the story of Calvin's presence there was persistent enough to prompt the erection of a memorial pillar in the city square to preserve a record of his supposed expulsion by the bishop. Whatever Calvin's motive in his visit to his royal compatriot, it was only later that a result can be discerned. After Calvin's return to Geneva in 1541, it may have been the influence of Renée which directed toward Geneva the emigrant stream from Italy; but Geneva certainly offered a surer means of livelihood for such fugitives as were masters of a craft and Calvinism encouraged thrift all the more in a city where the tendency to corruption of morals was a grave problem. As regards the gospel in Italy, the duchess did not fulfill what was probably the hope of Calvin, though, until she was forced into outward conformity with the cult of Rome in 1554, she was known as a protectress of the reform. Zürich was rather the goal of the exiles. There, in Heinrich Bullinger "Blasius to Bullinger, Chur, Apr. 7, 1546.
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(1504-1575), antistes of the reformed church and successor of Zwingli, and in Konrad Pellikan (1478-1556), the gentle old scholar whom Zwingli had attracted from faction-ridden Basel to teach Hebrew in the Carolinium (the academy erected at the chapter-house of the Grossmiinster and supported with its confiscated prebends), they long had faithful friends. More widely known to his contemporaries than was Calvin, Bullinger left a less tangible impression on posterity than did the Genevan dictator because of the moderation by which he enabled the Swiss church to present a united front to its enemies. In his diary 20 and in his correspondence is revealed a man of eminent tact, judgment and intellectual sanity, averse from violence but critical of error as he understood it. His assiduity in literary work was astonishing and only less remarkable to readers of his diary than his keen interest in events. A man of far different type was the former Franciscan Pellikan, gentle and unworldly professor, who resembled Bullinger only in his unwillingness to sit in judgment on his fellows and in his appreciation of the good in them. Of him also we have a faithful reflection in his diary, as spontaneous and ingenuous as the writer himself.21 Like Bullinger in the wide personal influence he exercised (as an enormous correspondence preserved in manuscript at Basel testifies) and like Pellikan in his aloofness from theological debates, Boniface Amerbach of Basel was of those who made residence in the Cantons possible to the last moment for the Italians. To visitors in the Basel museum, he is familiar as the subject of a noble portrait by Holbein, who painted it during a holiday of his subject in Basel when Amerbach was a student at Avignon in 1519. Those who have admired this portrait will not wish to overlook one by Christoph Romer, representing Amerbach much later, when years of ceaseless activity on behalf of his city, his university, and his friends, had left upon him tedling evidence of the changes wrought by anxiety and ill health. The museum itself is in part a monument to him, for his collections were the nucleus of it; but he had not the passion for collecting which marked his son Basil, the real founder of the institu" E . Egli, ed. (Basel 1904). It includes, with much about gains and losses to the Bullinger family by births, deaths, and marriages, a very complete record of his successive publications, and almost annual summaries of crops, weather and prices, accounts of current history suggesting that the author of the Rejormalionsgeschichte was an attentive reader of Sleidan. It was begun in 1541. " B. Riggenbach, ed. (Basel 1877). H e began it in 1544.
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tion.22 The chief monuments to Boniface must be sought at the university library. There a thick manuscript volume awaits some future historian of the "Erasmian endowment," the fund appropriated for the use of needy folk—particularly students—out of the fortune of the childless Erasmus, who had made Amerbach his heir. There too is abundant evidence of the esteem in which his legal attainments were held by neighboring princes and cities, in the professional opinions submitted by him, at their request, in various contingencies. There lies, above all, the score and above of volumes containing the letters, for the most part unpublished, written to him by his numerous correspondents in France, Germany, and Switzerland, besides the single tome, of prime importance to us, of Epistolae Italorum rejormatorum. The most important result of the council of Basel for the city which entertained it throughout eighteen years (1431-1449) was the contact with Italian humanists and particularly the patronage of Cardinal Piccolomini, who was one of the chief factors in swinging the church back to her allegiance to the pope at the end of that critical period. Upon his accession to the papal throne as Pius II, Piccolomini founded the university of Basel in 1460, to promote classical studies in the ancient city of the Rauraci. In the wake of the university came the printing press to profit by the neighborhood of an institution of learning and to be the laboratory of scholars now that the enthusiasm for collecting and hoarding the literary remains of antiquity was giving way to a wholesome desire to collate, edit, and preserve them for posterity. And when the coterie of humanists, thus brought together, was drawn like all such circles —as the Italian "academies"—into the current of the reform, the Basel press made itself the organ of educated opinion upon current issues. The first of the Basel printers to enlist the aid of scholarship in his enterprise, and the first to use the Roman script instead of the Gothic, was Hans von Amerbach, 23 who had studied the humanities at Paris under Heynlin von Stein ("Johannes a Lapide") and the art of printing M Ganz und Major, Das Amerbach'sehe Kunstkabinett (Basel 1907). The only studies of Amerbach are those of Theophil Burckhardt-Biedermann and of D . A. Fechter. By the former, Bonifatius Amerbach und die Reformation (Basel 1894) and "Die Erneuerung der Universität Basel in den Jahren 1529-39" (in the Basel Geschichte, N.F., LV, 401-87). Of the latter a study Beiträge zur vaterländischen of his student days in the Beiträge, II, no use is made here.
* The name which the family took as its o w n seems to point to the Swabian village from which they came. Vide Burckhardt-Biedermann, "Hans Amerbach und seine Familie," in the Basel Festbuch of 1892.
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at Nürnberg with Koburger as well as at Venice. A monumental undertaking he had on hand when he projected a critical edition of the church fathers and for that purpose summoned to his aid the learning of Germany. To his house on the Rheinweg in 'Klein'-Basel came Reuchlin, Konrad Pellikan, Beatus Rhenanus, and Heynlin von Stein and many another, finally Erasmus himself. In 1513 the Dutch humanist came to Basel to attend to the printing of his New Testament; and was so pleased with the scholarly spirit prevailing there, and with the friendly attitude of the citizens, that he took up his residence at Basel. He lived in a house belonging to Johann Froben, who had taken over the press of Hans Amerbach when, at his death in 1514, his great project was left to be completed by his successor. Erasmus spent his happiest years at Basel; and though he avoided conformity with the Zwinglian cult introduced by Oecolampadius by going to Freiburg in 1529, he returned to Basel to die. The place of the older generation of printers had been taken, by the time Basel became an asylum for the Italians, by Oporinus (Herbst), who married the widow of Froben, and by Pietro Perna of Lucca, who learned his trade with Oporinus. He was settled in Basel as early as 1542 and in 1544 purchased the printing plant of Thomas Plater. The latter was a printer during a great part of his varied career, and in partnership with Oporinus and others printed at Basel the first edition of Calvin's Institutes
of
Christianity
During his student days at Freiburg-in-Breisgau, Boniface Amerbach had, like his teacher Zasius, hailed with joy the appearance of Luther; but after he became professor of jurisprudence at Basel, he broke with the reformation, not only as lawyer "whom imperial law commands to hold upright what holy church has established" but from an aversion to the Zwinglian conception of the Eucharist which made his position in his native city most unpleasant when the reformed church undertook to enforce there the principles which, initiated under Zwingli at Ziirich, had been imitated by Oecolampadius at Basel.25 For five years he declined to appear at the Lord's table, although repeatedly summoned before the Bannherren (officers charged to exclude from the communion those living " F o r printers and printing at Basel, vide Stockmeyer und Reber, Beiträge zur Basler Buchdruckereigeschichte (Basel 1840); Streuber, "Neue Beiträge zur Basler Buchdruckereigeschichte" (Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte III, pp. 65-124); Heckethom, The Printers of Basle in the XV and XVI centuries. Their biographies, printed books and devices (London 1897). " Vide Wemle, Calvin und Basel (Basel 190S).
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in open sin). Unwilling to dodge the issue, and open to conviction for which he sincerely prayed, he declined successively calls to the universities of Freiburg and Dole in Burgundy and the gymnasium of Strassburg. The city council, on its part, exerted itself to keep him in the interests of the university of Basel, which it now proposed to make a vehicle for the propagation of reformed opinions and to subordinate to the state. 24 Popular feeling against intolerance exhibited by the reformed preachers contributed to prevent the excommunication of Amerbach in accordance with the decree published in the lifetime of Oecolampadius. Finally, however, won over by the specious union of the Lutherans and the Zwinglians effected by Butzer and Melanchthon at Cassel (the prelude to the Wittenberg concord), he advanced from the Lutheran to the Zwinglian standpoint. Henceforth he avoided being drawn into the doctrinal debates; and although appointed by the city council a deputy to the colloquy of Worms in 1541, he succeeded in delaying his departure until the complement of representatives was full and he could no longer be admitted, as has been seen. His whimsical comment in verse on the colloquy of Regensburg has also been recalled.27 His reconciliation with the reformed church of his native city sets a period to the history of Amerbach's theological development. That he progressed thus far was owing to his compelling desire to accept the accomplished fact in the interests of law and order. He was no theologian, as he said repeatedly; 28 and only necessity could have driven him to take a stand on a theological matter. His was a legal mind, although he had taken up jurisprudence unwillingly at the outset: and for him orthodoxy was the amount of latitude consistent with law and order. Attendance at the Zwinglian communion-table was the law; he must comply. It must be right if he could only see it. He never mingled, it is pretty clear, in the theological quarrels which began to stir his city with the establishment of Calvinism at Geneva. We would gladly know what passed between Boniface Amerbach and Erasmus, his early friend, when the latter came back from Freiburg to be cared for during that last year of his life in the city with which he had especially identified himself. Had the counsels of the " Burckhardt-Biedermann, "Die Erneuerung der Universität Basel in den Jahren 1529-39." Also the histories of the university of Basel by Vischer and by Thoramen. " Vide supra, pp. 32-33. " e.g. when asked to criticise the work of Oecolampadius on the sacrament of the altar; when defending himself before the council, which threatened him with excommunication; when appointed to go to the colloquy of Worms.
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embittered old humanist anything to do with the silence his pupil henceforth maintained in matters of creed? But if Amerbach did not commit to paper his distaste for dogmatism, his actions were eloquent. That the reconciliation of Lutherans and Zwinglians was but illusory must have been only the first in a long series of disappointments regarding those upon whom he had resolved to rely in these matters. He soon learned to distrust them all. The history of the last twenty years of Amerbach's life—he died in 1562—is that of his relations with the fugitives from Catholic lands with whom the bull Licet ab initio, the Augsburg Interim and the accession of Mary Tudor in England successively filled the Cantons which had broken away from Rome. Most suggestive, perhaps, are his relations with the Italian refugees from the Inquisition, his sympathy for whom may not be unconnected with his friendship for Cardinal Sadoleto, who was bishop of Carpentras when he was a youthful student in the neighboring Avignon. From the ranks of the Italian exiles came many of those who fought on the left wing of the reform and for many a shade of opinion condemned by their opponents as heretical. "Anabaptist" and "Antitrinitarian" were the terms applied to them, and more often than not they were objects of aversion. For it was inevitable that the deeper spirituality of narrower leaders of thought should sway less alert intelligences than the Italian, and that emancipation from authority should be thought as dangerous in religion as in politics. The reformed church employed as a matter of course the means of repression of which Rome had taught her the use. What would be the attitude of those who had themselves experienced an inquisition as established at Basel by Oecolampadius and imitated at Geneva by Calvin? Castellio and his friends answered in ringing tones for tolerance. Amerbach's lips were sealed, but his choice of friends says much and he seems to have accorded his friendship to every scholar. He was primarily a humanist, with a mind trained to think as a jurist. If he faced an issue in a matter of dogma when fairly confronted with it, he never went to meet it. "He was no theologian," and must often have reiterated his disclaimer when, the execution of Servetus having opened the era of strife on the question of tolerance in the matter of dogma, he found his friends in the ranks of those who opposed Calvin and Beza. The Amerbach house lost its mistress on the threshold of the epoch of repression in Italy which filled the cantons with fugitives, for Frau
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Martha died of the plague on December 13, 1541.29 Her husband never married again, but devoted himself to the task of rearing his motherless children. There were three, Faustina, Basil, and Juliana; one little daughter, the eldest of all, had died while her father was under the ban of the church, and another, the youngest, soon followed her mother. 30 Boniface Amerbach's only son evidently inherited some personal charm which was his father's. The delight of his teachers, he pursued legal studies as time went on, from university to university, and at Tübingen (1552-1553), Padua (1553-1555), and Bologna (1555-1556) laid the foundations of training for a long career of usefulness to his native city. 31 Faustina Amerbach became the wife of the jurist Ulrich Iselin, who succeeded to the professorship of Boniface Amerbach; in her descendants the blood of the Amerbachs still flows at Basel. Juliana's husband was Hans Wasserhünlin, who appears occasionally in the letters. When Amerbach in the course of time resigned his chair at the university on account of ill health, he found plenty to do still in administering the fortune of Erasmus. The latter had returned to Basel in the summer of 1535 and had died there July 11, 1536. Already in his will of 1527, Amerbach had been named as his heir, and the subsequent ones of 1535 and 1536, making no change in this regard, testified that the old humanist did not condemn the friend of so many years' standing for his break with the church. With the assistance of the executors Nikolaus Bischoff and Hieronymus Froben (who appear in company with the aged Erasmus in Preger's picture in the gallery at Rotterdam), Amerbach gave himself to the task of carrying out a multitude of bequests for the deceased; and, these commissions fulfilled, he made an inventory of the articles remaining to the heir; repaired the slights—intentional or otherwise—put upon friends whom Erasmus had omitted in his will; and set a Martha Fuchs of Neuenburg-am-Rhein, w h o m Amerbach married in February 1527. For her death, Burckhardt-Biedermann, p. 116.
As to the in the Basel H e writes to pudicitiaque
date of her death, which Iselin gives (in his sketch of Basil Amerbach Taschenbuch for 1863, p. 169) as 14 Dec. 1542, Boniface is explicit. his son in 1557, "13 Dec., quo die Martha mater tua singularis exempli femina annis ab hinc X V I ad Dominum migrans. . . . "
" T o his parents, his wife, his brothers, his sister, and his two little daughters, Boniface Amerbach erected the tombstone in the Carthusian monastery of which the inscription may be read in Stockmeyer und Reber, op. cit., and in Gross, Coetus eorum in Basilea sepultorum, etc. It seems to have disappeared. " T h e correspondence of father and son has been utilized by Fritz Iselin, op. and a part printed, as I have noted in the bibliography of primary sources.
cit.,
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aside as a benefit-fund the greater part of the money on interest. Many of the Italians profited from this "Erasmian endowment"; for to Amerbach thenceforth all the needy turned as a matter of course, and scholars were treated with especial consideration. Three fellowships were created for the maintenance, until the attainment of the doctorate, of a student in each of the upper faculties ("colleges" in our phraseology), those of theology, law, and medicine. The fellows had to be without other means of support, studious and of good character; were to be selected by the heir or his male descendants without distinction between native-born and strangers; and must give written guarantees to fulfill the conditions of the endowment. Violation of these incurred the restitution of the sum already enjoyed. Tardy award or evidence of financial solvency might obligate the return of a part, and such a beneficiary must enter the service of the city at the university or elsewhere. Besides the fellowships in the upper faculties, two fellowships were endowed in the faculty of philosophy ("college of letters," as we would say), good until the taking of the Master's degree.32 Erasmus left Amerbach, furthermore, manuscripts, a library, and a costly collection of rings, medals, beakers, coins, and antiquities. No paintings or drawings are mentioned in the inventory; but it must have been now or before that Boniface came into possession of the round portrait of Erasmus and that of the More family (both by Holbein), which latter More had sent to Erasmus at Basel to make him acquainted with his family. Boniface already possessed the picture of Erasmus writing, the study for the well-known one in the Louvre, which Holbein had painted in 1523 and undertaken to convey to Amerbach at Avignon.33 The arrival of the Italians in 1542 found the Swiss leaders engaged in the ventilation of a matter which exhibits the question of religious toleration in a very curious light. There had been given to Bibliander (Theodor Buchmann, reader in theology at the Grossmiinster) a copy of the Arabic text of the Koran. The enterprising Oporinus wanted to print a Latin translation of it, and by so doing threw scholars and pastors into a ferment. Amerbach opposed the project with all his might. He used the argument of the humanist that here were matters unfit for the unlearned, and was supported by Sebastian Munster (professor of Hebrew at the university), by Wissenburger, and by his own pastor, " Vide Burckhardt-Biedermann, Bonifacius Amerbach und die Reformation, further details are given, pp. 110-11. n Vide Ganz und Major, Das amerbach'sche Kunstkabmett.
where
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Truckenbrod of St. Theodor's. T h e translation was favored by the atttistes Myconius (successor of Oecolampadius, founder of the reformed church at Basel), Bertschi, pastor at St. Leonhard's, and by Martin Borrhaus, one of his colleagues at the university. Amerbach set forth the legal aspects of the matter in a memorandum on the subject and argues that the practice of the church fathers—the printing of whose works, initiated by his father, had recently been completed—was to confute heretics without publishing their books, but merely pointing out the errors there contained; the heretical books were thereafter burned. Constantine, for instance, burned the writings of Arius. He cites too the decree of the emperor Theodosius II, prohibiting the possession, reading, or copying of the works of Nestorius, which had been condemned at the council of Ephesus. The penalty was loss of goods. In answer to the contention that the Koran is needed to learn Arabic, in accordance with a decree of Clement V, commanding the Arabic tongue to be taught at the universities, Amerbach replies that it is not the question of publishing the Arabic original, but of a Latin translation. Nor will he acknowledge the case of the Hebrew Talmud, the burning of which had been opposed by Reuchlin, as a parallel; for it was not a question of promoting among Christians the knowledge of a heretical work. I t was depriving the Jews of their sacred writings which Reuchlin sought to prevent. Like the theologians (who had expressed their opinion in a note dated August 26, 1542), Amerbach thinks it dangerous to put the book in the hands of everybody. There are already accessible the Verlegung (read 'Widerlegung') des Alkoran by Luther, translated from the work of Brother Richardus, and an Arabic edition of the Koran in the library of the Dominicans, which has been there ever since the council of Basel and has a Latin translation by the cardinal of St. Sixtus, Johannes Ragusinus. Such books are only for the learned. I t would be dangerous enough to have the Koran current in a Latin version, for there are plenty of "seltzamer, wirriger, zenckischer und besorg auch gottlose kopff" who understand Latin, as the Anabaptists have shown in our own time. A distinction must be drawn between savants and divines. The dangerous book may lie in our libraries for the learned, but let it not be printed. 34 Throughout his plea is evident Amerbach's anxiety lest another be added to the sources of confusion on religious issues. In the light of his
** For the whole matter vide Hagenbach, "Luther und der Koran vor dem Rath zu Basel" (Basel Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte, IX, 313-15).
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proven attitude toward questions which he strove vainly to leave to the theologians, it is certain that he is not arguing for a censorship of the press with a view to suppressing thought and opinion. He does not clearly see a motive for the new publication, for which actually there was motive enough in a growing interest in things that pertained to the rising power of the Crescent in eastern Europe. Yet Bullinger was already acquainted with Vincenzo Maggi, expert on Turkish affairs, to whom on one of his journeys through the cantons he had given a copy of his De scripturae sanctae authoritate. Jerome Laski, brother of Amerbach's (and Erasmus') Polish friend John Laski, was the special envoy despatched by King Ferdinand to Solyman the Magnificent to secure the investiture of Hungary after the death of Zapolya; his imprisonment by the machinations of Rincon was not unconnected with the murder of the Spaniard in the Milanese, which in turn almost cost the unfortunate Laski his life. He had been released from a rigorous captivity with health thoroughly shattered and had died soon after the reunion with his brother John. 35 And Curione's son Agostino at a later time was in a like position and the fruit of it was his Historia Sarracenorum. Amerbach's assumption that Oporinus was planning to bring out the Koran for the purpose of offering it to the theologians does not betray understanding of that publisher. In 1543 Bibliander's Machumetis Sarracenorum Principis vita ac doctrina omtiis . .. was published, to be increased in 1550 to Machumetis . . . eiusque successorum vitae, doctrina ac ipse Alcoran. But there was question also of the translation of Oporinus's Koran into the vernacular. Bullinger is writing Joachim Vadian of St. Gallen on December 19, 1542 about such a translation. "What asses," he says, "suggested to the city council of Basel that it be by no means permitted that the Turkish law go out in the vulgar tongue from Basel, I know not." Myconius, Marcus (i.e. Bertschi), Gast (one of the pastors, author of an entertaining diary), and Cellarius (Borrhaus) are opposed, it then appears, "though they teach piously in the vulgar tongue." So the ones who approved the Latin translation stop short of one into German! The opponents won, in any case, and Oporinus, according to Bullinger, was "thrown into chains" and the Koran put in durance. 86 Amerbach's first news of the reorganization of the Inquisition by the bull Licet ab initio was probably the arrival at Basel as fugitives that " A t Cracow, Dee. 22, 1541. Vide Dalton, Lasciano, p. 288. "Mittheilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte (Sankt Gallen), IX.
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a u t u m n of two of t h e scholars who h a d been m a k i n g the cloister school of S a n F r e d i a n o a t L u c c a the centre of an i m p r u d e n t Biblical exegesis. " O n t h e S a t u r d a y b e f o r e St. Gall's D a y , " — O c t o b e r 16—he tells u s in the a c c o u n t - b o o k of the E r a s m i a n endowment, 3 7 I made an arrangement with Hans Meder, Probst at the Augustinians, for two Italian scholars who have been compelled to leave Italy for the sake of purer religion, Peter Martyr, a Florentine, and Paul Lacisius, a Veronese. With them were two famuli, and for the four I consented to pay for a month. H e r r Meder demanded 14 batzen a week; and as, in the fourth week, Peter M a r t y r departed with his famulus, while Paul remained with his for five weeks, I paid altogether 9 gulden 11 batzen. T h u s did A m e r b a c h record the coming to the C a n t o n s of t h e two well-known exiles for conscience's sake a n d two less well-known comp a n i o n s of t h e i r s — P i e r m a r t i r e Vermigli, lately a m e m b e r of t h e circle of Valdes a t N a p l e s ; Paolo Lacize, who h a d been one of Vermigli's staff a t L u c c a ; Giulio T e r e n z i a n o (concerning whom there is an old confusion w i t h Giulio of M i l a n o ) ; a n d p r o b a b l y E m a n u e l e Tremellio, the first of a n u n i n t e r m i t t e n t s t r e a m which now began to flow through the R h e t i a n Alps a n d down t h e R h i n e . Bullinger tells u s more a t length how news was b r o u g h t of the t h r e a t ened persecutions in Italy. 3 8 I n August 1542 c a m e a huge m o n k of the C a p u c h i n order n a m e d H i e r o n y m u s , 3 9 w h o h a d read his (Bullinger's) b o o k s in Naples. H i m the Zurich antistes sent to C h u r to find a position, b u t in vain. T h e n c a m e Celio Secundo Curione, a Latin a n d Greek scholar, inquiring a f t e r H i e r o n y m u s . As he h a d t a u g h t at Pavia, Venice, M i l a n , a n d Lucca, Bullinger soon obtained for him the principalship of t h e school a t L a u s a n n e in the territory of Vaud, which h a d been taken b y B e r n f r o m t h e d u k e of Savoy. N e x t c a m e " D o c t o r B e r n a r d i n o " ( O c h i n o ) , w h o m prince Ascanio C o l o n n a h a d helped with horses, serva n t s , a n d v i a t i c u m (travelling expenses). H e h a d been on his way to " Cod. Bas. C VII, 19. "Uszug," blatt 14. "Rodel," blatt 16. "Bullinger to Vadian, Dec. 19, 1542 (SGM X, 1271; OC XI, 441). "The editors of Calvin's correspondence venture, rather wildly, "Bolsec?" The mention of Naples suggests the abbot Geronimo Busale, cited by the informer Tizzano as imparting Anabaptist tenets there about 1543. Bullinger's monk Hieronymus apparently did not remain in the Cantons or Leagues, for he is no longer mentioned. Busale was at Padua in 1551, and an abbot Busale (called Leonardo, however) is cited as a member of the Collegia Viccntina. With Ochino at Geneva was a Neapolitan who had preached at Siena, Rome, and Florence. CI. also p. 232 for another Capuchin 'Hieronymus'—Girolamo Spinazola.
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obey a summons to Rome when at Florence he was turned back. After a month, Celio passed through Zürich again, on his way back to Lucca, whence he wished to fetch his wife and children. Hardly was he gone, proceeds Bullinger, when Peter Martyr arrived, "driving four abreast," as the saying is; a prior at Lucca and an abbot at Naples he, of the Premonstratensian order, thinks the pastor. His companion on the journey was a certain Paul, learned in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and somewhat in Chaldee. It was about the middle of September 1542 that Vermigli and his companions reached Zürich after their journey over the old Roman road that leads from Chiavenna to Chur. Two days later, provided with letters from Bullinger and Pellikan to the Basel antistes Myconius and to Boniface Amerbach, they left for Basel. Amerbach drew on the wealth of Erasmus and lodged them, as has been said, in the Augustinian college. "Basel," wrote Vermigli to Bullinger, on October 5, "would much please me—the beautiful situation of the town, the mild climate, the earnestness and Christian zeal of the citizens, everything attracts me; but I have little hope of securing a position, for there are scholars enough here, but few students." No place was in fact available for him at Basel, but Myconius wrote Butzer in his behalf; and soon after came a letter from the latter inviting the Florentine to Strassburg. Butzer held out hopes of placing both Vermigli and Lacize in the academy of Strassburg, but Lacize lingered, according to Amerbach's account, after the departure of his friend. If Vermigli left Basel on the 17th of October, as Schmidt says,40 Lacize was gone by the 25th. To Strassburg he went also, to fill a chair of Greek; but he died in a little more than a year. On November 17, Konrad Pellikan is writing Amerbach from Zürich: Paul Lacisius wrote me lately from Basel in his own name and in that of Peter Vermilius that you received them in the most kindly fashion, and did your best to help them; but that they are uncertain what decision will be reached regarding them, and whether a subsistence will be granted them. . . . [He adds later], I hear the Italians have been received at Strassburg.41 In the humanities, there was indeed no chair vacant at Basel, and the most that could be secured for a scholar without pecuniary resources was 40
Schmidt, Peter Martyr Vermigli, p. 48. For Tremellio, vide M. Becker, Immanuel Tremellius Berlin Institutum Judaicum Schriften, N o . 8, 1890).
(Breslau 1887 and in the
" G I. 9, 3. Lacize received a prebend at St. Peter's and taught Greek there until his death in January 1544.
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the task of corrector of the press. So in the case of the Savoyard Castellio,"12 who came to Basel toward the end of 1544 or beginning of 1545. Amerbach entrusted to him in 1546 or 1547 the education of his only son Basil, whom Castellio had as a pensionnaire. To Basil, at the age of thirteen, he gave his Mosis institutio reipublicae, the Latin translation of the fourth book of Josephus' "History of the Jews," which Castellio deemed, as coming from the Bible, infinitely more chaste than the books of Lucían, on which a young student was usually set. With Castellio lived Bernardino Ochino for the time that elapsed between his departure from Geneva, where he had been preaching for three years to the Italians, until, in the fall of 1545, he went to preach to the Italians in Augsburg. His apostasy was still the object of solicitude to Rome and hence to the new Company of Jesus, whose function was to carry out the will of Rome. Ignatius Loyola is writing on December 12, 1545, to Le Jay at Dillingen, urging him to try and gain the friendship of Ochino and bring him back into the church. He promised the efforts of Lainez and Salmerón, who were just then with Ignatius at Rome, to reconcile the Sienese with the pope, if only he could be got to express his repentance. 43 Curione returned to Lucca in October to fetch his family, and brought them back with him, except for the baby Dorotea, who was left to grow up in the family of Aonio Paleario, then living at Siena, where he was undergoing tried for heresy. It must have been on the way that Curione, resting in an inn in Pescia, saw the s birri of the Inquisition enter the room. Seizing a knife from the table, according to the story he afterward told at Basel, he cut his way through his would-be captors, leaped on a horse, and escaped. T H E SOUTH GERMAN
N E I G H B O R S A N D T H E STRASSBURGER
BUTZER
That which rendered certain of the towns of southern Germany of an importance not to be forgotten in the history of the fugitives from Italy was the downfall of the Swabian League in 1534. That organization, the creation of the emperor Maximilian for the counteracting of Bavarian influence in the old Swabian lands, collapsed with the adhesion of the south German towns to the Reformation; it was not renewed on its expiration in 1533, and the attempts of the Hapsburg rulers to revive it in 1547 and 1551 were vain.*4 It was this league which had made possible " Vide Buisson, Sebastien Castellion. " Gothein, Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegenreformation, **Fueter, Gesch. d. europaischen Staatensystems, p. 134.
pp. 314-15.
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the Austrian occupation of Württemberg for fifteen years (1519-1534) and postponed the open adoption of Lutheranism there as in the neighboring imperial city of Augsburg. Strassburg was, by her geographical position, which made her one of the gateways of France into Germany, less amenable to Hapsburg dictation even before the downfall of the Swabian league enabled her to draw more closely to her neighbors to the west and south. Augsburg had business interests which an influential element hesitated to jeopardize by giving offense to Charles V—more than one of the great millionaire families of the time dwelt there—but she turned out from her foundry the best cannon of the time, and with her artillery, her wealth, and her walls, need fear war less than most. Tübingen was the university town of the duchy of Württemberg where humanistic studies had been cultivated from the start, and to which it was the pride of the duke to attract scholars. The evangelists of Strassburg were Wolfgang Fabricius Capito of Hagenau (1478-1541), former chancellor of the archbishop of Mainz, and Martin Butzer of Schlettstadt (1491-1551), once chaplain of Franz von Sickingen; those of Augsburg, Johannes Oecolampadius (14841531), better known for his later activity at Basel, and Urbanus Rhegius the Carmelite, favorite pupil of Eck, who were successively preachers at the cathedral. The reformed preaching commenced in both cities about 1523, and the first and most significant consequence was the influx of "Anabaptists" whom the inquisition established by Zwingli at Zürich had driven forth. The first decree of Augsburg against them is of April 1527; that of Strassburg of July 27 following.*5 Augsburg became indeed the first important centre of the sect; thither came Hübmaier (born in a near-by village), Ludwig Hetzer, Hans Denk, and Hans Hut. Konrad Peutinger the humanist was put in charge of the inquisition of them. At Strassburg, a great statesman was for almost a generation (15241553) at the head of foreign and domestic affairs, Jacob Sturm, pupil of the famous Wimpheling, and stettmeister of the town. Strassburg could early declare for the reform and in 1529 had joined the protest raised at Speyer against the emperor's attempt to check innovations too long permitted. Like the other south German cities, she was attracted by the Zwinglian system which, originating in a self-governing community like " F o r Stiassburg, Reuss, Histoire de Strasbourg (1922) and Virck and Winckelmann, Politische Correspondenz Strassburgs (1882-98). For Augsburg, Chr. Meyer, Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg (1907) and Roth, Reformationsgeschichte Augsburgs (3 vols., 1901-11).
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their own, supported the theory of self-government of the church against the ecclesiastical prince (or, in the case of Zürich, princess). There was serious danger of the German cities becoming in consequence allies of France—allied with the Swiss by the treaty of Freiburg, November 29, 1516—and of Ulrich of Württemberg, friend of the Swiss, whom the Swabian League had driven out of his duchy; and Philip of Hesse, himself drawn toward the logical ideas of the Swiss reformer but a politician above all else, exerted himself to prevent such an outcome.48 Strassburg he diverted with the plan of a great evangelical league until the hopes of the Strassburg theologians Capito and Butzer were destroyed by the uncompromising attitude of Luther at the conference of Marburg. Strassburg then entered into an alliance with the cantons of Bern and Zürich (January 1530) and when the towns of Niimberg and Reutlingen joined with the Lutheran princes in the Augsburg Confession, she joined with Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen, in the Conjessio tetrapolitana. At Strassburg, Jacob Sturm was the founder, with Butzer of the Schola argentinensis" which, becoming an academy in 1566, developed finally (1621) into the university. The idea of this gymnasium, as it would be called to-day, is due to Wimpheling, the contemporary of Erasmus, but the realization can be credited to the Reformation. Sturm called thither to head the institution the famous Johann Sturm, no relation of his,48 who had been teaching since 1529 at the college of France in Paris, and Sturm the scholar opened the new school in the Dominican monastery in March 1538. In a few years there were six hundred pupils enrolled in courses in theology, law, and medicine. The friendship of Johann Sturm with France aroused the anxiety of Jacob Sturm, for the emperor was already regarding Strassburg with suspicion on account of the presence there of Johann Philippi, better known as "Sleidan," then an agent of Francis I, but later in the employ of Strassburg and the historian of the Schmalkaldic war. Meantime the Swabian League had dissolved, and Augsburg came out openly for the reform. The council wanted a colloquy of the sort which regularly inaugurated the setting aside of the mass in the early stages of the Swiss Reformation, but the cathedral chapter (now rid of its recreant preacher Urbanus Rhegius, who had left in 1530 for Brunswick) ob" Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V, I, 228 f. " Argentoratum, Latin name for Strassburg. ** Vide Veil, "Zum Gedächtniss Johann Sturms" (in Festschrift Gymnasiums, pp. 45 fi. 1888).
des
Strassburger
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jected. T h e council went ahead to establish protestant worship in all the churches of the city except the cathedral, and the rebels were not disturbed by Charles, although he had responded to the appeal of the cathedral chapter by ordering the city to restore the monasteries and churches and had commanded the dukes of Bavaria to carry out the mandate. She was soon provided with a constitution for her reformed church; for, dissension breaking out over the Eucharist, the council summoned Butzer from Strassburg, while Luther sent Professor Johann Forster from Wittenberg. These drew up a confession in ten articles, and the Roman church was completely overthrown. Strassburg had not found it difficult to declare her acceptance of the confession of Augsburg when such acceptance was a necessary preliminary to her entrance into the Schmalkaldic League. She kept (until 1563) her Conjessio tetrapolitana and in 1536 she accepted the Wittenberg concord. She asserted moreover the right to punish heretics with the sword, as did the Catholics, but rarely made use of the right. 48 Entrance into the Schmalkaldic League was indispensable for the south German communities, which must be Lutheran politically, whatever their theological leanings. Strassburg had entered in 1530, Augsburg in 1536. The statesman who directed the destinies of Augsburg at this time was Jacob Herbrot, one of the wealthiest of her citizens. He it was who brought about an increase in the number of patrician families which made the old aristocratic element less influential and prepared for the struggle with Charles V in which Augsburg cannon were needed. There had been only seven of these families (including the Welsers); now there were admitted thirty-nine more, in which were included the well-known names of Fugger, Peutinger, and Imhoff. 50 The gild of merchants, of which Herbrot was head, assumed more and more power. Strassburg had forbidden in 1533 every doctrine contrary to the confession of Augsburg. But her relations with France made this resolution difficult to keep. When the epoch of persecution began there, Strassburg received the exiles Lefevre of Staples, Guillaume Farel, Gerard Roussel, and Lambert of Avignon. These were followed by so many of their countrymen that their numbers, amounting to fifteen hundred, called for the services of a special preacher. As such, Jean Calvin served when, exiled from Geneva in 1538, he came to the place where he would find his
"Reuss, op. cit., p. 132. "Meyer, op. cit., chap. VI.
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countrymen in force. The French evangelical church persisted in the city which offered its Lutheran confession and kept its Zwinglian behind its back until 1563, when its closing followed the abandonment of the Conjessio tetrapolitana. The dissolution of the Swabian League entailed also the recovery of Württemberg by the house of Zähringen. Duke Ulrich had won an evil fame in the days of the emperor Maximilian by his murder of Hans von Hutten (cousin of the famous humanist) for the same reason that King David removed Uriah the Hittite, and by his bestial behavior to his wife, Sabina of Bavaria. The Swabian League had executed the ban or the empire on him and then offered to sell Württemberg to Charles V, since the relieved duchy could not pay for the performance. Charles had not the money to buy—nor dared to do so for fear of offending Bavaria, France, and the Swiss,—but he accepted the territory as a fief for Ferdinand his brother. This was in 1519, when Charles's funds had been used up in the imperial election. Ulrich, in exile at Mümpelgard (otherwise Montbelliard), gave evidence of a chastened spirit by accepting Lutheranism (1523) while Ferdinand, in Württemberg, tried to prevent the progress of the new ideas. Religion was, according to Stählin, the one thing on which Ulrich and his much-abused wife, the sister of ardently Catholic princes, agreed.51 He was influenced to reform by Johann Oecolampadius, late of Augsburg, now of Basel; and Farel, an associate of Oecolampadius, was summoned to Mümpelgard in 1524 by popular demand to carry it out. He came, and composed his Sommaire, oldest French formulation of the articles of reformed belief. The qualities which made Farel's position sooner or later untenable, wherever he went, compelled Ulrich to dismiss him, but his work was done. Ulrich now entered into relations with evangelicals of Württemberg with a view to his restoration. Presently he gained the support of Philip of Hesse, who was concerned to prevent the division of evangelicals and possible alliance of those in south Germany with France; Philip began corresponding in 1531 with the dukes of Bavaria, Sabina's brothers, and with the Bavarian chancellor Eck regarding the restoration of Ulrich. Already he had enlisted the aid of Francis I of France, with whom he had had an interview at Bar-le-Duc. The attack by the coalition took place in 1534, when Philip had an army prepared to crush the Anabaptists of Münster. Ferdinand saw through the plan
" Stählin, Württembergische
Geshichte,
IV, 244 ff.
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and warned Charles; but the Swabian League, on which the Hapsburgs relied, was no more and the restoration was successfully accomplished. At the last minute, the Bavarian dukes and Philip quarreled, the dukes supporting the claims of their nephew Christoph, son of Ulrich and Sabina. But Christoph had been brought up a Catholic, and Philip's plans depended on the protestantizing of Würtemberg. He therefore accomplished the feat in spite of the defection of Bavaria; Ulrich, restored, excluded Catholicism as he had promised, and Ferdinand compromised by the treaty of Kadan, by which Ulrich became the vassal of Ferdinand, the allies having decided that Württemberg should remain an Austrian fief. In Miimpelgard, at Ulrich's instance, his brother Georg did away now with the Mass, in 1538. At the recommendation of Butzer and Capito, Ulrich summoned to organize his reformed church, Ambrosius Blaurer; Philip of Hesse sent him Erhard Schnepf of Heilbronn. The former sympathized with the Swiss conception of the Eucharist, the latter with the Lutheran. The matter was amicably adjusted, however by the agreement of August 2, 1534, and by the division of their respective spheres of activity, Schnepf directing his field from Tübingen and Blaurer his from Stuttgart. Christoph of Württemberg, who plays a most important part in the history of the Italian evangelicals, went to France to serve king Francis when his father got back his duchy. The real reason was his father's dislike for the boy who resembled his mother and the Wittelsbachs, but the arrangement was part of an agreement by which Francis agreed to help Ulrich against Ferdinand. Christoph remained eight years in France (1534-1542). He won the prize at the tournament which celebrated the marriage of James V of Scotland and Magdaleine of France in 1538. He was present at Nice for the conference and refused to kiss the foot of Pope Paul. He was at Aigues-Mortes, where Charles and Francis met together for a day and a half and where Charles promised Francis not to prosecute anyone who was in his service. Charles assured Christoph of his regard and promised to go into the question whether Württemberg was a fief of Austria, to the prejudice of the claims of the empire on it. He went to the colloquy of Regensburg in 1541, but his presence there was in the course of a visit to his Bavarian uncles and his mother, which displeased Ulrich. It was more difficult, then, for Francis to reconcile him with his father, as he was trying to do, but he finally succeeded, and in June 1542 Christoph was made Statthalter of Mümpelgard in place of his uncle Georg.
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The new status of Württemberg was jeopardized by Ulrich's participation in the Schmalkaldic war. Ferdinand charged him with having broken his feudal oath, and the suit entered by the Hapsburg against his vassal was long and tedious. Ulrich's position was not one whit strengthened by the settlement at Heilbronn (January 8, 1547), which merely held in abeyance the claims of Ferdinand. Ulrich was compelled to put in force the Interim, as was his son Christoph, by order of his father, in Mümpelgard." Boniface Amerbach became the legal councillor of Ulrich, as of Christoph later, and procured the opinion of other jurists, including Mariano Sozini. • Stählin, op. cit., IV, 494-502 and 529-40. And vide infra, pp. 191-92.
CHAPTER V
T H E ITALIANS AND T H E EPOCH OF REPRESSION AFTER T H E PEACE OF CRESPY, 1544-1548 FRANCIS I AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE—GRIBALDI THE JURIST
The French evangelicals confronted organized persecution after the interviews between Francis, Charles, and Paul III, at Nice and AiguesMortes in 1538. Their king, though inclined by disposition and training to a reformation in the spirit of Erasmus and influenced by policy to ally himself with the Schmalkaldeners in Germany, reacted unfavorably toward innovation when it seemed to threaten his throne. The necessity of alliance with the pope was no great factor in making him a persecutor, because Francis and Paul and the Protestants were generally at one in working for the thwarting of Charles V. The death in 1537 of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, who was in a certain sense the leader of a reformation in France, and in 1540 of Guillaume Budé, who had been instrumental in the foundation by Francis of the Collège de France, mark the passing of the older generation, that of Erasmus; and Lefèvre in dying closed the chapter in which mysticism played the chief part. Lefèvre, a Christian Platonist since his visit to Italy in 1492, had, like Colet in England, seen his work dissipated by the vigorous onslaught of Lutheranism and a new scholasticism of which Jean Calvin, Picard like himself, was to be the great exponent. Budé, a scholar of the sort most respected in the period in which he lived, infused with the burning question of the day whatever he wrote, even if it were a treatise on Greek and Roman coins. A brief access of persecution followed the posting on the very doors of the king's bedchamber "and in the cup where he kept his handkerchief" in the château of Amboise of some of the placards denouncing the Mass which appeared on the morning of October 18, 1534, not only in towns of the Loire like Orleans, Tours, Blois, and Amboise, but also at Paris and Rouen. But Francis deferred to the wishes of his new allies of the Schmalkaldic league and stayed the hands of his executioners. Not until three years later did the king yield to the pressure of the pope and, before long, refuse to be bound by the prejudices of his political ac-
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complices, launching the edict of Fontainebleau (June 1, 1540), which was the signal for a repression of heresy in which he was obdurate before the protests of his Protestant allies. It was just at the moment when Charles seemed to have a chance to settle the question in Germany by the conferences which began at Hagenau and ended at Regensburg; and Francis was no more eager to strengthen the cause of the Schmalkaldeners than of the emperor. At Hagenau he employed the Protestant Sleidan (the later historian) as his agent; at Worms the Italian Vergerio, formerly papal nuncio; at Regensburg he also employed representatives to work against the project of union. But in the meantime had appeared at Basel the "Institutes" of Calvin, which made the French reformed a party with a leader, albeit outside the borders of France. Calvin's permanent residence at Geneva began when the war clouds were again lowering in consequence of the murder of Rincon and Fregoso, in the preceding July, 1541. His very capital threatened in the new contest—for Charles arrived within fifty miles of Paris, halting at ChâteauThierry with his Spanish army,—Francis could not push the religious persecution in France as yet, and the chief victims of the edict of Fontainebleau were the Vaudois, or Waldensians, though at Lyons (where the cardinal de Toumon had taken measures against the humanists already), and in Burgundy, Dauphiné, and Savoy, executions were multiplied. In the territories conquered from the duke of Savoy, Francis had from the beginning spurred on the parlement of Turin, prompted thereto by Paul III; and when the Vaudois appealed to the king, he made the famous answer—it would seem to have been the favorite retort of the king and his son after him—that he was not burning heretics in France to support them in the Alps. Ordered to give up their barbes (pastors), the Vaudois are said to have responded that they would render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's. But Francis had a pretext for proceeding against them in the embassy which they had sent to Oecolampadius at Basel in 1530, its object a rapprochement with the Swiss, just when an alliance between the Swiss and Francis I (not yet sovereign of the valleys of Piedmont) was in the air. In January 1540 and in November of the same year, ordinances of Francis I prescribed the parlement of Savoy (at Chambéry) as the court of appeal from the ecclesiastical courts—the secular arm to which heretics could be relaxed. The Counter-Reformation was inaugurated in France, then, earlier than in Italy. In the case of the bishop of Maurienne, who claimed absolute juris-
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diction both in criminal and in civil matters, the parlement at Chambéry asserted its authority, 1 and there was no loophole for leniency. The letters-patent of June IS, 1544 suspended all proceedings against the Vaudois at a time when both the end of the war (which Charles V was ready to conclude in order to be free to attack the Schmalkaldeners) and the meeting of the council of Trent were in prospect. But they were revoked when the treaty of Crespy in November 1544 was concluded with its agreement between Charles and Francis to combine in crushing the reform; the severe decree of November 18, 1540, was ordered enforced. The new decree was prepared by the cardinal de Tournon. It was so drastic that the keeper of the seals refused to sign it; but somehow the seals were affixed by the cardinal, and l'Aubespine (the abbé de Bassefontaine) presented it to the king. News of these events came to Basel through Gauchier Farel, brother of the reformer of Mümpelgard who was now the colleague of Calvin. He had hastened to the Cantons as soon as the edict of 1544 had temporarily stilled persecution, seeking to bring about intervention from the town council of Basel, a city friendly to France. In March 1545, it was learned that the cardinal de Tournon had accused the Vaudois of being revolutionaries, and the project took shape of an intervention of the Swiss cantons in behalf of the sufferers. Calvin obtained permission from the town council of Geneva to canvass Bern, Basel, Zürich, and Strassburg to this end. Zürich appointed a diet to meet at Aarau on May 21, and summoned to it Bern, Basel, St. Gallen, and Schaffhausen. Bullinger invited the city of Constance to assist. At Aarau it was decided to send letters rather than an embassy to the king, and the letters were sent, although sympathy cooled when it was reported that the Vaudois were being punished not because of their faith, but because they refused to pay their tithes. On June 27, 1545, the king replied to the Swiss, forbidding further interference in his affairs.2 The character of the new decree was illustrated when, on August 18, 1545, the king solemnly approved the attacks on the Vaudois territory of the preceding April. On the 28th of that month, in fact, the destruction of Mérindol and Cabrières had been perpetrated and accompanied by the massacre of eight hundred or more of the inhabitants. It raised a cry of revulsion in Germany, Switzerland, and France and 1 Romier, "Les Vaudois et le parlement de Turin" (Mélanges d'arckiologie d'histoire, XXX, 13). ! Wemle, Calvin und Basel, pp. 50-52.
et
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doubtless stirred all the more feeling because the carnage itself had taken place at the very time the council of Trent had been summoned to meet. Persecution under Francis I was then left to the local authorities while the king was engaged in the last campaigns he fought with Charles V. Among the cities where the religious ferment was most felt were Grenoble and Lyons; the south indeed, where the sects of the Middle Ages had flourished, was destined to be the very hotbed of the Huguenots. For ten years (1535-1545), several university chairs in that region were successively held by one of the most notable figures among the Italian reformers; his identification with the reform, indeed, though not complete at the time, had very likely begun. These years spent in France constitute a chapter of which too little account has been taken in the history of Matteo Gribaldi. As a member of the humanistic school which brought to the study of jurisprudence the methods of the new learning, the school of Zasius, Alciati, Panziroli, Duaren, and Mariano Sozini, Gribaldi must have been early known to Boniface Amerbach, who ultimately secured him a chair in Germany which he was holding at the time he came to grief on account of his religious opinions. He was teaching at the university of Padua when their relation became personal through the entrusting to Gribaldi of young Basil Amerbach who during his studies at Padua lived at the house of the jurist. Moreover, Gribaldi spent his holidays on his estate at Farges, in the territory of Bern, and came frequently to Basel for brief visits. The greater part of the life of Matteo Gribaldi, and that of which we know least, was spent presumably in those regions where first took shape a form of opposition to the dogmas and ceremonies of the Roman church. In Piedmont, Tuscany, and Languedoc, the Manichean heretics —Patarin, Cathar, or Albigensian—had left memories; and along the Rhone and in the subalpine valleys which cradled the house of Savoy, the Vaudois preserved their existence in spite of the persecution undertaken when it was not to the interest of their sovereigns to stand well with the populations which guarded the passes of the eastern Alps. It is his environment which must be kept in mind, for of the training of the future jurisconsult we have no hint. His birthplace, Chieri, is today a town of some 13,000 inhabitants eight miles southeast of Turin. I t was in the Middle Ages one of those virtually independent communes from which Patarin agitation forced the bishops; it commended itself
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(May 19, 1347) to Giacomo of Savoy, prince of Achaia. Cirié, where Curione was bom, and Moncalieri, where he grew up, were others, and the latter lies at no great distance from Chieri. The two boys, so closely associated in later life at Basel, may have been children together. If not, then perhaps they met at the university of Turin, whither the orphan Celio went to cultivate that love of the classics which determined his career as a humanist, and where in 1506 Erasmus had received the laurea. Turin was a natural destination for a Piedmontese student, even for a son of Chieri which could not forget that she herself had harbored the university for a few years. 3 And Gribaldi may have shared the instruction of Francesco Sfondrati, later cardinal and papal nuncio in Germany, of whom Curione was a pupil at Turin. "Mopha," the name by which Gribaldi is often called by his friends, is no nickname given by his students, as might be suspected; like "Gribaldi" it is a family name, and has a separate coat of arms. Mopha, it may be surmised, was the name of his mother. Gribaldi was related on his father's side, apparently, to the Broglie, one of the families from which Chieri got its name "the republic of the seven B's." Of the others, the names Benso and Balbo contributed in the nineteenth century to make famous the spot where Matteo Gribaldi first saw the light. Of his ancestors, one is perhaps to be discerned in the "Guidetus Gribaudus" who appears in a list of those chosen by the consiglio di credenza on May 11, 1398, as charged with the defense of Chieri, then threatened by Theodore of Montferrat. He is one of the two from the quarter "Jaluo," explained by the editor as Gialdo* There is no indication as to the date of Gribaldi's birth. 5 It must have been in the days when the young duke Philibert II was keeping up a difficult struggle to maintain neutrality between France and Austria on the eve of the great struggle for Lombardy, perhaps about the time of his marriage with Margaret of Aus* 1421-34. Vide Vallauri, Storia delle università degli studi del Piemonte. 2 vols. Torino 184S, 1846. 4 C. Cipolla, "Chieri e le compagnie di ventura nel maggio 1398" (Rivista storica italiana, II, 66S-88. 1885). * Research in the parish registers at Chieri does not yield his fede di nascità, but in the parish registers of this time there are serious lacunae, as I am informed by a courteous letter from the canonico Bartolomeo Valimberti. A near relative of Gribaldi was Vespasiano Gribaldi, archbishop of Vienne 1569-76, according to Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier, II, 54 n. Cf. Meredith Read. Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy, II, 73, where the Gribaldi coat-of-arms is described.
no
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tria, during whose brief reign Turin had its share of feast and revelry. It was while hunting in the fields near Chieri that the duchess once fell from her horse and nearly perished of the same fate that had befallen her mother, Mary of Burgundy. Young Gribaldi was somewhere in his 'teens when the Swiss victory at Novara (1513) enabled the confederates to treat Piedmont like a conquered country with the connivance of its sovereign Charles III, the brother and successor of Philibert. He had probably all but severed his connection with his native country when Savoy and Piedmont were annexed by France in 153 6. Chieri was taken in March of that year (before the fall of Turin) and to its inhabitants were confirmed the customs, privileges, franchises, and liberties accorded by the dukes of Savoy and the princes of Piedmont,6 for Francis aimed to win the good will of the people he was now to rule. The city was retaken by the Spanish under the Márchese del Vasto on August 28-30, 1537, and became French again with its conquest by Brissac, who besieged it in time of truce in 1551; with the return to French rule, the inhabitants considered themselves to have escaped from the hands of the Furies to fall into those of angels. By that time, Gribaldi had severed his connection with Piedmont. Gribaldi married Georgine Carraxe, heiress of the lordship of Farges in the county of Gex, which was Bernese territory from 1536 to 1567. Georgine, whose birth was illegitimate, seems to have been the daughter of Etiennette de Gento, dame de Farges, by Bartolomé Carraxe, who ultimately became her second husband. Her claim to the inheritance was disputed by Jean de Grammont, who purported to be the son of dame Etiennette by a secret marriage. The case came before the court of Gex, which decided in favor of Jean de Grammont. Referred to the administration at Bern (for the conquest of the country by the Bernese had now taken place), before which representatives of the contestants appeared on February 12, 1536, the claim of Gribaldi's rival was nullified, the decision reversed, and he himself invested with the lands in November of the same year.7 •Romier, "Les institutions françaises en Piémont sous Henri II." (Revue torique, CVI). 'Bern Stadtarchiv. Teutsch Spruchbuch HH pp. 213-16 and 543. Haller (Ephemerides 114, under the year 1557) that Gribaldi acquired Farges by chase: "Vargianum dominium . . . emit." It is likely that Gribaldi had to buy off his unsuccessful rival, for the latter presumably the would-be assassin of 1555, when the jurist was at Bern. The biographers of Gribaldi know nothing of his marriage.
hissays purwas
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T o Farges, Gribaldi c a m e each summer, leaving the estate in the a u t u m n in charge of a steward when he returned to his lecture platform. H e occupied the chair of jurisprudence at T o u l o u s e at the time the government of Bern adjudged the lands in Gex t o him. H e is said to have taught at Chieri, Pavia, Pisa, and Perugia; b u t the statement m a d e in old biographical sketches lacks confirmation in the places where confirmation
must be sought. 8 H e certainly occupied the chair of juris-
prudence at Toulouse in 1535 and 1536, and there became intimate with B o y s s o n e and Voulte, as well as with fitienne D o l e t , to w h o m he w a s probably introduced b y the other two on the occasion of a visit to Lyons. W i t h Boyssone he carried on a close correspondence for s o m e years.® H e was next at Cahors; thence was attracted b y a larger salary to Valence, where he lectured in 1540 and 1541, the years in which the cardinal de Tournon w a s organizing the Inquisition in Burgundy, D a u phine, and Savoy. Perhaps Ulrich Iselin was his student there and Boni-
" He does not appear in the list of professors of jurisprudence at Pisa (Fabronio, Hisloriae academiae pisanae. 3 vols. Pisa 1791-95) or at Pavia (Memorie e documenti per la storia dell 'università di Pavia e degli uomini più illustri che v'insegnavano. Pavia 1878). The university of Pisa was in a bad way at this time, the teachers deserting their classrooms because their salaries were in arrears and Alessandro de' Medici not being concerned to bring them back. * Vide Christie, Étienne Dolet, 303 and passim. At the university library of Toulouse, he tells us, a volume of Latin letters to and from Boyssoné, commencing about 1532 and extending over more than twenty years following, contains a portion of Gribaldi's letters (p. 82 and note). One or two appear in the publication of this correspondence commenced by Buche in the Revue des tongues romanes, vols. 38, 39, and 40. From the city library at Toulouse, manuscrit 834, copies were sent me by M. Galabert of three letters of Boyssoné to Gribaldi written from Toulouse, the first dated 1537; a letter of Mopha to Boyssoné from Cahors, Jan. 26, 1538; and four letters to Gribaldi not signed but written from Chambéry, June 3, 1539; from Grenoble, undated; from Grenoble, May 21, 1552 ; and from Grenoble, June 5. Evidence of the migrations of Gribaldi is found in a poem of Boyssoné which Buche prints, citing Boyssoné, Eieg. Lib. f. 43 v° 44 r° MS Bibl. de Toulouse, N" 835. Thus: "Olim habuit Decium praeclara Valentia. Ecce tibi haec eadem tellus fecunda Gribaldum. Detinet insignem jure in utroque virum: Quem mirata prius fuerat studiosa juventus Taurini, ereptum quemque Tolosa dolet, Quem prece nec pretio valuit retinere Cadurcum, Urbs tenet, o felix, clarior Allobrogum."
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face Amerbach was first drawn to his famous confrère through the young Basler who became his son-in-law; for Iselin was at the university of Valence in April 1543 and apparently remained until the beginning of 1544. He was always, in later years, the recipient of a special greeting in letters of Gribaldi to Amerbach. In the experience of his contemporary Andrea Alciati, we can probably find the explanation of Gribaldi's years of expatriation from Italy. From Milan, where he had practiced law for five years, Alciati fled in 1527, closing a long series of calamities which had befallen him on account of the war in which the league of emperor and pope in 1511 had involved his native city. At Avignon, where he had formerly taught, counting Boniface Amerbach among his pupils, he again found a chair, which he exchanged after two years for one at Bourges. He returned reluctantly to Italy in 1533, obeying a call to Pavia; but he never ceased to inveigh against the turbulent times and the interference with his work. In his letters to Amerbach from Pavia in 1536, he relates the exodus of students on the invasion of Francis I. Of six hundred pupils, only one hundred are left him. He curses Mars, the stupidest of all gods, and thinks that, if war breaks out, the jurists will be the first to shut up shop. In an address at Ferrara, where he taught from 1542 to 1546, he scores military service, pouring sarcasm on a trade that from the most ancient times has been followed only by those who had no other livelihood. He calls Vergil to witness: "Pauper in arma pater primis me misit ab annis." Today, he says, military service is to be abhorred and it is strange to find people who are willing to stake their lives in it. In antiquity the poorest slaves were sold for a thousand drachmas, but today there are men who are willing to risk life and limb for a drachma a day. Ulpian was right when he derived the word "miles" from malitia, and the Greeks "athlete" from '¿OXioç wretched. But the French universities offered Alciati other attractions than freedom from interruption, and no doubt Gribaldi would have echoed some of the complaints of the Milanese, of the turbulence of the students who failed to appreciate those advantages. Thus a letter to Bembo (Pavia, September 1, 1535) complains of their impertinence, and Moeller adduces stories told by an old pupil of Alciati of unruly students during the last days of the old professor, who died in 1550. More constructive is his comment in a letter from Bourges on the intellectual atmosphere there. In Italy, he says, he had to fear the hostility of students who turned up thmr
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noses at the humanities; at Bourges he set the pace. Calvin was there among his pupils. 10 As Gribaldi was a subject of the French king, his stay in France was not broken by the importunities of a sovereign beyond the Alps, as was that of Alciati. He was moreover coming to the front as a writer in his field. At Valence in 1541 he prepared for the press his De methodo et ratione studendi, dedicating it to his former students at Toulouse, who had persuaded him to undertake it. The preface of the edition published at Lyons in 1544—the second and by no means the last—is dated January 1, 1541.11 A call now came from the university of Grenoble (January 19, 1543), and he was named professor there on April 3 at a salary of 300 crowns. His dismissal in the spring of 1545 was due to the inability of the town to continue paying as much, its only resource for the salary of Gribaldi and others being the interest on a loan to the king. 12 It is important to note that at the time of this his first engagement at the university of Grenoble, Gribaldi was not openly won to the reform: "il allait toujours à la messe." Moreover it was a canon of the cathedral who headed the subscription list when in 1543 an effort was made in this way to eke out the budget of the university. But these were regions in which heresy was strong, and at Vienne, in the neighborhood of Grenoble and Valence, the Spanish physician Michael Servetus was at this very time living under an assumed name which it had been necessary to take because of the notoriety attaching to the author of the 10 For Andrea Alciati, vide Moeller, Andreas Alciat (Breslau 1907). His letters to Amerbach, preserved at Basel (Codex G II. 14 of the university library) have been published, in great part, by Giardini, "Nuove indagini sulla vita e le condotte di Andrea Alciati," in the Archivio storico lombardo, X X X . (1903), and used by Costa, Andrea Alciato e Bonifacio Amerbachio (Firenze 1905). His memorandum on the witch-persecution of 1515 is published by Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hezenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mitteialter (Bonn 1901), pp. 310-12. For his attitude toward the reform, Moeller, pp. 46-48; for his scoring of military service and war, ibid., 13, citing Alciati Opera, IV., col. 859; for his eulogy of Bourges, ibid., 62, citing Hoynck, Analecta Belgica (Hagae Comitum 1743), I, 73 ff. 11 Cf. Nani, in Memorie dell' Academie delle sdenze di Torino, ser. 2, X X X V , 131-61 (Torino 1884). "Vide Berriat-St. Prix, Histoire de l'ancienne université de Grenoble, p. 17, quoting Reg. Mss. de Grenoble F 129.
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De erroribus trinitatis. It seems as if Gribaldi must have heard at Chieri in 1528 the Lutheran preaching of the Carmelite Pallavicino, from whom Curione is said to have imbibed heresy. 13 Doubtless he had learned at Toulouse, that headquarters of ecclesiastical bigotry from Albigensian times to that of Voltaire, where parlement, university, capitouls (civic magistrates), and mob were the henchmen of the Inquisition, to give no sign of concern with more than the externals of religion. In 1532, two professors of law, Jean Cadurque, a priest, and his friend Jean Boyssoné were long under indictment by the parlement for supposed Lutheran leanings, and the former had suffered death. 14 The year after Gribaldi's departure from Toulouse the grand inquisitor himself, Louis Rochette, similarly expiated his convictions, 15 and Étienne Dolet was bumed at Paris. That Gribaldi was teaching between 1545 and 1548 and where, does not appear. He may have been devoting himself to writing. POPE, K I N G , AND EMPEROR, D U R I N G THE INITIAL EFFORTS AT T R E N T
The war between Francis and Charles which closed with the treaty of Crespy in 1544 brought anxiety to the Swiss cantons on account of the troops mobilizing on their borders. Popular opinion held that the Cantons would be the first to feel the weight of the new alliance against heresy; and a pamphlet inspired by the French made a great impression. Accusing the emperor of aiming at universal dominion, the writer intended to dispose sentiment in favor of France. The cantons both Catholic and reformed were accordingly one in the decision not to send envoys to the meetings at Trent when the invitations came on April 15, 1543, on March 23, 1545, and on July 6,1546, and when through the Swiss territory the bishops began to pass on their way to the council. The astonishing unanimity in the usually divided cantons appeared in high relief at the diet of Baden on August 9, 1546. There the reformed cantons were admonished by the pope to take thought for the safety of " T h e preaching of Pallavicino is the subject of admonitions from the pope to the bishop of Aosta in Fontana, Documents vaticani, nos. X X I I and X X I V . Pallavicino had come into suspicion at Brescia ( v i d e supra, p. 76). Cf. Jalla, op. cit., 28-29 and Tacchi-Venturi, I, 331 n. 1. " B u i s s o n , Sebastien Castellion, I, 83-84. Cadurque's crime w a s having proposed at a banquet to substitute for "le roi voit" the phrase "Christ règne en nos coeurs." H e preferred death to making a simple retraction before his students. " Vide Christie, op. cit., chap. IV.
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IIS
their souls, but Zürich responded that St. Paul declined to appear before the council at Jerusalem, which was composed of his enemies; Athanasius and Ambrose in like manner disregarded the invitations of the wicked; and the Zürichers likewise would not present themselves in a place where they were already judged. The council of Trent finally came together in December 1545. Both Charles and Francis, in carrying out the agreement made at Crespy, aimed at the element which seemed to them to constitute a serious danger to monarchy. Francis did not realize that it was not Lutheranism which was to constitute the danger to his kingdom, but Calvinism, which was far more ominous to princes. As for Charles, he knew now that a chief reason for his failure to realize his scheme of religious union was that it involved also political union from which the princes were averse. In abandoning the policy of conciliation with the Protestants, he had not willingly come over to the side of the pope who, disappointed of the help of Charles in advancing his family interests, was obviously hoping for the success of Francis. His army was in such a condition that he may well have feared lest its weakness be unexpectedly shown,18 and he knew that the council presaged war. He must prepare for it. At the diet of Worms, where he had to confront angry murmurs against the council from the Lutherans, he approached the papal legate Alessandro Farnese in the matter of a subsidy. The treaty with the pope was signed on June 7, 1546, and signified that Charles had given way and promised to send envoys to Trent. To Trent came the papal delegates, Del Monte and Cervini and Pole with instructions from the pope to bring about first the settlement of the doctrinal questions. Del Monte was opposed to reform and worldly; Cervini was eager for it but also for the definition of doctrines; while Pole represented the humanists, tolerant and clinging to the idea of reconciliation with the Protestants. Since he entertained an idea of justification not much different from the Lutheran, and since his friend the Bishop of La Cava was not sufficiently judicious, Seripando, general of the Augustinians, became the leader of the party of mediation.17 He was a member of the Neapolitan academy. The imperial envoys (Juan de Mendoza and Francisco de Toledo), to whose party the bishop of Trent, Cardinal Madruzzi, went over, had instructions to insist that reform be first considered; but these, even with the help of the Spanish prelates, could not prevail. The result of the friction which inaugurated "Armstrong, op. cit., II, 26.
" Gothein, op. cit., p. 48S.
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the sessions of the council was a compromise just as good as a victory for the most aggressive of the papal prelates, Del Monte. Paul agreed that matters of doctrine and of clerical reform be discussed simultaneously; but the papal legates possessed the initiative by the pope's decree, and determined the order of discussion, which proceeded briskly in the direction of the definition of doctrine. This first period of the council of Trent gave the Company of Jesus a secure place among the bulwarks of Rome. Of five members of the Order who were present, two were there not as official representatives of the band, but in the train of accredited prelates. They were Salmerón and Lainez, and it was their view of justification by faith which prevailed as the outcome of the great debate between Lainez and the Augustinian Seripando on the subject. Lainez was here permitted to speak for three hours at a time, although one hour was the limit usually set. These disciples of Loyola, when they went to Trent, were to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. They were to meet together every night, discuss the events of the day, and plan for the following one. They were to keep clear of heretical opinions and abstain from defending with zeal any tenet which had not already been decided by the assembly. Their very modesty inspired confidence when they spoke and won indulgence when they ventured to express an opinion, but Loyola was disposed to recall them, though they told him of having softened the prejudices of the party of Charles V and of being consulted by prominent prelates. At the very time when justification by faith was under discussion, Ignatius was considering the transfer of Lainez to some other mission. His colleague Salmerón voiced his protest in a letter to Loyola of January 20, 1S47, and the two remained, going to Bologna when the council was transferred thither. The decree on justification belongs to the sixth session of the council (January 13, 1547). What the condemnation of the Protestant view implied is realized by recalling that Morone, Pole, Contarini, and many another prominent prelate had shared it and admired the Benefizio di Cristo. The decree was published in February amid the protest of Charles and his envoys and ministers. Luther had been dead just a year, almost with his last breath calling upon Charles to lead a religious war against the pope and cardinals and the Roman Sodom, until the Germans could wash their hands in their blood. The emperor was all but sufficiently incensed to do just that, what with the almost simultaneous withdrawal of the papal forces in the war which had broken out, as expected, and
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with the publication of the decree on justification. The Schmalkaldic war gave Paul the pretext he wanted for the transference of the council to Italy; and already in March 1547, the legates (to whom the pope had, during the advance of Schertlin on Trent, given secret powers to move the council) had decreed its removal to Bologna on the score of danger from the plague. Charles commanded the bishops to stay where they were. He roundly abused Paul, getting no sympathy from the legate, who told him he should have humored the old man, and informed by the nuncio Verallo that the council could not depend on the protection of the emperor and had gone to Bologna to be safe. The council had been in progress for six months when the Schmalkaldic war was opened with the seizure of Füssen on July 9, 1546, by Sebastian Schertlin of Burtenbach. This famous condottiere had been recruiting in south Germany for the League of Schmalkalden, and was made commander-in-chief of the forces of the confederated towns on the upper Rhine. He later boasted that only his recall by the Schmalkaldic council of war of Ulm after the exploit of Füssen prevented his marching to Innspruck as he had planned, breaking up the council of Trent and closing the Brenner to the Italian auxiliaries. These arrived, however, at Regensburg—papal forces, light cavalry from Florence and Ferrara, Spanish infantry, and Neapolitan cavalry—and received the duke of Alva for commander-in-chief. The campaign on the Danube ended abruptly with the withdrawal of the Saxon troops of the league on the invasion by Moritz of the territories of his cousin, the elector. The south German princes and towns made their submission, the elector-palatine, childhood friend of Charles V, Ulrich of Württemberg, Ulm, Augsburg, Nördlingen, Heilbronn, Hall, Esslingen, Frankfurt, and last of all Strassburg, which was treated lightly on her surrender in February 1547 lest she make overtures to the Swiss cantons. Most of the cities had to pay such sums to secure temporary toleration as would have saved their cause if employed in time to pay the troops. Paul was still the well-wisher of the Lutherans. Apprehensive of the success of Charles in spite of the repulse by Johann Friedrich of the invasion of Moritz, he withdrew his troops at the end of the six months for which he had promised them. He listened to the proposals of the French court, from which came l'Aubespine to persuade him not to renew his treaty with the emperor, and he fomented probably the revolt of Naples against the Spanish Inquisition. The result was what nobody expected. Charles hastened to Saxony and surprised the elector, who
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was marching from Meissen to Wittenberg, while Alva crushed the inferior forces of his opponents, vainly waiting for reinforcements from Bohemia. The battle of Muhlberg, which resulted in the total defeat of the elector's army and in his capture, was fought througout Sunday, April 24, 1547. Henry II of France (who had succeeded his father Francis just as Charles was marching into Saxony for the decisive battle) now approached Paul through l'Aubespine and professed his willingness to send representatives to the council, not even demurring at its transfer to Bologna. He also sent an ambassador, Claude d'Urfé, who arrived however (September 1547) with instructions to protest against the usurpations of the curia in the matter of appointments and annates and to demand a return to the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. The pope refusing to recall the council to Trent, Charles proceeded at the diet of Augsburg (the "armed diet," September 1, 1547 to June 30, 1548) to try once more and secure religious peace. He appointed accordingly a committee composed of laymen and theologians to consider the matter again. But Catholics insisted on the restoration of secularized church property, while Lutherans denied both the justice and the possibility of doing so ; the breach thus created was widened by Eck, the Bavarian representative, and Charles finally instructed three theologians to draw up a scheme of comprehension. Pflug was the chairman, and the result was the Interim of Augsburg. There were granted to the Protestants by this arrangement the marriage of priests, the communion in both kinds, a mitigation of the regulation about fasts, and a modification of the Mass. Purgatory and indulgences were passed over in silence, but the ceremonies of the church were preserved along with the teaching as to the sacraments, tradition, and the power of the bishops. There was nothing about restoration of church property, but much about restoring the discipline and morals of the clergy. It was says Reimann, 18 the attempt at a national church on a Catholic basis; "an oppressive ecclesiastical rule . . . intended to keep Protestantism within strict ecclesiastical bounds till the council of Trent should speak with the voice of authority," and a "semi-Catholic régime," in the words of Beard,1® and it confirmed the worst fears of the Swiss, who had been convinced by the French that the emperor was aiming at universal "Deutsche Geschickte im Zeitalter der Reformation, p. 172. " " T h e reformation of the sixteenth century in its relation to modern thought; and knowledge" (Hibbert Lectures, 1883), pp. 108, 310.
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dominion. The Interim was carried on May IS and published on June 30. Charles then issued his scheme of reform for the clergy, and as this applied only to the Catholic clergy, the Interim came to be interpreted by the Catholic states as applying only to the Lutheran ones, who regarded it thereafter as a measure of compulsion.20 Charles was severe in his treatment of the powerful cities which had made their submission and paid their fines in the Schmalkaldic war, but which now refused to accept the Interim. Constance, the only one of these in southern Germany which had held out against the Emperor, had commended herself to Ferdinand (October 13) in order to avoid receiving a Spanish garrison; she hoped vainly to be relieved by her Swiss allies.21 The representatives of Augsburg were told by Granvella that he would drown or hang their preachers who would not accept the Interim. The deputies of Frankfurt were given to understand that they would have to take lessons in the old religion or be forced to leam Spanish too. In Ulm and Augsburg, Charles changed the constitution of the town councils, making them more aristocratic and incidentally Catholic; he had observed that Nürnberg had continued loyal and prosperous under her aristocratic constitution. Strassburg was treated with more consideration than the other cities because l'Abuespine was then at Basel, prepared to take advantage of the sympathy there for France. FRANCIS I AND H I S ITALIAN AGENTS—VERGERIO AND MAGGI
What has been said helps to explain why the French ambassador at Venice, Morvilliers,22 interested himself in the cause of the bishop of Capodistria, Pierpaolo Vergerio, on trial for "heresy" at Venice since 1544, and why Vincenzo Maggi, whom the diplomatic service had apparently decided to drop, was given another trial. Vergerio had displayed a zeal for the reform of the clergy in his diocese which won him the ill will of a clergy not willing to be reformed. In December 1544, the priors and guardians of the five monasteries of Capodistria denounced him to the council of Ten at Venice. Similar denunciations to the papal nuncio there, Giovanni della Casa 23 and at Rome itself, may be assumed; and the procedure of the Inquisition was set in motion. It seems there was an inclination at Rome to try there all "Armstrong, op. cit., II, 184. " Vide infra, p. 137. Vide Baguenault de Puchesne, Jean de Morvilliers (Paris 1870). Vide Campana, "Monsignor Giovanni della Casa" (Studi storici, 1908). His Galateo is a famous treatise on manners.
XVII. Pisa
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cases having to do with ecclesiastics, and that a bishop must appear there in person and conduct his defense from prison,24 the depositions of the prosecution having been sent from the quarter lodging the complaint. Thus the dossier from Capodistria was forwarded by Delia Casa, who with great consideration for the accused abstracted the part which had to do with an old scandal concerning the pope's wretch of a son, Pierluigi Farnese, which Vergerio, then papal nuncio, had furthered. 25 And the bishop was required to present himself at Rome within twenty days of the reception of the summons which it was now resolved to serve on him. Delia Casa wrote to Rome that Vergerio was ready to obey; but the latter, who had taken refuge with Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga at Mantua, wished to be tried by the legate of Bologna. That concession he obtained in fact from Cardinal Farnese, who passed through Mantua in April 1545. In August, since Rome made no move, he offered to be tried by the patriarch of Aquileia, Cardinal Grimani, his immediate ecclesiastical superior; and in the meantime began to undermine with great efficiency the pope's authority in the neighborhood of Trent. Vergerio was already entering upon a third phase of his activity. First a lawyer, then a pillar of the Roman church first as diplomat and then as cleric, he had now advanced from the standpoint of a reformer of discipline (and possibly dogma) to the standpoint he henceforth represented, that of the superiority of a council to the pope. To the furthering of a council in what was soon to be understood as the Protestant sense and to the combating of the council of Trent when that proved to be nothing of the kind, Vergerio now devoted his legal and diplomatic talents and a gift for invective which rivaled Luther's. As Luther appealed from the pope to a council, so now Vergerio. The council which he had advocated to Paul III, in 1536, and for which he had worked, had finally come together at Trent in December 1545, and thither he wished to go and present his case. Vergerio, with the instinct of a publicist, is now seen riding from place to place in the diocese of Brescia and in the neighborhood of the council, stirring up the very attitude towards the relations of pope and council of which Paul feared the recrudescence. With him, in a sort of travesty on the * Buschbell, op. cit., p. 104. p. 105. Pierluigi Farnese was evidently addicted to unnatural crimes, and color was given to the story of his attack on the bishop of Fano.
"Ibid.,
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penitential processions of earlier centuries, rode more than a hundred humiliati, as they styled themselves." The formal summons to Rome which he had hitherto succeeded in dodging overtook him at Mantua on January 15, 1546. Vergerio had the messenger shown the door, with no courtesy whatever, charging him to tell the legate that he had not found his man; and hastened to the assembled fathers at Trent, with a letter of recommendation from Cardinal Gonzaga. A disappointment awaited him. The legate Cervini (later Pope Marcellus II) made it clear that, so long as he was not absolved from the charges against him, he could not be admitted. Nor was a second attempt in March following any more successful, though the legates at Trent, considering the powerful protectors whom the man enjoyed, consented to urge every possible compliance with his preference of a place for a trial, recommending that he be exempted from coming to Rome and that his case be handed over to the patriarch of Venice. In case the latter could not serve, the patriarch of Aquileia might be his substitute. It was conceded, accordingly, that the hearing take place at Venice, and that, with the nuncio Delia Casa, the patriarch of Aquileia27 should preside. As the patriarch was under suspicion himself for alleged protection accorded to Ochino and other heretics, and was even reported to have said that the council was superior to the pope, it was necessary that Delia Casa, anxious to bring the matter to a head, dispel these new clouds before Vergerio was cited anew to begin his defense, which was set for June 5, 1546. Rome was finally content when it was learned that Grimani would be represented at the trial by the vicar of the patriarch of Venice, Girolamo Quirini, who had himself declined to serve. Vergerio, now back from Trent, was in Venice. A warrant from the Ten to search his house in Capodistria yielded nothing to the harrassed nuncio (January 1546); neither books nor papers offered grounds for the prosecution. * "Humiliati" was the name assumed by a body of reformers in the Lombard towns in the time of Pope Alexander III, who, without quitting their own firesides, lived according to simple self-imposed rules which caused them to be identified with the Poor Men of Lyons and to be condemned with these at the council of Verona in 1183. They wore undyed garments, abstained from lying and swearing, and regarded lawsuits as opposed to the Catholic faith. Vide Comba, Waldenses, 68. " Giovanni Grimani, who had succeeded his brother Marino (whom Vergerio had congratulated on his accession in 1528) in 1S4S. Vide infra, pp. 166, 319, 36S.
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Vergerio's trial followed the procedure laid down in the manuals of the Inquisition; to that procedure correspond the directions given in a memorandum sent from Rome to Delia Casa on April 3, 1546. 28 T h e bishop is to be given copies of the testimony containing the substance of it; he is not to know the names of the witnesses. He did not, however, conduct his defense from prison, as was the rule, for Delia Casa had no prison at his disposal and would have had difficulty, to boot, in securing the consent of the Ten to the arrest of Vergerio, for the government of Venice was ever jealous of the encroachments of the church. His hearing was first oral; thereafter he was given until the end of the month to prepare an answer in writing to the accusations against which he had already defended himself by word of mouth. Vergerio was evidently throughout his own lawyer. Not until September did he engage counsel (procuratori), and the nuncio declared the trial closed in November. Meantime he exhausted every legal subterfuge to win his case. He sought permission to go to Capodistria and find witnesses in his defense, though the law said he must conduct his defense from prison, and he was already free. He demanded copies of the complaints and testimonies just as they were offered, instead of the summaries which the law enjoined in order to keep the prisoner from knowing the identity of those upon whose evidence the prosecution rested. I t is evident that, as Buschbell contends, there is no animus on the part of his opponents. Vergerio and his brother Giambattista, however, may have nourished grievances in the recollection of interference from the side of Rome in matters that touched their revenues; and the Venetian clergy in general were impatient with the claims of Rome which touched fields other than religious. The patriarch of Aquileia was indignant at the intervention of the curia in behalf of a scion of his family against himself, and Vergerio, as has been noted, had been incensed at a financial burden on his diocese in 15 40. 2 9 Perhaps Vergerio was already considering flight beyond the confines of Italy for which there were now so many precedents, if all hope of furthering the Reformation at home should be taken away. T o Rome he did not intend to go, in any case; he feared the iron hand in the velvet glove, as had Ochino and Vermigli and Curione. He had reason just then, for, inspite of the assurances of Cardinal Farnese to the Nuncio Delia Casa that in Rome corporal punishment was never inflicted on
"Buschbell, op. cit., p. 119.
" Vide supra, p. 74.
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heretics,' 0 death by fire was not unknown there, as well as corporal punishment of other kinds. 31 The accusations against which Vergerio defended himself are too trifling to have been the real cause of his long-drawn-out trial. They concern various practices and superstitions already in question. Only the charge of reading prohibited books (the Pasquino in estasi, the Benefizio
di Cristo,
the Sommario
della santa scrittura)
recalls serious
prosecutions for heresy; and here Vergerio contended that it was a bishop's duty to read and confute heretical books. The Istrian historian Kandler told Cantil that the whole matter seemed to him a feud with the Franciscans, who were wroth with the bishop for having discovered and punished certain irregularities. 32 The testimony of witnesses which followed the naming of counsel by the accused was also favorable to him, and it might seem that Vergerio had now, the trial having been declared closed, only to manifest his obedience by complying with the formality of going to Rome in the expectation of absolution or else a light sentence. But not so. His friends exerted themselves to clear him absolutely and spare him the journey to Rome. The French ambassador came twice to Della Casa's house to recommend the cause of the bishop in his own name and in that of the cardinal of Ferrara. Vergerio averred that, as soon as the minutes of his trial should be read at Rome, his innocence would be apparent and the joumey would be unnecessary. He made every effort to have the minutes precede him. Now he pleaded the expense of the journey—the excuse of poverty we are destined to hear all his life from Vergerio,—now he is confined to his bed with illness. It was eleven months after Della Casa had declared the trial closed that, on August 13, 1547, Cardinal Farnese acknowledged the receipt of the documents on which the case rested. Meantime the Venetian tribunal of the Inquisition had been founded through the efforts of Delia Casa. His activity in this direction and in that of the establishment of subordinate tribunals (which were set up in September 1548), together with measures looking toward a censorship " Buschbell, op. cit., p. ISO. " Diego Enzinas, for example, a Spaniard, was burned alive at Rome in March 1547. The date, an ominous one for Protestants, is suggestive. His letter to Luther (of December 24, 1545) is to be read in Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., I, 519-21. Francesco Enzinas ("Dryander"), the brother of Diego, was then a student at the university of Basel {Matricula studiosorum 1546-47, Borrhaus rector). * Cantil, op. cit., p. 253, n. 5.
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THE EPOCH OF REPRESSION
of the press, suggest why the case of Vergerio, inconclusive as had been the outcome, was not brought to a decision. And to no small degree must have contributed Vergerio's comments on the new index of Delia Casa (May 1548), if he expressed himself orally as he did in the edition later published of the list of his opponent. In his comments in print, he speaks particularly of the Benefizio di Cristo in a warm tone of partisanship. Not only so, but Frá Ambrogio Catarino, who printed a confutation of the book at Rome in 1544, is alluded to as one whose invective was inspired by the hope of a benefizio from the pope, and Cardinal Pole is plainly indicated as having in his possession a book defending the Benefizio di Cristo, which he declines to have published, thereby showing a lack of the spirit with which he is credited. 83 All this time, Vergerio and his brother had employed themselves with the work of protestantizing Istria, which had gone on without pause since Vergerio came back from Worms and began to imbue himself in the writings of the reformers. The trials of Istrians before the new tribunal of the Holy Office at Venice show how effective was the propaganda. So also does the number of witnesses whom Vergerio was able to produce in his defense. To Istria was sent as special commissioner of the Inquisition in October 1548, Annibale Grisone of Capodistria. By the time that his investigations had begun to reveal the spread of heresy in Istria, the two events cited by Buschbell had drawn attention again to Vergerio, the burning of heretical books at Venice in July 1548, which argued that Vergerio had done with impunity what to less privileged persons was forbidden; and the death of his brother, the bishop of Pola (August 1548), among whose papers was found more evidence against Pierpaolo. Summonded by the nuncio to Venice in view of the reawakened suspicion of him, Vergerio did not linger there, but betook himself to Padua and commenced to frequent the society of students, exercising upon them an influence prejudicial to Rome. One such was the young Bemardin Bochetel, whom Vergerio was to meet a decade later as the abbé de Saint Laurent, ambassador of France to the Swiss Cantons. It was his way of securing a hearing among another influential class; Vergerio was a consummate publicist. The suffragan of Padua complained to Delia Casa of his "scandalous conduct" there in December 1548; and the nuncio authorized the inquisitor of Padua to hold hearings in the matter. It was at Padua, according to Vergerio's own account, that " CaDtii, op. cit., pp. 454-55. The date of Vergerio's edition is July 3, 1549.
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125
the event occurred which decided his apostasy from Rome. In the desperate ravings, alternating with earnest spiritual counsels to his hearers, of the unfortunate Francesco Spiera, who was expiating with awful crises of conscience his alternate relapses from Rome and the reform (to which he had given himself for a time), the bishop of Capodistria saw the finger of God. There was now no doubt of his breach with Rome; and the papal brief commanding him to appear within a month at Rome on pain of deprivation of office and a fine of 10,000 gold ducats was issued on December 11, 1548. Should he not be found, the brief was to be affixed to the doors of the cathedral of Capodistria and be considered as having been delivered to him in person. The nuncio was given authority moreover to arrest Vergerio and hand him over to the legate of Romagna to be imprisoned. I t was in March 1547 that Delia Casa had reported to Cardinal Farnese the solicitude of Morvilliers the French ambassador at Venice in the matter of Vergerio. It was, in other words, at the time when Paul III, in the effort to dilute the cup of the emperor's success even before the battle of Miihlberg, recalled to Italy both his council and his troops. He was not quite ready for an alliance with France into which Henry II, not long after, began to lure him, and Vergerio, whose opposition to the council of Trent could not be disregarded in view of his powerful patrons like Ercole Gonzaga and Ippolito d'Este, might be used as a lever. It was unquestionably the fear that to the patrons of Vergerio would be added the king of France, in whose employ he had been earlier, that made Rome so considerate of the wishes of the bishop in the matter of his trial. Henry, as has been seen, gave u p his opposition to the council when Paul finally yielded to his seductions, and presumably also his support of Vergerio, the dossier of whose trial was so slow in being forwarded to Rome in 1547. Vergerio was not demonstrably in the pay of France until 1551-1552, when Julius I I I was at war with Henry II, the champion of the Farnesi and the opponent of the council, and he was a sufficiently important stipendiary to be the object of a special interview with a papal envoy entrusted with the effort to regain him for Rome. In January 1547 Morvilliers is writing to Cardinal de Tournon, head of the underground diplomatic service of Francis I in regard to another agent from the ranks of the fuorusciti, Vincenzo Maggi, whom he does not want to retain and dares not dismiss. T h e letter is a second arraignment of the Brescian who had served the French interests at Constan-
126
THE EPOCH OF REPRESSION
tinople without winning the formal appointment as ambassador there after the murder of Rincon. Taken in connection with Pellicier's comments, it is something like a portrait of Maggi, as viewed by the critical eyes of two episcopal diplomats at Venice. Vincenzo Maggi had certainly remained in the east, if not at Constantinople. T h a t he was not in charge there is to be inferred from the fact that when "captain Polin," as the successor of Rincon was called, sailed for Marseilles in May 1543 with the fleet of Barbarossa, he left at the Porte, with the title of resident, a new figure, Gabriel d'Aramon, a gentleman of Languedoc who had been French agent at the court of Mirandola. 34 He had been seven years in the east in the capacity of "secretary" according to the testimony of his wife at the trial in Venice in 1553, following eighteen months as ambassador; "several years," according to a Rhetian friend, the pastor of St. Regula's at Chur, " a t Saloniki as chargé d'affaires of the French king." 35 But there is no other evidence of his stay in that port of cardinal importance on the highway between east and west, with its wealth of Greek and Roman antiquities and its heterogeneous population, predominantly Jewish through the recent influx of Hebrew families fleeing from the Spanish inquisition. 36 In the correspondence whether from Constantinople or from Venice, the name of Maggi no longer appears after 1542. Of his part, if any, in the negotiations which Francis, who had sent the Turkish fleet home and made peace with Charles at Crespy, undertook by way of mediating between his old ally and his new one, we hear nothing. They culminated in the truce of Adrianople (November 10, 1545), which was converted into a treaty on June 19, 1547. During the long delay, d'Aramon set out for France for in" Charrière, Les nègotiations de France dans le levant, 556, n. 1. " T h e evidence of Lucrezia Maggi, then, is that her husband was in the east from 1540-47 following his tenure as "imbasciatore in turchi . . disotto mesi." Gallicious wrote Bullinger (Vide infra, p. 189): "Vincentius . . . Costantinopoli . . . legatum egisse se dicit septem annis"; but in another reference to the Brescian he substitutes Saloniki for Constantinople, and seems to have no clear idea of what this much-travelled person had actually done or where he had been. The two names meant probably much the same to his provincial soul. What Maggi told his transalpine friends was evidently what Lucrezia went on to tell the Holy Office: "et poi e stato li in turchia segretario sette anni" (PSO Busta II, Madius. July 11, 1553). "There is suggestion, however, in the admission to citizenship at Geneva in 1589 of a Jew of Salonika named "Seraphaim Maggio," baptized at Turin with the names of Charles Maurice, noted in Galiffe, Rijuge italien de Genève. Genève 1881, p. 170.
THE EPOCH OF REPRESSION
127
structions, but it was not Maggi who was left in charge, but rather JeanJacques de Cambray, later ambassador to the Swiss cantons. The former secretary appeared at Venice next. Pellicier had been succeeded by Montluc in October 1542; Montluc had given place to Morvilliers. To him Maggi, who had evidently fallen on evil days, applied. Reduced to extreme poverty (as Morvilliers knows from another source than the petitioner), he besieged the ambassador with requests for aid which seem, taken at their face value, not so unreasonable as Morvilliers would have us believe. Morvilliers wrote in his perplexity to the cardinal de Tournon, in date of January 24, 15 4 7.87 The Brescian "often endures hunger at his dwelling, where he shuts himself up from shame." Morvilliers seeks to placate him, knowing that he does not abstain from complaining "elsewhere than before me" of the length of his service with the king, at the peril of his life sometimes and with promises of reward left unfulfilled. There have been communicated to him, moreover, very many important secrets, to wit, the affairs of the Levant where he has been employed; and it is inadvisable that the manner and means of transmitting information be revealed in quarters where it will be useful to the prejudice of the king. In the promises of Maggi to be circumspect and "not forget the faith and honor which he owes to the king's service, "Morvilliers reposes less confidence than in his lack of courage. He believes too, "according to the shifting inclination of men of this sort," that he will use the power he has, and of which one ought to take account. He thinks it possible that Maggi may "injure us more in one day . . . than he has helped us in his whole life." He considers him of a type which it is useless to arrest and exact pledges from, "which they forget at the least passion which mounts to their head or the greatest hope of profit." Not to take too seriously the portrait of Maggi by the ambassador, who is probably rendering a general indictment of the agents of whose use he deplores the necessity rather than of the Brescian agent in particular, it is evident that he had been found wanting in some respect, probably, to guess from the letters, by reporting military movements of Solyman incautiously. It is safe to conclude that the Brescian was somehow placated, for he is again in the French service when, in June 1548 he took a wife called Lucrezia Panza, daughter of a physician, Neapolitan by birth and the widow of one Piero della Porta of Tolmezo. " Charriere, op. cit., I, 638.
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128
With the episode of his life in the monastery he evidently did not make her acquainted until after the marriage: "she had rather have gone with the devil than with a frate," she said. The deception, one would think, was difficult if, since his return to Venice, he had resumed the life of a regular cleric at San Giorgio Maggiore, as one gathers was the case. Very soon afterward, Vincenzo left his newly-wedded wife to go to France. He was at the French court in that year, according to a letter of Pietro Aretino, cited by Tiraboschi,58 and at Lyons, the headquarters of the juorusciti, in August and again in October 1548, according to the letters of François Hotman.89 Whatever his mission there, it was just when Henry II, pushed by the Guises, was following up his reconciliation with Paul I I I by attempting to win Ercole of Ferrara with a French marriage for one of his daughters. The marriage was discussed in a meeting of Ercole and Henry at Turin in August 1548 and its result was the marriage of Anna d'Este (whose intended bridegroom, the king of Poland, had just thrown her over for Barbara Radziwill) to Francis of Guise (Sept. 29, 1548). The duke of Ferrara, however, declined to enter the league against Charles. In France, for the first time since he talked as a young man with Francesco Negri, Maggi appears in connection with the reformers. With the evangelical leaders in Italy and Switzerland he is henceforth associated. It was as an agent of Vergerio that he came to the notice of the Inquisition. " Letter at ura italiana,
Book I I I , chap. L I V . T h e letter of Aretino which is cited,
IV, 199. "Opera
Calvini,
ed. B a u m , Reuss, and Cunitz (henceforth O C ) ,
13, 1067 and
1082. The jurist François H o t m a n was then at Lyons preparing to go into exile and eking out a living by correcting for the press, while his father, the councillor Pierre H o t m a n , went on missions of the chambre
ardente,
the inquisitorial tribunal
established by Henry I I . In the letters cited (to Calvin at Geneva),
"Vincentius
Magius" seems to be included among the fugitives about to set out for Geneva.
CHAPTER
VI
T H E ITALIANS AND T H E LAST ATTEMPT OF CHARLES V TO COERCE T H E PROTESTANTS, 1548-1549 REACTION I N T H E SWISS CANTONS TO T H E SUCCESS OF CHARLES V
Not only the pope's preparation for the council, but the emperor's for the war with the Schmalkaldeners had preoccupied the Swiss. Neutral they must remain, considering the division of the cantons into two confessions; and the Catholics, mindful of the crisis of 1529-1531, which had all but disrupted the confederation, promised to take no step which would involve it in the affairs of the emperor; while the reformed acknowledged with regret that they could render no aid to their German co-religionists in the Swabian towns without throwing their Catholic fellow Swiss into the hands of the enemy. But it fell to their lot to harbor not a few of those who fled to them even before the collapse of the Protestant cause at Mühlberg; and they could not prevent Swiss volunteers from seeking service on both sides in the German conflict. Presently all alike were threatened by the prospect of having to submit to the council, in the matter of which even Paul I I I would have to yield to the victorious emperor. It was from Augsburg especially that the exodus into the Cantons began. Thence came in January 1547, to avoid submission to Charles, Sebastian Schertlin. From Constance, to which he had first gone, he corresponded with Bullinger and other notable men at Zürich. Finally, disappointed in his hope of making terms with the emperor and at odds with Augsburg on account of the confiscation of his property, he betook himself (November 1547) to Basel. There he entered the service of Henry II, who demanded that he be tolerated on Swiss soil, while Charles insisted on his extradition. His right of sojourn there was finally negotiated by l'Aubespine in 1548. From Augsburg came also the reformed ministers Johann Haller and Wolfgang Musculus. The former, son of a father who had fallen with Zwingli at Cappel and pupil of Bullinger, found asylum at Zürich, in the autumn of 1547, but decided to return to Bern, whence his father had once fled on account of religion. His arrival at Bern signified the establishment of closer relations with Zürich at a time when union was needful. To Bern he was followed by
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LAST COERCION ATTEMPT OF CHARLES V
his friend Musculus, who had been cathedral-preacher at Augsburg and who, fleeing thence, found temporary refuge at Basel (where he stayed with the printer Heerwagen), Constance, St. Gallen, and Zurich (where Bullinger prevailed on the town council to grant him residence). The victory of Charles V at Miihlberg spelled also an accession to the number of Italian leaders and controversialists in the Cantons. Not indeed Ochino, who fled from Augsburg where he had been domiciled for about three years, nor Vermigli, who had to leave Strassburg. Both of these were called to England, where the accession of Edward VI—for Henry VIII died soon after Francis I—had opened the way to constant modifications in doctrine and practice. Ochino had escaped from Augsburg on the eve of its capture by the emperor and made his way, in company of Francesco Stancari of Mantua, by way of Constance and Zurich to Basel, where Ochino found refuge in the house of Oporinus the printer. There he received the invitation of Cranmer, who had taken in hand the contemplated changes in the English church, and invited him to become preacher to the Italian refugees in London, a position similar to the ones he had filled at Geneva and at Augsburg. The merchant John Abell fetched him from Basel and conducted him to England, together with Vermigli, who joined them at Strassburg on November 4, 1547. To him had been offered a chair at the university of Oxford. Both were married by this time, and the veteran Ochino already a father. He had married at Geneva his former housekeeper. Vermigli's wife was a French woman from Metz, who was among the refugees for religion at Strassburg. It was Stancari whose arrival in the Cantons was of ill-omen for the cause of harmony. He was clearly, judging by the opinions of those who knew him—and it may be as well to note it now in view of the disturbing part he soon came to play—one of those unfortunate mortals who arouse such antagonism as makes it difficult even for us to appreciate them. Disregarding for the moment the unfriendly judgments passed on him by his ecclesiatical opponents, there are the opinions of men who knew him at Venice, not appparently evangelicals; these opinions, to be sure, are also quoted to us by those who dislike him. Marco de Lillis, a Venetian citizen, compares him with a snail which leaves behind it a trail of slime. Manzoni, sindaco of Venice, at whose house Stancari had stayed while in that city, calls him unreliable, egotistical, selfish in all that he does. Worse than that, he disseminates opinions—Manzoni was quoted as saying—which differ from the Christian belief. He is, however, no Jew, though he looks like one. He had married in Venice a woman of
LAST COERCION ATTEMPT OF CHARLES V
131
doubtful reputation. He, Manzoni, had kept him in his house at his own expense and unwillingly on account of his unruly disposition. Stan can was a scholar of note, at any rate, who published at Venice in 1530 his De modo legendi Hebraice institutio brevissima and in 1547 a Hebrew grammar. He had been a monk, then a priest, then a teacher of languages at Padua in 1540, when he was persuaded to abandon Rome. He was imprisoned for certain writings in Mantua and Venice for eight months, and, escaping, fled from Italy to the relief of his friends. In the summer of 1544 he was in Vienna, and there he received on October 13 the chair of Hebrew. He came into suspicion; the Inquisition was set in motion; and King Ferdinand commanded (Olmiitz, March 30, 1546) that he be dismissed. Henceforth, said the order, a newly-installed professor must formally submit a Catholic confession of faith. Stancari went to Regensburg to the conference which broke up on March 10, and perhaps met there his countryman Ochino, who invited him to Augsburg. There the town council made him professor of Greek and Hebrew. For Stancari, Curione interested himself. The Piedmontese held come to stay at Basel in 1546, having forfeited his position at Lausanne by an affair with one of his pensionnaires, a girl of the age of his own daughter.1 In 1547, nevertheless, he succeeded Johannes Hospinian in the chair of "eloquence" (then joined with "rhetoric") at the university of Basel. He matriculated at the university in the rectorate of Borrhaus—Ochino and Stancari are also on the rolls in that year—and received the doctorate in 1548, in that of Miinster. Curione, whose own dereliction at Lausanne was of too recent a date to permit his approaching the authorities at Bern, bespoke the aid of Bullinger in that quarter for the Mantuan; and inquiries as to his religious opinions resulted satisfactorily since Stancari, in his letter of February 1547 professed the abhorrence of Lutheranism required there. He failed of appointment, however, and busied himself with the publication of various works, including his Hebrew grammar and his commentary on St. James, and in getting his doctorate at the university of Basel. From Basel, he sent, according to Cantu,2 his treatise on the Reformation to the signoria of Venice. Delia 1
Curione to Bullinger, Jan. 18, 1547 (at Zurich) and Sulzer to Amerbach, Mar. 14, 1547 (Cod. Bas. G. I. 9).
'Op. cit., n, 409 and note 27, which cites Lettere d'uotnmi Ulustri conservate nell 'archivio di Parma. For Stancari, vide Wotschke in the Altpreussische Monatschrift, XLVII, 465-613. The letters are in De Porta II, 120; Trechsel, Die protestantischcn Antitrinitarier, II,
76;QSG XXm, 133-35.
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LAST COERCION ATTEMPT OF CHARLES V
Casa, who is writing of the matter to Cardinal Famese from Venice on July 2, 1547, speaks of him as having been apprehended and as having made abjuration, and must be referring to the earlier imprisonment. The signoria of Venice are hesitating whether to prosecute him on account of the book, and are putting the nuncio off by suggesting that he write the cardinal of Augsburg to have Stancari arrested. From Basel, Stancari went to the Rhetian Leagues, where he was acquainted with Comander and Negri; and obtained employment as a teacher. Almost at once he became involved in a dispute which made his retirement imperative, the famous controversy between Camillo Renato and the pastor Mainardi of Chiavenna. It was in the summer of 1547 that the pastor was first preoccupied with the heterodoxy of Camillo Renato the Sicilian (so he is nearly always called, with "Neapolitan" as an alternative), who seems to have been a companion of Curione's on his return from Italy. Of his names, both are so significant that it is hard to believe either of them his real one.3 He had been tutor of the sons of Raffaele Paravicini at Caspano until, removing to Chiavenna in 1545, he opened a school for boys, like that of Negri. The two became friends, though competitors, and Negri's partisanship for Camillo in the debates which broke out on the resurrection of the body was dictated chiefly by his personal regard for the Sicilian. Camillo maintained that the soul dies with the body and revives at the Last Judgment, returning to life under a form different from the original one. Mainardi, to whose attention this new and therefore suspicious speculative idea came, questioned the author of it; and proceeded to draw up a confession of faith for all to sign and show where they stood. Negri, the man of most distinction in that mountain community, was aroused. Stancari, a newcomer in the Leagues, joined Negri and Camillo and came forward with a counter-confession by which he probably intended to show how little confessions mean anyhow; certainly the pastors at Chur, Comander and Blasius,4 to whom it was submitted, 'Camillo "the restorer" (from the Roman general), Renato the "reborn." Gordon calls him a "gentle mystic" and a "Calvinistic Quaker" (article "Sozini" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; cf., "The Sozzini and their school" in the Theological Review, 1879). He was the teacher of Lelio Sozini. The reference to him as the "heretic Fileno" by a witness in the last trial of Paleario suggests the Sicilian Ricci, who so called himself when he abandoned Rome (vide supra, p. 39 and note 39). 4 Comander (originally Dorfmann) was pastor of St. Martin's from 1S28 to 1SS7. Blasius was the predecessor of Galicius at St. Regula's from about 1S30 to 1SS0.
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133
approved it. In November 1S47, Mainardi and Camillo were summoned before the synod of Rhetia—Negri had gone to Zürich,—Bullinger, who had been appealed to, having drawn up a declaration of doctrine as the basis of accomodation. But Camillo failed to appear, was condemned in absentia, and enjoined to keep silence. This injunction he took (under the stimulus of his friends, for he was no controversialist) as a call to assert his stand on the subject of coercion in matters of belief. Mainardi and Stancari followed Negri to Zürich to consult Bullinger; and as a result Bullinger, Gwalther, 5 Pellikan, and Bibliander on June 7, 1S48 rendered decision together in favor of Mainardi. Stancari's elimination at this point was due directly to the ungracious light in which he had made Mainardi appear. He taught Hebrew in the Valtelline for some months after his return (on which he brought back from Zürich little Giorgio Negri); but discredited by the opinions of him collected by Mainardi 4 and forwarded to Bullinger in a letter of September 22, 1548, he left the country and found refuge in Transylvania with the Hungarian queen Isabella, widow of Zapolya. Through her influence he was presently received at Cracow, capital of her brother Sigismund of Poland. Negri now threw down the gauntlet to Mainardi, presenting for baptism a child of his and demanding that it be baptized in the faith of its father. This incident, which also finds place in the letter to Bullinger blacklisting Stancari, provoked new dissension. But at this point Vergerio appeared on the scene and took the place of Stancari, while the virulence of theological dissension was increased by the debates over the Consensus Tigurinus. The most important of the disciples or advocates of Renato was by that time domiciled in Zürich. It must have been on his passage through the Leagues as he came from Italy that Sozini learned of the Sicilian; and the hint of oriental theology in Camillo's conception of the soul suggests a possible attraction to him of a youth who was interested in Semitic studies. Lelio Sozini of Siena proved to have a share in the religious dissensions that was most constructive, and his personal charm, 'Rudolf Gwalther was the son-in-law of Zwingli and the foster-son, colleague, and finally successor as antistes, of Bullinger. The epitaphs he was prone to write on the occasion of each death in the circle of Zürich find place in the pages of Bullinger's diary. 'Those of De Lillis and Manzoni (vide supra, pp. 130-131) and of Baldassare Altieri. who has known him many years and says that he is always complaining, always arousing bitterness, always disagreeing with people, always shifting in his opinions.
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like that of Valdes, was the outstanding factor in it; but that charm was an additional offense to those who expected vituperation and violence from the servants of the devil. He was a son of the famous jurist Mariano Sozini the younger, to whom Amerbach had written for an opinion in the lawsuit between the Archduke Ferdinand and Duke Ulrich of Württemberg. 7 "Lelius Sozinus Senensis" was a young man sent abroad by his father to study, just as was Basil Amerbach a few years later. Later tradition made the youth of twenty-two already an arch-heretic, leader of a society equally obnoxious to Rome and to the reform, and a fugitive from the Inquisition. Something of this sort he afterwards became, but for the present he came and went like any other student. This first stay of Lelio in the Cantons was brief if followed, as his biographers relate vaguely, by travels which took him to France, England, and Holland; indeed except for the register of the university of Basel, it is attested only by a letter of Gellinus (Gallinius, court-preacher of Sigismund II) to Melanchthon of October 1,1547, cited by Bumat. 8 Of his journey, there is nothing to show us, not knowing the friends to whom, as to Bullinger on later ones, he wrote of where he went and whom he met, that it had more significance than any other student jaunt. Returning to the Cantons, he went to Zürich, where he was already known by the recommendation of Nikolaus Meyer, Duke Ulrich's envoy to Mariano Sozini.® Here he took up his residence with Konrad Pellikan and proceeded with the study of Hebrew, making the house of Pellikan his headquarters from October 19, 1548, to June 25, 1550.10 It was during the debates over the "Consensus" that he first appears in the role in which he is always cast henceforth, and it is his questions in regard to the resurrection which betray contact with Camillo Renato. They were directed to Calvin, whom he had met at Geneva according to Illgen, on a visit thither as he set out on the extended trip of the summer of 1548, and with whom he had already discussed the matter. He had certainly raised questions about marriage and baptism, two of the sacraments retained by the reformed, which made him the despair of his Swiss friends, 11 1
Vide supra, p. 191. "In his Lelio Socin. "Opera Melantonis," he says; but I do not locate the letter. In the Univ. Bas. Matr. stands "9. Lelius Sozinus Senensis . . . 6 B." It is the rectorate of Sebastian Münster (1547-48). •The letter (of Oct. 22, 1548) in Hottinger, Bist. Eccl., IX, 436-37. "Pellikan, Chronikon, p. 177. " T h e letters of Sozini to Calvin are of May 14 and July 25, 1549 and the correspondence is conveniently summarized for us by Bumat in his third chapter.
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and he was probably writing at that time his treatise on the resurrection. He refuses to believe in it literally. There is no necessity of having risen bodies identical with those which were in the flesh. What of the lame, the infirm, the cripples of every kind? What of the changes in the body between death and the day of judgment? The resurrection of Christ is not to be cited in proof of Calvin's doctrine, for Christ did not suffer corruption, and preserved his wounds from choice, wishing to strengthen the faith of his disciples, to whom he would not exhibit the glorious body which he had after the ascension. And of what use is a corporal body unless the joys of the other world are sensual? Calvin was not fond of theological subtleties and had on one occasion praised Ochino for refusing to go into them; but these were the sort of questions pardonable in a young student—especially, it might be added, in a day when students studied and pondered on religious matters before they announced their doubts. He answered the young man, then, with patience, not with understanding, for the questions which are to us evidence of an active mind projecting reason into an atmosphere of faith were to Calvin like the attempt to chip away a rock with a teaspoon. He was not mollified by the apologies of the young man for his curiosity,12 and felt a sort of relief when he heard that the engaging but inquisitive young Italian was going to Wittenberg, where Melanchthon, who was sufficiently Calvinist, would have to cope with him. But Lelio gave thought to the lesson learned by all who tried to reason with Calvin. It is, as far as demonstrable, only a coincidence that Lelio Sozini came to the Cantons at the time of unrest which the apparent collapse of Protestantism inspired both north and south of the Alps. But to Basel now came Simon Sulzer (1508-1585), whose directing hand was felt henceforth in the affairs of the church founded by Oecolampadius, and whose policy did not permit the resurgence of confessional strife. Sulzer had been a pupil at Strassburg of Butzer, who had just gone to teach at the university of Cambridge, another of the recruits whom Cranmer was gathering from among the evangelicals of the continent. Sulzer was by birth of the canton of Bern, but his studies led him in a direction diverse from that which came to be standard there; he accepted his teacher's statement of the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist. His view was apparent at the colloquy of Bern in 1540, and drew upon him "These are contained in Sozini's letter to Calvin dated Zürich, Feb. 1, 1550, and printed in OC XHI., 1341.
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the suspicion of the other pastors when the Swiss found themselves in 1547 distracted by the friction between the party inclined to submit to the emperor and that opposed to submission. In Bern, the rivalry was particularly keen. One party held to the Helvetic confession of 1536 and the other to Butzer and the Wittenberg Concord; the former was in a sense the national party and the latter an imperial. Their quarrels resounded in city and country, in pulpit and council chamber, and were sometimes attended by armed conflict. The danger from a triumphant emperor gave the victory to the national party. Simon Sulzer, the chief preacher of Lutheranism, had to leave Bern, where he was succeeded by Johann Haller. He went to Basel in the summer of 1548 and on July 22 became principal of the college established at the Augustinians'. Later he was appointed pastor at St. Peter's (1549). He dominated the antistes Myconius, the successor of Oecolampadius, and no Lutheran need henceforth fear any such inquisition as Amerbach had endured. 13 The days following the publication of the Interim on June 30, 1548 saw the roads between Germany and the Cantons animated by the passing of fugitives from places to which the restored Catholic régime brought a revolution. Neutrality such as had been professed at the outset of the Schmalkaldic war had become increasingly difficult with the fall of the south German cities, the defeat and capture of the elector of Saxony at Miihlberg, and the surrender of Philip of Hesse, the statesman who had always supported the theologian Butzer in the efforts at union. Now came the summons to submit in all essentials—doctrines were the essentials by this time—to a restored Catholic church. The pope, to be sure, was as much alarmed as anybody, and the Cantons responded to his appeal for the defense of his person by sending six companies, which were conducted to Rome by Von Meggen of Luzern. The Cantons were somewhat steadied when they found themselves on the verge of the old confessional discord in the matter of Constance. The old episcopal city, upon the see of which Ziirich had depended before the Reformation, had never been a member of the Swiss confederation, some of whose members considered her too aristocratic; but she had always been in close relations with her Alpine neighbors especially after the overthrow of the bishop and the inauguration of the Reformation under the lead of Ambrosius Blaurer. Her refusal to accept the Interim brought upon her the military and naval forces of Charles on August 6, 1548. Ziirich and " Vulliemin-Muller, Histoire de la confederation Grote, Muscvlus, pp. 97-100, 106-19.
suisse, XI, book 8, chap. 2. Ci.
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Bern especially were much exercised at the situation, and Bern offered 7,000 men while she got her artillery ready. Volunteers went to the aid of the besieged city. The Catholic cantons, however, did not share the general enthusiasm and not only recalled their own subjects who had thrown themselves into the town, but demanded the recall of the other Swiss auxiliaries. Their hope of deliverance at the hands of their Swiss neighbors gone, the citizens of Constance, assembling in their gilds, decided to offer their allegiance to king Ferdinand (October 13). The result was the permanent detachment of the chief city of Thurgau from the Swiss and the exodus of evangelicals with Blaurer at their head. The Catholic cantons now urged the Swiss cities to submit to the council, which at that time was of course no longer in session—it had been prorogued at Bologna until September 13, 1549—but was expected to return to Trent more uncompromising than ever. Basel (which, as an imperial town, was threatened by the Reichskammergericht, the supreme court of the empire) showed itself disposed to comply, and forbade anything to be published against the Interim. The partisans of the Mass, moreover, were no longer to be called devils, and Myconius remarked (crestfallen, no doubt): "One cannot say who is a Christian if one cannot say who is the devil." The burgomaster Bernhard Meyer was regarded as too sympathetic with the attitude of the other reformed cities, Zurich, Bern, and Schaffhausen, which did not agree with Basel in her compliance. One would be glad to know how much of a share in the decision of the last can be claimed for Boniface Amerbach, with his bent for judging everything from the point of view of a lawyer. It was just at this moment that he resigned his chair at the university on account of ill health, and he is not likely to have committed himself, anyhow. The three other cities finally agreed to accept the council as well as the proposal of the Catholic cantons that they all unite their forces against Charles, if he demanded more. Switzerland was again united, and Paul III, applauded the stand taken toward the emperor. As for the Interim, there appeared before the city council of Basel an envoy of the bishop, the former sovereign, bringing his apology for reminding them of the new requirement. The council first sought an opinion from Zurich and Bern, and when it came (May 2, 1549), pronounced decidedly against the new demand, citing an earlier pact with the bishop as justification of their refusal. The terror inspired by the triumph of Charles V and the enforce-
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ment of the Interim accounts for the facility with which Henry II of France prevailed upon the Swiss to renew the alliance of 1521, which had been maintained with difficulty by l'Aubespine during the war which ended at Crespy, and had lapsed on the death of Francis I. When the Schmalkaldic war was in its initial stage, Francis, through his ambassador the sieur de Lyancourt, had painted to the Swiss the dangers which threatened them, and they had just granted him 15,000 men when the envoys who had been sent to Fontainebleau by the diet of 1546 returned with the admonition not to be in a hurry about granting mercenaries, for Francis was dying. Henry II, through l'Aubespine, made new advances, and flattered the Swiss envoys by asking them to hold at the font the newest daughter of himself and his queen. Accordingly the envoys from Zurich, Schwytz, Unterwalden, and Solothum went to France for the baptism of the princess Claude (bom at Fontainebleau, November 12, 1547) and were rewarded with rich gifts and prodigal assurances. Thereafter French envoys traversed the cantons in the interests of the renewal of the alliance. The treaty was in fact concluded on June 7, 1549, for the lifetime of the king and for five years after his death. Only at Zurich and Bern did Bullinger and Haller and Musculus, already alienated by the persecutions of Calvinists, protest against foreign entanglements and condemn the Reislaufen in the spirit of Zwingli. It was an alliance, said they, of God's people with the Canaanites, of Jehosaphat with Ahab. Calvin pointed out that God did not blame Abraham for his friendship with Abimelech, nor David for imitating him. "Fear," he said, "in fleeing Pharaoh, lest ye fall into the hands of Antiochus," and exerted himself for the renewal. Basel consented to the alliance (August 31, 1549) on condition that the 2,000 livres which assured her perpetual peace and the 1,000 which promised her the renewal of the alliance be increased by 3,000 livres annually, to be distributed according to the judgment of the burgomasters and the council. The diplomacy of l'Aubespine made unavailing the efforts of Charles V to wean the Swiss from the alliance with France. The Grisons of Rhetia, where powerful families like the Salis had their price, yielded more easily in the incessant rivalry for the control of the passes to the subtle French than to the overbearing Spaniards. The pensions paid to retain the services of the influential houses were now justified in the eyes of the beneficiaries by the impossibility of living in the luxurious style which had been introduced already in the wars against Charles the Bold, unless there were other resources to make up
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for the lack of booty. But as a matter of fact, as Vulliemin argues, the Reformation had furnished other resources. The time formerly dissipated in the beershops, the energies which had been consumed in the mercenary service, were now devoted to agriculture and industry. The sale of church property had increased the number of householders and the ground was better tilled. Order and frugality were the rule, pleasure was more restrained; social functions were less noisy. . . . The countryman employed in the adornment of his house the money he had once spent for an indulgence or the bedecking of the parish church. . . . The evangelical cantons surpassed in wealth those which had stayed by the old faith. T H E CONSENSUS TIGURINUS AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE.
A surer reliance than the alliance with France, in view of the threatened danger to the reform in the Cantons, was the union of Swiss evangelicals in the matter of the Eucharist, which divided Zwinglians from Calvinists as it divided both from Lutherans of the intransigent school. At the end of May 1549, Calvin and Farel had come to an understanding with Bullinger on the matter, at Zurich." The new formula was far clearer and more assertive than the concordat of Butzer, whom Curione had accused of renouncing his own conviction in the matter for the sake of peace;15 it bade fair to win over Butzerists as well as Lutherans to the church of Zwingli. The three leaders, then, regarding their conclusion as provisional, sent their formula to their friends for an opinion, and Farel wrote to Sulzer at Basel, a delicate matter, one would think, since Myconius had not been invited to the conferences. But Sulzer made things worse by failing to communicate with Myconius, as was intended, until he had written to Butzer, his old teacher, on the subject. Bullinger had declared it unnecessary to submit the new agreement to Basel, which had, only a year before, revised the confession of Basel in a sense perfectly accordant with it. When, then, the definite Consensus Tigurinus appeared in August 1549 and the course of the proceedings at Zurich was revealed to Myconius by Sulzer, the antistes of Basel was loud in his disapproval. 'If only they had stood by the First Helvetic Confession, which had so pleased Luther!' The voice was the voice of Myconius but the sentiment was the sentiment of Sulzer, who regarded the stateu Bullinger, Diarium, p. 37. "Circa finem Maii consensio in re sacramentaria conscribitur inter d. Calvinum et Tigurinos; impressa est demum mense Martio anno 1551." " Cf. Butler's defense of himself in a letter to Ochino of April 11, 1545 preserved at Hamburg (Benntb, Ochino, p. 159).
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ment as deplorably Zwinglian, though he expressed his opinion only after assuring himself of what Butzer thought of it. His delay was responsible for an estrangement between the church of Basel and Calvin which contributed its bit to subsequent events. Not for two years would Myconius subscribe and bring to the agreement the support of the church of Basel.19 In another respect the result was not concord. Antitrinitarian tendencies among the Italian reformed were first discovered when, the sacramental question having been thus revived, their rationalizing spirit found scope. As it happened, the internal dissensions of Lutheranism began at much the same time, for Moritz of Saxony adopting the Interim in a modified form (the "Leipzig Interim"), the support of it by Melanchthon called down upon that unfortunate head the thunders of uncompromising Lutheran divines. From Curione we know what sort of answer was made to questions touching the new agreement on the Eucharist between reformed theologians; from Lelio Sozini we know what sort of questions suggested themselves to these untrammeled minds; but it was in Rhetia that the sharpest conflict raged. Celio Secundo Curione's attitude in matters of religion was colored, not improbably, by the financial difficulties in which he was constantly involved. With nine children, his salary of 60 gulden did not suffice either for his own needs or for those of the compatriots who came seeking him out in his new home.17 But Amerbach was at hand with the income from the estate of Erasmus. Thus, on August 3, 1547, Curione shamefacedly—"a certain innate aversion to asking," he says, "withheld me from coming to you to beg, but a letter does not blush"—applied for a loan of six, or at least four gulden.18 That Amerbach considered it worth while to "bind" the Piedmontese to himself and to the university " Wernle, Calvin und Basel, pp. 7S-79. " E.g. the two Italians "Turca" and "Georgius" who came to Ziirich with him in the summer of 1S42 and were sent with letters of recommendation to Basel (Wernle 42 and Curione to Calvin, Sept. 7, 1S42)—the iuvenem italum regarding whom a letter of Curione is sent by Blasius to Bullinger (Chur, Oct. 31, 1547. QSG XXIII, 90)—the Veronese, one of the circle of Giberti, whom Curione recommends to Amerbach in an undated note in Cod. Bas. G II. 31, 342—the Vicentine Girolamo Massario (C VII. 19, "Uszug" Blatt 17, June IS, 1551). Is it permitted to discern behind the first two mysterious names Francesco Negri and his boy Giorgio, who more than once took the wanderer's staff toward Zürich together? "Turca" cannot mean much more than a man of dark complexion, and the origin of "Negn" must be that- The Veronese is probably Pdolo Lfurise. " C o d . Bas. G II. 31, 299.
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"in perpetuity," as Curione suggested, is shown by the stipend entered on the account-book of the Erasmian endowment as having been granted him on this latter date.1® Again, on Sept. 26, 1551, when Curione has not the ready money to pay for some corn he has bought, and his hungry boarders are waiting at home, he hurries to Amerbach "as to a sacred anchor"—with confidence, then, born of closer acquaintance—for ten gulden.20 And Curione had to refuse the young Belgian, John Utenhove, who at his father's desire applied for a place at his table when he came to Basel to study, 21 principally because of the meagerness of the fare in the Curione family and the high price of provisions. Apparently an increase of salary was granted him in 1550, to the disgruntlement of some who did not consider that a foreigner, though a man of approved scholarship, should be so favored. 22 He assured Amerbach that he was contented with his modest lot; if there was a better man to replace him, he would gladly resign, for he wanted only peace and quiet. Amerbach and Borrhaus defended him against evil reports—his shortcoming at Lausanne was probably the subject of gossip—and the complaints died away. Curione was probably a sort of magnet which drew toward Basel the Italian students whom he had known in the homeland, possibly all at Padua. Lelio Sozini received his training there, where his father went to teach in 1525, the year of Lelio's birth. Pierpaolo Vergerio took his degree there in 1518 and occupied a chair of civil law from 1522. Grataroli entered in 1534 and took his degree in 1537. Gribaldi went thither to teach in 1548, but it cannot be assumed that he was a stranger there at the time. Curione was not merely the Ciceronian he seems in the letters which, in humble imitation of Erasmus, he selected from the accumulation in his desk and gave to the world,23 not merely the man of resource one gathers from the picture of his earlier life in the funeral oration of Stupanus, not merely the theologian whom Bullinger thought him from his acquaintance with theology. He wrote elegantly and was open to "Arch. Bas. C VII. 19, "Rodel," p. 34. "Cod. Bas. G II. 31, 300. " Utenhove to Bullinger, Basel, Mar. 1, 1554 (Parker Letters, second series, part 2, p. 595). " Schmidt, Celio Secundo Curio, p. 597. " C . S. Curionis epistolcrum libri duo (Basel 1SS3), reissued by him in 1S70, with the works of Olympia Morata and his own orations.
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attack on the score of being a purist,14 like many another. He could extract himself from an unpleasant situation with great ability,19 but that was the heritage of his perilous generation. He could bring his learning to bear on questions which learning only obscures, but so could anyone who knew his Bible. Nor was Curione the sort of radical he appears from the claim of the Antitrinitarians to include him in their number.46 Suspicion was rife about him, and the tolerance aroused by the death of Servetus availed to save from his fate many a sympathizer with his opinions. But of that number Curione was not one. That which compromised him earliest—his association with Francesco Negri and with Camillo Renato—compromised Vergerio also, that champion of the Augsburg Confession; and neither his presence at the congress of Anabaptists at Venice in 1550 (if such conference there was) nor his absence seems demonstrable.27 It was apparently one Girolamo Allegretti of Spalatro, known in the Dominican order as Fra Marco,28 who first accused Curione of denying the divinity of Christ, but the evidence is inconclusive from one who quarreled with him on the subject and probably did not understand what he said, to boot. Nor is it possible to interpret satisfactorily as a reference to Curione (as Dr. Schiess does) the assertion of two reclaimed Anabaptists that they had baptized "one of the foremost men at Basel."2® Words were to Curione, who was so skillful in their use, not things to be lightly employed. He is likely to have avoided a technical phrase as well as a symbolic act if either seemed to pin him to a particular dogma. If it be fair to assume that any utterance indicates more than the stage reached just then in the progression of a thoughtful mind, then the attitude of Curione on the great question of dogma, obedience to authority, is expressed in his comments to Bullinger on the phraseology of the Consensus Tigurinus. Regarding the conception * C f . his quarrel with Bonifacio of Oria (infra, pp. 292-93). * Cf., besides the oft-told stories of his early adventures, his retraction in the matter of Joris {infra, p. 340 and note 6). " Cf. Sand, Bock, Wallace, etc. * Vide infra, p. 168. " H e left his order in 1549 and fled to Venice, Poschiavo (from which he brought a letter of recommendation from Vergerio), Chiavenna (where Mainardi, Renato, and Negri were in conflict, as has been seen), and Basel, on the advice of Altieri. There Curione received him and there they quarreled. Allegretti recanted on November 8, 1550 (Arch. Ven. busta 22). Cf. Benrath, Wiedertäufer im Venetionischen, pp. 31-32 and Comba, 1 nostri Protestant, II, pp. 176-79. "Vergerio to Bullinger, Chiavenna, Jan. 10, 1SS3. Vide infra, p. 209.
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of the sacraments as Zwinglian, he was offended at the assigning to them of attributes foreign to the sense of the Scriptures and sure to stir up controversy. When Bullinger sought to explain away the offending expression, Curione responded (August 26, 1549) with a veritable confession of faith which Wernle calls the beginning of Socinianism. His objections applied [he said] he was as ready to give them up meaning of religion as to stand by the cause of religion. The idea is of to express, not to obscure it. 30
only to the expressions taken literally; if they threatened to obscure the true them if to renounce them would injure prime importance; words must be chosen
So had Contarini once said. Lelio Sozini was following the arguments with interest, it may be assumed, and bursting with questions about the other sacraments. His question about marriage is supposed to have indicated that he was himself contemplating matrimony and with a Catholic girl. He demands of Calvin whether in order to marry one of the reformed, a Romanist woman ought to abjure her errors publicly, as does a Jewess in similar case. And as to baptism,—Is baptism administered by the Catholics valid though corrupted? Furthermore, Can a man who condemns the Mass be present without harm to the Roman cult?31 Unusual consideration for the enemy from the camp of those who condoned iconoclasm. And has one who is out of sympathy with the Catholic faith the right, when persecution rages, to conceal his true opinion? These questions, and those about the Resurrection to which reference has already been made indicate the quarter from which came the stimulus to Lelio's inquiring mind and arouse the suspicion that the letters of Calvin are a mere reflection of the discussions of which he was the subject. The appearance of Vergerio awakened anxiety of a different sort. It had been on the doors of the cathedral of Capodistria that the papal brief was posted on February 23, 1549, for Vergerio had fled to Trieste, and was, on March 23, deprived of his bishopric. When the condemnation pronounced by the commissioners of the Inquisition was affirmed in the consistory of July 3, 1549, he was already far away. He left Italy on May 1, taking undoubtedly the route of the Val Camonica and "Wernle, Calvin und Basel, p. 79. The letters of Curione are in OC XIII., nos. 1227, 1243, and 1249. " Curione, in Quatro lettere cristiane (Bologna 1552) condemns, like Calvin, Viret, and others, the idea that one can take part in the Roman ceremonies without being in agreement with them.
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passing by way of the Valtelline to Chiavenna, where he was just in time to make an effective entrance upon the scene. His side was quickly taken; it was of course that of his compatriots against whom decision had been rendered at Zürich, for that way lay leadership. He now demanded that the confession drawn up by Stancari and approved by Comander be endorsed, and he made a special trip to Chur to present the matter. In October, Stancari having departed, Mainardi is warning his Zürich friends that they are liable to a visit from Vergerio, who will seek to induce them to subscribe, like the pastors of Chur, to a confession of Francesco Negri,82 and in November 1549, the ex-bishop was indeed in the Cantons. About St. Martin's day, as Mainardi had predicted, he arrived, but not at Zürich (at which he had not touched for fear of the plague). Coming by way of St. Gallen, where he won golden opinions from the old humanist Vadian, he appeared at Basel, with a letter to Myconius from Bullinger and vouched for by Sozini. He was given a banquet at the hostelry "zum Ochsen" by rector Wissenburg of the university, and he found quarters at the house of Curione. Together with his nephew Alvise or Ludovico, he matriculated at the university, though he was a doctor of laws of many years' standing, and prepared to spend the winter. He was planning to extend his visit as far as Geneva when he received a summons from a Rhetian village in search of a pastor, Vicosoprano in the Val Bregaglia; and with visions of the asylum there to be established for Italians who should flee thither as the French to Calvin at Geneva, he departed to throw himself into the duties of pastor in the mountains.3® REACTION I N ITALY TO T H E SUCCESS OF CHARLES V
Before the council of Trent was transferred to Bologna, the antiimperial party in Italy had begun intriguing. The Fieschi plot at Genoa in January 1547 was the first tribute to their efforts, and the revolt of Naples in March, the second. Siena, where Cosimo de' Medici had been induced by his suspicions of the Dominicans of San Marco to remove them from their convent in 15 4 5 34 was with difficulty kept in hand " Vide QSG X X I I I . , 153. Negri signalized his withdrawal from the conflict by formulating as his own confession the one which is published in the second edition of the Libero arbitrio. "Vergerio to Calvin, Basel, Jan. 3, 1550 (OC XIII., no. 1336). " Gothein, op. cit., pp. 549-50. Cosimo found his most dangerous opponents among these new Piagnoni. Vide infra, p. 213, note 96.
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at the time of the battle of Miihlberg. During the summer of 1547 the negotiations proceeded for a league between Paul, Henry II, and the Venetians. It was at this point that Maggi was refused employment, as has been seen, and that Vergerio became for reasons that can be guessed an object of solicitude to the French ambassador at Venice. The Venetians would not be beguiled, and the French alliance would have failed but for the zeal of the Guise brothers, who nourished ambitions in Italy as the heirs of René of Anjou. Then the death of Pierluigi Farnese on September 10, 1547 played into the hands of the promoters of an antiimperial league, since the conspirators acted with the complicity of Ferrante Gonzaga (governor of Milan since 1546), who had been urging the Emperor to consent to an attack on the pope's son. Charles had consented on condition that Pierluigi himself be not injured; but the nobles of Piacenza, whose anger broke bounds against the tyrant, could not be restrained. On the following day, Gonzaga occupied the fortress of Piacenza in the name of the emperor. He stirred up the Colonna princes against the pope; he intrigued with Morone, the papal legate in Bologna; and he egged on the nobility of Crema, Bergamo, and Brescia against Venice. Charles had much ado not to be hurried into difficulties by his eager viceroy. The disaster to the Protestant cause in Germany at the battle of Miihlberg strengthened the hands of Charles V in Naples also, and must have contributed to the final victory over the popular protest against the introduction of the Inquisition—of an inquisitorial authority, that is, other than the local one of the archbishop. For at the first inkling that the Viceroy Toledo, who had been unable of himself to stop the preaching of Ochino and Vermigli, had opened negotiations with Rome and that a papal brief had arrived, the representatives of the sedili, or city wards, mostly nobles, waited upon Don Pedro at Pozzuoli to register a protest against this violation of the canons which entrusted the inquisition of heresy to the archbishop or his vicar. From the populace rose an angry murmur, for it was generally supposed that, so far from being a measure to bolster up the tottering episcopal inquisition, the project was to introduce the Spanish procedure with its hateful accompaniments of delation (in a city where false witnessing was almost a profession) and confiscation. Amabile suggests that Paul III was not guiltless of the desire to pay off Charles V in Naples for his opposition to the council as well as to the Farnese family. Certainly personal hatred of the iron viceroy played its part, and nobles and people joined
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in the insurrection, showing themselves on the street together, even walking hand in hand, together electing representatives to maintain the canons, and giving altogether an incredible example of the oblivion of class distinctions. All that summer of 1547 it lasted, while the guns of Sant'Elmo thundered, and the citizen-army pressed under the very walls of the Castelnuovo. It collapsed when Placido de Sangro, the envoy of the sedili, returned from his interview with the emperor at Nürnberg, and the nobles hastened to be convinced by his assurance that there had never been any idea of introducing the Inquisition. For the populace, then, there was no choice but to submit likewise, and the crisis was over. Instead of the old episcopal tribunal there was set up however, within a few years, one dependent upon the Holy Office at Rome, the appearance of which coincides with the renewed activity of that body under Julius III, and the whole episode betrays the determination of the pope to widen the rift between the Neapolitans and the Spanish government, making a space where he might insert the thin edge of the Roman Inquisition. Caraffa's tribunal was accepted as a species of compromise when emperor and pope were in 1551 once more friends, and Julius obtained quietly what Paul had sought to gain by revolution. But the pope forbade that the property of heretics be confiscated in the kingdom of Naples,—a regulation revoked by Paul IV.35 Venice, the city in which the first of what should have been a series of dependent tribunals was established, had always claimed a particularly apostolic character as the vassal of St. Mark, without doing much to prove it. When Giovanni della Casa came as papal nuncio in August 1544 with a commission to repress heresy, the republic answered that heresy was in Venice the affair of the patriarch, as on the mainland that of the bishops; and the nuncio took care to close his eyes to matters in which the signory did not conform strictly to the canonical requirements. If he wanted to proceed against anyone, he had first to lodge a complaint; and the accused had time to escape before the opening of his trial. Only if permission were given him to proceed, could the nuncio effect an arrest; and in the state prisons, manned by state officials, jailors and prisoners did as they pleased. Prisoners could communicate with the outside world, keep informed of all that concerned them, and form their defense accordingly. There was no means of coercing them. As the nuncio pressed for a decree of the state against the heretics, the doge " Pastor, op. cit., XIV, 28S.
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professed ignorance of the existence of so much heresy, and one of the great Morosini family declared that he did not know the meaning of the term Lutheran.' 6 The motive of the republic in her policy as regards heresy lay partly, it may be, in her constitution: "aristocracies," says Gothein37 "are severe only in punishing crimes against the state," and heresy, in that case, was so ill-understood as not to be recognized as such. Material considerations played their part. When an edict of the council of Trent threatened her book-trade, the republic would not permit the censorship to be exercised by bishops and inquisitors, but only by the magistrates." And a desire was everywhere manifest to subordinate church to state by keeping bishoprics in the hands of Venetian patrician houses, by repulsing papal patronage, by stripping the patriarch of his temporal power, by refusing to receive papal legates except for a stated time and on a particular mission.3® She was loath to acknowledge her shortcomings; and, secure in the consciousness that she was the last hope of Italian freedom and the bulwark against the Turk, allowed reiterated complaints from Rome to fall on deaf ears, or made inquisition in but perfunctory fashion. Heretical books were read and published with impunity. Bruccioli's translation of the New Testament and presently of the whole Bible, the Benefizio della Morte dt Cristo, the Commentaries of Valdes, the Pasquino in estasi, all appeared at Venice. Luther and Melanchthon were in correspondence with the evangelicals there. The earliest trace of an Antitrinitarian movement in Italy appears in the distorted tradition of the collegia Vicentina. Buschbell ascribes it to the altered political situation that the institution of a special tribunal was at last conceded by the republic to the pope, the foundation of which Della Casa reported on April 23, 1547, the day before the battle of Mühlberg. The procedure of the new tribunal is detailed by Cantil.40 Three lay deputies are specified (the savii) besides the spiritual, as necessary to the conduct of any trial for heresy. The republic evidently meant to reserve its ancient rights. When a complaint is lodged against anybody, witnesses can be heard by the ecclesi" Buschbell, op. cit., pp. 22-2S. " Ignatius Loyola, etc., p. 526. " Elze, Reformation in Venedig, pp. 14-1S and Meyer, op. cit., I, 35, quoting De Thou, V, chap. 11, ad annum 1548. " Gothein, op. cit., pp. 529-35. "Op. cit. I l l , pp. 142-43. Vide also Buschbell, op. cit., pp. 26-27 and cf. Benrath, Ein Inquisitions process ous dem Jahre 1568.
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astical judges (the auditor of the legate and the inquisitor) in the presence of the lay deputies. If arrest is to follow, the ecclesiastical judges decide it upon the advice of the lay deputies. Otherwise the suspect is invited to appear in person before the court. If he fail to appear, the citation is posted and the prosecution begun contumacia eius nonobstante. If he appear, the ecclesiastical judges decide, in the presence of the lay deputies, to arrest him or else direct him to remain in a certain place, from which he undertakes not to escape. There follows, in any case, the hearing of the testimony for and against; and the accused is summoned to recant his errors, having first acknowledged them and submitted to the punishment to be imposed upon him by the church. He reads the paper aloud, if he can read; otherwise a day is appointed on which the notary will explain it to him. The lay and the ecclesiastical judges then confer as to the punishment. The accused is summoned to hear the sentence, which is laid before him in writing. At the end, the judges humbly beg the doge to carry it out. If the condemned refuse to submit, he is more straitly confined, and if he then still refuse, the evidence against him stands as a conviction, in so far as the witnesses are credible and not personal enemies of the accused. If the witnesses are not credible, torture will be employed upon him. 41 Baldo Lupetino of Albona was one of the first cases to be dealt with by the new tribunal, but he remained in prison, though condemned on October 27, 1547 to be beheaded and his body burnt. Only when it was learned that the text of his trial was circulating in print and was attracting much attention was the Council of Ten obliged to order that the case be reopened. Even now it was a long time before the new condemnation to death was pronounced.42 It is to be observed that the new procedure still left the nuncio all but helpless in the matter of arrest, and the inability of the Venetian Inquisition to cope with a recusant is shown in repeated instances to be taken up in their proper places in the following pages. That the collapse of the League of Schmalkalden was none the less a blow to the Protestant congregations of Venetia appears from the journey undertaken to the Swiss cantons by Baldassare Altieri, who 41 It must be remembered that it was not the Venetian tribunal to which Vergerio was amenable. This was the procedure followed, however, in the cases of Maggi, Grataroli, and Porto. " H e was executed by drowning on August 20, 1556, after Christoph of Württemberg had appealed vainly to the doge Marcantonio Trevisan (Elze, op. cit., p. 21).
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had been from 1541 to 1549 the secretary of the English ambassador Edmund Harvel, and somehow combined that position with that of accredited representative of the Protestant princes of Germany. He seems also to have been head of the reformed organization in the territory of Venice,43 and his activities in connection with the superintendency of these were safe-guarded by the diplomatic offices with which he was connected. In behalf of them he visited the Swiss cantons at the time the Zurich consensus, the treaty with France, and the danger from the emperor were the absorbing questions. By this time, Paul III was seeking reconciliation with the emperor, and planning the reunion of Parma with the papal states. The cardinal of Ferrara, who had long been working in the French interest, was instructed accordingly to prevent the reconciliation of pope and emperor, and despatched to Rome, only to find that Paul's resolution had already been made. It was useless for Henry to demand through l'Aubespine, sent from Susa with letters dated August 15, 1548, the investiture for Orazio Faraese, his son-in-law. Ottavio Famese, the eldest son of Pierluigi and the son-in-law of Charles V, who did not propose to resign his inheritance without a struggle, was making overtures to Gonzaga and the Spaniards when his grandfather, exhausted with this last struggle, died at the age of eighty-three, on November 10, 1549. In a letter in the form of a pasquil addressed to Flacius Ulyricus and published ostensibly at Piacenza in December of that year, Vergerio places the dead pope in Tartarus, where he is feted for his war against the gospel and its adherents. On one of the monuments there is represented the conflict of wolves with a flock of lambs.44 Altieri's politico-religious activities were pursued evidently under the aegis of England and the Schmalkaldeners rather than that of France, as in the case of Vergerio, with whom his association doubtless began during these years in which the bishop's famous trial was going on. He preceded Vergerio into the Swiss cantons, and it may be that the illsuccess of his mission stimulated his friend to attempt an organization of the Italian reformed in the valleys of the Alps. Of the extent and diffusion of the Venetian evangelicals as early as 1530, we have evidence in the letter of Francesco Negri to Luca Paolo Roselli,45 and Altieri him" Cf. the letter to Luther of the evangelicals of Venice, Vicenza, and Treviso (Nov. 26, 1S42) which he bore (Enders, Briefwechsel Luthers, XV., no. 3210). "Hubert, op. cit., pp. 139 and 271, no. 25. ** Vide supra, p. 85 and note.
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self wrote to Luther in the name of the brothers of Venice, Vicenza, and Treviso. The house of the English ambassador, Harvel, where he lived, was made a refuge for evangelicals far and wide.46 Harvel interceded for Francesco Strozzi, who was involved either as translator or author in Curione's Pasqutno in estasi; and in his house in 1546 or 1547 was the physician Girolamo Donzelino of Brescia, who had been suspected already at Rome for leanings toward the reform. Altieri was dismissed by Harvel probably on account of his activities, though Altieri asserts that his employer slandered him.47 To Harvel, Curione dedicated his Araneus, seu de providentia Dei (Basel, Oporinus 1544), and it is evident that the Piedmontese also, who was in Venice from 1539 to 1541, was of the circle, as were probably Michelangelo Florio and Vincenzo Maggi. Altieri reached Zurich at the end of May 1549, and the intercession of Bullinger procured him a letter of recommendation from the city council to the Council of Ten at Venice, but not the credentials he wanted. Haller exerted himself for him at Bern; but neither there nor at Basel did he have better success than at Zurich. He had a similar fortune at Chur, where the diet granted him on July 17 only the letter of recommendation. "Literae illae commenditatiae nihil proderunt," he wrote Bullinger from Poschiavo on August 3. Not permitted to remain at Venice, Altieri made his way via Padua and Bergamo to Florence, where he counted on the protection of Cosimo de' Medici, for even the strongest henchmen of Charles among the princes were not averse from employing checkmates at this point. But the Duke, while willing that he should live there, stipulated that he was not to profess openly his evangelical beliefs; and Altieri, not content, retired to a village in the Brescian territory at the beginning of 1550. In April, he was again at Venice for a brief stay, and in May at Ferrara. He died in August 1550. At Venice also, Altieri had been refused permission to remain unless he conformed to the Roman cult. "A board has been charged with these matters," said the Ten, "whose authority we do not wish to lessen." In the territories on the mainland, the tribunal of 1547 was supplemented by local tribunals established on September 21, 1548. On that date, the "Altieri to Bullinger, Jan. 13, ISSO (Meyer, I, Beilage I). For Altieri, vide CSP (Turnbull, Edw. VI and Brown, Venetian series V.)— De Porta, book II, pp. 32-3S—QSG XXIII. Anhang pp. 472-76—Meyer, I, pp. 46S76. Harvel died in ISSO (Cf. Brown, "The marriage contract, inventory, and funeral expenses of Edmund Harvel," English Historical Review, X X , 70-77, 1905). " Letter to Bullinger of Jan. 13, 15S0, as before.
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Ten issued a decree to the rectors of Padua, Brescia, Belluno, Vicenza, Bergamo, and seven other cities of the Veneto, regarding the appointment of assessors to sit with the ecclesiastical authorities in receiving denunciations and trying cases of heresy. The rectors of the twelve towns named are to choose two doctors, or otherwise intelligent persons, Catholic and of good reputation, to meet with the bishop of the place, his suffragan or vicar, and the inquisitor, to search out heretics and receive denunciations. The rectors must be present with the two deputies at the reception of accusations and at trials, and must carry out the sentence when pronounced. A secret instruction to the rector charged him, in the case of anyone whose arrest or condemnation would attract attention, to send the Ten an exact report as to the quality of the person, his relatives and adherents, his property and all else that might seem worth noting. 48 But the real impulse to renewed inquisition of heresy was given by the flight of Vergerio, and that not until the election of Julius III brought about the brief cooperation of pope and emperor which preceded the reverses of Charles in Germany. When that time came, the first of whom the nuncio Mignanelli had to complain was Matteo Gribaldi, but a less prominent friend of Vergerio had been long under observation. Francesco Stella was a physician of Oderzo, who was living at Portobuffalo in 1S49 when he was denounced as one of those whom Vergerio had led astray and as keeping heretical books hidden in the palazzo Grimani at Venice. Perhaps we are to recognize here a "messer Francesco Stella," who with his uncle "messer Bartolomeo Stella bresciano" is mentioned as having taken part in the discussions of the circle of Cardinal Pole at Viterbo in 1541.49 When his house at Venice was searched, a chest was found containing the Tragedia del libero arbitrio, the Dialogue between Mercury and Charon by Valdes, the Pasquino in estasi, and writings of Luther, Westphal, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Vermigli, Ochino, Giulio of Milano and others. Among his letters were one from Vergerio of May 25, 1549, two from Baldassare Altieri of March 28 and April 1, 1549—Altieri had sought to persuade Stella to accompany him to the Cantons—and one to Renée of Ferrara, of May 3, 1549. The " Vide Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, V, 548 and ci. Cantù, op. cit., IH, 134-3S with Romanin, V, 333, where the date is Oct. 1548. Cantù is notoriously careless. "Agostini, Pietro Camesecchi, p. 110. But vide DaComo, Umanisti del secolo XVI (Bologna 1928).
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last had been entrusted to Stella to deliver.50 When Stella's arrest was decided upon, the condemnation of Vergerio had already been pronounced in the papal consistory and Vergerio himself was beyond the Alps. His friend Stella was a person of sufficient prominence to be treated carefully. On October 14, 1549, the bishop of Ceneda in the Friuli writes the senate of Venice that the cardinal of Augsburg has induced the emperor to charge the lieutenant of Gorizia to retain absolutely the said Francesco Stella and turn him over to him, the bishop. "He was, then, retained," proceeds the writer, "and finally handed over to an agent of mine on the border 51 who was enabled by the cooperation of the court of the lieutenant of Friuli to despatch him to me yesterday evening, and I have him here in prison." Since, however, he knows the agreement between the apostolic see and the signory of Venice —that the bishops may not proceed against heretics without the presence of the rectors—he has communicated with the Venetian authorities that they may authorize the podestà of Portobuffalo, which is fourteen or fifteen miles away, to entrust the task to the podestà of the neighboring Serravalle, his own brother incidentally.52 Stella was then arrested in Austrian territory and handed over to the nearest episcopal authority in Venetian territory, who was obliged to call upon lay authority to take the part of assessor. He went free this time, at any rate, and was in Venice in 1SS8, when he was arrested again. Three years after his dismissal from Grenoble, we find Gribaldi back in Italy and installed at the university of Padua. His appointment is dated March 22, 1548 and his salary was 800 florins, which after two increases reached 1100 florins by October 15, 1552.53 His popularity was such that on April 24, 1548—so carefully was the date noted in the annals of the university—scarcely a month after his installation, his lecture-hall was overcrowded and a body of students, lifting the professor on their shoulders, bore him into a more commodious one, where he could be heard by all who wished.54 He was not forgotten at Grenoble. In August 1548, in consequence of the edict of Henry II permitting the universities of Grenoble and Valence to draw 750 livres annually from "Comba, I nostri Protestanti, Vol. II, part 1, p. 209. " Between Carinthia and the Friuli. " M S of Frari trials quoted by Albanese, L'inquisizione religiosa nella republica di Venezia, pp. 177-78. ** Facciolati, Fasti gymnasii patavini, II, 140-41. "* Ibid., Syntagmata, 104.
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the ferme du sel of Dauphin^, the former was able to invite their popular teacher to return." In Padua, Gribaldi, at the height of his fame in his profession, first became openly associated with the Lutheran movement, which was there gaining ground among the students in consequence of the great influx of Germans and Swiss, who were in great part of Protestant birth and protected by laws which enabled them to secure themselves from molestation by the Inquisition in spite of the tribunal just set up at Venice and soon to be reinforced by a subordinate one at Padua. About 1SS0, the German students (including, of course, the Swiss) numbered more than 6000 and were a power in themselves. They sometimes sent embassies to the doge in defense of their privileges; they held military drill; and often flew to arms. They held uproarious meetings of good-fellowship, where was cemented the community spirit which the authorities acknowledged and in sign of acknowledgment conceded them their own burying grounds, in addition to their own annals, register, and library. Not all were Protestants. There was a Catholic minority dubbed "pontificii." 58 The new professor was one of the four witnesses of the death of Francesco Spiera," at whose bedside he became associated with the bishop of Capodistria, Pierpaolo Vergerio, who had resisted for four years a summons to Rome to answer the charge of heresy and who was brought by this episode finally to throw in his lot with the reform. That the death of Spiera was a cardinal point in the evolution of Gribaldi's religious thought as in that of Vergerio seems likely enough; but the friend of Boysson6 and the witness of ecclesiastical intolerance at Toulouse had probably all but abandoned Rome when he came to Padua. 15
Berriat-St. Prix. op. cit., p. 20. " Vide N. Weiss, "Etudiants protestants à Padoue et à Ferrare" (Bull. Fr. Prot. for 1903, pp. 94-95)—Rivue historique for 1903, p. 224—Brugi, "Uno descrizione dello studio di Padova in a MS of the 16th century" (De gymnasio patavino) in the British Museum, Harl. 3829 (Nuovo archivio veneto, nuova serie, XTV)—Landò Landucci, "La nazione germanica degli scolari" (published at the seventh centenary of the university of Padua), pp. 18-19. The last mentioned uses the "Atti della nazione germanica artista 1553-1591 e 1591-1615" and the "Atti della nazione germanica dei legisti 1545-1601," a beginning of the publication of which has been made by Antonio Favaro and Biagio Brugi. " For Francesco Spiera, who relapsed from Protestantism as he had earlier relapsed from Catholicism and died in torment of conscience on Dec. 27, 1548, vide Comba, op. cit., II, and supra p. 125.
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Indeed it may be no accident that he left France just when the new king, Henry II, opened the epoch of persecution by the institution of the chambre ardente. That which was most important in his new environment was his contact with the "Anabaptist" movement, which the Inquisition learned only in 1551, through the confession of Manelfi, to distinguish from the Lutheran propaganda. It is not possible to say, then, what sort of heresy was being taught by the newly-installed professor at the university of Padua according to the complaint voiced at Rome by the former nuncio Mignanelli to the Venetian ambassador there. He certainly was in touch with the evangelicals of Vkenza, where the story of conferences of Italian Antitrinitarians was localized, for he wrote to the "brethren of Vicenza" in September 1553 regarding the treatment of Servetus at Geneva; and he knew count Giulio da Thiene, whom he befriended when the latter came an exile to Württemberg in November 1555.
CHAPTER
VII
FIRST EFFORTS OF VERGERIO TO SECURE LEADERSHIP OF THE ITALIANS, 1549-1553 VERGERIO I N T H E LEAGUES AND IN T H E CANTONS
The summer of 1550 found Vergerio back in the Cantons. In the course of a tour of which the chief object was an engagement either at the academy of Lausanne or at Strassburg, he visited Basel again. He may have been seeking a stipend from Amerbach. Of the two nephews who were with him and were henceforth the object of a nepotism as devoted if not as ambitious as that of any pope, Alvise was provided for, at least temporarily. In 1550, there was granted him from the Erasmian endowment 16 gulden a year.1 But next year his uncle is begging for him again, and since he speaks of "10 or 12 gulden" as having been promised, we may suspect that Amerbach had been more frugal in word than in intention. Half of the sum evidently went to Curione, with whom the young man was boarded; the latter arrangement lasted some months, until his preceptor was obliged to send him away in utter disgust at his bad habits. The request was again granted,2 but Alvise was a sore trial, for in another year—we have reached May 1552—the lament is that the young man, now back with his uncle in Vicosoprano, has run away from home. The report is that he has gone to Basel and will Amerbach impress upon him, if he sees him, the propriety of squaring himself with his uncle, who stands to him in place of a father? In June, one of the exiles, Vincenzo Pordano, was sent to make inquiries and tell Alvise when found that he had better return to Istria, for his uncle will have nothing more to do with him.8 Pordano 1
Account-book of the fund, Blatt 10 of the "Uszug." Anno 1550 uf die fronfast cinerum hab ich uss beger Domini Petri Pauli Vergerii bewilliget Ludovico desselbig nepoti ein zeyt lang alle jar 16 R. zegeben. Und als ich im uf trinitatis hernach angefang zegeben und 16 R. und hernach . . . 12 R. 20 B. bezalt hab, ist et ante angiriam trinitatis anno 52 hinweg kommen und derfall nut mehr zalt worden. Ist dessen so im geben summa . . . R. 28 B. 20. 'Amerbach notes on the sheet: " I paid his nephew the 8 gulden, as requested, on the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin." '"Vincenzo Pordano da Ravenna, abitante in Chiavenna" was of the list drawn
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was successful in locating him, but at Chur, on the return journey, the young man gave him the slip again. "Basel once more," says the uncle wisely (knowing without doubt of some special attraction there) and vows he will pay none of his bills. He probably did not, since he had not done so up to that time. At Geneva, Calvin watched Vergerio narrowly, remembering the bishop of Capodistria whom he had seen at the colloquy of Worms; but he consented to use his influence at Bern for him. With the help of either Calvin or Gribaldi or Amerbach, to all of whom Vergerio had applied, he was granted in July 1550 permission to live at Lausanne or elsewhere in the territory of Bern. At Strassburg his cause was blighted by Curione in one of those terribly frank letters which repeatedly give us the judgments of the Italians of this group upon each other. "He has alleged undoubtedly," Curione wrote Johann Sturm on June 25, 1550, "the burden of three nephews whom he has to look out for; next, the multitude of evangelical poor coming to him from Rhetia; and lastly his poverty and lack of resources, isolation and other things of that sort." Curione denies the three nephews; there are but two, he says,4 and they have an honest patrimony at home, which is increased by the riches of their uncle, in addition to which the one who is at Padua—Aurelio—possesses a rich benefice, nor seeks any other means of livelihood. He denies the multitude of evangelical poor; to Vergerio come as guests none except the rich, for he can easily dispense with paupers who saves everything for his own palate. He denies the poverty of Vergerio; he has from the Rhetians 100 crowns and other necessities of life, together with 100 others from Italy, besides those sums which he knows how to scrape together by his arts. He has moreover a well-stocked bookship in Chiavenna, and in Italy agents who carry on the business in his name; and he brought with him money, gems, rings, and rugs in quantity. It is clear from this letter also that Vergerio had discussed with Sturm at Strassburg the possibility of an English engagement, but not so dear that the ex-bishop was as badly thought of in England as Curione up in 1SS4 of heretics who were in Ferrara in the time of duchess Renée (Fontana, Renata di Francia, II, xxxii). ' T h r e e nephews are mentioned in the will of the elder Vergerio, Aurelio, Alvise, a n d Jacopo (vide infra, p. 353). Comba enumerates the sisters of Pierpaolo, Anna, Lucrezia, and the nun suor Colletta, the nieces, Paola, Chiara, and Orsa, and the natural daughter of his brother, bishop Giambattista, Ludovica, wife of Francesco Grisoni (op. cit., p. 684).
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would have us believe when he says: "There are people in England who have found him out as well as here, where judicious men have learned to know him." Richard Morysine, English ambassador at Vienna, who was writing at this time to Vergerio, probably under instructions from the privy council with a view to offering employment, says: "The man has left all to follow Christ, and lives very hardly. Many there are can gladlier commend well-doing than provide lest virtue go a-begging."5 Curione's reference to the opinion held of Vergerio in England is the earliest indication of a project entertained by the ex-bishop even before the death of Butzer in February 1551 opened up the way to an engagement in England. Vergerio's purpose was to obtain, if not a position in England, at least financial support for his plans in the Leagues. It was with this object in mind that he dedicated to Edward VI his works on the new pope, Julius III, and his conciliar policy in February and November 1550." Bullinger helped him by taking care of his correspondence with Morysine. In March 1551, Vergerio learns that the young king is disposed to grant him a subsidy for his battle with the devil; but he got no further than assurances, and when Celso Martinenghi was starting for England in February 1552, he asked the Brescian to work in his interests. 7 He seized the occasion of the publication at Poschiavo just then of his confutation of a book on the council by bishop Friedrich Nausea of Vienna, who had just died, to write a dedication (dated March 1, 1552) to Morysine, in which he protests the confidence in England of all believers. When Morysine advised him, in June, to go to England even without an invitation, it is permissible to suppose that he was already being mooted for the place of Butzer, though it is not until July that he informs Bullinger that he is being sought. Wolfgang Musculus, to whom an invitation had been extended through Sleidan in August 1551, had declined to go. Vergerio accepted with becoming modesty, for he was interested in the little congregation of exiles in London, of which he was to be pastor as well as professor at Cambridge. For them he had published in 1551 the form of ritual used in that church.8 He planned to travel with Morysine when the ambassador re5
CSP Edward VI, Tumbull, p. 88. "Hubert, p. 276, no. 42, and 278, no. 46. 'Vergerio to Amerbach, Vicosoprano, Feb. 25, 1SS2 (G II, 31, 379). "Hubert, p. 283, no. 65. For the whole matter of Vergerio's engagement in England, vide Hubert, 108-12. It is not quite credible that Ochino was to cede to Vergerio his position as pastor to the congregation of exiles.
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turned to England, as he was soon to do; but the Englishman was delayed and the matter came to an end when the offer came to Vergerio from Christoph of Württemberg. He was not to be included in the band of Italians who came trooping back to the continent on the accession of Mary. With Ferrante Gonzaga, moreover, the ex-bishop had begun something like an intrigue within two months of his installation in his Alpine pastorate. It was a critical time for the Leagues when Vergerio came thither in 1S49. Their old enemy, the marchese di Musso (Giangiacomo de' Medici) was planning that autumn to attack the Valtelline and Chiavenna in conjunction with Gonzaga, and the Italian refugees were probably willing to come to terms with him if religious liberty were assured them. The Rhetian church in the meantime was torn by the struggle with Camillo and his adherents. While Vergerio was in Basel in the winter of 1549, Camillo had published a work which, first sounded in the controversy by Stancari, is now in the key of Vergerio, the Errores, ineptiae, scandala, contraditiones Agostini Mainardi a XLV anno citra. At Chiavenna, at the instance of Bullinger, there was held in December 1549 at the house of Francesco Pestalozza, a synod in which the matter was brought before four ministers. It was a lively session, and each side heaped blame on the other; but as a result sentence was pronounced against Camillo, who was again charged to keep silence, while a new confession secured apparent agreement between the dissidents. Vergerio returned to the Leagues early in 1550 to assume the duties of pastor at Vicosoprano, and it was not until he was again in the Cantons in July 1550 that the synod of Rhetia formally excommunicated Camillo. These months were spent by Vergerio in more than missionary work among the mountain villages. The toleration of the government of the Leagues had proved to have limitations, and a letter he wrote Ferrante Gonzaga on April 21, 1550® exhibits him in the light of a seeker after better conditions. He writes the brother of his old patron, the cardinal of Mantua, that, besides the plan to recover the Valtelline for the Emperor, he might be useful also in matters concerning religion, on account of his German contacts. And Gonzaga wrote to Charles V, on May 11 following, that the ex-bishop, once his close friend when Vergerio served his brother the cardinal, had been approached in the matter of the Val-
' Tiraboschi, Letteratura italiana, ibid., Storia di Como, n , 193.
VII, part 1, 302—Cantù
op. cit.,
III, 716-17—
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1S9
telline, and had been promised ten thousand scudi if he were successful in inducing the Grison authorities to renounce the land usurped. Vergerio aroused opposition then in the Leagues as well as in the Cantons. Returning from Ziirich after a month there, waiting for the plague to abate in Rhetia and living at Pellikan's,10 whence Lelio Sozini had just departed for Wittenberg, he assumed leadership at once. He secured the signature of Camillo to the confession of the Rhetian churches in December 1SS0, but he gave offense by his insistence in the case of Paravicini, an Antitrinitarian whom he insisted that the pastors at Chur approve, and by arrogating to himself the title of "visitator" of the Rhetian churches. His activities were curtailed by the intervention of the Rhetian government, which reenacted an old statute whereby no foreign preacher or schoolmaster might remain longer than three years in the Valtelline without the consent of the members of the community as of the pastor. For other aliens, the consent of the community at least was required. At the town meeting in Tirano, not one voice was raised in favor of the Italians, and all went on their way.11 From Chiavenna, where she had been in receipt of a pension from Giulia Gonzaga, Doña Isabella Briseña departed for Ziirich. Celso Martinenghi was starting for England when, at Basel, he was persuaded by Galeazzo Caraccioli, whom he encountered there, to come to Geneva and preach to the Italians there. By his reckless practical protests against the cult of Rome, Vergerio had no doubt actually put his life in jeopardy, though we may discount the message which, he says, was brought to him from Italy as he waited at Ziirich for Gribaldi in the fall of 1551, "that the pope had prevailed upon the emperor to station men in ambush to seize him as he passed through any town subject to his Majesty or to Ferdinand his brother."12 The outrage on the shrine of San Gaudenzio at Vicosoprano on the night before Ascension Day, 1551, may not have been unique. He entered the church with some ruffians from Casaccia through a window opened with an iron implement. The band proceeded to make havoc in the edifice, breaking the reliquary containing the bones and throwing these relics into the stream. All the silver and valuables were stolen; crucifixes were torn from the walls and altars, to be dishonored; and statues and "Pellikan noted in his diary (p. 178): "On August 10, there took up his residence with me Peter Paul Vergerius, bishop of Justinopolis, a holy man." "Meyer, op. cit., pp. 73-74. "Vergerio to Amerbach, Zürich, Sept. 10, 1SS1. Of these ambushes, Vergerio is always telling us.
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pictures were defaced. 13 There is little to be gained by seeking to ascertain the exact degree of Vergerio's guilt in this transaction. It was just in his heedlessness of the means employed for his (often great) ends that he failed of greatness, and never succeeded in playing the leading role he craved. His was a sort of ethical astigmatism. In a letter of May 20, 1551, he complains of the anger of "quidam potentes" in this connection —he means the house of Salis—which nearly cost him his life; and all because he threw from the church the body of the saint, destroyed the statues, and abolished the Mass. There was a reaction against this vandalism in the ranks of the reformed themselves, even among those whose influence was for breaking down in favor of the reform the policy of toleration which distinguished the Leagues. The furloughs he took, then, in the summers of 1550 and 1551 in the Cantons, which resulted in his engagement by Christoph of Württemberg, are easily explained, for Vergerio found his position growing increasingly unpleasant. He had certainly never counted upon exchanging his proud eminence in the Roman church for the role of a Mainardi or a Giulio da Milano, and the friction with the Rhetian churches in the matter of Camillo made imperative his engagement elsewhere. When the success of the Protestants in Germany quieted fears of aggression from the Milanese, the law in limitation of residence was indeed practically repealed at the diet of Davos on November 1, 1552. Private persons might now entertain and employ the foreign preachers and teachers in their own homes and at their own expense, provided that these sustain an examination before the synod of the three Leagues.14 But Vergerio found when he was staying near Sondrio at the beginning of 1553 that his extradition had been demanded of the diet, and he left to avoid trouble. Behind the unsettled religious situation contingent upon these efforts of Vergerio to play the part of leader in an open conflict with Rome lurks the European war. France and Spain were luring the Leagues in different directions. The success of the former in concluding the treaty of 1549 has been seen. Now, just as the danger to the imperial cause from the conspiracy of Moritz drew near, the capitulation of Milan was concluded with the Cantons (May 6, 1552). It assured them free export of grain, cattle, and merchandise, and free passage of merchants, envoys, " Cf. Salis-Soglio, Die Familie von Salis, pp. 43-44 and the Historisches der Görres-GeseUschaft, XV, 944-48. " M e y e r , op. cit., p. 77.
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pilgrims, and other travellers. It also regulated justice in certain cases. There was incessant friction in the end over the failure of the Milanese government to carry out its obligations; but the emperor offered to include the Leagues on condition that they afford the imperial troops passage through the Valtelline. They refused it with one voice, though it restored to them the markets of Lombardy which the emperor had closed to them as punishment for the alliance with France. To frustrate the efforts of Charles to wean the Leagues from France, there came to Chur in April 1SS3 Jean des Monstiers du Fraisse, bishop of Bayonne. His task was to combat the intrigues of the imperial agent Angelo Ricci and of the papal nuncio Paolo Odescalchi, of whom the former sought to draw the Leagues into the capitulation between Milan and the Swiss, while the latter strove, with Como as a base, to introduce the Inquisition.15 Du Fraisse succeeded so well that the imperial agent was refused and the legate denied admission into the territory of the Leagues.18 In revenge, Odescalchi denounced him to Rome as a heretic. As secretary of the bishop of Bayonne appears Vincenzo Maggi, who had fled from a summons before the Inquisition to take refuge in the Leagues and for whom Vergerio perhaps found a means of livelihood now that he was to be transferred to another scene of activity. And remembering how unfriendly the attitude of his employers had been on two previous occasions, it may interest us to note that when Du Fraisse, about to be relieved at Chur in November IS54, recommends Maggi as his successor, he says: "I have never known him save in this country, but he has always shown himself an affectionate and faithful servant." No great while after the capture of Siena by the French—and sometime in August 1552—there arrived in his native city Lelio Sozini, come to pay a visit to friends and relatives. Had Lelio been the marked heretic which tradition makes him even at that time, he would hardly have undertaken a visit to Italy just when Pope Julius and King Henry had agreed to sink their differences and promote the faith. He had left Zürich in the summer of 1550 and proceeded by way of Nürnberg to Wittenberg, where he intended to spend the winter unless compelled by the Interim to depart sooner." He made friends as usual, including Melanch13
Against Odescalchi, Vergerio levelled his broadside against the powers conferred upon the papal nuncio by the pope (Hubert 133 and 288, no. 85). " F o r Du Fraisse, cf. Monstiers-MérinviUe, Un évêque-ambassadeur au XVI siècle: Jean des Monstiers, siegneur du Fraisse, évêque de Bayonne (Limoges 1895). "Sozini to Vadian, Nürnberg, July 6, 1550 (SGM X. 1700).
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thon and Polish students like the young Macszinsky, a former pensionnaire of Pellikan at Zürich. It was through Sozini that the acquaintance between Melanchthon and Curione was promoted, and Melanchthon echoed the commendations of the young man expressed by Macszinsky: "Lelio is agreeable, gentle, and learned," in more than one letter. He "spoke very freely" with the doctors of the university. 18 On September 26, in the rectorate of Johann Förster, he matriculated at the university. With Förster too he lodged in accordance with the custom when one wanted to profit the more by instruction in a specialty. Förster was a Hebraist, like Pellikan and Münster, Lelio's earlier teachers. The plan to visit Poland need not have grown entirely out of the acquaintance with Polish students at the university. Sozini is said to have known Laski in London and is, in August 1550, holding letters to him from Bullinger, pending the return of the Pole from England, which is not far off. He must have known the Mantuan Francesco Stancari, who was at Basel in 1547, and have noted his installation as professor of Hebrew at Cracow. Probably he meant to continue his studies under him, though he does not imply that his plans were at all embarrassed by the imprisonment of Stancari, which he announces to Bullinger in a letter from Wittenberg, August 20, 1550. 1 9 He had the Polish trip in mind, at any rate, for the subsequent summer vacation; and on June 23, 1551 left Wittenberg with a flattering testimonial from Melanchthon in which he is called "equally versed in theology, literature, and jurisprudence." 20 He made new friends at Breslau, and at Cracow made the acquaintance of Lismanini, who had himself returned from a trip to Italy, where he had been ordered by Queen Bona of Poland to go from Venice to Rome and congratulate Julius I I I on his accession. In the fall, Lelio was himself on his way to Italy. 2 1 In Zürich, he stopped to visit his friends, and Pellikan, for one, gave him a warm welcome. "Lelio," he wrote Myconius on October 16, 2 2 "has returned, a man dear to me and worth doing kindness to. He strikes one not by his physical, but by his mental, gifts. He is upright, pious, and "Macszinsky to Pellikan, Wittenberg, Aug. 24, ISSO (Illgen, Symbola, V I ) . ™ Illgen, op. citV. But after his return to Zürich, Lelio is asking for news of the Mantuan (Letter to the physician Johannes Krato of Breslau, Mar. 27, 1SS2. Burnat, Lelio Socm, 90). " Illgen, X I . . . inde (from the trip to Poland) constituit recta redire in patriam" (Erhard von Kunheim to Bullinger, ISSI, in Hottinger, Hist. Eccl., I X , 437). "Pellikan, Chronikon, ed. Riggenbach, 177 note.
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learned, the son of a great man." That he did not proceed straight home, as Bullinger had been given to understand he would do, is not likely to have been out of fears that his orthodoxy be impugned after his prolonged intercourse with evangelical leaders in every land. The plague, which then raged, is much more likely to have delayed his journey through the Leagues and the Valtelline. Lelio apparently never had any brushes with the Inquisition, by which his comings and goings were probably no more regarded than those of any other wandering student. Basil Amerbach was for three years a student in Italy, and spent a glorious holiday in any cities of the peninsula which pleased him and time permitted him to visit. Sozini, though he has taken on immense importance even thus early in the eyes of posterity, was in the eyes of contemporaries of no more significance than the young Baseler, son like himself of a great professor who could afford to give his promising boy a few Wanderjahre of more than ordinary compass. Nor was the war in Italy a hindrance ; the ceaseless conflict promoted travel rather than hindered it, at least in the case of students, from the time that Erasmus undertook his Italian journey in the days of the League of Cambrai. Both of Lelio's Italian visits took place in crucial years. So Lelio lingered on in the cantons—staying at Zurich, so far as we know—until May 1SS2, when he set out on the long journey toward the brothers and sisters at Siena and the parents at Bologna, whom he had not seen for five years. Meantime he threw into a renewed ferment his friends. 23 Calvin he reproved for his violence toward Bolsec, whose banishment from Geneva had just been effected for his denial of predestination. Bullinger he exercised with the old question whether it be necessary to salvation to confess Christ openly. Rudolf Gwalther he tortured by doubting the utility of repentance. "What are we repenting?" he asks: "How is it possible to be sorry for that which has happened to the glory of God?" The second question suggests that Sozini had been giving some thought to his future conduct at home, now that he was returning thither no longer a Catholic. On the journey he delayed again with Vergerio at Vicosoprano until June 17, waiting to hear from his father, since the political situation had now changed significantly. In April the council of Trent had been adjourned and the pope had made peace with Henry II, whose alliance with the German princes opened up the prospect of war on many fronts. Indeed Mariano wrote his son to "This correspondence is analyzed by Trechsel, Vol. II, and more conveniently by Buroat, Chap. V.
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remain away from Italy, but the letter arrived after he had left Vicosoprano, and Lelio went ahead to pay his contemplated visits and spend two months besides with Gribaldi at Padua. There he heard no doubt of the events which had transpired a t Geneva, his attitude to which was to become clear on his return to the Cantons. It was on January 19, 1554 that he delivered to doctor Amerbach the letter of Basil dated December 5, 1553 at P a d u a . " It was probably during this visit home that Lelio's family first perceived the drift of his studies. T h a t the parents were grieved at the apostasy of a favorite son may well be. The mother did not long survive Lelio's return to the Cantons, 25 and his father, the great jurist, disinherited him. The young man certainly left Italy this time "purioris religionis causa," and he left behind him in his brothers the seeds of new beliefs. POLITICS, HERESY, AND INQUISITION UNDER JULIUS I I I
The pontificate of Julius I I I corresponds with an added impetus to the conduct of the Inquisition, which, like its beginnings in the time of Paul III, vibrated more and more slowly as the reign went on, so far as the pope was concerned. The election of the former Cardinal Del Monte in February 1550 was followed immediately by Vergerio's Delia creat'tone del nuovo papa . . . e ciò che di lui sperare si possa,2" dedicated to Edward VI of England. Vergerio's answer is that nothing better in the way of a council can be expected, since Del Monte was the principal means by which Paul I I I manipulated the other one. Before long, he is inveighing against the religious persecution renewed by Julius. On June 14, 1550, the envoy ("orator") of Venice wrote from Rome to his government that the former nuncio Mignanelli had complained to him at the pope's instance of alleged indifference regarding heresy in the territory of the republic. The prosecutions were carried on with far to great laxity, and the pope was minded to send a special legate thither to root out the infection. Dandolo says that he tried to calm Mignanelli, saying that the Venetian senate was in earnest, and that the tri" T h e letter in G I. 8, 26-27 and Trechsel II, 164, note 4. "Trechsel quotes a phrase in Lelio's letter to Bullinger of Feb. S, 1S54: "Caspar the Pomeranian, who lately came from Italy, brought me the sad news that my dearest mother has departed from among the living. . . ." Lelio's mother was called Camilla Salvetti. "Hubert, op. cit., pp. SS ff.
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bunals in Venice and the cities of the mainland were at fault. The exnuncio pointed out cases newly brought to light showing the spread of heresy in Bergamo, Brescia, and the university of Padua, where a recently installed professor of jurisprudence from Piedmont was the source.27 On June 27 following, in an audience with the pope, Dandolo threw doubts on the credibility of reports from the territory of Venice which His Holiness had laid before him. Again on November 28, they discussed the matter, and heatedly, it would seem. Finally Julius showed the Venetian a bull already prepared, excommunicating those who interfere with the spiritual jurisdiction. That the Venetian senate had indeed, on November 3, 1550, made the Inquisition more stringent, was the defense of Dandolo, to whom they had written on November 22 that he communicate to the pope the trial and condemnation of "that heretic in Brescia" (probably Ippolito Chizzuola). But excommunication hovered over the republic until September 1551, when a compromise was effected, the senate conceding that a special legate, the bishop-elect of Montefiascone, take charge of the Inquisition in the territory of Venice, though as before with the assistance of the lay power.28 The Milanese was another region where the Roman Inquisition failed to receive the secular support it would have liked, and where the difficulties of enforcement lay, like those of Venice, partly in the attitude of the government and partly in the neighborhood of the passes into the Alps. Here came, in 1550, Fra Michele Ghislieri as inquisitor. Finding a quantity of bales of books consigned to a merchant of Como for distribution, he seized them in the customhouse. On the complaint of the merchant, they were turned over to the vicar of the bishop, while Ghislieri wrote to his superiors at Rome. A summons followed of the bishop and canons to Rome. They appealed to Ferrante Gonzaga, and the viceroy summoned Ghislieri to Milan. The unfortunate inquisitor, whose life appears actually to have been in danger from the populace, was threatened by Gonzaga with imprisonment, and finally permitted to depart for Rome.29 The Milanese Inquisition tried vainly to arrest Celso Martinenghi and Girolamo Zanchi, who alone had escaped prosecution of the circle of Vermigli at Lucca, and finally denounced the former to his protector "For the first time, then, suspicion was directed at Gribaldi. " Benrath summarizes this correspondence (Wiedertäufer im Venetianischen, pp. 16-17) and Cantù prints (Eretici, HI, 164-65) the letter of Dandolo to the Signory. Cf. Vergerio to Bullinger, Casaccia, May 1SS1 (QSG XXIII, 152, 1). "Lea, Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, p. 122.
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Ferrante Gonzaga. He fled, early in 1551, to the territory of the Leagues. Zanchi, who had been more circumspect in his utterances, was now in the same danger as his friend, and fled too in October 1551. Galeazzo Trezio, the friend and pupil of Curione, was saved by Gonzaga from paying the extreme penalty on his first condemnation, and was to have gotten off merely with the confiscation of his property, but his defiance was so uncompromising that he was remanded to prison and death by fire in 1552."° The inquisition of bishops began. Vettore Soranzo, bishop of Bergamo, formerly a disciple of Valdes at Naples, was arrested in 1551 on the report of Ghislieri, for reading heretical books, and next year, suspended from his see, was imprisoned for two years in Castel Sant'Angelo. Giovanni Grimani, patriarch of Aquileia, who in a letter of April 17, 1549 had defended a Lenten preacher at Udine accused of holding a heretical opinion on predestination, had to undergo inquiry at Rome before the Inquisition. It lost him the cardinalate, for which he had been proposed by the Venetian signory, and Julius I I I said that not all the waters of the Tiber were sufficient to remove the stain of the accusation, unproven though it was. 31 At Rome, Renée of Ferrara was watched, and from 1550 the Este agent there reported the dissatisfaction of the curia with the duchess and the tolerance with which "Lutherans" were treated. The execution at Ferrara by strangulation of Camillo Fannio of Faenza (August 22, 1550) was the first sign that Renée was no longer potent to protect heresy in the territories of the house of Este. It is probably evidence also of the activity of the Society of Jesus, who had not been slow to install themselves there; to Modena in 1543 had gone Salmerón and worked for two years before cardinal Morone got rid of him, and to Ferrara in 1546 had been sent the Frenchman Le Jay. Francesco Negri, now the author of
" Rodocanachi, La réforme en Italie, II, 80-82 and the authorities there cited. Maccrie, op. cit., p. 395. " Grimani was the friend and patron of Bernardino Ochino and of Giulio da Milano; he was intimate with Vergerio and the bishop of Chioggia; he was frequently with Pietro Carnesecchi when the latter was in Venice. Grecchetto (nickname of Dionysius de Zannettinis, the suffragan of Vicenza), whom he had sought to convince to the superiority of the pope to the council, attacked him. T h e young bishop of Terracina, whom he sent to the council of Trent, remained only eight days and voted favorably to the Lutherans in October 1546. Cf. Pastor, X V I , 320 and Buschbell, 47-48.
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the Tragedia del libero arbitrio*2 and soon after of the poem Rhetia had been inspired by a meeting with Vergerio at Poschiavo early in 1550 to add to the text of earlier editions of the former the invectives against the persecutions at Venice which appear in the edition of 1550. At Zurich in that same year appeared also from the pen of Negri the narratives of the executions of Fannio and of Domenico Cabianca at Piacenza; and these, translated into German, were in 1552 printed at Bern with the undoubted result of further stimulation to the wave of feeling which now mounted in favor of toleration. In a published letter to the doge Donato, dated April 10, 1551, Vergerio takes up the defense of the persecuted Venetian evangelicals. He protests that Christ's teaching is not to employ force of arms and shedding of blood for the defending and extending of his kingdom. If he, Vergerio, were powerful enough to march on Rome and capture it, he would not do so. Further evidence of the persecution in the Veneto at the beginning of the pontificate of Julius III is in the letters of Vergerio, in 1551-1552, from the Rhetian village where he had installed himself and where he received the fugitives. The influence of the state was still for moderation, though its resistance to papal severity may have been more passive than active, and the form of procedure all but guaranteed the escape of anyone loath to stand trial,34 provided he had powerful connections. Renewed activity of the Holy Office at Venice followed the apprehension of one Pietro Manelfi of San Vito who opened the eyes of the spiritual authorities to an "Anabaptist" movement as distinct from the Lutheran activity there, and denounced many, both of the liberal and of the radical tendency, in his confession before the Inquisition at Rome in October 1551.35 That which has focussed attention on his words " T h e first edition was of 1546, according to Zonta in the study already cited (.supra, pp. 84-86 ff.), though the earliest existing exemplar is of the second (Venice 1547). "Issued from the press of Oporinus at Basel in January 1549, but submitted to Bullinger as early as August 1547. Aside from valuable historical and topographical references, this work may be taken as an indication of what most of the Italian exiles felt, but few could express, so full is it of the nostalgia of the writer for the banks of the Brenta, on which he was born. " T h e question was not really solved in the compromise with the pope in 1551, says Rodocanachi (II, 507), and conventions followed each other in 1574, 1580, and 1590, and 1599. " Among them was Pietro Speziali of Cittadella, apostle of justification by faith, whom he claimed to have visited in prison at Venice in 1549 and re-baptized (Comba, op. cit. II, 243 and 512).
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is the apparent support they give to the tradition of evangelical conferences at Vicenza which defined the Antitrinitarian movement in northern Italy, as well as the account of the remarkable general assembly of these radicals at Venice in 1550. In Vicenza, Lutheranism had spread through the liberal policy of the bishop, Cardinal Ridolfi, who had gotten rid of Delia Casa because he opposed the evangelicals. Next to Verona and in sharp contrast with that pattern diocese upon which Gian Matteo Giberti had left the impress of his rule, Vicenza stood as a horrible example, and its bishop was regarded reprovingly at Trent. 36 But of the real nature of the evangelical movement at Vicenza, there was apparently no inkling. Manelfi was a former priest, according to his confession, who after his conversion by Bernardino Ochino and the Capuchin F r i Girolamo Spinazola about 1540, spread Lutheranism for two years in Vicenza, Treviso, Rovigo, Istria, Ferrara, and elsewhere. At Florence in 1548 or 1549, he met the Tiziano who was in 1554 compelled to retract at Chur the "Anabaptist" teachings he had been spreading in Italy. He was rebaptized by him, and with Tiziano and other confreres—to follow his own account still—he went to Vicenza; and after discussing religious matters with other members of the sect, there discovered that they were at variance on the divinity of Christ and decided to call a meeting of the heads of the communities already existing in Italy. Two men were chosen to travel about and invite the delegates, two from each congregation, to a conference of Anabaptists to be held at Venice in September 1550. The conference which met accordingly counted sixty members, including representatives from Basel, St. Gallen, and the Rhetian Leagues, of whom Manelfi named "Johannes Secundo Curione," author of the Pasquino in estasi (who, if Manelfi is not qualifying on hearsay, must be Celio himself) and Francesco Negri of Chiavenna, whose Tragedia del libero arbitrio was, no less than the Pasquino, blacklisted on Delia Casa's new index of prohibited books. No other of the Italian refugees prominent in Swiss history is mentioned in connection with the conference, and no echo of it reached Calvin or Bullinger or Myconius, to judge from their correspondence. Small wonder, perhaps. Vergerio and Grataroli, the watchdogs of Lutheran and " Gothein, op. cit., p. 534. Paul III, on Nov. 25, 1540 had recommended the Venetian government to repress heresy in Vicenza, where the Council was presently to meet, and to forbid discussions on freewill and predestination (Fontana, Documenti vaticani, 380).
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Calvinistic orthodoxy respectively (as far as the face they presented to the public is concerned), were in 1550 barely arrived in the Leagues and had not yet learned the part which they were to play in a few years. Moreover, the Swiss leaders were at variance over the Consensus Tigurinus, in which the Basel church had not shared, and actually left to Vergerio the task of reconciling the Rhetian pastors with Camillo Renato and Francesco Negri. What is significant is that the question of re-baptism (as that generation naturally called adult baptism) now stirs the Italians, whose "Anabaptism" however assumes a character far different from Swiss or German or Dutch Anabaptism. Their tendency to rational speculation travelled inevitably from baptism to the nature of Christ, the one question being involved with the other by Christ's baptism. Re-baptism seems to have become a bond between the adherents of Camillo; and Vergerio was aware of it, Mainardi tells Bullinger in May 1549. The bishop, just arrived from Italy at that time, was present at "a certain nobleman's table," when one of Camillo's adherents openly confessed having been re-baptized.87 Manelfi testified that the majority at the conference of Venice were radicals on the question they had been summoned to solve. The doctrines under discussion by this band of reformers were those usually associated with the name of the Aragonese Miguel Servet, better known as Michael Servetus, whose De erroribus trinitatis was published in 1531, and his Dialogues on the Trinity a year later. The chief evidence for the spread of his doctrine in Italy is a letter of Melanchthon to the Venetian senate in 1538, in which he warns them against those professing the errors contained in a book of Servetus, "who has revived the error of Paul of Samosata condemned by the primitive church." 38 Servetus, born at Tudela in Aragon about 1509 and of a French mother, distinguished himself at the university of Zaragoza in the classics, scholastic philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and geography. He studied law at Toulouse, where it may have been the plague of 1528 which turned his thoughts to medicine, in which he achieved a distinction which posterity might well have remembered along with, if not above, his contribution to theological speculation.39 He was already a heretic when, in 1529, he "Cantu III, 218-19 and note 7. The Anabaptist was Pietro da Casalmaggiore. " Paul of Samosata was bishop of Antioch about 260, and conceived that the logos, or force working in Christ, had worked also, but to a lesser degree, in Moses and the prophets. " H i s edition of Ptolemy's Geography (Lyons 1535) contains the map of 1S22,
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became secretary of Quintana, the confessor of Charles V; and his anticlerical leanings were strengthened during his travels with his employer in Italy and Germany. He was present at the diet of Augsburg in 1530; he visited Basel and talked with Oecolampadius; he met Capito and Butzer at Strassburg. The attention of the Spanish Inquisition was drawn to his books in 1532, and the Aragonese Inquisitor took action, assigning to a brother of Miguel, who was chaplain of the archbishop of Santiago de Compostella, the task of delivering the suspect to his ecclesiastical judges. Up till 1538, the Council of the Inquisition occupied itself with this affair. 40 Under the name of Villeneuve, when his writings had aroused unfavorable comment, he entered the university of Paris in 1532 and studied medicine, mathematics, and physics. There he had his first brief contact with Calvin in 1534. He was at Lyons in 1534-1536 and at Vienne in Dauphiné from 1543 to 1553; at Lyons the archbishop, who had known him as a student, protected him, and there he brought out a new edition of Ptolemy in 1541. There too he published, with notes which show his knowledge of Hebrew, the Latin Bible of Pagnini (1542). With Calvin he carried on a correspondence from 1546. Antitrinitarian doctrines were attributed to Valdes and his circle by Tizzano in his confession at Venice in 1553. Tizzano himself is said to have brought these doctrines from southern Italy—so a Vicentine "Anabaptist" testified in a confession in January 1552"—and disseminated them as he went about in the guise of a cord-merchant. Camillo Renato, who is stigmatized in 1549 as the "Coryphaeus" of the sect in the Valtelline, was a Sicilian. Tradition is strong, however, on the identification of radical theology with Venetian territory, and more particularly with the city of Vicenza. There, says Morsolin, as one descends from the Piazza Maggiore to the Ponte San Paolo, he passes the very house, that of the Pigafetta family, where certain secret meetings were held by forty eminent Italian philosophers about the year 1546. Conspicuous among these were Valentino Gentile of Cozenza—another southerner!—Bernardino where the new world is called America. He points out that Amerigo Vespucci's name should not be attached to it. H e discovered the circulation of the blood. When a pupil of Realdo Colombo at the university of Padua between 1S40 and 1543, he got the notions that laid the foundation for his discovery (Cf. Carlo Foà, I primi albori della fisiologia e l'università di Padova. Padova 1922). " BataiUon, "Michel Servet poursuivi par l'inquisition espagnole" (Bulletin hispanique, janvier-mars 1925). " M o r s o l i n , "L'Accademia de' Sociniani in Vicenza" (in the Alti tuto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, V, series 5, Venice 1879).
del regio
insti-
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Ochino; Giampaolo Alciati, Matteo Gribaldi, and Giorgio Biandrata (three Piedmontese); Camillo Renato, Francesco Negri ("of Bassano," however), and Niccolo Paruta. All these are certainly names well known in the history of the Antitrinitarians as in the history of their difficulties with Calvin. The president of this academy, still following the tradition, was Lelio Sozini, a youth of twenty-one. To him certainly is attributed a prestige which he did not at that time possess as a heretic; but an absolute alibi cannot be established for him any more than for the others. If they met at Vicenza however, it was furtively; for at least two of them, Ochino and Camillo, were already exiles for conscience's sake; and Gribaldi had at that time not been censured for his religious opinions. If meetings of this kind there were—and the testimony as to the congress at Venice in 1550 seems a confirmation—the secret was incredibly well kept. An organization of this kind is no more remarkable than the connection maintained between less radical Protestants in those regions, of which we have indications in the Lenten trip of Francesco Negri in 1530 and the peregrinations of Baldassare Altieri later. As to the date of the dispersion of the Antitrinitarians of Vicenza, it is certain that the sect ran its brief span of life between the years 1550 and 1552. Those who were called before the inquisitorial court, however, were not of those distinguished for erudition or social rank. They were of the simplest folk, to judge by the records cited by Morsolin." Not the least interesting of the traditions woven into the history of the meetings at Vicenza is that of the fugitives who found refuge in Saloniki among the Jews. The appearance of an inquisitorial tribunal at Naples and the prosecution of the followers of Valdes also date from the early years of the pontificate of Julius III, and its activity was assured after the appointment as archbishop of Naples of Giampietro Caraffa, a Neapolitan born and resentful of Spanish influence in his native city. Even earlier, and by the agency of the Theatines—the order founded by Caraffa when bishop of Chieti—denunciations had begun of the innovators in matter of religion and the hearings had started before the tribunal at Rome. Giangaleazzo Caraccioli and Isabella Briseña did not wait for theirs, but departed for evangelical lands, Caraccioli for Augsburg, where he talked with the emperor, but to no purpose, it must be concluded, since he turned his steps next to Geneva.43 Doña Isabella proceeded to Chiavenna, "Op cit., pp. 20-36. "Amabile, op. cit., p. 21S. Caraccioli arrived in Geneva in June ISSI.
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where her friend Giulia Gonzaga, who was now the real head of the Valdesians in Naples, sent her money from time to time. In May 1553, the Sicilian Scipione Rebiba was named by the congregation of cardinals as commissary of the Holy Inquisition for Naples. He was the vicar of the new Archbishop Caraffa. Not merely at Naples, but from elsewhere, information was collected regarding those differing from the doctrines of the church, now in process of definition by the council of Trent. One Lorenzo Tizzano, successively a friar at Monteoliveto in Naples, chaplain at San Francesco delle Monache, the residence of Giulia Gonzaga, and finally a student of medicine at Padua, was frightened by the activity of the Inquisition in the university town to lay information voluntarily before the Holy Office, first at Padua and then at Venice. He got two years in prison at San Giovanni in Bragora, according to Amabile; 44 at least that is the interval between his two depositions of 1553 and 1555; but there was at just that time a Tiziano whose Anabaptistic activities brought him into conflict with the Rhetian pastors and led to his retractation at Chur in 1554. Furthermore a Tizzano was employed as a scrittore by Vergerio in 1555. 45 The revelations of Lorenzo Tizzano are most important for having laid upon Valdes and his friends the accusation of Antitrinitarian. At Venice also, the names of many of the Naples circle were revealed by Giulio Basalù, a lawyer formerly resident at Naples, who testified before the Inquisition in 1555. T h e list 46 includes names of importance other than those of the Valdesians, and these are classified under categories purporting to specify their particular heresy. There appear, for instance, of those encountered again on the following pages, Girolamo Donzelino, Pietro Perna, and Lelio Sozini. In these last months of the pontificate of Julius III, Stella is again in trouble, and Vergerio suspects that rascal Lorenzo, "who was here"— he is at Göppingen—"and whom I employed as a scrittore. H e knew my friendships in Italy and has denounced Stella and many another." Perhaps it was of importance to the reform, and it was certainly evidence of a more vigorous attitude at Rome, that Renée of Ferrara was now forced into outward conformity with the church. It is hard to say how far it was his wife's religious opinions which weighed in the estrangement of the duke and duchess; it may be suspected that Ercole did not 44
Ibid., p. 1S8.
" Vide the letter of Vergerio to his sister Anna (Göppingen, Jan. 14, 1555) in re-
gard to the new denunciation of Stella (Arch. stor. ital., XVI, 165, nos. X and XI). "Which is printed by Amabile, op. cit., I, 162-63.
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find it easy to live with a wife of royal blood and support her in the style to which she was accustomed. In 1553, the pope was complaining of the duke and duchess on the strength of a report of the inquisitors. T h e envoy of Ferrara, caught unawares, could defend his sovereign only b y the justification that "if Madame were not of the house and of the blood that she is, another sort of procedure would have been adopted toward her." And in fact it was the protection of Henry II, in great part, on which Renée relied. T h a t there was a papal brief according the duchess a privileged position, the envoy was doubtless unaware. Ercole now wrote to Henry II the famous letter of March 27,1554, and the king gave him a free hand with his aunt, even sending the grand inquisitor Ory to attempt the conversion of the duchess. But Ory abruptly withdrew from the scene, made aware doubtless of that same brief; and Ercole, conciliatory measures not availing, had his wife conducted from Castelnuovo in the night between the 6th and 7th of September 1554 and placed in Castelvecchio. There, separated from her daughters, and reduced to the services of two women and one man, she had nevertheless three beautiful rooms opening on the garden. T h e contemporary chronicler Lancilotti of Modena tells us that, as she went to her new quarters, she turned to her husband and said: "Signore, vui seti signore del corpo mio, ma non dell' anima," (you are lord of my body, but not of my soul) and Balbi, informing the Tuscan court of the events in his letter of September 7, says that the duchess was very cheerful. The chronicler adds significantly that her household used to number eighty-four and was very costly, "Every year there were purchased in the Modenese four hundred castellate of grapes in addition to feeding the said French mouths." 47 Renée was henceforth in disgrace and never emerged until the death of Ercole in 1559. For her failure to take a stand Calvin reproved her, but to no avail. Thereafter the pope did not wish his legates to salute her, and a subject of her own, Guido Bentivoglio, came from France to the court of Ferrara and remained three days without seeing her in 1558. In the correspondence of 1557-1558, Renée is hardly ever mentioned. When Anna d'Este is trying to make a match between her brother Alfonso and Margaret of France (future duchess of Savoy), she assures Alvarotti, the ambassador of Ferrara, not too enthusiastic about another French princess, that Margaret "will not live as did Madame my father's " Sandonnini, "Della venuta di Calvino in Italia e di alcuni documenti relativi a Renata di Francia" (Rivista storica italiana, IV, 531-61. 1887).
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most excellent consort, but will defer in everything to the Duke and to the Prince; and so far from being an expense to him, she will give him of her own." POLITICS, H E R E S Y AND INQUISITION UNDER H E N R Y I I ALCIATI AND BIANDRATA—VERGERIO AND T H E COUNCIL
It was out of no deference to Pope Julius I I I that inquisition raged in France simultaneously with the pope's efforts to inject new life into the Roman Inquisition, for Henry found himself from the outset of the new pontificate involved in conflict with Julius, and on the ancient issue, the Council. His opposition to the Council was shared by the German Protestants, but the exigencies of politics prevented these from taking issue with him on the score of his intolerance, for Henry became their ally against Charles V. The Italian juorusciti cared not for the Council, but on them also Henry relied, not only fostering their hopes of expelling the Spanish tyrant from Italy but using them to defend his possessions in Piedmont. As for the Italian Vergerio, his campaign against pope and council from the accession of Julius I I I was not undertaken as part of a contract with Henry II, although the French king came to subsidize it. It was directed in the first place against a pope whose past record offers no hope of a free assembly such as the Protestants demanded and such as the emperor had been promised by the nuncio Pighino.48 Henry I I did not think that his engagements with evangelicals abroad laid him under obligations to evangelicals at home, and the Swiss repeatedly lodged protests with him, now on account of the Vaudois, now on account of the French Calvinists, against whom edicts had been published and an inquisition set up in the chambre ardente,49 His reign had opened with tension over Lutheranism. At the beginning of 1547, numerous Lutherans had been burned at Paris. In May 1547, the sieur d'Oppede, persecutor of the Vaudois, was accused and subsequently imprisoned for three years. He was under suspicion as a friend of the cardinal de Tournon, not for his barbarity to his victims; and he was reestablished in his position in the parlement of Toulouse when the cardinal was restored to favor in 1551. On July 5, 1549, Henry followed in the streets of Paris a solemn procession to implore the aid of God against the heretics. After the royal dinner that day in the episcopal pal• Hubert, op. cit., p. 62. " Vide Weiss, La chambre M a y 2, 1548 (p. botvi).
ardente.
T h e register of arrests by this body begins
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ace of Notre Dame, there were executions of heretics, and the king watched the lighting of the pyre from a window.40 It is not unlikely that suspicion was directed to Gribaldi also in consequence of the activities of the Piedmontese Inquisition following the edicts of Henry II, for his old home, Chieri, was a centre of the reform in Piedmont. The edict of November 19, 154951 initiated renewed persecution of the Vaudois, and the edict of Chateaubriand of June 27, 1551,52 recalling earlier edicts of the king and his father, aggravated them by extending the competence of the judges in matters of heresy and by enumerating minutely the actions which were henceforth to be considered prohibited or suspect. Of those who emigrated at this time was Giampaolo Alciati, signore de la Motta di Savigliano, a Piedmontese noble who in the course of a military career had been won for the new doctrines. He was at Geneva in 1552 and again in 1554,63 and was destined to play an important part in the opposition to Calvin after the death of Servetus. It is not appropriate to cite the name of Gribaldi among the exiles who were at this time driven from the valleys, as Jalla does,04 unless it be to recall that some of his family evidently lived at Turin, where they could hardly fail to come into suspicion, and that his native town, Chieri, was again captured by the French in 1551. The edict of Chateaubriand brought new protest from the Swiss. Calvin joined to the packet in which he despatched to Basel the dossier in the case of Bolsec, a plea for combined intervention at the French court. The four evangelical cantons did indeed make a new protest by letter just when Henry's alliance with the German Protestants seemed to promise alleviation of persecution; and permitted Calvin to visit Bern, Basel, and Zürich to promote a new embassy of the Swiss cities. With him went the newest arrival from Italy, the "marquis" of Vico, as the reformers persist in calling him, and Farel joined them at Neufchatel. To Zürich they did not go, for Calvin was highly incensed with the Zürichers because they had not upheld him against Bolsec. Sympathy with the French evangelicals soon focussed on the "prisoners of Lyons," 55 in whose interest new envoys from Geneva visited the K Romier, Les origines politique! des guerres de religion; Henri II et Vltalie, p. 498, quoting from the state archives of Modena. 51 Haag, La France protestante, X, 14. Letters of Calvin to Buschetto. Haag, op. cit., p. 17—Jalla, Storia della Riforma in Piemonte, p. 67. ™ Moeller, Der Antitrinitarier Paulus Alciat. - Op. cU., p. 72. " Five French students who left Lausanne at the end of April 1552 to propagate
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Swiss cities. Bern and Basel sent letters to King Henry to request the release of the boys, and on June 5, 1552, at the diet of Baden, three of the cantons—Zürich, Basel, and Schaffhausen—decided to entrust the burgomaster of Zürich, Haab, who was going to France, with a special mission to Henry in behalf of the prisoners. On July 26, Haab received the king's answer; he forbade outright the interference of the evangelicals in the affairs of his kingdom.56 Yet a certain prudence was soon forced on the inquisitor of Piedmont by the outbreak of the war with Charles V in 1552, and in the dedication of his Italian translation of the Syntagmata of Brenz, addressed to l'Aubespine, Vergerio begs him to urge upon the king most earnestly to abstain from the persecutions.57 At the beginning of 1554, Henry created a conseil particueier sur les affaires de l'hérésie, in the institution of which is to be traced the influence of the cardinal de Tournon, now restored to the favor he had lost on the death of the late king.58 The cardinal it was who prevented Margaret of Navarre from sending for Melanchthon, and aggravated measures against the Protestants. He was a great protector of the Jesuits and patron of Denys Lambin, who was later a great enemy of theirs at the time of their conflict with the university of Paris.59 The results of the severity of Henry II are to be seen in the stream of Piedmontese emigrants which flowed to Geneva between 1553 and 1555, but to call them indiscriminately exiles for religion's sake leaves out of account the preference naturally given by artisans to a state where the channels of industry were not interrupted by the operations of armies in conflict, as in Piedmont. Of professional men among them, there is soon occasion to notice Giorgio Biandrata, a physician of Saluzzo,60 who became associated with his countryman Alciati. He was sprung from the counts of Biandrate, whose annals reach into the thirteenth century, and was a doctor in arts and medicine from the university of Montpellier when he was but eighteen. the new faith in their own country. They were arrested on arriving at Lyons, and burned alive, M a y 15, 1553, on the Place des Terreaux, vide G. Truc, "Calvin et les cinq prisonniers de Lyons" ( R e v u e des études historiques, janvier-mars 1920). " Wemle, Calvin und Basel, pp. 92-93. " H u b e r t , op. cit., p. 126. The date is June 19, 1553. " Romier, Les origines politiques des guerres de religion, I, 502. " P o t e z , "Deux années de la Renaissance" (Revue d'histoire littéraire X m , 460-62. 1906).
de la
France,
" Cf. Cantù, op. cit., II, 486 and Alexander Gordon's article "Biandrata" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition. For his place in the history of radical theology vide Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socin. Cantù quotes Malacame, Commentario delle opère e delle vicende di G.B. (Padova 1814).
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Cantü credits him with another degree from Pavia later, and says that he wrote about obstetrics and women's diseases better than any other who had written up to that time, "and without knowing the commentary of Berengarius nor the works of Pareus" (Paré). Summoned to treat John Zapolya, voievode of Transylvania in 1544, he enabled him to marry the Polish princess Isabella, and remained thereafter linked with the grateful family. He was at Mestre in the Veneto in IS52, and was soon afterward in Geneva, where he treated the English wife of Celso Martinenghi. If Francis I, not intolerant by nature, persecuted heresy as a peril to the monarchy when it was a question of Lutheranism, Henry II had the more reason in confronting Calvinism, which had become a mighty organization when he attempted to cope with it by the revolting methods of the chambre ardente. His policy was short-sighted, for the Calvinists throve on his treatment of them, and the strength of the militant church which looked to Geneva was diffused by his efforts through Germany and the Netherlands, where each branch attained the vigor of the parent stock, while the forces of Geneva were swelled with the number of the immigrants from France and Piedmont. And in France the new church, presently to be called "Huguenot" for a reason not quite clear yet, came to draw not only from the middle class, but also from the nobles, not excepting those of the blood royal. There is no collusion between the intolerance of Henry II and that of Julius III, of whom the French king disapproved as recreant to a promise. When Julius, who owed his election to the votes of French cardinals, commenced negotiating with Charles V for the return of the council to Trent, Henry reminded him of his engagement not to institute the council at Trent without the consent of the French king and the Gallican church. To the representations of the legate Trivulzio, sent him by Julius to negotiate the matter, Henry asserted that his kingdom was in no need of a general council to regulate its affairs; that, if a reform of morals was necessary, he had sufficient pious prelates to accomplish it without making complaints and seeking redress elsewhere; that, as to the independence which, it was claimed, the assembly would enjoy at Trent, he appealed to the candid opinion of the pope, who had been legate there. This was in August 1550, when Henry was already entering into relations with the German princes who, under the leadership of Moritz of Saxony, were carefully maturing a great coalition against Charles, the author of the Interim and the gaoler of Philip and of Johann Friedrich.
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Vergerio girds himself for the attack on Julius with characteristic energy. He forecasts his policy of professing friendship for French and imperials alike, and theirs of pretending to trust him in order to avoid an open break.®1 He asserts that the pope and the emperor have mutually promised each other military assistance in carrying out the decisions of the council.62 Indeed he is full of the war against the Protestants, of which he is sure that the council is the prelude. He pictures Julius as announcing the condemnation of them at the close of the council, and issuing the Ccill to arms for the massacre of the true followers of Christ.63 Vergerio first hoped for support from England, and dedicates his first broadsides to the young king Edward VI. They are both in Italian, Delia creatione del nuovo papa Giulio III. et ciò che di lui sperare si possa (dated February IS, 1550), and the later De portamenti di papa Giulio III. et quale habbia ad essere il concilio che egli intende di jar e (November 1550), but of the first Latin and German translations were made, and of the second a French one, as will be seen. Indeed Vergerio wishes that scholars of all lands would dedicate themselves to the work of publicity. Literature regarding the council should be distributed in all languages and among the masses.64 The second pamphlet appeared when Julius, without ceasing his attempts to win over the French king, proceeded to appoint a new congregation of reform composed of cardinals of the imperial party (Pole, Morone, and Cervini), and to promulgate on November 13,1550 the bull convoking the bishops again to Trent on May 1 of the following year. The date was later set at September 1, to give the German and French prelates time to arrive. Vergerio keenly analyzes the papal policy in a satire upon the bull of convocation which appeared at the end of 1550 or beginning of 1551, likewise in Italian, with a perfectly serious title, Bolla della inditione et convocatone del concilio. Upon the doge of Venice as upon the Germans (in an anonymous pamphlet in the form of an address to the German nobility), he urges the assembling of a national council in view of the hopelessness of an oecumenical one.65 Imagine all the debtors and criminals in Venice, he says to the doge, meeting together to judge their own misdeeds without the intervention of any prosecutor or creditor whatever. The result would not be doubtful. So with the council, where the pope and the bishops are the debtors and " Hubert, op. cit., p. 58. m
Ibid., p. 68.
" Ibid., p. 56.
"Ibid., p. 70
" H u b e r t , op. cit., p. 87. On the "Heus Germani," pp. 83-90; on the letter to the doge, pp. 91-95.
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criminals, and the misdeeds the corrupt practices in Christian worship, morals, and teaching. The news of a papal bull by which the bishops are forbidden to read Protestant books spurs Vergerio to a protest in January 1551. Against the bull he prepared one of his pamphlets, which was translated by Negri into Italian, but it has disappeared." Henry prepared to wage war against both council and pope. When Julius, in agreement with Charles about the meeting of the council, prepared to comply with his request for the cession of Parma and Piacenza, Henry became the champion of the dispossessed Ottavio Farnese, with whom he signed a treaty of alliance on March 27, 1551, promising him troops and an annual subsidy. In July, he joined forces with Vergerio. The French ambassador in the Cantons, Morelet, met the ex-bishop at Basel to concert measures against the council.67 Vergerio's edition of the text of the bull of convocation came out that same month, and he followed it in August 1551 with the Concilium tridentinum jugiendum esse omnibus piis, which is, in the words of Hubert, a collection of documents with commentary. There is the bull of convocation again, on which Bullinger had written a pamphlet translated by Vergerio into Italian; there is the imperial summons, dated Augsburg, March 23, 1551, which is criticised for conceding too much to the pope; there is the imperial safe-conduct of the same date, which holds good only for the emperor's subjects—not that an imperial safe-conduct is worth anything after what happened at Constance;—there is the prescription of the right of voting at a council printed in a book published at Venice about ecclesiastical usage; there is the oath of the bishops which the reader is invited to consider word by word; there are extracts from the catalogue of prohibited books of Delia Casa and the book of Muzio attacking Vergerio.®8 Vergerio's book on Pope Julius III and his conciliar policy, first published in Italian and dedicated to Edward VI of England, was now translated into French by a certain Joachim de Coignac.69 Henry engaged also the services of the lawyer-publicist Charles Dumoulin, whose task was to affirm the independence of the French church and the authority of the council against the pope, and to discover in the king of France the heir, through the Frankish kings, of the Roman emperors. In "Ibid.,
pp. 77-78. "Ibid., pp. 99-101 and 127. Antoine Morelet du Museau, sieur de la Marcheferrière, died at Basel Oct. 27, 1SS2. "Hubert, op. cit., pp. 101-04. "Ibid., pp. 70 and 278, no. 46.
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IS52 was published his Commentar'tus ad edictum Heinrici 11. contra parvas datas et abusas curiae romanae. The Sorbonne declared that neither king nor church in France owed obedience to the pontiff, but only recognition as chief, and honor when he came to visit the churches of the kingdom. The "war of Parma" was now in progress. Italian fuorusciti—émigrés, if you wish—commanded the French troops which confronted the papalimperial forces; and the Turkish fleet hovered in the background. The war was extended to Piedmont, where Chieri, the birthplace of Gribaldi, gave itself up, in September 1551, to the French governor Brissac. But the French war party was more warlike than the king. A proposal made in the privy council in August 1551 to withdraw the Gallican church entirely from papal control, and create a patriarch invested with supreme religious power was clearly the omen of a schism from which Henry shrank. He now disclaimed any intention of effecting a religious settlement which would have resembled that of England, and he resolved to send an ambassador to Trent at the opening of the session. Jacques Amyot, abbot of Bellosane, a creature of the cardinal de Tournon, presented himself at Trent on September 1, 1551, but he got no further than the address of the letters from the king which he was to read. At the word conventus instead of concilium for the assembly, the imperial prelates rose in protest, and Amyot could not even have his credentials approved. Except, then, for the bishop of Verdun, who was there from Lorraine and whose see included part of France, the French church was not represented. At Torgau, in the preceding May, negotiations had been set on foot for an alliance between Henry II and the German Protestants, and the ensuing treaty of Friedewald in October was confirmed by Henry at Chambord in January 1552. It cost the empire Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which became the first of the annexations which ultimately netted France the whole of Lorraine. Moritz of Saxony and his fellow conspirators, including the Catholic duke of Bavaria for whom jealousy of the house of Hapsburg was stronger than any fear of religious discord, opened the campaign in March 1552 with a manifesto directed to Ferdinand and alleging religious grievances, the arbitrary power of Charles, the "infamy and unreasonableness" of the imprisonment of Philip of Hesse, the foreign troops, and the attempt to make the rule hereditary (i.e. secure the succession of Philip to his father). There ensued the Protestant Restoration in Augsburg, Ulm, and the other cities of upper Germany which had been obliged to accept the Interim.
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The German princes were experimenting with the council and a French alliance at the same time. To Trent, envoys had been sent by Brandenburg, by Württemberg, by Moritz of Saxony, and by Strassburg. The confessions of Württemberg, Saxony, and Strassburg were submitted to the council, though the theologians who had composed them did not get there in time because of disputes over safe-conducts and the unexpectedly early dissolution of the assembly. Strassburg, to whose efforts it was largely due that any Protestants came, and which obligingly endorsed the confessions of her sister states, different as they were, was represented by Sleidan, the historian of the Schmalkaldic war. The Protestant envoys demanded that the basic teachings of the Augsburg Confession and of the Catholic church should be discussed without reference to the dogmas adopted in the earlier sessions of the council, and, to secure freedom of debate, stipulated further that the bishops be freed from their oath to the pope. The pope, for his part, should be required to submit to the decrees of the council. The Spanish bishops, of whom there were more than in the earlier sessions, were interested in the reform of discipline and insisted on the residence of bishops (who gave more cause for criticism on that score in Italy than elsewhere), and the control of the king over the church through nomination of these. The German bishops, who numbered in their ranks the moderate Pflug, now bishop of Naumburg, supported the Protestant demands already conceded in the Interim, and hoped they would be satisfied. It was not the strongly papal assembly of five years before, though the Jesuits Salmerón and Lainez were there in the interests of the pope and sure of an audience when they spoke, because of the free entrance that was accorded into the deliberations of the theological section.70 Salmerón writes Loyola (August 11, 1551) in a mildly jocular vein of the difficulties of himself and his companion in the matter of a lodging. In their efforts not to give offense to the secretary of the council, who had assigned them to a warm and smoky cubicle in his own house, they grinned and bore the inconvenience for eleven or twelve days until rooms were available at the inn where they had stayed on their first visit to the council. They even made a joke of the matter when they related it to Cardinal Crescenzio, the president of the council. The nuncio Lippomani wrote Ignatius that his house was at their service and at the service of the whole Society.71 Charles V was at Innspruck during the course of the council, and not 70
Gotheen, op. cit., p. 493. " Sedgwick, Ignatius Loyola,
pp. 260-64.
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too certain that Julius and Henry might not yet make up the quarrel on which the Amyot incident had cast fresh fuel. The curial party took advantage of the situation to press him for a dissolution, and were aided by the manifesto of Moritz. Finally the Emperor gave permission, on March S, 1SS2, for the suspension. The Protestant envoys, now that it was evident that they would not be accommodated, withdrew, the Saxons on March 13 and those of Württemberg and Strassburg in April. The three ecclesiastical electors left about the same time because of the advance of Henry I I in the direction of their territories. The pope, in the consistory of April 15, declared the council suspended, and the council in spite of the protest of the Spanish bishops, voted on April 28 its suspension for two years. The council had been over one day when, on April 29, 1552, the French king, through the efforts of the Cardinal de Toumon, made peace with Julius I I I . The latter, his income threatened by an edict of Henry prohibiting the sending of money to Rome for the according of benefices, had made overtures of peace. The king appointed Cardinal de Tournon to go to Rome and discuss terms with the pope. The armistice was signed for two years. 72 Dumoulin fled to the Swiss cantons, his book declared heretical, and identified himself perforce with the reformed. 73 Late in August 1552, the cardinal, restored to the prestige which he had enjoyed under Francis I, and on his way back from Italy, met Vergerio at Vicosoprano and tried to reconcile him with the pope by the prospect of a restoration to his bishopric and the lure of a cardinal's hat. He failed, and Vergerio did not give up his polemic against pope and council. Henry I I had indeed abandoned his opposition to them, but he did not leave the pen he had hired to fight on as a free lance. Through the French ambassadors in the Cantons, the ex-bishop evidently continued to receive subsidies from Fontainebleau and he was in regular correspondence with l'Aubespine and Coignet, though the French foreign office did not openly avow its support and Vergerio's position toward the Valois was always anomalous. His own account is that the year before he entered the service of Christoph of Württemberg—i.e. 1552—King Henry instructed his envoy Morelet to give him 200 crowns a year for his services to him.7'1 " H e never did so," Vergerio proceeds, "but Bassefontaine, 75 on the death " A n d was renewed on May 3, 1SS4. ™ Romier, op. cit., p. 287 and note. "Vergerio to Christoph, May 7, 1564 (KS no. 204). w
L'Aubespine was abbé de Bassefontaine.
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of another pensioner, to whom 120 crowns had been paid, transferred his stipend to me, and also often paid me the 200 crowns." Vergerio did not find it altogether easy to serve two masters, and at least twice sought to end the connection with France. It is to be guessed from an indignant letter to l'Aubespine in January 1554 that he was called upon to report so minutely what he learned through his strategic position at the court of Christoph that his self-respect was wounded. In asking Bullinger to see to the delivery to l'Aubespine and to Du Fraisse78 of letters conveying as much, he promises that he will never be bothered again with this correspondence. There was no permanent breach at this time, however, nor apparently in the following April, when Vergerio is writing Bullinger of his wish to terminate his relations with France as amicably as possible, and of sending his nephew Aurelio on missions to that end to the two envoys. What came out of Aurelio's mission was apparently the interview with l'Aubespine in June at Baden, where the Frenchman succeeded in setting the matter right. When l'Aubespine left the cantons, he recommended Vergerio to his successor, the abbé de St. Laurent, who was an old acquaintance of Vergerio.77 The advance of Moritz was regarded with enthusiasm even by those who distrusted the French alliance. Bullinger was of opinion that in case of his victory the papacy should be renounced in all Germany, and Vergerio added: "in all Italy also; everybody would say Amen."78 Thereafter Moritz marched into the Tyrol, took the fortress of Ehrenberg, and but for a mutiny among his forces would have overtaken the emperor in his flight from Innspruck to Villach. In the treaty of Passau (August 1552), the French were not included, and when Charles refused to consider the settlement final until it had been confirmed by a diet, he was hoping to be able by then to make better terms. But he failed to retake Metz, defended by the duke of Guise throughout November and December 1552, and in March it was common talk at Chiavenna that Moritz would invade Italy with an immense army, encountering a popular rising in his favor, especially if he took with him a few Italian preachers. Vergerio would gladly be included in the number. And these events inspired the muse of Francesco Negri.79 The death of Moritz at Sievershausen in July 1553 dashed these hopes and was of no advantage to Charles V, who learned apparently of relations between " Vide supra, p. 161. "Hubert, op. cit., pp. 127-31. "Letter of April 8, 1552 (ibid., 116). "Letters of Mar. 10 and Mar. IS, 15S3 (ibid., 117).
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the Saxon and Ferdinand which drained him of the last drop of resistance. Interest focussed more and more on the Italian theatre of the war where Siena had been occupied by the French during the negotiations which led to the peace of Passau; where Corsica was taken in the weeks following the battle of Sievershausen; and where Naples was the final objective. The enterprise regarding Siena, the native city of Lelio Sozini, was undertaken in the interests of the juorusc'tti, the Italian political exiles, for whom the occupation of Siena was a step to the recovery of Florence from the Spaniards. The revolt of Siena from Cosimo de' Medici was due to the agents of the Cardinal de Toumon, director of the French secret service in Italy, head of a remarkable organization which awaits study through the medium of his papers, according to Romier. The agents of Henry I I were appointed, with that same disregard for religious opinions as had characterized his father, from a class of clerics and other semi-heretics or cultivated freethinkers, "diplomats of the second class," who can adapt themselves to any situation, "soldiers in the war of intrigue," for whose services a bishopric will later be the reward. They were not asked what they believed, and moreover they knew how to conceal their thoughts. But the extraordinarily swift diffusion of heresy is to be accounted for by reflecting that the very ones who did not defend it in the light of day would propagate it in secret. The juorusciti were conspicuous among these diplomatic irregulars. Such was Vincenzo Maggi, and such was virtually Vergerio, though as a class the Florentines (who had perhaps suffered most at the hands of the Spaniards) were the most influential and the most numerous. When Henry I I became king, the chief centres of Florentines were Lyons, Venice, Rome, and Ancona. At Lyons was the centre from which this Greater Florence was directed; it was the point of departure of the routes for Italy. To reach the papal states it was necessary after 1551, on account of the war in Piedmont, to traverse the Swiss Cantons and Rhetia into Venetian territory. The sea route, although much shorter, was not used until 1553, in which year the French conquered Corsica. When Henry I I wanted to spread news true or false in Italy, he transmitted it to the governor of Lyons who disseminated it in the peninsula. Of assistance was also the international syndicate of Italian and German bankers, the jondamento del danaro.80
" Romier, op. cit., pp. 499 ff.
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On July 26, 1552, the Spanish troops were driven out of Siena by a popular rising through which there rang cries of "Francia! Francia!" The city accepted a French army of occupation, and Henry II became "protector" of Siena, entrusting his interests there to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who secured the recall of the papal legate Mignanelli and thwarted papal efforts to secure the withdrawal of the French. Pope Julius, as a Sienese on his mother's side, would have been a very acceptable "protector" to many, but the cardinal was the friend of the Cardinal de Tournon. To the fuorusciti he was an object of suspicion, for he was known to be on good terms with Cosimo de' Medici; they accordingly could not trust the duke of Guise (husband of the cardinal's niece) and turned to his rival, the constable de Montmorency. Montmorency, who did not really want war, despatched Strozzi, chief of the Florentine exiles, to Italy in the spring of 1553, thinking to abandon Siena after obtaining guarantees that her liberty would be respected. Pope Julius assembled a peace conference at Viterbo in the summer of 1553, but his efforts shattered against the rising hopes of the Sienese, cheered by the raising of the siege of Montalcino by the Spaniards; against the clamor of the fuorusciti, whose banks at Lyons and Venice were offering credit to Henry for a war against Cosimo; against the rising strength of the war party at the French court during the illness of the constable. Henry tried to tempt Julius into an offensive alliance by the offer of a wealthy marriage for his nephew Fabiano del Monte. Ippolito was employing the conference, meantime, to negotiate the marriage of his nephew Alfonso, brother of the duchess of Guise, with Lucrezia de' Medici; and so evident was his intention to play into the hands of Cosimo that appeals of the Sienese to the pope to deliver them from the cardinal, and of the French military leaders at Siena to Henry, would have secured his recall except for the new ascendancy of the Guises in France during the illness of Montmorency. But when the Guises stultified themselves by the occupation of Corsica (August-September 1553), which was to them a step toward the conquest of Naples, but which alienated Genoa and gave added offense to Cosimo, Henry sent Strozzi to relieve the cardinal at Siena and the latter yielded his place, though not without a struggle. By that time, the war was an accomplished fact; Cosimo's troops were invading Sienese territory and threatening the city. But the war was now for France a war of offense against the duke of Florence in the interests of thè Florentine fuorusciti, whose ardent advocate was queen Catherine. Strozzi, however, in the invasion of Florentine territory, suffered a fright-
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ful defeat at Marciano on August 2, 1554 and the siege of Siena began, Blaise de Montluc succeeding Strozzi. It ended when on April 17, 1555 was signed the capitulation, and the Spanish reoccupied the city. Cardinal Ippolito profited by the defeat of an enterprise never favored by his French connections, who had their eyes fixed on Naples. He went back to Rome, "protector" as before of the interests of France in Italy. To Rome moreover he now caused his friend the Cardinal de Toumon to be sent. Ippolito entered Rome on December 7, 1554. Even before the siege of Siena opened, Julius I I I had sent Cardinal Pole as legate to Brussels and Fontainebleau to try and reconcile the rivals. He encountered a deadlock, due in part to the identification of the pope with the party of Spain since the betrothal of his nephew to Lucrezia de' Medici, which had been announced on April 6, 1554. In December, Pole, in announcing the reconciliation of England with the Holy See on the accession of Mary Tudor, invited Henry II to resume negotiations. Now, with the siege of Siena under way, the proposal took root, and a conference of representatives of both parties with Pole as arbiter met at Marcq. Julius died on the day it was announced, March 23, 1555, and the conference failed. Siena fell in April, and the Guises were determined on a renewal of the war. Actually, it was the question of Savoy on which the negotiations foundered. Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, insisted that the differences be submitted to the council of Trent. The truce of Vaucelles (February 5, 1556) was due to the determination of the constable de Montmorency and the hurry of Charles to abdicate. Charles V, who had thought to protect Hapsburg interests in Italy by the marriage in July 1554 of his son Philip with Mary Tudor, abandoned definitely his dream of a reconstituted Holy Roman Empire in favor of an enlarged Spain. Ferdinand, mollified by the acknowledgment of his claims in Germany, had undertaken to pilot the diet of Augsburg through the months (February to September 1555) which saw the religious peace take shape. The Italian territories had been ceded to Philip on his English marriage, and Charles now turned over the Netherlands to his son a month after the peace of Augsburg. In January 1556 he gave him the throne of Spain. In September 1556, he resigned the imperial crown.
CHAPTER V I I I
T H E ITALIAN P R O T E S T AGAINST T H E E X E C U T I O N O F SERVETUS, 1553-1555 MAGGI A FUGITIVE I N T H E LEAGUES AND AGAIN I N THE F R E N C H SERVICE; C H R I S T O P H OF WÜRTTEMBERG AND THE E X I L E S
Vergerio was in Basel for the third time in July 1551, working with the French ambassador, Morelet, whom he met there, to prevent the Swiss from sending prelates to Trent, as Julius I I I had invited them to do, 1 and waiting for his friend Gribaldi, professor of law at the university of Padua, to accompany him to Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva, where he undoubtedly hoped that the influence of the jurisconsult, a subject of the republic of Bern, would be useful in furthering his plans to be installed at the Lausanne academy. He remained until the second half of September seeing through the press his first broadside against the council and translating for distribution in Italy a work of the same sort from the pen of Bullinger. 2 Returned to his Alpine village it is still the council upon which his eyes are fixed and of whose proceedings he keeps himself informed. He writes of it to Martinenghi and Sozini in February 1552; he indites bulletins in regard to it, which are copied by his nephews and sent by them according to their uncle's instructions to churches far and wide. His famulus Menucrino Venturino carries them into Venice, where he finds Y'incenzo Maggi whose relations with Vergerio probably commenced in 1540, and who now comes into suspicion. The course of Maggi's religious development is but dimly perceived. We know of Lutheran agitation in Brescia as early as 1527, as has been said, 3 and we are probably to recognize our Vincenzo Maggi in the friend of Francesco Negri. On some one of his journeys through the cantons, he had made the acquaintance of Bullinger at Zürich and had received from him a copy of his De scripturae sanctae authoritate (printed at Zürich in 1538). 4 We can suppose him drawn into such fields 'Through a legate who was present at the diet of Baden in June 1551. Bullinger, Diarium, p. 39. ' Bullinger, op. cit., pp. 39-40. * Vide supra, p. 76. 4 C f . QSG X X I I I , no. 211, 2.
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by the humanist's interest; for, Benedictine as he was apparently, he cannot have been untrained in the classics, and the bad Latinity of some of his late letters is excusable in one who must have spent a period of years mastering eastern vernaculars. Moreover, the circle in which he moved was not untouched by the reform. Pellicier had, long after his withdrawal to his diocese of Montpellier, to undergo trial for heresy before the parlement of Toulouse, though he was acquitted. Edmund Harvel, the English ambassador at Venice, and protector of Altieri, made his house an asylum for heretics. Morvilliers' intervention in favor of Vergerio must be regarded in another light, indeed, than sympathy with the reform. Lastly, Maggi had doubtless learned in the east that Christian charity was not practised best in the lands that obeyed Rome; had had exceptional opportunities to know the Jews if he lived in Saloniki; and may possibly already have come into contact with the radicals who, upon the dispersion of the "collegia Vicentina" fled to Saloniki and Damascus. 5 But it was his connection with the religio-political activities of Vergerio which first compromised him. That they had already begun when, in the summer of 1548, he left his bride at Santa Fosca and went away to France, is quite likely. Doubtless the ex-monk, whom the French reformers now claim as "one of ours," lived very unobtrusively during the years when pope and nuncio were striving to make more rigorous the procedure of the Inquisition in the territories of the Republic. He is dimly seen in company of the Florentine monk Michelangelo Florio, "who had been a prisoner in Torre di Nona, and came to the house of Maggi during about two years, after which he went away to England and preached in the Italian language to the Italians." 6 Thither came also in 1552 (and doubtless in other years) Venturino, the servant of Vergerio, laden with books of the ex-bishop for distribution. 7 These Maggi read and passed on. He was in correspondence with England, moreover, and "pretended to be an ambassador." In his library were the Beneficio di Christo, the Charon (of Valdes), and the New Testament (of Bruccioli), besides many other books on the new ° Andreae Wissowatii Narratio compendiosa . . . (in Sand, Bibliotheca AntitriniFreistadt. 1574, p. 210) and supra, p. 171. It would be futile to question on chronological grounds such acquaintance, the subject being beset with so many difficulties. 'Concerning Michelangelo Florio, cf. injra, pp. 343-44. He is best known as the father of the translator of Montaigne. ' C f . Vergerio to Bullinger, Bern, Aug. 6, 1551 (QSG XXIII, 158), in which he requests Bullinger to give his servant books to be distributed in Italy.
tariorium.
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index compiled by Delia Casa. Only his wife Lucrezia went to Mass, and she only out of regard for the neighbors; neither of them kept Lent, nor abstained from meat on Fridays. 8 With the Maggi couple was closely associated, during their stay in Venice, the physician Girolamo Donzelino of Brescia, who had been, in 1546 or 1547, in the house of the English ambassador Harvel. 9 He had apparently been suspect even at Rome, where he was in the service of Cardinal Durante before he came to Venice,10 and had left the eternal city on that account. He had been declared by Manelfi to have the reputation of a Lutheran. He had, said the informer, discussed the matter with the physician at his house at Padua and had seen Lutheran books in his study. But it seems not to have been their association with Donzelino which occasioned the proceedings against Maggi and his wife, for the physician was not involved with the Inquisition until six months after the beginning of Maggi's trial. 11 On April 19, 1553, the auditor reported a denunciation of "Vincentius de Madiis," which had been handed him by a third person who wished to remain unknown. On the same day was examined Catarina Colbertalda, who had been thirty-nine months employed at the Maggi house as a domestic. It is from her testimony that we can formulate what little is possible about the obscure years since his return from the east. The secret examination of witnesses dragged on till Maggi got wind of it, for the formal summons before the tribunal followed only in July, and already in June he had taken the familiar route into the Leagues. Galicius, pastor of St. Regula's at Chur, as the Brescian left for the Cantons on some mission, describes him as "lately obliged to flee from the pressure of the Inquisition in Venice."12 Lucrezia was summoned when her husband's flight became known, and examined as to the circumstances of their marriage. She denied knowledge of having married a monk; her husband was a "servitor del re di franza." Nothing was asked her about confession and ' P S O Busta 11, Madio. Apr. 19, 1553. " . . . "in casa del Imbassador vechio d'Inghilterra che morsi." Ibid., Donzelino. Aug. 23, 1553. Harvel died in 1550. Donzelino had been, in 1541, professor of medicine at Padua (Facciolati, Fasti, III, 367). He was one of those denounced by Basalu (supra, p. 172). 10 Durante de' Duranti, cardinal-bishop of Brescia 1551 till his death on Dec. 24, 1558. u Donzellini Hieronymi Epistolae, etc. (Venezia 1574) is in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples. " T h e letter was to Bullinger (QSG X X I I I , 211).
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fasts, and of heresy there is not a word in the report that has come down to us. But on being dismissed with a charge to appear next day to answer further questions, she doubtless divined the next step, for she disregarded the admonition. The presbyter Alvise Scorticha went, some days later, to seek her at the address she had given (the house of her friend Isabetta, wife of Alvise Bembo, in the rio Marin); but was told that, the day after her hearing before the Holy Office, she had gone from her friend's to stay with her sister at San Vio. She probably joined her husband, though her presence with him is not established before 1SS5. On July 27,15S3, it was proclaimed on the stairway of San Marco and on the Rialto that "Vincenzo de Masi bressano" and "Lugretia sua moglier" must within three days appear in person at the tribunal, about three o'clock, when it will come together to purge them of the heresies for which they have been examined and tried, and to conform to whatsoever shall be required of them. The term expired without their having appeared, and on August 1, the tribunal recorded its decision to proceed against them as contumacious, disobedient, and obstinate heretics.13 Donzelino, whose case was now taken up, stole away in a gondola at midnight of the day on which he was summoned,14 and did not respond when directed (September 30, 1553) to present himself within nine days before the Holy Office in the chapel of St. Theodore, next to San Marco. On October 7, the record notes that Alvise Scorticha has conveyed the citation to the house of the accused, where he read it to the servant girl and then left it. And on November 28, the citation, as in the case of Maggi and his wife, was proclaimed on the stairs of San Marco and on the Rialto. Without doubt Donzelino, as well as Vincenzo and Lucretia, were safe in the leagues. Donzelino, indeed, who was certainly with Vergerio at Tübingen next year, may have been the traveling companion for whom Vergerio was waiting at Chur that autumn. The three fugitives may have heard from Pietro Perna of Basel, who had been twice at the house of Donzelino, according to the maid-servant, and who came back just then from a trip to Venice, of their condemnation in contumaciam in accordance with the decree of 1547. On January 9, 1554, the said citations" having been disregarded . . . and Hieronymus Donzelinus, Vincenzo di Masi and his wife not having presented themselves, they have been declared contumacious and stained with heresy, and as such have been "PSO Busta 11, Madio. Aug. 1, 1553. "Of July 27 and Nov. 28.
u
Ibid., Donzelinus. Aug. 17, 1553.
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banished from this city of Venice and its district and from all the other lands and places of the illustrious signory on land and sea . . . under penalty, if they disregard the ban and are taken, together or separately, and given into the power of our illustrious signory, of being shut up in one of the prisons of this land, to be named by the said tribunal, until such time as their case shall be expedited by the same tribunal. . . and those who shall take them, together or separately, are to have 300 pistoles for each one of them from their own property, if money for the rewards shall not be found elsewhere." At the time when Maggi became domiciled at Chur, Vergerio had been for perhaps a month at Tübingen. It is no longer necessary to speculate with Sixt17 and the editors of Vergerio's correspondence as to how the ex-bishop and Duke Christoph of Württemberg became acquainted, for Boniface Amerbach was evidently the means. Christoph of Württemberg doubtless came to know the jurist when as statthalter of Miimpelgard he visited Basel. There his first stay was from June 20 to June 22, 1546, and finds extended mention in the gossipy pages of parson Gast.18 About Christmas time of that year, in serious danger on account of his negotiations with the dauphin in behalf of the Schmalkaldners, he came again; and here, on January IS, 1S47, his daughter Hedwig (later landgravine of Hesse) was born, the burgomaster Theodor Brand and the countess of Rappoltstein being her godparents. Soon afterward began his correspondence with Amerbach regarding the suit between his father Duke Ulrich and King Ferdinand. 19 Consulted by Ulrich, Amerbach and the juristic faculty of Basel made answer together; and when Duke Ulrich sent Dr. Nikolaus Meyer to Italy to get the opinion of Alciati and Mariano Sozini, Amerbach wrote the request. On November 6, 1SS0, when Ulrich lay dying at Tübingen, Christoph, journeying thither, wrote posthaste to Amerbach to come to him and confer with other advisers regarding the suit, which had now come before the diet of Augsburg. But the jurist begged to be excused from the journey on the score of ill health.20 Boniface in fact had given up for this reason the active labor of teaching when in 1551 he entered upon his fourth term as rector of the university. But "PSO Busta 11, Madio. Jan. 9, 1554. " C. H. Sixt, Peter Paul Vergerius. Braunschweig 1853. " Tagebuch (ed. Buxtorf-Falkeisen). For Christoph, vide the life by Kugler and also Ernst, Briefwechsel des Herzogs Christoph. " Vide supra, p. 104. "Amerbach to Christoph, Basel, Nov. 11, 1550 (Ernst, I, 14, note 1). He says in his exordium for the year 1551-52 in Matr. Univ. Bas. . . . "deposito iam pridem publico, propter infirmiorem oculorum et capitis valetudinem docendi minere, inter emeritos connumeran cogitans. . . ."
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Christoph continued to seek his advice.21 On the death of Johann Sichard, he consulted Amerbach about filling the vacant chair with a scholar of repute, devoted to the gospel and adapted not only by knowledge of languages, especially Greek, but by experience on the platform, for the place. 22 The successful candidate was that Charles Dumoulin who, after fleeing from France to profess the evangelical faith after the reconciliation of Henry II and Julius III, returned there eventually to die reconciled with Rome. 23 In IS54, at the instance of Duke Christoph, Amerbach was consulted by the chancellor Schroteisen in regard to the assembling of a legal library for the university of Tübingen. Two hundred gulden had been placed at his disposal; and when Schroteisen said it would cost not 200, but at least 1,000, Christoph told him to go ahead if it took 3,000. Amerbach was evidently the means of finding a new place with the generous Christoph for Vergerio. It seems possible that already in the autumn of 1550, when Vergerio, lingering at Zürich till the plague should abate in Rhetia and allow him to return to his Alpine pastorate, wrote Amerbach of being detained partly by public affairs, negotiations were afoot for his installation with the duke of Württemberg; and that the later engagement by Christoph, who succeeded his father that November, was a product of Vergerio's visits to Basel. He had evidently been consulted, in any case, about the lawsuit between Ulrich and Ferdinand, for he writes Amerbach from Vicosoprano on September 18, 1550 to acknowledge the receipt of his letters "together with those of the duke, as well as certain papers." 24 At Basel in July 1551, he was again negotiating with "certain princes" through Amerbach, and while one thinks of Christoph and of his uncle Georg of Mümpelgard, who was also well" Thus he requests "Ambrosius" Amerbach on July 15, 1551, to examine the marriage-contract made by his father, which he dispatches to him; and after calling attention to it again on October 9, thanks Amerbach on Mar. 3, 1552, for acceding to the request. This correspondence, printed not so well as to render checking superfluous, is available in Bahnmeier, Sophronizon, VII, 1, pp. 5-15. . . einen gelehrten beruembten, der auch dem Evangelio anhengig Doctom, welcher neben dem Recht der Linguis, und sonderlich graecae kundig, sonnst der Las-Ubung und practick halber zu einem solchem Primarien Cathedranten taugenlich. . . ." Christoph to "Ambrosius" Amerbach, Sept. 14, 1552. For Dumoulin, vide supra, pp. 248-49, 252. " A letter from Amerbach to "Molinaeus" is dated Sept. 25, 1555. For his imprisonment by Georg of Mümpelgard, vide Burckhardt-Biedermann, op. cit., p. 124. " G n , 31, 371.
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known at Basel,25 it must not be forgotten that Vergerio was in correspondence with England at this point, and that Henry II of France might easily be one of those referred to. He sought interviews with them, at any rate, and from Bern on August 6, 1551, thanks Amerbach for the letters written to "those princes," who will certainly be better disposed toward his cause when it is set forth by him to them.26 Not till two years later was Vergerio granted an interview with the duke of Württemberg. On January 8,1553, a messenger of Christoph arrived in Chur, but could go no further, not daring to cross the snowy mountain passes. In April, Vergerio left Rhetia, arriving in Tübingen at the beginning of May. But he still speaks of these mountain regions as "locum ministerii mei," and his services were for the present only required to translate into Italian the Württemberg confession which had been submitted to the Council and the catechism of Brenz and distribute them in Italy. On October 10, however, Christoph offered him the choice of a residence in the dukedom, proposing Tübingen on account of the association with scholars there. On November 16, 1553, the contract was drawn up by which the exbishop became the duke's consiliarius. Through the commendations of Amerbach also a successor was found for Dumoulin, when the latter was imprisoned by Georg of Mümpelgard; it was that Matteo Gribaldi Mopha who had exchanged the laurels won in the lecture rooms of several French universities for a chair of jurisprudence at Padua, which he was in 1555 compelled to abandon by the pressure brought to bear on the Venetian government by Rome. Vergerio indeed got the credit for the installation of the Piedmontese at Tübingen and laid himself open to suspicion much as he had already done on account of his championship of Camillo Renato on an earlier occasion. Boniface Amerbach seems to have met Gribaldi first during the summer vacation of 1552, when the latter was at Amerbach's house at Basel to discuss the choice of an Italian university for Basil, then at Tübingen. The year before, Vergerio had recommended Padua, "for Pavia and Bologna are disturbed by the soldiers," and promised that Gribaldi would receive the young man with open arms. In August 1553, when Gribaldi paid his next visit to Basel, Amerbach was waiting anxiously to learn whether his contract had been renewed at Padua, and " Gast relates that when he fled to Basel on account of the Interim he was caught by the watch in a love-intrigue and reprimanded sharply in spite of his protest that "es geziemt sich nicht einen Fürsten dergestalt zu überfallen." " G II, 31, 375.
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we may infer that he was already contemplating a change. But in reporting his interview with the signory at Venice, to whom he was summoned on his return, in order to receive his new appointment, Gribaldi says that they received him with a kindness and warmth not easy to express. Indeed he now brought his wife and children—four daughters and three sons—from Turin, obtaining an imperial safe-conduct through the Milanese. He ceased moreover to keep a pension for students. Through Basil, who lived for a time in his house, the elder Amerbach was kept informed of the growing opposition to Gribaldi, and doubtless brought him to the attention of Christoph as another sufferer for conscience's sake. Gribaldi, however, if already suspect by Rome, was suspect also at Geneva before ever he had terminated his contract at Padua to enter upon another at Tubingen. The fall when he accepted the post of mentor to young Basil Amerbach and conducted him to Padua was also the fall when he visited Geneva just at the time of the trial of Servetus. T H E Q U E S T I O N OF TOLERATION RAISED ON T H E E V E OF T H E EXECUTION OF SERVETUS—GRATAROLI T H E
PHYSICIAN
There were important additions to the number of Italian immigrants into the Leagues and the Cantons when, papal protests having spurred the tribunals of the Holy Office into activity after the flight of Vergerio, many were in danger whom a great name had hitherto protected. The jurist Gribaldi indeed, though plainly indicated in the transactions between Julius III and the Venetian envoy at Rome, was so firmly entrenched behind his popularity at Padua that he could permit the account of the death of Spiera to be published at Basel in that same year, 1550. But Soranzo was arrested; Martinenghi and Zanchi fled from Milan, Galeazzo Caraccioli and Isabella Brisena from Naples. The most significant addition to the ranks of the exiles at Basel was Guglielmo Grataroli the physician," a perplexing figure because he gives the lie to his early unequivocal declaration in favor of non-interference by his later partisanship for Calvin, the apostle of interference; he joins with a medical skill that places him among the moderns a taste for speculation about the Apocalypse; he wrote amusingly about his travels and practically about his profession. Grataroli came of a family originally " T h e only Hfe of Grataroli is that of Gallinoli, Della vita, degli studi, e degli scritti di Guglielmo Grataroli filosofo e medico (Bergamo 1785).
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of San Giovanni Bianco in the Val Brembana, eighteen miles from Bergamo, which had been transferred in the fifteenth century to Bergamo by Patina de' Grataroli, who acquired a dwelling in the neighborhood of San Giovanni dell' Ospedale. The family residence was, presumably at the time Guglielmo was bom, the present palazzo Maffeis, seat of the circolo artistico. This building, whose architect was Pietro Isabello, author of the church of the Santo Spirito at Bergamo, was formerly the palazzo Grataroli and bears the date 1515, the year before the birth of Guglielmo.28 Of the three sons of Patina de' Grataroli, according to Gallizioli, the descendants of Angelo, the eldest, established themselves at Venice in the sixteenth century and exercised the profession of causidico. Presently they were decorated with the rank of royal secretaries. The Bergamasc family descended from Jacopo, the second son. Doctor Pellegrino Grataroli, who died in 1528 during an attack of the plague at Bergamo, where he was trying to save the lives of his fellow citizens, was inscribed with his children among the citizens of Bergamo on November 12, 1507. To him was bom on May 16, 1516, our Guglielmo. As the father was a physician, the son felt himself drawn into the field of practical science. Of "polite" letter he learned rhetoric with Giovita Rapicio29 and made considerable progress in Greek, in which one of his fellow pupils was Girolamo Zanchi. At hardly more than eighteen, he was sent to the university of Padua. It was but a few years since the death of Pomponazzi, who "denied immortality as a philosopher while he believed it as a Christian," and supported the former thesis in his De immortalitate animae of 1516. Piermartire Vermigli, already known for his Lenten sermons, had been for eight years (1519-1527) regular canon of San Giovanni in Verdara at Padua, and Vergerio, who in 1534 had just taken orders, had been judge of the criminal court at Padua and a professor in the university, of which he was an alumnus, from 1522. Grataroli apparently received his doctorate in 1537 and was appointed to lecture publicly on the third book of Avicenna.80 He first exercised his profession at Milan, according to his own statement in the De vini natura, K
Fomoni, "Il vecchio palazzo dei Grataroli in Bergamo" (in Arte italiana, decorativa e industriale, XIV, S3-S6, 1905). " Gallizioli here refers to Donato Calvi Effemeride sacra [e] profana di Bergamo (Milan 1676) II, 328, and to the Diario del Beretto sotto li 19 giugno anno 1522. Facciolati, Fasti, II, 380. "MDXXXVII. Guilielmus Gratarolus Bergomas, de quo multa Donatus de Calvis in Scena litter. P.I., p. 307." Calvis, Scena litteraria was published at Bergamo in 1664.
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from which we learn also that he knew Giulio of Milan at Bologna;* 1 but on June 16, 1539, at any rate, he is found inscribed in the college of physicians of his native city. If it was Vermigli, as is said, who turned the thought of the young Aristotelian in the direction of reform in the church, it could not have been through personal evangelism, since Grataroli was but eleven years old—much less a university student—when the Augustinian left Padua; and it is hard to see where they could have met later, travelled as Grataroli later became. T h e influence of the school of Pomponazzi comes rather into consideration; the spirit of Pomponazzi lived on at Padua and was a real factor in the religious life there even after he left. 32 But there is nothing to show just what were the heterodox opinions professed by Grataroli or when his orthodoxy first wavered. We only know that on February 4, 1544, he was obliged, in presence of the inquisitor of Milan, to abjure "certain articles concerning which he was held suspect." 33 It may be that he had been reading forbidden books, the crusade against which at Milian is evidenced in the preceding year. 34 It is likely to have aroused more interest in the works of the reformers, rather than to have discouraged such interest. Certainly he was guilty of unguarded utterances, for when he moved from the diocese of Milan into that of Bergamo, the bishop of the latter city, Vettore Soranzo, admonished him to have a heed to his tongue." In consequence of the decree of 1548, the podestà Pietro Sanuto of Bergamo had to bestir himself. To him and to the capitano Gianfrancesco Memmo, the doge Francesco Donato wrote on November 29, 1548, expressing regret that in their city were heretics who not only did not live in Catholic fashion, but publicly disputed and tried to infect others with their Lutheran opinions. He ordered the rectors to cooperate with the bishop and the inquisitor in milking an investigation and forwarding the result, when complete, to the head of the Ten, who would advise them of their next step. 86 In 1551, the trials held in obedience to this mandate are still going on; in December the doge " The references are to chap. 7 and 28. K Cf. Christie, £tienne Dolet, pp. 20 S. " PSO Busta 10. Grataroli, Jan. 23, 1551. u Vide supra, p. 49 and note 65. " P S O Busta 10. Gratarolus, Jan. 23, 1551. " Battistella in the Archivio 151.
storico
lombardo,
third ser., I l l , 116 ff. Cf. supra, p.
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writes to the podestà Contarmi and to the capitano Zaccaria Morosini, charging them to forward to Venice the minutes of the examinations which take place, according to the instructions given. The records of the trial of the physician Guglielmo Grataroli are preserved in the Venetian state archives and in the Joppi collection at Udine. It went the way of many another. Twice summoned by placards posted at his house and on the doors of the cathedral of San Vincenzo, to appear at the episcopal palace within the limits of a period which was set, and give reason why he should not be prosecuted for the crime of heresy in general and in particular, 37 and for relapse after his abjuration at Milan, Grataroli was not to be found. Two extensions of the term were granted at the instance of his brother-in-law Bernardo de Averaria. They brought not the accused himself, but a letter written from Tirano in the Valtelline on November 27, ISSO. "He had received the copy of the citation sent him, with the heretical articles of which he was accused, and he declined to offer any defense. He did not believe in the power of the Roman church or of the supreme pontiff. He trusted to a future general council and to the tribunal of Christ." His case seemed to be aggravated by the arguments he adduced that "heretics ought not to be burned nor punished, but tolerated by the church"—a standpoint he was loud in abandoning when he found himself on the orthodox side in later years. Yet a third extension of twenty days was granted; but the Congregation, after a session in which the whole case was reviewed, resolved that, if he did not present himself this time, or show a change of heart, they would proceed to the sentence. At the end of the twenty days then, the board met and drew up the condemnation in contumaciam, which sums up the case and proceeds to declare Grataroli an obstinate and relapsed heretic, handed over to the secular arm. His property was declared forfeit, and a part appropriated by the Holy Office for the expenses of the trial. The rest was turned into the treasury of San Marco, on January 23, ISSI. 88 The sentence was confirmed by the civil power on July 3:
The counts alleged against him comprise denial of dogma, neglect of the cult, and reading of prohibited books. "PSO Busta 10. Gratarolus, Jan. 23, 1551. An undated and unsigned note which is filed with the record seems to be the request of his intercessors, who bad secured three postponements of the case, and says that he asks six or eight months, ten of the twenty days given him being all that remain. When he sent the report of the case to the signory at Venice, on January 27, 1551, the inquisitor Adelasio warned them that opposition had been made to the sentence on the score that the testimony had been heard without the presence of all
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4 , " and be was banished from Bergamo and its district and for fifteen miles beyond the confines, on penalty of decapitation and burning of his body, if taken within these bounds. A reward of 500 lire is to be paid to whomsoever shall be the cause of his arrest. It was probably in 1549 that Grataroli left Italy, and it may very well be that, as in the case of Lelio Sozini, it was under no immediate pressure. There is nothing in his travelogues to indicate that the journey or journeys of which he whimsically recalls the mishaps, were anything but pleasure trips or perhaps Studienreisen.*0 But none of the Italian exiles except Vergerio—not even Curione, the hero of hairbreadth escapes—harped on their persecutions by Rome, though they never forgot them; and questioned the sincerity, as we shall see, of a reputed exile for conscience's sake, who, like Bonifacio of Oria, found irksome even the hospitality of Basel. Most of them had as much reason in the lands of Calvin and Luther as at home to say nothing about their more intimate religious convictions. Genuine humanists, they sought not to find a new definition for orthodoxy but to assert the claims of reason. How far Grataroli progressed from the position of 1550, which certainly makes him out no radical, one cannot now say. That he asserted then that heretics ought not to be burned nor punished, but tolerated by the church; that in the preface to his edition of Pomponazzi he defends him and asserts that if he had been treated with Christian charity he would have been one of the most zealous apologists of the Christian church, does not square with the nervous zeal with which he defends the treatment meted out to Servetus three years later. And the years 1550 to 1552, when he was presumably in the Valtelline, are years in which the opinions of the Sicilian Camillo, friend of Curione and championed by Vergerio, were still giving anxiety to the Rhetian pasthe deputies, and that the "agents" of Grataroli might be expected at Venice before the heads of the Ten or the doge, to "adduce a thousand lies in order to confuse the case and try to get the sentence revoked." " Battistella, op. ext., p. 119. " I n his Regimen omnium iter agentium (Basel 1561), he says that, up to the age of forty-five, he had journeyed—by land on foot, on horseback, and in vehicles —through Italy, Rhetia, Savoy and Burgundy. Among other adventures, he relates that which befell him in 1551, at the inn in Milan, where his caution in raising the sheet saved him from falling a victim to the practical joke of a stranger roommate who had strewn broken glass in his bed. With the same instinct of the raconteur, he tells of being in May 1550 in the Val Camonica in Brescian territory and of recovering, by a great show of spirit, the purse which had been taken from under his pillow while he slept (Regimen omnium iter agentium, pp. 115-17).
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tors. Vergerio himself, pillar of orthodoxy as he became, was not exempt from suspicion and adhered to Gribaldi, as will be seen, as long as he could without compromising himself. Grataroli seems to have taken the same course, and out of fear of Calvin as respectful as was that of Vergerio for Christoph. It is doubtful if either of them was shocked by rational theology, and both expressed at some time their abhorrence of barbarity. Grataroli was at Tirano in the Valtelline when he acknowledged the summons of the Holy Office at Bergamo, in November 1550. With him was his wife, Barbara Nicolai, whose dowry of 800 crowns was now confiscated,41 and his niece Elizabetta Gratarola. That he long remained there is not likely. The plague which raged in Rhetia would have called a physician over the Alps—the Valtelline was immune at this time, while Chur suffered terribly—and the unpopularity of the Italians just then, on both political and religious grounds, would have made his stay impossible in Tirano, where the popular assembly refused to allow any of them to remain. His native city continued to give anxiety to Rome; the bishop, who had been suspect five years before in the matter of justification, was now a captive at Rome. In these circumstances, we should hardly expect to find him at Milan in 1551 (as he was, according to the "Regimen") unless he also was involved, as was Vergerio, in the plan of joining the Valtelline to Lombardy under Ferrante Gonzaga.42 Grataroli came to Basel in 1552, at the same time (and most likely in company with) Martinenghi and Zanchi. At Basel they found Galeazzo Caraccioli, who had come with Calvin to plead for the French sufferers;43 he persuaded Martinenghi to go to Geneva with him instead of England. Zanchi went to Strassburg to teach at the academy there in succession to Caspar Hedio. When Grataroli came to Basel in 1552, he registered at the university,44 and after living some years apparently as a private practitioner, was given a chair in medicine. That he came primarily for the sake of the printing press is likely enough, for he was a prolific writer and a popular one. At Basel appeared in 1552 the first "Zanchi to Volteius, 1S60 (Zanchti opera, p. 390). ° Vide supra, pp. 158-59. " Vide supra, p. 159. Caraccioli never succeeded his father as marquis of Vico, and never possessed the title which the reformers loved to give him. It went, on the death of his father Colantonio I, to his own son, Colantonio II. " Matr. stud. Simon Sulzer (1552-1553). "D. Guilielmus Gratarolus Bergamensis medicus . . . 6 B."
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work attributed to his pen, the Prognostica naturalia, a cyclopedia of natural science in which he shows himself an acute observer of earth, sea, and sky. He wrote on the warm springs of Rhetia (ancient Rhetia, for the region was Bergamasc territory in his time). 45 He dedicated to Edward VI of England in 1553 his book on strengthening the memory and determining character. 46 And in 1554, Grataroli edited the De incantationibus of Pomponazzi.47 But the new residence was to mark more than his rise to prominence as an author. It was on his arrival at Basel, he tells us, that he was given a copy of the De erroribus trinitatis of Servetus, together with the two dialogues on the Trinity. The donor was Girolamo Massario of Vicenza, a professional colleague of his own. Though he protested, eight years later, that he had not solicited them, and was very unwilling to receive them, it is hard to see how suspected books could have been forced on him unless the giver was pretty sure of not being compromised. Two years or more later, when Grataroli was trying quite in the Vergerian manner and with the same shrinking from a fate like that of Servetus, to clear his skirts in the matter of Antitrinitarian leanings, he did not forget to warn Bullinger to interrogate the Italian physician Massario, then at doctor Gesner's, "who," he added, mindful that he was writing of a friend and compatriot, "is not bad in other respects." The mention of the native city of Massario suggests at once the famous centre of radical theology in northern Italy. When he came to the Cantons, he had brought a letter to Bullinger from Vergerio, with whom he must have enlisted in the war against pope and council, since he had already sent Bullinger a pamphlet directed against them. 48 Massario may have been, as Gerdesius thought, the "Marrinus" to whom ** De thermis rheticis agri bergomatis (in J u n t a : De balneis omnia qui ex slant apud Graecos, Latinos, et Arabos . . . 1553). ** De memoria augenda, reparanda et conservanda, de praedictione morum naturaque hominum. . . . The second edition was dedicated to Maximilian, king of Bohemia, in 1554. The British Museum has the edition of Lyons 1555, as well as English and French translations. " T h e De incantationibus of Pomponazzi was composed in 1520 and is better described, says Webb (Studies in the history oj natural theology, 330) by its longer title, De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis. It combats the explanation of miraculous cures and other phenomena as the work of spiritual beings. " T h e letter of recommendation, Vicosoprano, April 30, 1551, is in QSG X X I I I , 151, 2. The reference to the pamphlet in a letter from Vergerio to Bullinger, ibid., 144, and dated Vicosoprano, Feb. 13, 1551.
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Servetus wrote regarding the publication of the Restitutio Christianismi, in 1552, but Marrinus suggests rather Martinus (i.e. Borrhaus), to whom Servetus did indeed write about the publication of a book.49 He was, at any rate, the author of Eusebius captivus, sive modus procedendi in curia romana contra Lutheranos per Hieronymum Marium (Basel 1553); is recorded as a beneficiary of Doctor Amerbach in 1551 and 1553; 60 was at Strassburg in 1554, when Vergerio suspected him of sympathy with Servetus; 51 and was, in 1561, sending heretical books to Vicenza according to the nuncio Delfino, whom he visited with Count Thiene at Strassburg. To the public, however, Grataroli was best known for his cure of Wolfhart (Lycosthenes), the nephew of Pellikan, "who for twelve days was entirely dumb and quite paralyzed on one side,"52 and pleasant surveillance over his friends is suggested by a little note of November 18, 1554, to Boniface Amerbach, accompanying a gift of fennel to be eaten after supper until spring, "for it is better for the eyes and the head and the stomach than coriander or the like." Much later, when the gouty ex-diplomat Maggi pleads with Amerbach for three apples, "with which to call back my appetite, if I can, from the dead," he begs his friend not to let Doctor Grataroli know of the gift. 53 D E A T H OF SERVETUS AND THE REACTION TO IT.
On October 27, 1553, the Aragonese Michael Servetus, of whom the reformers had probably never lost sight since his early work—he was but twenty-two at the time—on the errors of the Trinity had marked him as undermining traditional Christianity, was burned alive at Geneva. The immediate occasion for his apprehension and condemnation was his Restitutio Christianismi, written as a refutation of Calvin's "Institutio" and a work of wider scope than his earlier one. The annotations in his own hand on a copy of the "Institutio," which he sent to Calvin at Geneva, enabled the Inquisition at Vienne, where he was practising medicine, to penetrate the disguise of the assumed name under which he " Gerdesius, "Specimen," 296. Cf. OC VIII, 835 and Buisson, Sebastien Castellion, II. 11.
"Cod. Bas. C VII. Uszug Blatt 17-18. " D e Porta, •Grataroli Grataroli sent, " Cod. Bas.
op. cU., I, part 2, 159. to Bullinger, Jan. 5, 1554 (Cod. Tur. E II 336, 60). To Massario, soon afterward, a copy of Calvin's defense. G II, 31: 31 and 429.
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was living, and to pronounce his condemnation. His fate overtook him however at Geneva, whither he came with strange imprudence on his way to Naples. There in a Spanish ambiente he thought perhaps to find disciples as well as compatriots.54 The tragedy on the hill of Champel was a rallying-cry for the Italians in exile, whose opposition to creed, nourished in the freedom of Rhetia, had first taken shape when a standard of dogma was set up for the Swiss reformed in the Consensus Tigurinus. The Swiss churches, though they condemned the teaching of Servetus, were palpably unwilling to make the treatment of him by Calvin the substructure of a whole theory of capital punishment for heretics, to divide against itself the reformed church and to compromise it in the regard of the wavering. Bullinger says expressly that it is Servetus the blasphemer and not Servetus the heretic who is to be punished, but does not show how the two are to be distinguished in the infliction of a penalty. The question can be answered there only from a knowledge of the heart and mind of Bullinger. At Bern, Musculus regretted that the condemnation was for heresy and not for blasphemy, and that offense was thus given to those who think heresy not punishable by death.5® Among such, he presumably would include himself if he were bold enough to say so. Nikolaus Zurkinden gave Calvin clearly to understand, when the latter was impelled by the growing disapproved to defend his course, that he might have found better employment for his pen than justifying the punishment of heretics.56 "Sanguinary punishments have hitherto produced on the partisans of heresies and extravagant speculations the effects of a stimulant," he sagely remarks. And he adds that the very wise town council of Basel knows this, and has never pronounced capital punishment for religious causes. He himself would make use but rarely of the sword—he says nothing of fire—in the repression of the enemies of the faith. To appreciate the question raised by the execution of Servetus, it must be remembered that in the year 1553, feeling ran high not merely because of the activity of the Roman and the French Inquisitions, but because " F o r Servetus and his partisans, vide supra, pp. 169 ff. " Roget, Histoire du peuple de Genève, IV, 118, 120. The author notes, without giving the authority: "This same Musculus wrote elsewhere: 'I do not hesitate to range myself on the side of those whom it displeases that one should kill men when it would be proper to kill their errors.' " "Roget, IV, 118-19. For Zurkinden, the friend of Castellio, vide Bonnet in the BuU. Fr. Prot. for 1876—von Ganzenbach in the Berner Taschenbuch for 1877— Bàhler in the Jahrbuck fur Schweizerische Geschichle for 1911 and 1912.
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on July 6, 1553 Mary Tudor succeeded to the English throne, in the contest for which she was successful over Lady Jane Grey. Ended was the brief alliance of the Anglican church with the continental Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation in prospect was all the more sinister in view of the rumors of the marriage of the queen with Philip of Spain, only legitimate son of Charles V. Back to Europe came the emigrants of five years before, except for Butzer, who had died in 1551. Vermigli, Ochino, Laski, Florio, Tremellio, Utenhove, returned and once more sought occupation as pastors or teachers. With them came a flock of new exiles, the Englishmen who could not reconcile themselves with the new régime, John Foxe, Richard Cox, John Knox, and others. The Marian exiles were repulsed in the north German cities because of their leaning toward Calvin's doctrine of the Eucharist, and it was again the Swiss cities and their neighbors at Strassburg and Frankfurt and Geneva which had to play host as in the first influx from Italy. Tremellio, for example, who had been reader in Hebrew at the university of Cambridge, visited Strassburg, Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva before, at the end of 1555, he became tutor to the children of the Countpalatine Wolfgang of Zweibriicken. Vermigli went to Strassburg, to resume his old position as professor of theology and to find that he had opposition to confront because of his abandonment of the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist and his refusal to subscribe to the Wittenberg Concord. At Frankfurt, where the English exiles aspired to be the directors of the colonies abroad, an acrimonious contest arose between the supporters of Calvin and those of the prayerbook of Edward VI. John Foxe, whose Acta et monumenta was placed on sale just then at the great book fair, tried to get Vermigli to act as arbiter; and, failing, removed to Basel in November 1555. Laski, when the Calvinistic forces had been routed by Richard Cox, sought asylum for them in Basel, and wrote Boniface Amerbach in terms which left the real reason for their persecution a little vague.67 It was at Basel that the sentiment opposed to persecution bore fruit, and not only because it found a leader in Sebastian Castellio, the Savoyard humanist who, eight years before, had been obliged by Calvin to leave Geneva and was now professor of Greek in the university of Basel.58 There was not the best feeling between Basel and Geneva. " Dalton, Lasciana, p. 342, Anm. 2 to no. 96. The letters are of June 8 and Sept. 18, 1SSS, Frankfurt. "For Castellio, there is the old study by Mahly (Basel 1862) and the later
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Pierre Caroli had once accused Calvin and Farel of favoring the heresy of Servetus, and the antistes Myconius was very slow to give the Genevan pastors his confidence, even charging them with the responsibility for the relapse of Caroli to Catholicism. A contributing factor to the growth of opposition to Calvin at Basel was the alienation of his earlier associates there which dated from the adoption of the Consensus Tigurtnus in 1549. When in 1552 Calvin wrote Myconius of the sad plight of the French evangelicals, Sulzer let it be known that Schertlin, recently returned from France, brought news of a royal edict staying the persecution. Sulzer, who succeeded as head of the church of Basel upon the death of Myconius, on October 14, 15S2, was, as has been said, a lutheranizer. He sought to restore in the reformed church such forms as were retained by the Lutherans and caused to be rung not only the Mussglocke, the bell presented by the Emperor Henry II, but also that given by Pope Felix V at the time of the council of Basel. The glosses on the margin of the Basel confession, which had already begun to be dropped in successive editions, were finally omitted by him. The innovations of Sulzer encountered the opposition of Heinrich Erzberger, a young deacon of St. Peter's. The breach between Calvin and Basel was not healed then by the affair of Servetus. Nearly two years after, in August 1555, the Basel ministers, according to the Bernese pastor Haller, were still debating the question whether heretics should be put to death ; 59 and on September 23 of that year, François Hotman, who was at Basel on his way to Strassburg (seeking to gain the influence of magistrates welldisposed to France in his undertaking to recover the property of his late father), wrote: "At Basel, Calvin is not more favorably spoken of than at Paris." 60 It was the Italian exiles resident at Basel or coming thither frequently on visits to Amerbach or others, who were most outspoken. Ochino arrived in Geneva the day after Servetus was burned, and so expressed himself on the matter that to remain in the neighborhood of Calvin was out of the question. Lelio Sozini, who was in Italy during the trial and execution of Servetus, came back to the Cantons early in 1554; and one of Buisson (Paris 2 vols. 1892), as well as E. Giran, Sebastien Castellion et la réforme calviniste (Paris 1914). Castellio came under Calvin's suspicion because he called the Song of Songs obscene. He had also made a French translation of the Bible. "Haller to Bullinger, Bern, Aug. 6, 1SSS. Dareste, François Hotman.
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certain utterances he made about the Trinity during the visit he made from Basel to Geneva that spring identified him with the partisans of Servetus and drew upon him the suspicion of complicity in the book of Castellio and his friends, a "farrago" or compilation from many sources, of passages from the works of ecclesiastical authorities from the church fathers to the sixteenth century, and discussing the thesis whether heretics ought to be burned. The author of the De haereticis an sint persequendi called himself Martin Bellius.61 Theodore Beza, to whom Calvin gave over the task of answering this attack—peculiarly exasperating because even statements of Calvin himself were cited in favor of tolerance —made his own the labor of establishing the composite character of the work. He never doubted that the Savoyard was responsible for it, and he pitched upon the Sienese as next in importance.62 Matteo Gribaldi, who was in Geneva during the trial of the Spanish physician—he was, as usual, on his wife's estate at Farges for the vacation—condemned unreservedly the idea that anybody should be put to death for holding a particular opinion, and moreover did not find the teaching of Servetus damnable in itself.63 It seems to have been that Calvin refused an interview which Gribaldi requested, because he knew "of what sort he was."64 At Zürich, the jurist also expressed himself frankly on the matter, and, it can hardly be doubted, at Basel also, where he stopped to get Basil Amerbach, whom he was carrying off to his studies at the university of Padua. But it was at Chur, where he met Vergerio and dined with him at the French ambassador's (Du Fraisse, whose secretary was Maggi), that he apparently argued most cogently. He greatly impressed Vergerio, and to the pastor Galicius of St. Regula's he did not disguise his sympathy with Servetus. In his classroom at Padua, he " T h e book may now be read in a reprint (Geneva 1913). This French des hérétiques
Traité
appeared probably at Lyons at the same time as the Latin edition;
only three copies of the original are known. " B e z a to Bullinger, June 14, 1554 ( O C X V , 1973), where Sozini is not named, but is indicated. H e is named as principal author, with Castellio, by Beza in his Vie de Calvin.
Vide O C X X I , 149. Sozini, according to Cantù ( I I , 485) wrote and pub-
lished "in Belgium" De haereticis igne, dialogus inter Calvinum m
et
Trechsel, Die protestantischen
quo jure quove fructu
coercendi
sunt gladio
vel
Vaticanum. Antitrinitarier,
I I , 55-56, who cites Calvin's letter
to Georg of Mümpelgard of M a y 2, 1557 and identifies Gribaldi with the "jurisconsultus celeber" who wrote to the brethren of Vicenza, according to the auctor anonymus
contra Iibellum
Calvini
(i.e. Castellio).
** Calvin says that at that time Gribaldi concealed his sympathy for Servetus, while combating the belief that punishments are to be exacted for false dogmas.
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evidently continued the discussion, and was said to have received from Pietro Perna, who was in Padua that winter, 6 * a copy of the book of Servetus on the Trinity, after reading which he declared that he would never have known what Christ is without the aid of Servetus. Thereafter he praised him loudly in public lectures, and said that Servetus was so called from having preserved the true doctrine. 66 Whether made so openly or not, Gribaldi's propaganda was effective. Two Polish students, Petrus Gonesius and Michael Salecki, followed him later to Tübingen. The one, returning home, began immediately to spread in Poland and Lithuania Antitrinitarian views. The other was a cousin of the Lutomirskis, concerning whom there is more to be said. After his death, there was found in Tübingen at his room an Antitrinitarian work of his. 67 Gribaldi was busy in the spring of 1554, when the book of Martin Bellius appeared, with the matter of the Novellae, of which his pupil Georg Tanner was preparing a new edition for the press. This was probably the occasion of a trip to Venice in company of Tanner and of Basil Amerbach, which the letters of the latter show to have been at the time of the feast of the Ascension. Tanner had been given access, the preceding November, to the library of St. Mark's and had spent the winter copying the Greek text of the Novellae, regarding the printing of which he had written from Padua to Boniface Amerbach in February 1554. 68 Gribaldi, on his part, had been writing Amerbach of a translation of the Novellae by the young Strassburger Dionysius Gremp. The jurist, accordingly, was taken up that fall and winter with much besides the cause of the unlucky victim of Protestant intolerance at Geneva. 69 His next vacation found him as usual in the neighborhood of Geneva and doubtless frequently in the city. A few days after that on which he announced his arrivel to Amerbach (September 2, 1554), he attended a service of the Italian community, whose pastor was Celso Martinenghi. " H e had probably accompanied his young protege, Theodor Zwinger, the nephew of Oporinus, who entered the university that fall, like Basil Amerbach. Perna had remained to distribute and collect antipapal tracts. " Grataroli to Ulrich Iselin in 1560, G II, 31. "Wotschke, Reformation in Polen, pp. 194-97. Stinzing, Georg Tanners Briefe, pp. 17 ff. " In the end, it was Henry Scrymgeour—the Henricus Scotus who frequented with Gribaldi and Vergerio the bedside of Spiera—who published the text of the "new laws" of Justinian which lies at the basis of the current edition (Stinzing, Geschichte der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft, p. 234).
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Martinenghi, who was responsible for the earliest reflections on the orthodoxy of Gribaldi and Sozini, seems to be playing the part for which Grataroli is famous. He had not spent nearly a year in the environment of Camillo without being tinctured with the genius for speculation at Chiavenna. Galicius is writing Bullinger from Chur at the end of February 1552 of his discussions with Martinenghi, then on his way to England, concerning the Trinity and the Virgin birth, 70 and in May 1554, Calvin was offering Vermigli the position of pastor of the Italians at Geneva. When in September Martinenghi persuaded Gribaldi—against his will, he says—-to express his idea on the unity of God to the Italian congregation, his hearers were intrigued by the paradoxical way in which he did so, and at their request he committed to writing what purported to be what he had said verbally. Upon his "Fratribus italis," which Gribaldi composed then, and upon—it may be—a more detailed confession of faith which he undertook to send back from Padua to his compatriots at Geneva, Beza rested his case against the jurist. 71 So it was that, in May 1555, when Gribaldi was at Zürich waiting for Vergerio to conduct him to Tübingen, Bullinger exacted of him, before he let him proceed, a statement of his opinion on the chief article of faith. It lies in the archives of Zürich undated; is throughout orthodox; and might well indicate a change of front in the case of anyone with less definite convictions than Gribaldi. It is not improbable that the jurisconsult, loath to wound the great-hearted successor of Zwingli, who did not antagonize him as did Calvin, persuaded himself that it was immaterial to quibble over terms, and thought only of retaining the friendship of Bullinger. There were Jesuits in many camps in the sixteenth century, and their point of view was justified more easily then than now. The antistes did not part with him, moreover, without some words of warning; and Vergerio inculcated in him his future line of conduct. Curione was in Chiavenna when Servetus was in prison at Geneva, probably seeking a printer for the De amplitudine beati regtii Dei, which, long in manuscript, he was preparing to give to the press. Since his coming to the Cantons, Curione had contributed to the appreciation of the Italian cause there by his Pasquillus ecstaticus (1544)—the Pasquino in estasi so obnoxious to Rome in its Italian dress—and by his n
Cantü, op. cit., Ill, ISO and note 32. Cantü makes Gribaldi send his confession also to Zanchi, asking him to show it to Vermigli (op. cit., Ill, 98); but Bullinger was evidently the medium (vide infra, p. 214). Cf. O.C. XV. 2341 and Trechsel II. 461-63. n
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translation of the "110 Divine Considerations" of Valdes (1550), both published at Basel. He had made known the sympathies of Vergerio and Gribaldi by giving to the press the Historia Francisci Spierae, consisting of Latin translations of the Italian accounts of the four witnesses,72 and he now came forward with the book De amplitudine, which was meant to show that the number of the saved is much greater than is commonly supposed—a thoroughly Zwinglian idea. In the dialogue, his interlocutor Mainardi contemplates a vaster realm than that of the enemy of the human race, not brought about by the power of men but by the providence of God. Curione's disavowal of force is unmistakable. Mainardi goes on to survey the field won for the gospel in their own day, enumerating Scythia, Thrace, India, Africa—certainly not the theatres of Protestant missions—as well as the countries where the reform has taken root. Even the Jews have forgotten their hatred for Christianity, seeing that Christians no longer worship images nor pay divine honors to a mystic wafer. They acknowledge having received Christ from the Jews, and the Jews, for their part, can hope to enter into the kingdom from which they have been separated as we once were.73 Curione, having decided to publish the work, consulted Amerbach and Bullinger. What impression it made on the former, whom he begged not to show it to any of the Basel theologians,74 does not appear; but Bullinger set forth his view in a long letter of September 20, 1553, in which, approving the main thesis, he declared that Curione could have brought to bear still stronger proofs of the vast extent of Christ's kingdom. But, he objected, the book seems to teach that not all men will become Christians; there will always be some unbelievers.75 It was published at Poschiavo, where, according n Hubert, p. 265-66, no. 18, and references there cited. H e lists two editions of Basel, in 1549 and in 1550, of which the 1549 copy at Basel was presented to Boniface Amerbach. T h e letter of Gribaldi in the edition of 1550 is dated Padua, N o v . 27, 1548; the letters of Scotus and of Gelous are not dated; the account by Vergerio in six letters, three dated Padua, N o v . 12, 16, and 19, 1548, and three incompletely dated or not at all. 71
Maccrie, op. cit., pp. 210-11. H e quotes Schelhorn.
"Arch. Bas. K A C I, 2, Vol. I, p. 172. "una cautio in eo est, ne ullus theologorum id nesciscat, quamquam nihil erat opus dolere Minervam." " S c h m i d t , Celio Secundo Curio, pp. 618-19. Cf. Lindner in the Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie, for 1872, pp. 423-24. For the press in Poschiavo, J. A. von Sprecher, "Die Offizin der Landolfi in Poschiavo 1549-1615" (Bibliothek und literarische Chronik der Schwciz 1879, nos. 3-8).
THE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
209
to Vergerio, who later attacked it violently, Curione's agent was his son Orazio. The dedication to king Sigismund II of Poland (dated September 1554) is explained by the fact that, within no long time after the execution of Servetus and the revelation of the sympathy of the Italians for him, that distant potentate became, for reasons that will be clear in their place, a person whose attention and interest they were anxious to bespeak. Even earlier, Curione, in whose pension Polish students had found lodging, had contemplated paying the king such tribute, for in December 1552 he was writing to one of them, Abraham Sbanski, for a list of the king's titles. The immediate suggestion came from John Lutomirski, the royal treasurer, who had heard of the book through Polish students like Sbanski and his own cousin Salecki.78 The personal relations of Curione with Vergerio, who was also in Chiavenna in September 1553, were not improved by his seconding the protests against the activities of the ex-bishop, which were rising from the Rhetian pastors; Vergerio was just then attempting to force the adoption in the Valtelline of the catechism of Brenz, which he had just translated into Italian at the instance of his new employer, Christoph of Württemberg. 77 Nor were they improved if Vergerio was indicating Curione in mentioning as a convert to Anabaptism "one of the foremost men of Basel," who was said to have been baptized by two reclaimed Anabaptists. 78 That he meant Curione is likely enough, but that the Piedmontese had thus committed himself is not so likely. Beza, who next year was telling Bullinger of the authorship of the De haereticis, almost as elaborately avoids naming Curione. But he is not ambiguous. "Tertius est Secundus," he says after naming Castellio and indicating Sozini. Curione indeed had protested earlier in the year to Bullinger against the reports that he was spreading certain "versicula," having to do with the death of Servetus, which had been brought to Basel by Pietro Pema, 80 back from his Italian journey. Vergerio himself was terrified as the trial of Servetus proceeded, "Under the guise of reforming the churches," he told Bullinger, "the Cf. Wotschke, Lutomirski. der Schweizer mit den Polen.
The letter is printed in Wotschke, Die
" H u b e r t , "Vergerio im Veltlin" (op. dt.,
Anhang
Briefwechsel
V, 254-S6).
"Vergerio to Bullinger, Chiavenna, Jan. 10, 1SS3 (QSG X X I I I , 199, 2). " C u r i o n e to Bullinger, Mar.-Apr. 1554 (OC X V , 101). Rudolf Gwalther w a s thought to have furthered the story. The book of Martin Bellius was suspected by Bullinger to be the one which "they say" Pietro Perna brought from Italy (Bullinger to Calvin, Apr. 22, 1554. OC X V , 119).
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THE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
foundations are shaken and dislodged." He abhors Servetists and that sort of monsters, he wrote from Chur, where Gribaldi had just ranged himself on the side of the Spaniard; but he does not think that fire or sword should be used against them.81 He knows from a friend in Basel that Servetus does not lack sympathizers there; but it was only when he learned from Grataroli how the Italians were becoming identified with the opposition to Calvin that he saw the danger to the refugees, whose cause he undoubtedly had at heart. "There is a conspiracy of certain Baselers with some Italians," he wrote Bullinger on September 6, 1554, "which will be a source of great harm unless it be suppressed." He acknowledged that Gribaldi was a declared Servetist and was bending his energies toward implanting Servetus in others; Girolamo Donzelino, now at Tübingen, had often been tempted by the jurist to become a proselyte. 82 Girolamo Massario also seemed to side with him, as Vergerio learned in conversation with the Vicentine at Strassburg; Lelio too had not been able to refrain from saying much that contravened the dogmas; and at Basel, whither Vergerio hears that he has gone, was sure to begin raising questions.81 But Vergerio, who confided in none but Bullinger— and, it may be surmised, Amerbach—was deaf to the plaints of Beza 84 ; and in September 1555, referring to the latest encounter between Calvin and Gribaldi (that of June 29 preceding), 85 reminds Bullinger that " T o Bullinger, Oct. 3, 1SS3 (QSG X X I I I , 229, 2). " De Porta, op. at., II, part 2, 159. " Vergerio was a true prophet. Sozini must have resumed the role of unconscious Socrates, for there now came from Basel also a warning against him, that of Grataroli. He certainly had begun again to interrogate Calvin, and Bullinger was unable to convince the latter with his assurance of the modest demeanor of the Sienese at Zürich. Lelio, since his return from Italy, had been occupied with an Italian translation of Bullinger's book on the origin of error in the Mass. " A letter to him from Beza, entrusted to Hotman and by him to Bullinger to deliver, went astray and was found by chance at Schaffhausen by a friend who forwarded it to Vergerio. "Che scandalo sarebbe stato se fosse andata in man di qualche uno degli awersari," exclaimed Vergerio; "che concetto n 'haverebbono fatto et del Giurisconsulto et di me!" (Beza to Bullinger, Geneva, Oct. 22, 1555. OC XV, 233). " When, to quote Calvin, "because I would not immediately on his entrance extend my hand to him, he flung himself out of the room, although I gave the excuse in courteous and even flattering terms that a hand-shake was not fitting until we should be in agreement on the principles of the faith" (OC XVI, 2623). He was then summoned to the hotel de viUe and arraigned by Calvin in the presence of the syndics and some of the council.
TOE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
211
there are old grounds of hostility between the two; "we all have a bit of the old Adam." Moreover, "it is not by asperity that tendencies are overcome."86 It is not surprising that Vergerio came into suspicion himself of being implicated in the book of Castellio and his friends, a charge against which he defends himself in his letter to Bullinger from Stuttgart of April 7, 1555." The physician Grataroli made no nice distinctions between the treatment of sins and of sinners. In him Calvin had inspired either a fervor of attachment or a terror of consequences against which the conviction once expressed in the letter to the inquisitors of Bergamo that "heretics ought not to be burned nor punished but tolerated by the church" was not proof. Grataroli's letters to Bullinger and to Calvin at this time show him more preoccupied with the matter than any of the other Italians, and his professions are too emphatic to be sincere. Servetus, in Grataroli's opinion, owed his long imprisonment to his obstinacy and pride; he is thinking that his tenacity was hardly called for, and that his indomitable spirit had best have recognized his situation. He thinks that most obstinate instrument of Satan to have deserved not merely one, but two deaths—after all, Servetus was dead—and that the example given is of a sort to terrify those who cannot be corrected or coerced in any other way.88 There is little doubt, judging from his inquiries of Bullinger in January 1554 as to what Girolamo Massario has to say about Servetus, that he fears to be compromised by the man who knows of old Servetist leanings of his own. Soon afterward, he is sending Massario a copy of Calvin's defense of himself, concerning which, Zurkinden had said, Calvin might have better employed his time.89 What he says about Lelio Sozini in connection with a denunciation of a disciple of Castellio sounds noncommittal: "Concerning Lelio the Italian, I say nothing because perhaps you know him as well as I, and you can hear from Geneva." Grataroli was reflecting that Lelio was compromised anyhow, he could add nothing—and it is to be noticed that he did not. The physician was able furthermore to inform Bullinger as to the debates elsewhere than at Basel. He knows that "Peter Martyr, an Italian living at Strassburg," "Vergerio to Bullinger, Sept. 14 and Oct. 31, 1555 (OC XV). " O C XIV, 2179. "Grataroli to Bullinger, Oct. 28 and Nov. 16, 1SS3 (OC XIV, 1840 and 1843). The former was written on the day following the one on which Servetus was executed. " Grataroli to Bullinger, Feb. 26, 1SS4. (OC XV, 1914).
THE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
212
is the one who has promised to write against the heresiarch,90 and that Zanchi treated the matter at Strassburg exhaustively for a whole week "whether it be permitted a Christian magistracy to inflict capital punishment on heretics."®1 Bullinger had been hearing from various sources92—as Grataroli very well knew—of the unholy curiosity of Sozini, and now there came, to reinforce the denunciation of Beza as to his share in the De haereticis, a specific arraignment of him as an Antitrinitarian by Celso Martinenghi, pastor of the Italian church at Geneva. It was to Lelio himself that Bullinger now carried the complaint, just as a few weeks before he had done in similar straightforward fashion in the case of Gribaldi, when the latter joined the ranks of Italian exiles beyond the Alps. Like Gribaldi, and probably from the same motive, the young man was perfectly tractable and surrendered in the most whole-souled way to the spirit which prompted the catechism. His confession, in his own hand and dated July IS, 1SSS, lies in the city archives of Zürich and may be read, with the comments of Bullinger, in Hottinger's church history.93 Calvin and Beza could have found no fault with it. Vergerio, who conceived of himself as missionary rather than inquisitor, had too much to do in the years 1554-1555 to pay more than a passing tribute of regret to the falling away of Gribaldi and Sozini, as the theologians regarded it. Twice he was in Strassburg, for a week at the end of July 1554, and for most of the last three months of the year, occupied, according to his letters to Bullinger, with the Commentaries of Sleidan, which he read on the first visit and helped to see through the press on the second. He spent three weeks at Tübingen, between trips, composing a memorandum of material to be used in the forthcoming work. It had to do largely with himself, it is probable, for Vergerio " G r a t a r o l i to Bullinger, J a n . 5, 1554. " G r a t a r o l i to Bullinger, M a y 26, 1554. Vermigli's opinion regarding Servetus is in his Loci communes,
et. 1 5 8 0 f° 553 verso. Ci. Grataroli t o Calvin, Dec. 19, 1553.
The relation of both to the question of toleration is discussed by Paulus in Die Stellung
der protestantischen
in the Strassburger "From
Calvin
Professoren
theologische in Aug. 1554
Studien
Zanchi
und Vermigli
zur
II, 2, 83-102 (Strassburg
(OC X V ,
1995)—from
Gewissensfreiheit, 1895).
Galicius in Sept.
'QSG
X X I I I , 3 8 8 ) — f r o m Vergerio in Sept. (a very guarded one, for the Italians stood by one another as far as possible)—from Giulio of Milan, who emphasized Lelio's association with Camillo and the danger of the Locamese (cf. Bullinger t o Giulio, J u l y 1555. QSG X X I I I , "Hist,
290).
eccl., pp. 4 2 1 - 2 7 .
T H E EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
213
has rather abundant notices in Sleidan's pages, as has also Della Casa; but he evidently furnished the facts as well upon which the account of the translation of the Council to Bologna is based, and he certainly contributed documents for the history of the abortive council of Mantua, for he is telling in 1561 of his fruitless efforts to recover them from Sleidan in 1557. 9 4 H e had just produced a succession of treatises on various aspects of the Roman cult and teaching when the death of Julius I I I in March 1555, set him at renewed study of the "book of Roman ceremonies," loaned him four years before by Amerbach—evidently the Rituurn ecclesiasticorum... Romanae ecclesiae libri III., of which he published at Tübingen in 1556 his Ordo eligendi pontificis et ratio, an extract of the larger work. 95 T h e appearance of an outburst from the fanatic Nardi, who thought himself a second Moses and the prophet of a return to the age of the apostles (eschewing the works of "Satan, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory, and other doctrines of the antichristian church") spurred him to a confutation.® 8 The Slavonic translation of the Bible, which was being printed at Reutlingen, whither Vergerio had fled from his enemy the plague, engaged his attention. 8 7 And the exiled con** Hubert, op. cit., pp. 152-59. "Vergerio to Amerbach, Stuttgart, Apr. 13, 1555 (G II 31, 388) and Hubert, op. cit., pp. 133-34. Vergerio had published a quotation from this book in 1551 (vide supra, p. 179). Vergerio moreover rendered, together with Brenz and Gribaldi, a legal opinion dated May 27, 1555 on the episcopal oath to the pope (Emst Briefwechsel des Herzogs Christophs III, no. 86). " For the Florentine Joannes Leonardus or Joannes Leo Nardus, vide CSP Edward VI, Turnbull, pp. 103-05—letter of Nardi to Amerbach, Basel, Mar. 12, 1553 (G II 31, 440)—Haller, Ephemerides, p. 103—OC XIII, 1897 and note— Gerdesius, Specimen Italiae rejormatae, 305-07, with its analysis of Nardi's book, Tabularum duarum legis evangelicae, gratiae, spiritus et vitae, libri quinque (Basel, 1553). He was seemingly a Piagnone, one of those Dominicans in all probability, with whom Cosimo de' Medici contended (vide supra, p. 144). " A s to the Slavic translation of the Scriptures, it may be said that Primus Truber, the reformer of Carniola, driven from home and pulpit after the battle of Mühlberg, had fled to Germany and as pastor in Rothenburg and afterward at Kempten become known for his works in Slovenian. For this language he had invented a script. Vergerio, to whose attention was brought his project of a Slovenian translation of the Bible, was interested—his native peninsula was bilingual and he may have been familiar with Slovenian—and interested duke Christoph. With the backing of the latter and with the Lutheran Bible as a model, Matthew was completed in July 1555. Cf. Elze, Primus Trubels Briefe and Kausler and Schott, op. cit., pp. 110-12. The type was made expressly in Istria and sent to Laibach (Lubiana)
214
THE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
gregation of Locarno he regarded as his particular charge. Indeed it was this last matter, upon which the attention of the Swiss had been focussed since the expulsion had been decreed, in July 1554, of the evangelicals illegally fostered in territory closed by treaty to the reform, which thrust into the background the question of intolerance in the ranks of the reformed which had been agitated since the burning of Servetus. Calling attention once more to the intolerance of Rome, it postponed the inquisition of Gribaldi. The persecutions of Henry II, particularly in Piedmont, worked to the same end, as also those of Mary Tudor in England. Calvin and his colleague Beza did not fail, however, to keep alive the question of heterodoxy in the ranks of the Italians; and Bullinger could not satisfy them with the confessions of faith which, in May and July 1555, he elicited from Gribaldi and Sozini. Probably a little before the encounter with the jurist at Geneva and immediately on learning that Vergerio was conducting the latter to Tübingen, Calvin took pains to warn one of the latter's new colleagues, his own old teacher Melchior Vollmar, of the danger to be apprehended from the jurist. At the same time, he cast suspicion on Vergerio for sponsoring his friend. "The alleged ground is specious," he declared, "that of receiving a man expelled by the Venetians for the sake of the gospel."98 Beza seconded his chief by sending the heretical confession of Gribaldi to Bullinger (who showed it, with the later orthodox one, to Zanchi when the latter visited Zürich) and to Vermigli (who sent it to Vergerio). Christoph gave no sign of having heard any rumors about his new consiliarius, with whom he was immersed in the lawsuit with the Hapsburgs, terminated in this year. 8 ' On Gribaldi's recommendation he received the fugitive Count Giulio of Thiene, a member of the reformed circle of Vicenza. Moreover the plague which broke out at Tübingen in the summer of 1555 and drove the university to Backnang for the winter semester, diverted all attention. The jurist paid his accustomed visits to Basel as he came and went between his country home and his university chair; and at Bern won an encomium from Musculus.100 to found a press there. In traversing Istria, however, it was confiscated and sent to Fiume, whence it was sent to Rome to serve the Propaganda in printing Catholic books. So Cantii (HI, 717, note 25), with unmistakable relish. " OC XV. 2220. "Gribaldi to Amerbach, Backnang, Feb. 8, 1556 (G II, 31, 252) and Burckhardt-Biedermann, Bonifatius Amerbach und die Reformation, p. 123. »"Musculus to Zanchi, Apr. 7, 1556 (Zanchü Epp., p. 310).
THE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS
215
Nor did Gribaldi's reputation suffer abroad. When the news came that he had left Padua, the offer of Grenoble was renewed. Berriat-SL Prix cites an account of 49 sous presented by the procureur Boucher for the expense of a messenger sent to Farges to invite him to come and lecture at Grenoble. The account was presented on December 28, 1S5S. But the jurist had gone to Germany, "qu'appert par missive de sa femme a M. Roybon, conseiller de Savoye e d'autres de lui audit Boucher."101 Camillo Renato expressed himself on the death of Servetus in the verses composed at Tirano in September 1554, which Trechsel prints.102 He mourns the sad destiny of the free Christians of Italy, who see a fiery place of execution erected where they had thought to find a refuge. The execution of heretics, he finds, is as useless as it is odious. Does not Calvin see that, though the man has perished, the error subsists? better learn to kill the errors and preserve the men. * Berriat-St. Prix, op. cit., p. 26, citing Arch. Gren., sac 570, liasse 1, pi6ce 2. Boyssoni was professor at Grenoble at that time, and may have exerted himself to bring about the recall of his old friend. "Op. cit., IV, Beilage 321. Cf. Roget, op. cit., TV, 123.
CHAPTER
IX
T H E ITALIANS ACQUIESCE I N T H E C O N D E M N A T I O N O F G R I B A L D I , 1555-1557 T H E INQUISITIONS OF 1 5 5 5 AND T H E R E A F T E R
The new pope who succeeded Marcellus I I on May 23, 1555 was a fiery old man of seventy-nine in whom the spirit of the Counter Reformation as manifest after the failure of the colloquy of Regensburg was exemplified. His were the directing mind and hand back of the Roman Inquisition from the start. He it was who had provided it at once with a local habitation, a house hired by himself and fitted by him with bolts, bars, chains, and blocks. Not till 1553 had he persuaded the papal government to assign quarters to himself and his colleagues by taking a house on the Quai di Ripetta, not far from the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Torre di Nona, which served as prisons.1 The election of Cardinal Caraffa as Paul IV heralded a reign of terror at Rome as elsewhere in Italy, for Paul not only made effective use of his own courts but browbeat the other Italian rulers into using theirs. The Inquisition was never more reminiscent of its Spanish prototype than during the reign of this pope, whose dominant motive was the repudiation of Spanish rule by his native land. The tentative efforts toward the compilation of an Index of Prohibited Books culminated now in the Index of 1559. A reform commission on a much more elaborate scale than the novemviral body of Paul I I I was appointed in January 1556 and went immediately to work on the eradication of simony, which Paul rightly divined to be the root of all evil. The new cardinals appointed in December 1555 were not the nominees of princes or other interested persons or parties, but were chosen for their known sympathy with the papal policy, their aloofness from intrigue, and their identification with some religious order or position. It was the Roman Inquisition which absorbed the greater part of 1 Cf. Rodocanachi, op. tit., II, 119-25. The palazzo of the Inquisition, sacked and burned in the popular rising which followed the death of Paul, nevertheless served again as soon as repaired, and until Pius V abandoned it for a more commodious one. I t became a stable and finally an antiquary's shop.
T H E C O N D E M N A T I O N OF G R I B A L D I
217
the time which Paul devoted to spiritual matters. The cardinals complained that he assembled the board every Thursday for the prosecution of a single heretic, while he allowed whole kingdoms to fall away, leaving them without nuncios.2 The number of the members of the tribunal was now increased to eight and then to fifteen. The competence of the body was extended to include blasphemy (October 17, 1SSS, renewing a regulation of Julius III), "simoniacal heresy" (July IS, 1557), and sodomy. And its activities were directed tirelessly by the old pope, with whom heresy became an obsession. Pastor condemns his willing acceptance of accusations "as incomprehensible as they were baseless" and concerning bishops and even cardinals, who were treated with the same ruthless severity as declared enemies of the church by inquisitors who "scented heresy in numerous cases where a calm and judicious observer would not have discovered any trace of it." 3 Bishop Vettore Soranzo of Bergamo, who had been a prisoner in Sant'Angelo under Julius III, was again arrested on an accusation of heresy and hailed before the Inquisition in 1557. He was condemned to recant his errors and was deprived of his bishopric (April 20, 1558).4 Cardinal Giovanni Morone, who had enjoyed the regard of Paul III and had been sent to Germany as legate for the third time during the diet of Augsburg in 1555, passed four terrible years while Paul IV was pope. Morone was arrested and thrown into Castel Sant'Angelo (May 31, 1557) by the man whose hostility had been first shown in the conclave of 1550, when, but for Caraffa, Morone would have been elected instead of Del Monte (Julius III). Lutheran opinions were attributed to him because of his having propagated the Benefit of Christ's Death, as Catholic prelates interested in reform had generally done at that time, twenty years before. This accusation, and that of decrying the adoration of saints and relics, he meets in his "Confession," published by Cantil in the Eretici d' Italia.5 In his behalf, his friend Lainez, general of the Society of Jesus, employed himself with Philip II of Spain, while Salmerón, the colleague of Lainez who had preached in Modena in 1543, testified against him.® His trial lasted for the remainder of the pontificate. From his vassal, Ercole of Ferrara, who had yielded in the matter of the heresy of his s
Pastor, op. cit. XIV, 347.
'Ibid.,
p. 287.
'Ibid., p. 284. Soranzo retired to Venice and soon died of grief. •II, 176-90. The date is June 18, 1SS7. ' Salmerón's deposition in the case of Morone is printed in Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., I, 533-49.
218
THE CONDEMNATION OF GRIBALDI
duchess in 1554, the pope demanded further evidence of compliance. Among others whose delivery to the Roman Inquisition was enjoined upon him by Paul in October 1555 was the scholar Ludovico Castelvetro, translator of the works of Melanchthon into Italian. When Ercole issued the citation, the conservatort of Modena protested, and Castelvetro fled.7 When Paul IV complained about the laxity of Venice in the pursuit of heresy, the senate answered him that if the world was in confusion regarding religion, and if in their own territory many mistaken opinions were cropping up, this was because of the lack of bishops and their persistent nonresidence. Until this condition was remedied, irregularities would constantly increase. Considerations of state, which are common to all governments, dictated their choice of nobili as bishops, they further declared; these, presumably, were more closely tied by interests at home. When Priuli, the friend of Pole, was summoned to Rome by Paul, they did not permit him to respond, alleging that suspicion was no ground for making ill-retum for past favors.8 And in the Milanese, where the viceroy was now Cristoforo Madruzzi,® archbishop of Trent, there was the familiar flouting of Roman authority. On May 20, 1556, a brief of Paul IV relates that an Augustinian eremite had been convicted of heresy and handed over to the secular arm. A forged order, ostensibly signed by the inquisitor, had enabled him to escape from prison. The viceroy was accordingly exhorted to uncover the agents of the fraud and punish them, and to support the inquisitor, guarding against the penetration of heresy from the Rhetian Leagues.10 In the interests of greater efficiency, the Milanese diocesan inquisition was now removed from the monastery of Sant'Eustorgio and transferred to that of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Leonardo's Last Supper was probably already beginning to fade. A Dominican, Giambattista da Cremona, was appointed Inquisitor-General.11 The ground for a definitive Index of Prohibited Books was prepared when the Inquisition drew up a long list of heretical works in SeptemPastor, op. cit., X I V , 282. Cf. Cantù, I I , 168. ' Gothein, op. cit., pp. 527-28. 'Vide G. Vittani, "Il cardinale Madruzzo, governatore di Milano (1556-57)" in the Archivio storico lombardo t. L, fase., 1-2. "Pastor, op. cit., p. 283—Lea, Inquisition m the Spanish dependencies, 123—Fontana, Documenti vaticani, 174. a Fontana, op. cit., 184. T
THE CONDEMNATION OF GRIBALDI
219
ber 1557. Immediately the booksellers became alarmed, and the Jesuit Nadal was of those who protested against the severity of the proposed regulation, which had been discussed in a commission of cardinals in February 1558. Concurrently with the appearance of the somewhat modified Index of 1558-1559 the papal bull of December 21, 1558 was issued and revoked all permissions to read prohibited books. Exceptions were the Inquisitor-General—on December 14 preceding, Michele Ghislieri had been made such for life—and those cardinals who had been granted a special authorization. The Index as it assumed final shape under Paul IV is called "A list of authors and books against which the Roman and Universal Inquisition orders all Christians to be on their guard, under threat of censure and punishment." There are three classes of books, under which the names are arranged in alphabetical order; the first comprises authors like Erasmus, all of whose works were forbidden, the second authors of whom only certain works are forbidden, and the third anonymous works. A supplement forbade printing, reading, or keeping without permission of the Inquisition a number of Latin editions of the Bible and all of the translations of the New Testament. A list of sixty-one printers was added, the whole of whose publications were forbidden.12 The accession of Paul aroused the apprehensions of the Company of Jesus. Loyola later acknowledged that "all the bones of his body trembled at the news." Added to Paul's original cause of aversion was the fact that the order was largely composed of Spaniards. Paul however summoned Ignatius into his presence, made him keep his head covered, and was very amicable. To Lainez, Provincial of Italy, who had been forbidden to leave Rome because the pope needed his advice, were assigned quarters at the Vatican. Paul even contemplated giving him the red hat. But the Jesuits were forbidden to leave the city without permission, and it was clear that the pope intended to curtail their privileges. He even caused their house to be searched for arms. When Ignatius died (July 31, 1556), he demanded that the Jesuit Constitutions and rules of the Society, together with the papal bulls concerning them, should be handed over to him. Perhaps it was fortunate that at this point Bobadilla raised objection to the Constitutions, maintaining that the government of the Society lapsed on the death of Ignatius to the survivors among the original members. When the sky cleared after the storm of controversy which arose, Paul withdrew the measures unu
Pastor, XIV, 277-81. Rodocanachi II, 1S6-S8.
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favorable to the order which he had drawn up, and the Constitutions were adopted by the same congregation which elected Lainez in 1558.13 When Caraffa became pope, Vergerio issued a broadside in which he warned evangelicals of the wrath to come. The accession of the founder of the Inquisition is only the last device of the Devil, who has always been contriving fruitless ways of circumventing the truth. 14 When he received in May 1559 the new Index of Paul IV, he attacked it as he had attacked its predecessors, the Venetian of 1548, the Florentine of 1553, and the Milanese of 1554.15 Duke Christoph permitted the printing on condition that Vergerio verify his historical references, and the work appeared both in Italian and in Latin. As a book review, it is not so indispensable as those earlier attacks of the author on the Index, which have preserved lists otherwise lost to us. Here the comments are partly polemical in their character and partly mock-constructive. Vergerio, for instance, suggests the appending of their titles to names of authors; in the second class it ought to be added that Aeneas Silvius was a pope and Fregoso a cardinal. He surmises that the Interim has not been condemned because there is still hope of winning back the Protestants by the two concessions it makes, the chalice and the marriage of priests. He finds it an admission of error that the church has left the Decameron uncondemned until now, and he would bring out a special edition in which are included those novelle which reveal the corruption of the church by the Roman scribes and Pharisees. But he condemns the inclusion of good Catholics like Zasius, Beatus Rhenanus, and Glarean, of a forgotten work of his own when there are newer and more important ones; he recommends the inclusion of the Magdeburg Centuries (which had just begun to appear), and he supplements the list of translations of the Bible with others which had escaped the attention of the Inquisition, expressing the hope, besides, that before long the Bible will be translated for the Turks. 16 The position of Gribaldi had no doubt become precarious when the Venetian government was obliged to cooperate with Rome in the prosecution of those denounced by Manelfi, acting upon whose revelations the Council of Ten ordered the podestà of Padua to arrest those denounced by him and send them to Venice. He is said to have disregarded " Pastor, XIV, 246 ff. " Hubert, op. cit., pp. 141-42. "Ibid., p. 144 and Anhang VII. Vergerio is sending Bullinger the Milanese catalogue in 1SS6. Vide infra, p. 252. ™ Hubert, op. cit., pp. 145-49.
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papal edicts repeatedly, and so exasperated the "monks"—doubtless the Jesuits are meant—that they urged upon the Venetian government his dismissal and punishment, for they considered themselves unsafe as long as he was teaching undisturbed in Italy. The signory of Venice promised Gribaldi safety and honor if he would recant, runs the old account; but it is doubtful if, as a vassal of Bern, he could be indicted. If he refused to recant, they could no longer retain his services without laying themselves open to censure. The increasingly ominous clouds on Gribaldi's horizon were materially augmented by the enemies he had made among his colleagues. Tomielli, for instance, was jealous because the Piedmontese had more students than he. It became common talk that Gribaldi was lax in his attendance at Mass and in other religious observances, and an obscure visit to "Germany" in February 1555 may point to preparations for his installation in an evangelical milieu. When he left Padua finally, it was for Basel, where it may be that Amerbach had already arranged his engagement by Christoph of Württemberg. Gribaldi left Padua on April 22, 1555, having raised money for the journey through the good offices of the Basel merchant Wentichius, whose son was studying medicine at Bologna. In May, Vergerio, who was prepared for his arrival, met him at Ziirich to take him to Tübingen. His anxiety was not for the breach with Rome which this departure signified, but for a more fatal breach with the reformed, already in process of widening in consequence of his friend's championship of Servetus during the preceding eighteen months. The Inquisition, Basil Amerbach told his father, 17 was not permitted by the Venetian government, which feared that the university would lose its very considerable quota of transalpine students; but the imprisonment of Pomponio de Algerio of Nola, a student at Padua who had been won for the reform before he came thither, showed that the boasted immunity of the university had become a thing of the past. It occurred just at the time the terrible Caraffa was being chosen at Rome and in the month following Gribaldi's departure from Padua, in May 1555. The young man—he was but twenty-five—was a subject of the king of Naples; but he was imprisoned for some months at Padua and then despatched to Venice, whence he wrote his friends at Padua a long letter which, coming into the hands of Curione, was given to the press by Pantaleon, who received it from him. Meanwhile, De Algerio was sent on March 4, 1556 to Ravenna and finally to Rome, striking proof that " B a s i l to Boniface Amerbach, June 24, 1SSS ( G I. 8, 56).
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the republic of Venice was weakening. There on the square before the Ponte Sant'Angelo, he suffered a horrible death in a caldron of boiling oil, for, persisting in his denial of papal authority, purgatory, and the sacraments as taught by Rome, he was not entitled to the more merciful death by the sword before being burned. 18 Events like this it was which called forth what was for the book trade of the middle years of the century a very timely book, the Acta et monumenta of the Englishman John Foxe, better known (with the additions subsequently made to appeal still more to a popular taste for horrors) as the "Book of Martyrs." When he fled to the continent on the accession of Mary Tudor, Foxe had carried with him in manuscript the first part of his treatise, which was meant to extend from the time of Wiclif to his own. It was printed at Strassburg by Wendelin Richelius, with a dedication to Christoph of Württemberg, dated August 31, 1554, who was not flattered. The work was extended, by borrowing from the Magdeburg Centuries of Flacius Illyricus, to seven stout volumes; and when he went to Basel in November 1555 and found employment as corrector for Oporinus, it was again issued. Oporinus also printed (in 1557) Foxe's plea for toleration, addressed to the nobility of England on February 8, 1556 and drawn up after the burning of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. Vergerio was much concerned for his own family, for after his flight from Italy he never ceased to foster the evangelical movement he had started in the diocese of Istria, and he kept in touch with his proselytes there through his nephew Aurelio, his intermediary with the jratelli d' Italia from 1549 to 1556. Aurelio, instead of attending to his mission, lost time with boon companions at Venice, and with two others of the Vergerian clan, was thrown into prison. Six others had to flee in one day from Trieste. 19 The elder Vergerio besought Duke Christoph to approach the Venetian ambassador through his representatives at the diet; "there is no doubt that the Venetian government would yield in the matter since the prisoner is a layman and one of the duke's councillors," even though he was performing a commission for his uncle. Aurelio, it appears, had been for two years at Tübingen with his uncle, " For Pomponio de Algerio, vide Giuseppe de Blasiis, '"Pomponio de Algerio Nolano" in his Racconti di storia napoletana, pp. 27-88. He corrects the usuai form of the name, Pomponio Algieri. "Comba, I nostri protestanti, II, 685—Vergerio to Christoph, May 20, 1556 (KS 42).
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and was in receipt of a stipend from Christoph. Vergerio feared that, without the duke's intervention with the nuncio, the luckless Aurelio would be burned "since he displays constancy and confesses Christ." The Venetian ambassador at Rome, Bernardo Navagero, wrote to the Ten on March 21, 1556, recommending that he be handed over to the Inquisition there, "than which (favor) neither the pope nor the cardinals could receive any greater or more important;" 20 for in view of the truce between France and Spain just concluded at Vaucelles (February 1556), Venice was inclined to tack a trifle. The intercession of Christoph was delayed by the non-arrival at the diet of the king of the Romans as well as of the Venetian ambassador, with whom the ducal ambassadors were to treat; 21 and in the meantime Aurelio's constancy, of which his uncle had boasted, broke down under the strain of the long imprisonment. He confessed all that was required of him; he denounced the pen of Pierpaolo as sacrilegious; he betrayed relatives and friends; and after being condemned on October 27, 1556, he made a formal abjuration in the cathedral of Capodistria on May 16, 1557.22 The Inquisition now went so far as to arrest and hold prisoners strangers paying a visit to the city; and Friedrich von Salis, sent by the government of the Rhetian leagues to demand the release of certain Rhetian citizens thus detained, describes the state of affairs about that time in a letter to Bullinger. In this republic and in general in every part of Italy where the pope possesses a spiritual jurisdiction, as the saying is, the faithful are subjected to the most rigorous surveillance. The inquisitors have all authority to cause an individual to be seized, upon the most trifling information, submitted to torture, and—that which is more horrible than death—sent to Rome, a thing unheard of until the accession of the present pope. I am kept here longer than I like, and I do not know when I can extricate myself from this labyrinth.23 And Vergerio writes after a trip boldly undertaken in the territory he had served as bishop (though there seems no evidence of the trip " C S P Brown III, App. 145. "Vergerio to Christoph, Oct. 14, 1556 (KS 48). " Comba, as before. The dates are corrected by Ferrai in the Archivio storico italiano, XVI, 31. Records of the Holy Office regarding Aurelio and his brother Alvise (Ludovico) are in PSO, under the years 1554, 1556, and (for Aurelio) 1580, all on the charge of Lutheranism. "Friedrich von Salis to Bullinger, Venice, Aug. 9, 1557 (QSG XXIV. no. 21).
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beyond his bare assertion): "Never was there such a persecution of the pious as there is now in Istria, my native land, and in the Friuli— indeed in the Venetian territory generally." And he attributes the virulence of it to the pope. The name of Antichrist as applied to Paul IV is henceforth a familiar designation. The question of the evangelicals of Locarno had come before the diet of the Swiss confederation at Baden just as Bullinger was beginning to hear from Geneva denunciations of the Italians favored by himself and Pellikan and Amerbach." Their expulsion from their homes removed a source of friction between the Swiss cantons and the Milanese government, which resented the growth of the reform in lands which had once been under its rule. The relations between the Cantons and their Lombard neighbors were already strained on account of violations of the Capitulation of Milan when religious matters intensified the bitterness. The governor Ferrante Gonzaga (1546-1555), high in favor with Charles V although suspected of sympathy with the reform—he was an admirer of Bernardino Ochino, whom his brother Ercole the cardinal protected—was far from staying the tide of persecution initiated under his predecessor the Marchese del Vasto, in whose time Zanchi and Martinenghi had been among the suspects pursued by the Milanese Inquisition. The Milanese Inquisition found a serious obstacle in the neighborhood of the so-called Gemeine Herrschajten (common bailiwicks), the four provinces forming the present canton Ticino which were taken from Massimiliano Sforza by the Swiss in 1512, just as the Grisons or Rhetians took the Valtelline, Bormio, and Chiavenna. These were now governed by bailiffs sent from the thirteen cantons turn and turn about, every two years. Through these territories the reform filtered into the Milanese, in no slight degree doubtless by means of the press; and finally, after the recall of Gonzaga in March 1554, the archbishop of Milan and the inquisitor established a censorship of books. Of the Gemeine Herrschajten, Locarno, which was situated at the head of lake Maggiore, was the seat of a growing evangelical community which in 1549 had proffered a request to the four reformed cantons for a church of its own. In view of the Catholic majority in the diet, nothing could be accomplished for them there, and they were advised to wait until the following year; for, as it happened, the next three bailiffs would be sent from Basel, Schaffhausen, and Zurich, all favorable to their project. Six years would then 14
Supra, p. 207.
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be assured them in which the evangelicals might count on sympathy from the administration. The Catholic cantons regarded the situation with growing distrust, and insisted on the terms of the treaty of Cappel (1531), which forbade the adoption of the reform by subject-lands of the confederation. A new civil war seemed likely just at the time l'Aubespine was succeeded as French ambassador by the abbé de St. Laurent. This was in December 1554. A religious war in the cantons was perilous to the French alliance, for it would drive the Catholic cantons into the arms of Spain, whose intrigues in Rhetia were just then being combatted by France; 25 and the friendship of the Swiss was particularly desirable to the French just then, the loss of Siena being certain and their relations with the Leagues being very uncertain in consequence of the defeat which the Grisons in the French service had sustained at Marciano. 26 The diet of Baden (November 1554), where the fate of the congregation of Locarno was to be decided, was concerned, then, with the preservation of a union which the division of the Swiss into two religious camps in the time of Zwingli had not availed to destroy. Fear of rupture was stronger in the evangelical cantons than sympathy with their threatened coreligionists. Only Zürich, dominated by Bullinger, refused to approve the expulsion of the Locarnese from their homes, which the diet decided upon in order to uphold the treaty of Cappel. Zürich it was, accordingly, which received the exiles in May 1555 and granted them residence. The cause of the Locarnese was warmly embraced by the Italians established beyond the Alps. Sozini and Curione addressed to them letters full of approbation, 27 and Vergerio composed for them a confession of faith which he sent to Bullinger, refuting the charge of Anabaptism brought against them.28 He arrived at Zürich (whither, as we have seen, he came to meet Gribaldi) on May 12, 1555, just as the cavalcade of exiles streamed into the city, his head full of plans, no doubt, for the deploying of this new cohort of the Italian reformed. Back in Tübingen, he * Vide suftra, p. 161. * Vide supra, p. 185. "That of Sozini, of Jan. 13, 1555 (Treehsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier, II, Beilage) -, that of Curione, July 5, 1555 (Meyer, Die evangelische Gemeinde zu Locarno, II, 16, n. 46). "Meyer, op. cit., p. 295: Vergerio to Bullinger, Baden, June 7, 1554. Vergerio was then probably occupied with l'Aubespine in concerting resistance to the danger from Spain in the Cantons.
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constantly assures Bullinger of his personal appreciation of the generous reception accorded his "brothers" at Zürich; and when the matter of a pastor for them is under consideration, is at great pains to influence the choice. 28 But it was Sozini who provided them with a shepherd. In the middle of June 1555, he went to Basel, in company of the Locaraese Muralto, to fetch thence, as pastor of the transplanted church, Bernardino Ochino, who had been without a position since his return from England. Ochino seems to have left Geneva after expressing himself as to the execution of Servetus, which he came very near witnessing, and taken u p his residence in Basel. When he went to Zürich, two years later, the town council of Basel gave him, in date of June 17, 1555, a certificate of morality which speaks of a "good while" spent in their city. 80 The journey with Sozini and the friendship which sprang up between the venerable preacher and the young student was apparently of significance for the theology of the former. For that of the Locarnese also, for Giulio of Milano is complaining in November 31 of Lelio's baneful influence on these compatriots of theirs, who had already been accused of being Anabaptists. It was on June 12 that Ochino received the invitation of the town-council of Zürich, which asked that of Basel to persuade him to accept the call; and it was on June 23 that he preached for the first time at Zürich. I t was at this point that Vincenzo Maggi drew toward what promised to be a nucleus for the Italian exiles among the Swiss, his reason being that, although he was in receipt of a pension from King Henry, he was permitted to serve in none but a subordinate capacity. Residence was indeed granted him, 82 but the conditions laid down by the council, which threatened him with expulsion if he had dealings with any lords and princes, doubtless made impossible his stay in a city where the business of French agents was not tolerated, however pleasant might be the personal relations of its antistes with men like l'Aubespine and D u Fraisse. Maggi remained, he tells us, but one day, 83 if indeed he left "Vergerio to Bullinger, May 14, June 12, and June IS, 15SS (Meyer, as above). " Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, p. 202. " Giulio Milanese to Bullinger, Poschiavo, Nov. 4, 1SSS. (QSG XXIII. 296). "Meyer, op. cit., II, 151, citing Rathsmanual der Stadt Zürich, Aug. 31, 1SSS. "Uff Vicentz de Masi von Bress Begern, inn sambt sener hussfruwen und dientst, diewil er von Götlichs worts wegen vertriben, . . . allhie wonen und bliben zu lassen," etc. But cf. infra, p. 30S. "Magius to Bullinger, Chur, Oct. 1, 1SSS (QSG XXIII. 293).
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the Leagues at all for Zürich. Possibly he is referring rather to an earlier visit there on which he made the acquaintance of Bullinger. When Maggi finally left the Leagues, it was to take up his residence in a city friendly to France, where he might correspond freely with his varied connections, and treat for the restoration of his pension, which had been diverted, under the impression that he was dead, to the orphan sons of a Rhetian colonel killed in the French service in Italy." Tension over the matter of the Locamese had not had time to subside when the sympathies of the Swiss reformed were drawn to the difficulties of the Vaudois congregations in Piedmont. There the inhabitants of the valleys, although they had resolved to conduct their worship as unobtrusively as possible, were obliged by the accessions to their numbers in the years of quiet following the Swiss protest of 1552,' 5 to take measures looking toward the erection of meeting houses or the repair of fallen edifices. They erected a temple in the Val d'Angrogna in 1SS5, and they followed it with one in the Val S. Martino. In the first months of 1556, the whole valleys of Lusema and S. Martino were provided with these public places of meeting for worship, where the cult was celebrated four times a week. The inauguration of public preaching by the Vaudois was frowned upon by the king, who ordered the parlement of Turin to act with severity. The burning on the Place du Château at Turin, on June 20, 1556, of Barthélémy Hector, who was caught carrying letters and books from Geneva to Val S. Martino, was a testimony to its obedience. It now delegated the sieur de St. Julien, its second president, and the councillor Della Chiesa34 to put an end to the open defiance of the government. The Vaudois protested and presented their confession of faith as guarantee of their fidelity to the Christian church. The parlement, on recommendation of the commissioners, sent it to Paris. From Chieri, the birthplace of Gribaldi, then the richest and most populous city of Piedmont, and long a joyer of religious discussion known as the little Geneva, came numerous fugitives to take refuge with Calvin. More than forty names from thence are found for the years subsequent to 1555 in Galiffe's Refuge italien de Genève. Calvin addresses the Vaudois in a letter ad una chiesa perseguitata of April 19, 1556, and wrote "Rott, Inventaire sommaire, IV 624, citing Bibl. nat., ff. 25725, no. 304. The letters patent restoring to Maggi his pension are dated Paris, Nov. 20, 1556. * Vide supra, p. 175. " Romier reads : "a collateral de ecclesia."
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about the persecution to Viret and to Beza, while Sulzer speaks of it in a letter to Marbach. 3 ' Before word came from Paris concerning the confession of faith, the king issued the edict of November 27, 1556, recommending to the parlement renewed vigilance. It was not, however, until March 1557 that the commissioners appeared, St. Julien at their head, in the valley of Lusema. They bore the confession, which had meantime been condemned by the privy council of the king, and they commanded obedience to the edict. On pain of death and confiscation of goods, the Vaudois must return into the bosom of the Catholic church and give up their preachers. 38 Calvin and Beza resolved on an intervention at the French court. In spite of the ill-success of previous attempts of the kind, there seemed a chance now, for the armies of the pope and of Henry I I , which were then engaged in the attack on Naples, were composed in large part of Swiss. On April 1 3 , 1 5 5 7 , Farei and Beza set out for Bern, to obtain once more the intervention of the Swiss cantons, and on April 23, Bern declared that she would assume the expenses of a deputation to King Henry. The cantons of Zürich, Schaffhausen and Basel also gave the envoys a favorable reception, and the diet of Aarau on May 27 decided on the embassy to France. Beza and his companions proceeded to Germany on their mission, visiting Strassburg, Baden, and Göppingen. At Strassburg Sturm expressed the desire to lead the embassy, but was refused. Finally, on June 28, 1557, the representatives of four Swiss cantons and of seven German princes arrived at Compiègne, where they waited on King Henry. The answer was more temporizing than on the other occasions when Henry had confronted a Swiss protest, for he was loathe to offend his allies. So too in the case of the subsequent mission in behalf of the Huguenot prisoners at Paris and Dijon which Vergerio wished to join. But Henry let it be understood as before that in matters that concerned his own government he wished to be left as undisturbed as he himself left others. 39 Meantime the matter had been brought home to the Swiss by the execution of Niccolo Sartori, a student in the academy " T h e letter of Calvin in OC X V I . 2433; that of Calvin to Beza ibid. 2427. Cf. Jalla, Storia della riforma in Piemonte, pp. 64-65 , 84-85. " Besides Jalla, op. cit., vide Romier, "Les Vaudois et le parlement de Turin" (Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire, X X X . 1910). " C f . Mörikofer, Die evangelischen Flüchtlinge in der Schweiz, p. 28—A. Holländer, "Eine Schweizergesandtschaftsrcise an der französischen Hof im Jahre 1557" (Historische Zeitschrift, 69, pp. 385-410)—N. Weiss, "Episodes de la réforme a Paris: l'assemblée de la rue St. Jacques, 4-5 septembre 1557" (Bull. Fr. Prot. 65, 196-260).
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at Lausanne. 40 The minister of Angrogna, Geoffrey Varaille, was burned at Turin. That Gribaldi and Sozini and Curione profited by the general sympathy for the Italian reformed called forth by the misfortunes of the Locarnese and of the Vaudois in the years 1555-1557 seems likely, and that they were given the benefit at Zurich and Bern and Basel of the doubts which were raised at Geneva is certain. Just at this time also came Olympia Morata and her husband from Ferrara, where the curbing of the Duchess Renée involved their departure. The letter of Curione to his former pupil (Basel, August 26, 1555) is published in his edition of his letters and hers which appeared at Basel in 1562. 4 1 Curione has given her greeting to Ochino and Herold, among others. He wishes her to write to Boniface Amerbach, since the latter has been exerting himself to enable her to come to Basel and has admired her letters to Curione, all of which Curione has shared with him. Olympia did write, accordingly, to Amerbach, sending the letter by Herold ; but received no answer. Her husband, Andreas Griinthler, writing to Curione after her death (which took place at Heidelberg on November 22, 1555), sends more letters to Curione, together with a greeting to Amerbach which Olympia had entrusted to him at the last. 42 But in spite of their stressing the evidences of man's inhumanity to man as evidenced between Catholic and Reformed, and deprecating any between professed co-religionists, a day of reckoning was at hand for the critics of Calvin. News had been laid before the Swiss theologians from a source to which no animosity could be imputed. From Poland, the synod of Pinczow had written to inquire about the teachings of a certain Petrus Gonesius, former pupil of Gribaldi at Padua. They had directed their letter to Francesco Lismanini, former provincial of the Franciscans at Cracow, confessor of Queen Bona, and resident at Geneva since he had taken advantage of a foreign mission in the interests of the Polish reformed church, upon which the king had sent him, to abandon the Roman church and take a wife. T H E LETTERS FROM POLAND; LISMANINI
The Basel circle had long been interested in those distant regions where Lutheran ideas had penetrated among the educated classes even "Sartori was of Chieri. His death took place at Aosta on June 20, 1S57, according to Jalla, or on May 4, 1SS7, according to Monastier (Histoire de l'église vaudoise, I , 228). According to Leger, Histoire des Vaudois (pp. 28-29), Sartori was burned at Asti on May 4, 1SS7. " Epp., II. 188. "Ibid., 207.
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before Albrecht of Prussia turned Protestant and made of the lands between the Niemen and the Vistula an outpost of Wittenberg on the side of the Slavs. In Cracow, an essentially German town, interest in Luther was furthered by the young Joachim von Watt of St. Gallen— the "Vadian" of later years—who, while a student at Vienna, visited his cousin Hektor von Watt, wholesale merchant at Cracow. This was in January and February IS 19. In Posen, moreover, where he went to see his brother Konrad, who was there the head of the firm, he had won many, including Konrad, to the Lutheran cause.43 Erasmus was long in correspondence with the leading Polish humanists, 44 one of whom, Jan Laski ("k Lasco") was the life-long friend of Amerbach and thrice visited the Swiss cantons, where he met Zwingli. Men who had been in Basel in those days remembered the courtly prelate and his interest in the works of the reformers, with which Beatus Rhenanus, Amerbach, Pellikan, and Glarean vied in supplying him—for Laski, like Vergerio, had leave from the pope to read the writings of the Protestant leaders. He acquired a goodly number of them when he bought the library of Erasmus. But it was known that he had left his country in despair of the hoped-for reform proceeding from the clergy, which by the favor of Queen Bona, was recruited from the ranks of the most dissolute courtiers. Another reformation was preparing among the Polish students, who, after the prohibition of Sigismund I against attending the university of Wittenberg (February 4, 1S34) flocked thither all the more, ostensibly bound for Leipzig. Some reached the Cantons, like the young Macszinski, who lived with Pellikan at Zürich in 1546 and corresponded with friends and relatives at home through the Watt firm in Cracow. Another of these wanderers was the specious Florian Susliga, who duped both Amerbach and Bullinger. The students had in their furthering of reform a sure support in the nobility, jealous of clerical prerogatives. It was Lelio Sozini who directed the eyes of the Italian reformers toward Poland, to which his own attention had doubtless been called by students he met from thence while he was at Wittenberg in 1550, though he was acquainted with Laski and with Stancari. His brief visit there in 1551 seems to have been of significance for the relations between the Poles and the Swiss. It cannot be a mere coincidence that in this, the year of his first Polish journey, there was published at Königsberg a Polish translation of Curione's history of Francesco Spiera. Curione himself then ** Wotschke, Reformation in Polen, p. 41. ** Vide Miaszkowski, Die Correspondenz des Erasmus mit Polen, Posen 1901.
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began to woo the Polish magnates with dedicatory epistles. At the suggestion of John Lutomirski it has been said that he dedicated to King Sigismund Augustus the bold De amplitudine. To John, count of Tarnow, who had directed two Polish students to his pensione, Curione dedicated his Schola sive de perfecta grammatica libri tres in August 15SS; to Stanislaus Tencszinski, palatine of Cracow and Lublin, whose son he had met in Basel, the In Ciceronts oratorios partitiones explicationum libri tres, on September 1, IS56; to John Lutomirski the Senecae philosopki opera quae exstant omnia, on September 2, 1557.45 At Cracow, Sozini met Lismanini of Corfu, who later emigrated to Geneva. Francesco Stancari of Mantua, professor of Hebrew at the university (who had been in Basel in 1547 with Ochino), was no longer at Cracow when Lelio was there. After his escape from the episcopal prison at Lipowitz, where he had been thrown by Maciejowski on account of his exposition of the Psalms, he had been given a chair at Königsberg by Albrecht of Prussia (May 1551). As Stancari had been, so now was Lismanini, his evangelical leanings strengthened by Lelio Sozini, ready to throw off his cowl and make overtures to the Swiss theologians. Francesco Lismanini was born on the island of Corfu of Greek parentage, and he went with his parents to Cracow about 1515." He entered a Franciscan monastery, though he had already begun to be influenced by the secret reading of Luther's works. In 1540, through the influence of Queen Bona, whose confessor he was, he became provincial of the Franciscans and Clarissites in Poland. He came into suspicion on account of taking part in a circle of humanists thought to hold religious discussions; and the bishop of Cracow, Maciejowski, who owed his position to Lismanini, searched his house for forbidden books. Lismanini, put on his guard by friends, left about in evidence only the works of medieval scholastics; but once, caught unawares, it was necessary for his secretary to shove some evangelical books hastily into the stove. At the end of 1549, Lismanini went to Venice on business of his order; and, next year, the order of Bona reached him there to go to Rome and congratulate Julius III on his accession. The bishop of Cracow wrote to the pope in order to bring him before the Inquisition, but Lismanini returned to Poland unharmed. Here his efforts to reconcile the king with his mother "Wotschke, Briefwechsel der Schweiger mit den Polen, nos. 18a, 21a, 90, 107a, 182, and 251a. " Vide Wotschke, "Francesco Lismanini" in the Zeitschrift der historischen Gesellschaft Posens ( X V i n , 213-332. 1903).
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on account of his marriage47 won him the favor of Sigismund II, who promised him the first vacant bishopric. In Venice, Lismanini had mingled with the leaders of the Italian reform.48 Now he and the king openly discussed religious questions, and on Tuesdays and Fridays, Lismanini read to the king after dinner from the Institutes of Calvin. In 1SS3, after the king's third marriage, he sent Lismanini to collect a library abroad and to discuss religious questions with the scholars of Switzerland, France, and Germany. He went to Venice, where he stayed six months; then to Padua and Milan. Here he was arrested on the delation of "some monks," and his baggage examined; only his letter of credit from Sigismund saved him. He went now to Zürich, Bem, Basel, and elsewhere; then for some weeks to Paris and Lyons. Returning to the Cantons, he took up his residence in Zürich, where he consorted with Gwalther, Bibliander, Pellikan, Bullinger, and Johann Wolff (pastor at the Grossmünster). In November 1554 he left for Geneva with letters to Calvin. The latter was enthusiastic over what he conceived to mean the prospects of the gospel in Poland. He wrote Sigismund the letter of December 5, 155449 and had Lismanini made a Doctor of Philosophy by the academy. Lismanini married Claude, daughter of a prominent French family and, after despatching to Poland the books he had bought, left Geneva. His arrival at Zürich he announces to Geneva on March 3, 1555, and his purpose there was study. To this he now devoted himself and cultivated the acquaintance of Sozini, Ochino, and the Locamese. From the synod of Pinczow came in September 1555 the invitation to become superintendent of the reformed church of Little Poland, together with the question about the student Gonesius. To the offer Lismanini responded in the affirmative on November 11, 1555; and when he left Zürich on December 1, he bore letters to the Polish leaders from the Swiss theologians. Indeed he collected all along his route similar missives to his colleagues in the new field, and returned to Poland with the greetings of Milden, Bem, Biel, Lausanne, Basel, Strassburg, Stuttgart, Bavaria, Bohemia, and Moravia. He was at Basel at the end of January and beginning of February 1556. "The errors about which Lismanini has been requested from Poland to inquire," says Beza,50 "are in almost perfect accord with the confession of Gribaldi"—he means that which the jurist had once made to " Vide infra, p. 366. " Vide supra, Chap. VI, 205-13. "Beza to Bullinger, Jan. 1, 1556 (OC XV. 2374).
" OC XV. 2057.
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the Italians at Geneva. Bullinger now wrote to the Basel antistes Sulzer to look out for Gribaldi. "The matter is worth careful attention," responded the successor of Myconius, 51 "but I do not see how I am to proceed to the inquisition of the author . . . You will confer a great favor if you either give us the significance of the circumstances (if you can do naught else) which are the occasion for seeking to eliminate the traces of this deadly poison." Sulzer expresses himself with the awkwardness of one who is trying to keep clear of a business in which he has no heart. He was on the best of terms with Gribaldi, who sends him greeting in every letter to Amerbach. But he seeks to give assurance that he has done his best. Many ways, and these secretly, have I tried, not only among the learned who are used to studying out things, but among the printers, wherever a spark of this inflammable stuff might lurk. But my care has been all in vain and I conclude the report has been spread by a sinister suspicion, or that the danger has been frightened away. The letter from Poland had set on foot an inquiry pursued, so far as Sulzer was concerned, probably in but perfunctory fashion. Its very language conveys as much. Suspicion was apparently directed also to Amerbach. "I fear," Vergerio had written to him on October 9, 1555,52 "lest you may be showing favor to certain ones (as you are good and never fail in kindness) who are playing a double part in the church of the Son of God." Vergerio was unaware of the irony we may feel in these words. "I spoke of this matter to Pleninger (who brought the letter to Amerbach) and other members of the council, for the conversation shifted to you. I shall take care that you know the whole matter accurately sometime. The zeal of the house of God urges me now to give you these few words of warning." The ex-bishop liked to dramatize himself. Through Lismanini, who visited him in Stuttgart in February 1556, to discuss with him a mission to Poland, to which Vergerio now felt himself called, Pierpaolo had already heard of the history of the De amplitudine, which Curione had been careful to have printed and put on the market abroad. A copy of it had evidently come into the hands of Duke Christoph, who had read it, together with Brenz and Vergerio. The last wrote to Amerbach on March 7, 1556, to warn him of the scandal hanging over Basel on account of it. " Sulzer to Bullinger, May 19, 1556 (OC XVI. 2456). U G II. 31, 392.
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Y o u see on the enclosed sheet the title of a book the duke has come upon. It is rare, even in Germany, and hard to find. . . . The author had it printed in Rhetia by the agency of his son Horatius and sent it into Poland. . . . Brenz advises that the man be obliged to recant; or that your theologians and printers formally testify that the book was not printed there. If you want the book, write to the duke or to Brenz. 53
To Count Georg of Miimpelgard, his uncle, Christoph wrote on March 22, 1556, of the De amplitudineand it may be that he charged him to make inquiries regarding the Piedmontese jurist whom, thus far apparently, he had seen no reason to question. That the visit of Lismanini in Stuttgart started proceedings against both Gribaldi and Curione seems evident; and it is not improbable that Vergerio, as he turned his eager steps towards Poland that summer, had instructions to investigate Gribaldi's connections with the teachings regarding which the Polish theologians had written to Lismanini. To his protracted stay in the north would then be due the year of immunity which the jurist still enjoyed. Meanwhile, the duke had satisfied himself (doubtless from Count Georg, as will be shown) and was ready to tax the ex-bishop when he came back from Slav lands with having introduced into his council a dangerous man. When Christoph had decided on his course, matters moved rapidly to a climax. On the evening of May 22, 1557, Vergerio arrived in Bern, full of Polish affairs and of the marriage of the Saxon electoral prince, Johann Friedrich, for whom he was commissioned to secure the hand of Leonora d'Este. There can be little doubt that he had a third errand, and that it concerned Gribaldi. The jurist meantime had been very nearly freed suddenly and tragically from the coil that was preparing. At the end of April 1557 returning from Tübingen to Farges at the close of the winter semester, he went to Bern for the sake of a business matter with the council. On May 1, he was strolling in front of the cathedral wrapped in his fur mantle and deep in conversation with a companion. The square was filled with people and the two were in full view of the city fathers in session hard by. Suddenly Gribaldi was aware of a sudden sharp pain in his right shoulder. He must have instinctively drawn his cloak the tighter about him at the first thrust of the dagger, ** (The enclosed leaf bears the title : "Coeìii Secundi Curionis de amplitudine beati regni DEI Dialogi seu libri duo Ad Sigismundum Augustum Poloniae regem Potentissimum et dementissimum . . . " and the date 1SS4). " Ernst, Briefwechsel des Herzogs Christoph, IV, no. 38.
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as he recognized it to be, for the blows that followed left no wound. They were the work of a Savoyard of Gex, with whom he had a lawsuit,—perhaps his old rival Jean de Grammont or an agent of his. The victim was in bed for nearly three weeks. On May 21, he apprised Curione of the attempt on his life,5® begging him to explain to Amerbach his delay in coming for the usual visit to Basel and to send an account of the mishap to Tubingen, should he be able to find a messenger. It was in this plight that Vergerio found his compatriot and colleague. He departed the next morning,86 promising to return from Geneva to fetch him and take him home. On May 26," the jurist wrote Amerbach that in three days he expected to be able to ride with Vergerio to Basel. Doubtless, then, when Vergerio came to Basel at the beginning of June, Gribaldi was with him. There the ex-bishop "skillfully warned the members of the council by command of the duke to have a care to the evil books printed in their city." There lingered the suspicion that the De amplitudine had seen the light of day in Basel. Perhaps Gribaldi was now made to feel that Vergerio could no longer be counted upon as before, for his politic friend learned on this journey "many things" about the jurist "that he had not known," and that must have convinced him that he must desert a sinking ship. T H E TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION OF GRIBALDI IN 1 5 5 7
The day after Gribaldi so narrowly escaped assassination at Bern, Calvin replied to the letter of Count Georg of Mumpelgard, who, it might be noted, was a prince in whose territories the doctrine of religious toleration was publicly accepted.58 To Count Georg, from his closer associations with the reformed (witness his correspondence with Calvin), his near neighborhood to Basel, and the absence from his court of a Vergerio to still disquieting rumors, doubtless came earlier than to his nephew the reports about Christoph's recently-acquired professor and consiliarius; but it was probably his nephew's instructions that prompted the inquiry. The defender of Toussaint against Calvin was not one to condemn a man unheard. It was from Geneva that the complaint came; m Haller, M S chronicle, who dates this attempt May S. Cf. Trechsel, of. cit., II, 295. "Ibid., citing Oporinus to Bullinger, Basel, June 12, 1557. " G II. 31, 271. Perhaps this experience was the occasion of Gribaldi's treatise on
homicide (De omni genere homicidii. Speyer 1583 and 1592). " Buisson, Sebastien Casteüion, II, 244-45.
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to Geneva then Count Georg applied for the story of the jurist's doings there. He wrote both to the council and to Calvin. The council replied59 that they wished to disabuse him of several ideas. Gribaldi was not resident in their city nor in their employ. Two years before, the ministers, hearing of his errors concerning the Trinity, wished to hold converse with him in a friendly way, in the presence of delegates of the consistory. He refused, and they called him into the council-chamber. He again refused, complaining furthermore of being persecuted on account of a difference in an article of faith. He was told that discord on the fundamental and principal article of the faith was insupportable. Previously to this, they said, he had shown himself an adherent of Servetus when the heresiarch was detained there in prison. But since he was not their subject, they let him go. They do not want to tolerate in their city a man such as he has declared himself to be. Of all this, Georg should be better informed by their very dear and well-beloved Calvin. Calvin, on his part, responded to the letter of May 2, 15 5 790 telling the facts of his relations with the jurist. Georg must have felt at the end of the recital that it was, as he suspected, another case like Castellio's, for Calvin says that Gribaldi pronounced it over-great and unjust rigor not to tolerate him in a city because he disagreed with him in a doctrine of the faith. But Calvin concluded with an explicit statement of the extent to which Gribaldi carried his partisanship of Servetus, and the name Antitrinitarian was repulsive. Moreover Calvin sent the confession of 1554, written for the Italians. No doubt Count Georg wrote at once to Christoph to warn him of the viper in his bosom; no doubt too Duke Christoph taxed Vergerio with his share in the engagement of Gribaldi. It was on May 11, 1557, in the ducal garden of Göppingen61 that Vergerio admitted Gribaldi to be "infected with certain opinions of the worst description." The result was to add a third commission, doubtless a secret one, to those which the ex-bishop received on his journey to Zürich, Bern, and Geneva upon which he was about to set out. What he learned doubtless convinced him that he could no longer shield his compatriot without danger to himself. From Tübingen on June 17, soon after his return, he wrote the duke: Conscience urges me to say freely that on this journey I learned much of Gribaldi of which I was ignorant and which convinces me that he is infected with certain opinions of the worst description, as I remember to have said "Senate of Geneva to the count of Württemberg, May 1SS7 (OC XX. 4183). " OC XVI. 464, used by Buisson and by Kampschulte, Trechsel, etc. "Vergerio to Christoph, June 17, 1S57 (KS 49).
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to your highness in the garden at Göppingen on the 11th of last month. I shall take public action. At present I merely say that he nourishes new and most pernicious opinions. I love Plato, I love Socrates, but I love truth more; therefore I have not been able to spare my friend. Gribaldi was now summoned before the senate of the university of Tübingen to answer "wegen erschröckenlicher, abscheulicher und unchristlicher errores." 62 He gave evasive answers at first; and even when asked flatly whether he accepted the Athanasian creed and the expression in the Theodosian code " D e summa trinitate et fide Catholica," sought to avoid either a denial or an affirmation. Given three weeks in which to give a direct answer to these questions, he fled afoot from Tübingen (August 5) without giving his reply. He made good his escape to Farges, whence on August 8 he wrote a "noble letter" to Tübingen. 63 Perhaps it was to leam how much was known at Bern of the proceedings against him at Tübingen that Gribaldi went not long afterward to the capital. Always ready to discuss his views with judicious minds, he was drawn into conversation with the thoughtful Nikolaus Zurkinden. I could not understand his opinion all at once [wrote Zurkinden to Calvin] ,64 for as you know, he becomes very much wrought up when he speaks. So I asked him—he was on his way to Tübingen unless I am mistaken65—to leave me the book to examine until his return. He agreed without difficulty. Meanwhile I examined the work at my leisure and noted in few words on slips of paper what displeased me, in order to show them to him on his return. I desired of all things, and stUI desire (as is my habit) to save rather than to destroy him. When he saw my criticism, of which I send you a copy, he first smiled blandly and then said that he had much to say on the other side. I gave the man his book, since he was in a hurry; and he took it with him as he went.66 The storm was gathering. After the flight of Gribaldi from Tübingen, an examination was made of his library to see if anything should be "Haller to Bullinger, Aug. 23, 1SS7, cited by Trechsel, II, 295-96. Wallace (Antitrmitorian Biography) gives the date as June 6, 1SS7 and the prosecutor as Jacob Andreae. Adam (Vitae jurisconsultorum Germanorum) adduces Hieronymus Gebhard as his traducer. " K S 118, note 5 I have not seen this "würdiges Schreiben" either in print or in manuscript. Mandry says (Johann Sichard) that it is in the archives of the faculty of jurisprudence at Tübingen. " Bern, June 13, 1558. Gribaldi had been in Bern "about ten months before." " He was mistaken. Gribaldi, satisfied that his flight was still unknown at Bern, was probably hurrying back to Farges. " Evidently the De vera cognitions Dei. In the acts of the university, says Mandry, exists the inventory of his books and furniture made by Gribaldi on August 5, 1SS7. Mandry gives the list of his legal books, with Gribaldi's prices attached.
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found of a compromising nature. In fact, "certain of his writings were found," notes a Bernese pastor in his diary, "and sent hither by the duke to the council, together with an account of all that had been done there."ST They must have arrived soon after the parting of Gribaldi and Zurkinden. A memorandum of August 20 shows the reception of Christoph's letter by the council of Bern, and the draft-reply: "To the duke of Württemberg, hearty thanks for the warning concerning the lord of Farges; we will have a care to him. . . . To the governor of Gex, instructions to keep an eye on the lord of Farges, to the end that he arrest him, send him here, and report to my lords when he sends him hither." The letter of acknowledgement on August 20 runs: "The Schultheis and council of Bern have commanded their officials to observe him and to summon him into their presence."68 The governor of Gex watched his neighbor, as instructed; and when the lord of Farges began openly to distribute his opinions in print, collected the pamphlets he was scattering broadcast and sent them, with their author to Bern. 68 Books as well as papers were handed over to the ministers of Bern to be examined. "There were found among other things," relates Haller, "that he asserted the Three Persons to be three subordinate gods," and likewise denied the idiomatum communicationem in the Son." He was thrown into prison on September 6 and his cause hotly debated. Some were for burning, others for banishing him. His sentence, pronounced on September 14, was banishment on condition that he return if he could get from the duke of Württemberg an honorable dismissal. He was to be sent to Christoph that his trial might be concluded; 70 but at the instance of Zurkinden, was permitted in accordance with his own request to present himself before the ministers.71 He professed his willingness to do whatever they might enjoin. By a nobleman who came to Bern at the desire of Madame Gribaldi, to cheer her husband in prison, the jurist sent a message begging Haller and his colleagues to persuade the council not to drive him to return with his wife and children to Romanism. "Haller, Ephemerides, 114. Besides Gribaldi, Curione was indicated as a dangerous person, as well as another living at Basel, "whose name," says Haller, "I do not remember," adding that it was not Castellio. " T h e draft-reply, Ratsmanual der Stadt Bern, no. 341, p. 222; the letter of acknowledgment, Teutsch Missivenbuch der Stadt Bern. Litt. CC, p. 585. "Haller to Bullinger, Sept. 14, 1557 (OC XVII. 2711). The book or pamphlet in question is doubtless the one which he had submitted to Zurkinden before printing it. " Ratsmanual der Stadt Bern, no. 341, p. 305. " Ratsmanual, 314, 17 Sept. 1557.
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On September 17, Gribaldi appeared before the ministers. There was lively discussion and the jurist was not at a loss for replies. Finally, to bring matters to a head, Haller and his colleagues (Musculus, Weber, and Moritz Bischoff) drew u p a confession which they requested Gribaldi to sign. He sought to evade and explain; the ministers only pressed him to subscribe. Finally on September 20 he complied. 71 What virtue they can have supposed to lie in his recantation it is difficult to see, in view of his express declaration that he was ready to receive and do anything which was ordered. T h e council decreed that he must copy the confession, sign it, and deposit it with them. He must take an oath then never more to set foot on the soil of Bern. Four days later, the government took possession of Farges, 73 and Gribaldi withdrew to Freiburg, whence he sent his famulus to beg permission for him to return to his estate. 74 He was refused, but at his wife's request, allowed a half-year in which to dispose of his property. He offered it, as will be seen, to the marchese d'Oria, latest arrival from Italy, who was looking for a country place. The Neapolitan applied to his friend Castellio to approach Nikolaus Zurkinden on the subject. 'Would the magistrates of Bern be offended if he bought the property? He wished it understood that, exile as he was, he could not pay a great price for it.' Zurkinden, in responding, charged Castellio to remind the Neapolitan of the danger of buying, with war on the borders." The matter seems to have stopped there. Perhaps the demeanor of Gribaldi himself in the matter of his prosecution reacted to his disadvantage, as formerly that of Servetus, as is well known. Zurkinden told Castellio: "Gribaldi is acting imprudently in preferring to be expelled rather than to go away. . . . If he had taken sober advice, the punishment of exile might have been commuted for a lighter one, and he might have been allowed to depart without conspicuous ignominy." Although displeased with the jurist's eagerness to be heard, Zurkinden did not cease to aid him in his peril, though he laid himself open to suspicion in so doing. Nor were the family of Gribaldi as cast down as was thought fitting. The wife and daughter of Gribaldi were here lately [continues Zurkinden], and would not, it seems to me, be much distressed by their exile if they could "Haller, Ephemerides, IIS. Haller to Bullinger, Sept. 20, 15S7 (OC XVII. 2718). ™Rathsmanual der Stadt Bern, 324 (Sept. 20, 1S57) and 342 (Sept. 24, 1SS7). '* Trechsel, op. cit., II, 301, citing Haller to Bullinger, Sept. 25, 1SS7. ™ Castellio to Zerchintes, Oct. 22 and Nov. 13, 1SS7 (Buisson, op. cit., II, App. IX).
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sell their property to advantage; and, escaping from the austerity of gospel service, withdraw to some place where reigns the liberty of the flesh, which they have not yet renounced. W h e t h e r to t h e
fleshpots,
a s Zurkinden s e e m s t o i m p l y , or to the rigors
of a w a n d e r i n g life, the l a d y s u c c u m b e d b e f o r e m a n y m o n t h s had e l a p s e d ; a n d o n April 2 4 , 1SS8, h e r h u s b a n d , n o w t h o r o u g h l y b r o k e n in spirit, w r o t e f r o m L a n g r e s to the ministers of Bern, H a l l e r a n d h i s colleagues. Since it has pleased God to deliver from the shipwrecks of this world m y wife and to take her to Himself, I pray you for Christ's sake guard the cause of m y seven desolate children and restore me, if you can, to the favor of my lords. I affirm to you, as God is my judge and witness, that I am conscious of no heresy at all, nor of favoring any opinion that is not evangelical. . . . If I have ever uttered anything erroneous, I retract it; I am ready always to be corrected and put right, when I am overtaken in m y error, by scriptural proof. H e reiterated h i s request, w h i c h s e e m e d to h a v e fallen u p o n deaf ears, to Zurkinden, w h o h a d a l w a y s been h i s a d v o c a t e w i t h the council. H e w a s r e a d y to return, if h e m i g h t , and w o u l d preserve strict silence a b o u t w h a t e v e r m i g h t stir u p strife a n d disturb the churches. H e came [says Zurkinden], 7 6 "winning public confidence by a petition which I dictated. . . . I confess that I am the author, or at least the solicitor, of the conditions on which he was restored; and I prefer that in this matter I should save rather than destroy Gribaldi. . . . I have suffered much annoyance in saving a man not particularly well-disposed to me at any time and impatiently chafing at the one who guards his safety at the expense of his own good name. Gribaldi w a s p e r m i t t e d , then, to return to h i s estate, k e e p i n g t h e pledge of silence in regard to his disquieting ideas. Certain other c o n d i t i o n s there m u s t h a v e been, b u t Zurkinden does n o t s p e c i f y t h e m to C a l v i n , " w h o h a s a l r e a d y heard t h e m . " Gribaldi w a s v e r y soon the recipient of a n e w offer from t h e u n i v e r s i t y of G r e n o b l e w h i c h resulted in his installation there. B u t there w a s also q u e s t i o n of h i s return to T ü b i n g e n , where C h r i s t o p h offered h i m a s a f e - c o n d u c t to return, while requiring t h a t h e s u b m i t his c o n f e s s i o n of faith. 7 7 U l t i m a t e l y , however, J o h a n n H o s p i n i a n w a s given Gribaldi's chair. D u r i n g
the n e g o t i a t i o n s w i t h T ü b i n g e n ,
Gribaldi w r o t e
from
Zürich, w h i t h e r h e h a d gone to f e t c h certain of h i s p a p e r s w h i c h h e h a d l e f t there, h i s last letter to B o n i f a c e A m e r b a c h . 7 8 '*Trechsel, II, 301, note 4 (Zerchmtes to Calvin, June 13, 1558). " Vergerio to Christoph, Tübingen, Aug. 11, 1558 (KS 89). "Mar. 21, 1559 (G II. 31, 272).
CHAPTER
X
T H E ITALIANS T U R N TO MAXIMILIAN AND SIGISMUND 1557-1559 T H E LAST COALITION AGAINST T H E SPANISH POWER
The growth of Protestant intolerance to match that of Rome and of the governments of France and Spain was halted by the vigorous protest which arose after the death of Servetus; but it had still the justification which Beard alleges to condone the régime of Calvin at Geneva. That city was to be held "as a fortified post of the reform" and something like martial law had to maintain. 1 The danger to strongholds like Geneva and Bern, which, unlike Ziirich and Basel, had a special enemy in the imperial camp, the dispossessed duke of Savoy2 was greater whenever a lull in the dynastic conflict threatened to engulf them in a combined action of the three chief Catholic powers. So it had been in 1544, when the treaty of Crespy was signed; so it was in 1556, when the truce of Vaucelles seemed to prelude a new treaty of peace and the concerting of joint measures for the suppression of the reform. Charles V had just completed his long-drawn-out abdications (except for that of the Empire) and Philip II of Spain, sovereign of Naples, had been given the position his father had held in Italy. He had, among other things, to champion the cause of his cousin Emmanuel Philibert against France, Geneva, and Bern. It was no time to relax discipline in the church militant; though, as events proved, the danger was yet a little way off. Paul IV bent to the influence of yet another dominating force than the Inquisition, and it was compounded in him not only of papal policy but of patriotism as well. He was a Neapolitan, and the traditional alliance of the papacy with France signified to him French aid in expelling the foreigner who had ridden ruthlessly over the privileges of the old nobility of southern Italy. He had prepared, soon after his accession, to abandon the neutrality maintained since 1552 by Julius III, and a new alliance with France had been signed, offensive and defensive, on Decem1 Beard, "The reformation of the sixteenth century in its relation to modern thought and knowledge" (Eibbert lectures for 1883), p. 245. 'Emmanuel Philibert succeeded his father Charles III in 1553.
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ber IS, 1SSS, when Paul's new ally, without consulting him, came to terms with Philip II at Vaucelles. The truce was the work of l'Aubespine, and left France in possession of all her conquests of the preceding thirty years. The prospect of peace threatened the plans of Paul's nephew, Carlo Caraffa, late a condottiere and now a cardinal, who counted on obtaining for himself and his brothers from Henry II principalities which he knew he could not induce his uncle to carve off the papal states. It was Carlo who had just engineered the treaty signed at St. Peter's by the cardinals de Tournon and Lorraine. It had gained the adhesion of Ercole of Ferrara, but it failed to win the Venetian republic. Caraffa determined to break the truce of Vaucelles. His uncle, when he appointed him legate to the French court, meant him to wait for the outcome of the negotiations with Spain which had been entrusted to Scipione Rebiba, the cardinal of Pisa—the pope's real purpose may have been to repair the damaged prestige of the Roman see,-—but Carlo pursued his own ends, and his arrival at the French court on June 15, 1556 was regarded with disquiet by Philip's ambassador, Simon Renard, in spite of his advertisement of his mission as peaceful. At Naples, the Spanish viceroy, the duke of Alva (distinguished already in the Schmalkaldic war and to be distinguished further in the Netherlands) watched warily, preparing to attack the papal states as he saw the work of fortification going forward at Rome. When news came to him of the attack in consistory on Charles and Philip, he prepared to act. On July 20, 1556, Paul had revoked the regulation of Julius III forbidding the confiscation of the property of heretics at Naples. On July 27, there was read in the consistory at Rome the formal indictment by the papal fiscal Alessandro Pallentieri of the emperor and his son as accomplices of the Colonna princes, Ascanio and Marcantonio. These Roman nobles, after the latest attack on their house by the papacy, its perpetual enemy, had taken refuge with the viceroy of Naples; now there were invoked against the Hapsburgs, Charles and Philip, excommunication, confiscation of goods, release of their subjects from their oath of allegiance, and assignment of their states, cities, kingdoms, and empires to whomsoever would occupy them. Alva, learning of the proceeding in the "secret" consistory, speedily despatched a messenger to the papal court with counter-charges against Paul; and, while professing peaceful intentions, even as did the pope, led his army out of Naples and in the direction of San Germano and of the border of the papal states, September 1, 1556.
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Caraffa pressed on Henry I I the necessity of action, and promised him subsidies, though he knew the papal treasury to be empty. Henry, yielding, ordered troops to Rome, entrusting Blaise de Montluc with the gathering of an army and paying Caraffa the compliment of asking him to serve as godfather of one of the twin-daughters just bom to the queen. The cardinal accordingly, on July 4, 1556, held at the font the short-lived baby who was christened Victoire, in compliment to the mother of the pope and to the hopes of the alliance. In August came the news of the definite adhesion of the duke of Ferrara, who had the best-organized finances in Italy; but Ottavio Farnese of Parma was won for Spain by the promise of the restoration of Piacenza. For breaking the truce, l'Aubespine had to justify king Henry in the eyes of the indignant Cantons, and was so successful that, without declaring openly against Philip, they permitted the French ambassador to engage for Henry's army all the Swiss who were inclined. The number of the latter was considerable, and after the battle of St. Quentin in August 1557, they sent 14,000 men, still under the stimulus of l'Aubespine. These auxiliaries saved the king of France. On Septemer 7, 1556, Caraffa entered Rome again, though Henry still delayed his declaration of war; and assured of French aid took charge of the defense. Upon Rome marched Spanish soldiers "who ate little and drank not at all nor laughed," Italian infantry under Vespasiano Gonzaga, cavalry, and twelve pieces of artillery. From all directions came the former vassals of Marcantonio Colonna crying "Colonna! Colonna!" as the army advanced through papal territory. Criticism was aroused by threatening to raze the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which was an obstacle to the defense of the walls adjacent to it, and by ordering the clergy to take their places on the ramparts like other citizens. When the army of Alva took Anagni, a general desertion of Rome was imminent, for the demoralized soldiery treated the town like conquerors. The Germans—for German Protestants were the most effective among the mercenaries of the pope—ostentatiously ate meat on fast days and hacked with impunity at the images of Christ. Then Alva took Tivoli and intercepted the provisions of the beleaguered city. He advanced to the siege of Ostia while the cavalry under Marcantonio Colonna proceeded to the spot where stands the basilica of San Paolo juori le mura and ravaged up to the walls of Rome. Caraffa had the temerity—he was an old soldier and bravo—to issue from the city for a promenade with his suite outside the walls, but he was spied by the be-
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siegers and had to run for it. Ostia, which had as garrison only a handful of men, little or no artillery and insufficient munitions, was hammered for sixteen days by the cannon of the duke of Alva, and was finally taken not by assault but by the surrender of the defenders, who had used their last charge of powder. During the truce which ensued (till January 1, 1557), Carlo tried to get from Spain what he was not succeeding in getting from France. He proposed to Alva that Siena be ceded to the Caraffa in exchange for Paliano (one of the confiscated possessions of the Colonna), and Alva promised to submit the proposal to Philip. Then Carlo proceeded by command of the pope to Venice, and in a visit which lasted from December 21 to January 12 tried to lure Venice into the league with France, the Holy See, and Ferrara with the bait of Apulia and coerce her with the menace of the Turkish fleet. He found the Spanish ambassador there also, making overtures to the republic, and he raised his bid. Now Ravenna and Cervia would serve as pledges for Apulia in return for an immediate loan; and if Apulia should not be conquered, Ravenna should remain in Venetian hands until the debt was liquidated. Possible gains from a campaign in Lombardy were also hinted at; and the assignment for a term of years of the ecclesiastical revenues of the domain of San Marco was held out. But all he gained was a present of money and freedom of passage through Venetian territory for his Swiss troops. Henry finally declared war on Spain on January 31, 1557, by which time his army under the duke of Guise (son-in-law of Ercole of Ferrara), having passed the Alps, was on its way to Reggio, for a council of war with Ercole. There had been no official announcement of the breaking of the truce, and the expedition was said to be for the defense of the pope, threatened by the machinations of the duke of Alva. At Reggio, the invasion of Naples was decided upon only after the plans to attack Lombardy, Parma, and Tuscany had been rejected, and because of the insistence of Caraffa, who overruled his allies. Ercole was so displeased with the plan, which offered no advantage to him, that on the trip he now took to Venice, he most likely made efforts to square himself with King Philip.3 The approach of the French aid injected new hope at Rome. The papal troops, resuming hostilities at the expiration of the truce, had retaken Ostia with troops brought by Piero Strozzi 'Duruy,
Le cardinal Carlo Carafa,
p. 220.
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from Siena before Guise and Caraffa arrived at Rome from Reggio. The connection with the sea was thus reestablished, and some of the lost territory was regained. At Naples, Alva supplied himself with funds from the nobles, who voted him a substantial grant, from the church, whose revenues and treasure he seized, and from Queen Bona of Poland, recently arrived in her duchy of Ban. The pope now proceeded to bring suit as threatened against Charles and Philip in the indictment of Pallentieri. He prepared to publish the acts of the case and expressed the desire, in the hearing of the Venetian ambassador Navagero, to publish them in Arabic and Turkish, that the infidels might understand them. Such a procedure would have been in line with the overtures made by Caraffa to the sultan Solyman, who had been requested to concentrate his attack on the Hapsburg lands in southern Italy instead of Hungary. Paul tempted Cosimo de' Medici with the prospect of a French bride for his son, but Cosimo was won by Philip with the cession to him of Siena, into the possession of which he entered on July 25. These negotiations and the progress of a difference between Guise and Caraffa over Ancona and Civita Vecchia (which Guise demanded for his troops) consumed time; and only on April 5 did Guise leave Rome. Now the dissension between the allies grew. Civitella, by which it was expected that the invasion of the kingdom of Naples would most easily be begun, offered unexpected resistance, and Guise began to accuse the Caraffa of double dealing. When the eldest of the brothers (Giovanni Caraffa, duke of Paliano) came to the French camp with Marsha] Strozzi, veteran leader of the Florentine juoruscitt, to appease him, Guise announced that the Holy See was on the eve of betraying King Henry and that secret negotiations had been initiated between Naples and Rome. Paliano had to send his son to France as a hostage, in company of Strozzi. Civitella was relieved by Alva in April, and on July 27, 1557, three thousand Swiss who had come to the aid of the pope—"angels sent from heaven to deliver him from the insolence and the injuries of the Spaniards" as he said—were all but exterminated by the troops of Colonna in an attempt to revictual Paliano. The news of the battle of St. Quentin (August 10, 1557) came just as Guise was hastening to Rome, weary of the whole enterprise. The French army was now recalled from Italy in view of the danger to Paris, and it was only the vigilance of Cardinal Caraffa which frustrated a surprise-attack on Rome by Alva on August 25. Caraffa heaped reproaches on the French king. There was now no alternative to peace-
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proposals. They came from Cosimo, who had got all he wanted from the war, and from Venice, who found it expensive to guard her neutrality. Alva met the representatives of the Holy See at Palestrina on September 8, 1SS7, for conferences. The formal treaty disposed of the thorny question of the restoration of Paliano to the Colonna by putting it in the hands of a receiver. Caraffa promised, unknown to Paul, that he would present himself within forty days at the court of Philip in Brussels, and the treaty was concluded on September 14. A few days before Guise departed on September 19, he had an interview with the pope. It was conducted stormily on both sides, Paul declaring that the French general had neither defended the church nor served his master nor done anything for his own glory, and Guise attacking the pope's nephews. When Alva presented himself at the curia three days later, he was received with the utmost cordiality, and entertained by Cardinal Caraffa at a banquet in his own apartments. Caraffa left for Brussels on October 14 as Legate. His errands were (1) to work for the conclusion of peace between France and Spain; (2) to obtain the adhesion of Philip to his project of assembling a council at the Lateran to continue the work interrupted at Trent; (3) to complain to the king of Spain of the protection accorded by his wife, the queen of England, to Cardinal Pole, then under accusation by the Inquisition, as also Cardinal Morone; (4) to obtain from Mary that her confessor, F r i Guglielmo Peto, recently made cardinal, return to Italy. Caraffa travelled by way of Pisa, where he had an interview with Alva and Cosimo; Parma, whither he went to plot with Ottavio Farnese the partition of Ferrara; Milan, where he had another interview with Alva; the Swiss cantons; Louvain, and Brussels, where he arrived with his brother the duke of Paliano on December 12. Emanuel Philibert came to meet him a league outside the city. Philip II came a brief space outside the walls to receive him and walk with him under a baldachino to the cathedral. A few days later came the news of the death of Bona Sforza, dowager queen of Poland and duchess of Bari in Apulia. Paul had at once begun to formulate plans for having Bari conferred on a Caraffa by King Philip, to whom the fief now reverted; and he immediately instructed Carlo to that end, charging him to keep the pope's name out of the negotiation. The enemies of Caraffa at Brussels quickly got wind of this project, as well as others such as the conferring of the marquisate of Oria on the other Caraffa brother, the marchese di Montebello. Alva
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himself came to Brussels early in 1SS8 and was ready when Caraffa demanded Ban to declare that such an important matter could not be settled without a full meeting of the ministers and councillors. Carlo declined to accept a substitute for Ban, and he departed on March 11, 1558, convinced that the Colonna had once more proved themselves too strong for papal ambition. Early in April he was in Venice having long interviews with the Spanish ambassador, which were presently followed by visits of the Spanish ambassador to the lodgings of the marquis of Oria, for whose lands Pope Paul and King Philip were rivals, as will appear in its place. The consequences of the political intrigues of Carlo Caraffa, though their purpose was the interests of his brothers as of himself, did not protect him from their rage when he failed, and he retaliated by charging them with the apathy they had displayed while he was active. In fact, the fall of the pope's nephews dates from the victory of Spain in the war of 1556-1557; they were at odds with each other, they were hated by the Romans, they had standing neither with the French nor the Spanish party. Guise accused them of having betrayed the papal throne and Cosimo de' Medici laid to them the failure of his project for making Siena an independent sovereignty.4 Their uncle the pope suddenly broke forth against them, depriving them of their offices and sending them into exile. Nor did he ever permit them to see him again, and he cursed their mother when she interceded for them. Paliano (or Montorio, to take his hereditary title) the eldest is described by Reumont as weak and extravagant; Montebello, the middle one, was gloomy and passionate; the cardinal, with all his faults, has something of greatness about him. Young Alfonso, son of the marquis of Montebello, alone retained the old man's favor. He was made archbishop of Naples, though a mere boy, and cardinal-librarian. But his nephews' conduct (whatever the specific reasons which turned Paul against them) was a real blow to the septuagenarian pope,8 whose death on August 18, 1559, removed the last bulwark which shielded them from their enemies. A decisive count against the eldest brother was the murder of his wife, who had already been put away for unfaithfulness; this took place ten days after the death of Paul. On June 7, 1560, before six months of the pontificate of Pius IV (elected December 25, 1559) had elapsed, the brothers were thrown into the castle of Sant'Angelo. Of the counts alleged in their indictment 'Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaioni, pp. 128 ff. 'Maggi to Amerbach, Mar. 31, 1559 (G II. 31, 438).
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(by the same procuratore who had prosecuted King Philip for Paul I V ) , the most significant is that of having robbed the apostolic chamber to pay the troops. Of the brothers, only Carlo was intrepid in face of the hostility of the consistory, where Famese, Ippolito d'Este, and Carpi were their only defenders. Carlo was strangled with a silk cord; the others were beheaded; and the boy Alfonso, archbishop of Naples, suffered deprivation of office and imprisonment, together with a crushing fine. The recall of the duke of Guise had soon restored the balance between the combatants. His further achievements in this war, beginning with the taking of Calais (January 13, 1558), were offset by the victory of the count of Egmont at Gravelingen (July 13), and the preliminaries of peace were soon in consideration. The crucial question was that of the lands of the duke of Savoy, which had not been considered to be affected by the truce of Vaucelles; to leave Piedmont in the hands of France was to expose Milan, and the Spanish would never consent to its abandonment, though they refused to support the claims of Emmanuel Philibert on Geneva and Vaud, where the alienation of the Swiss was not to be risked. France, while giving up the duchy of Savoy, thought to retain the fruits of her occupation by marrying the young duke to Margaret of France, whom Anna d'Este had formerly figured on as a sisterin-law. Accordingly, the terms of the peace (delayed only by the death of Queen Mary of England, in November) were agreed on and signed at Cateau-Cambresis on April 3, 1559. Calais was to be occupied by France for eight years, but its loss was as permanent to England as was that of the Three Bishoprics to the empire, for Philip would not help Elizabeth to regain Calais when she refused to marry him, nor Ferdinand, who had taken no part in the war, in the regaining of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. 6 France, then, gave up all her gains in Italy, retaining only five Piedmontese towns, Turin, Chivasso, Chieri, Pinerolo, and Villanova d'Asti; and the men who had devoted their best years to the administration of the conquests of Francis I retired with a keen sense of loss. Emmanuel Philibert soon manifested that his policy was not to be hampered by his French wife. He purposed to render life insupportable for those Piedmontese who had remained under the rule of France and to pursue con*Cf. Fueter, Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems 1492-1559, pp. 324-28. L'Aubespine, now bishop of Limoges, had an active part in the making of the treaty, though his name does not figure among the signatures.
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sistently a policy of encroachment on the lands still remaining to his old foe. He paralyzed the provisioning of the five towns and hemmed in the territory with a ring of arbitrary customs duties; Francis II repeatedly intervened against the intrigues of his "good uncle." He ruined the market of Carmagnola by instituting one at Carignano. Finally, in IS61, at St. Just near Lyons, and subsequently at Melun and at Blois in 1562, conferences were held to find a means of adjustment, which Catherine de' Medici was ready to accept. In August 1562, the cardinal of Lorraine signed the accord of Fossano, by which she gave up all the places in question except Pinerolo, receiving in exchange Savigliano and Perosa.7 The beginning of activity against the reformers coincided in France with the conclusion of the treaty between Henry and Paul in 1555.8 Of this activity the cardinal of Lorraine, younger brother of Francis of Guise, was the mainspring, and the royal mistress Diane de Poitiers an influential factor. From the beginning of February 1558 the king, pushed by Charles of Lorraine, expressed lively discontent with the procedure of the parlement regarding heretics. His apprehensions had been aroused by the discovery of a Huguenot conventicle which the police found meeting in the rue St. Jacques at Paris and attended by nobles of both sexes besides a host of lesser folk (September 5, 1557).® It was also ominous for the reformed (exposed by the treaty regarding Italy to the combined efforts of France and Spain) that on February 6, 1559, largely through the diplomatic ability of Maximilian, a treaty had been concluded with the sultan by the Emperor Ferdinand I. The annual tribute was fixed at thirty-thousand crowns for the fragment of Hungary which was left to him, besides which he must pay the usual present when the tribute was brought. Because nothing had been paid for five years, moreover, the Turks retained the fortress of Zigeth. Ferdinand promised not to behave to the prejudice of the Most Christian King, and not to help King Philip in such behavior, since King Philip, having been excluded from the friendship of the sultan, was not to be admitted to the favor of the Most Christian King.10 * Romier, Les origines des guerres de religion; la fin de la magnificence extérieure, pp. 438 S. * Vide supra, pp. 241-42. ' Romier, Les origines politiques des guerres de religion, pp. 243-47 and 254. He prints the list of those arrested on that occasion from a MS preserved in the archives of Zurich. "Maggi to Amerbach, Apr. 14, 1559 (G II. 31, 439).
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At Rome, the death of Paul IV was followed by unrestrained protest against the iron rule of the Inquisition. The insurrectionary leaders decreed from the capitol the opening of the prisons. The mob, swarming over the city, stormed the prisons of the Inquisition, the Torre di Nona, the Torre Savelli, the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. They burned the palazzo of the Inquisition. They sacked that of the senators. They demolished the statue of Paul IV in the capitol, having placed on the head the yellow cap which Jews were obliged to wear, and continued to insult it until, towards nightfall, somebody threw it into the Tiber. 11 Ludovico Castelvetro and his brother Giammaria must have been of those who were enabled by the popular rancor against the Inquisition to escape in the interval that elapsed before the election of the new pope. They had come to Rome with a safe-conduct for Ludovico, who had never answered the summons of 1SS6, and they were assigned quarters in the convent of Santa Maria in Portico, where the scholar was free to receive his friends and talk with them. But after undergoing severed interrogatories, he concluded that it was best to discontinue them, and fled with his brother. They went to Chiavenna, where they found their friend Francesco Porto. 12 FERDINAND I AND POPE PAUL I V "
In spite of his efforts to secure the succession to the empire for his son Philip, Charles had to reconcile himself to the choice of his brother Ferdinand as king of the Romans and his destined successor. It was Ferdinand accordingly upon whom the task of leadership in Germany fell on the abdication of Charles. As king of Bohemia he had long been a member of the electoral college, which no emperor had been since Albert II, who like himself was husband of a Bohemian queen. As king of Bohemia, moreover, he had long accustomed himself to a point of view on the religious question which was profoundly modified by ac"Reumont, The Caraffas of Maddaloni, p. 131. Cf. Pastor, op. dt., XIV, 411-16. " Cantü cites (op. cit. II, 168-69) the letter of Cardinal Famese to Alfonso, the new duke of Ferrara, December 11, 1559. The writer speaks of Castelvetro as having been interrogated "a' di passati" and as having fled when his examination had hardly begun. Other references are confusing. The diarist Tassoni gives 1560, Maccrie (p. 423) 1562. For the convent, Rodocanachi gives Santa Maria in Via, which accords with Maccrie's "Sainte-Marie-du-chemin." u Maurenbrecher, "Beiträge zur Geschichte Maximilians II, 1548-1562" (Historische Zeitschrift, 32, 221-97, 1874), and the earlier literature there cited. Later is Holtzmann, op. cit.
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quaintance with the countrymen of John Huss. The strength of Protestant sentiment in all of Ferdinand's territories—Austria and its dependencies, Bohemia, and Hungary—grew in proportion to the necessities of their ruler in the war against the Turks, very much as did the strength of Protestant sentiment in Germany by the preoccupation of Charles V in Italy. He early took a stand in favor of concessions which he consistently advocated, whether at a German national synod or at the council of Trent; the chief of these, the communion in both kinds and the marriage of the clergy, reflect conditions in the Austrian dominions. The nobles and towns of Lower Austria had obliged Ferdinand in 1556 to disregard the mandates against the communion in both kinds by the re-; fusal of a grant for the Turkish war until their grievances on the score of religion was removed. Among the lower clergy, pressure from Protestant proprietors as well as people had brought about priestly marriage and the cup to the laity. The memorandum to the pope in which these proposals are embodied mentioned that Ferdinand had been obliged to refuse a demand from a synod of the province of Salzburg that he forbid the communion in both kinds and clerical marriage in the lands dependent upon the see of Salzburg. The problems which Ferdinand confronted were the attitude of Pope Paul IV; the Protestantism of his son Maximilian, a most important factor in that attitude; and the question of the council, a more difficult one than ever since the settlement of the religious question in Germany at the diet of Augsburg in 1555 rendered inoperative the decisions of the council of Trent. Paul IV's refusal to recognize Ferdinand as the successor of Charles was a belated assertion of the claim made by medieval popes and carried no weight in view of the admittedly German character of the empire. Roman emperors were no longer crowned at Rome and Charles V was the last to be crowned in Italy. The pope persisted in his opposition even after Ferdinand's coronation at Frankfurt on March 14, 1558." He refused to receive publicly the ambassador of Ferdinand, and he recalled his own from Vienna. The matter aroused much feeling in Germany since it was regarded as evidence of Paul's unalterable and irreconcilable disapproval of the whole situation there; and it became the subject of preoccupation by Philip of Spain, who constituted himself mediator and advised his uncle to present his justification privately " T h e exclusion of the pope's representative from Ferdinand's coronation signified, thought Vermigli, that the authority of the Roman Antichrist was shattered more completely than ever before (Vermigli to Calvin, OC XVII. p. 144).
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to the pope through a trusted agent. He even promoted an exchange of views on the subject between Paul and Ferdinand; but before it could begin, Paul died, and the difficulties dissolved when his successor, Pius IV, immediately recognized Ferdinand. The refutation of the earlier charges against him, composed by the nuncio Delfino for the pope as Philip had advised, was purely formal, says Steinherz.1® The crux of the situation was really the heresy of Maximilian, the eldest son and heir of Ferdinand and, since February 1549, king of Bohemia in accordance with arrangements made at the diet of Augsburg. His marriage with Maria, the elder daughter of Charles V, and his residence at Madrid from 1548 to 1550 did not avail to deprive him of sympathy with the reform; but, in the view of the Venetian ambassador in 1557, taught him dissimulation.16 He early attracted the interest of the reformers. The commentary of Valdes on 1 Corinthians is dedicated to him as archduke, and the exemplar in the Vienna library belonged there already in the time of Maximilian II. 17 He possessed also the same author's commentary on Psalms 1-43, dedicated to Giulia Gonzaga. He read with interest the works of Vergerio, who, as will be seen, visited him in Vienna long after the break of the ex-bishop with the Roman church, and who used the influence with Maximilian of his personal friend, Christoph of Württemberg, in behalf of persecuted evangelicals. To Maximilian is dedicated Vergerio's Italian work against the Index of 1559; the ex-bishop sees in the king of Bohemia a second Constantine. 18 He objected to the Spanish attendants of his wife, but was prevented from dismissing them by his father, who admonished him against doing so in a codicil to his will of 1555. He declined to accede, however, to his father's wish to have his children educated by the Jesuits, and entrusted them to Georg Muschler, professor of dialectic at the university and rector of the Latin cathedral-school. Maximilian had long entertained a Lutheran court-preacher, Johann Sebastian Pfauser, and on this account had some sharp encounters with his father, who had his own reasons, not theological ones, for holding his son and heir faithful to the old church. His sentiments, expressed in the midst of the Schmalkaldic war, indica'te the profound disgust which the ambitious princes had inspired in him; they betray, to be sure, the neighborhood of a confessor and the flavor of his comments. In a letter to his * Nuntiatvrberichte II. (1560-1572), I, Einleitung. " Albiri, Relazioni, III, 151. " Heep, Juan de Valdes, XLVII-XLVIII. " Hubert, op. cit., p. 146.
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son, then, of February 14, 1547, 19 Ferdinand states his attitude. The house of Hapsburg has always been Catholic. It is better to stick with the old church than with these rebels. It is better to be with the majority. Disunion among the innovators shows that the devil is their father. Their opinions are always shifting. They are depraved beyond their opponents and presume to know more than the saints and the fathers; they are moreover too proud to recognize any authority, either of pope or of council. After one of the encounters with Pfauser, Ferdinand caused eleven questions to be formulated by the Jesuit Canisius and submitted to the preacher to be answered carefully. The answers Maximilian sent to Melanchthon 20 when his father, having deliberated over them, responded that he would no longer dispute with Pfauser, who was too learned for him. This was in December 1555, and the effect of Melanchthon's reply (March 24, 1556) was to win Maximilian completely for Protestantism, says Holtzmann. 21 From that time, high hopes were reposed in king Maximilian by the advocates of religious toleration. "From day to day," says Vergerio in 1559, "we hope for better things, when the king of Bohemia shall favor us." 22 To king Maximilian, as to Pfauser, when Lelio Sozini was preparing to return to Italy in 1557, Melanchthon had written (as also to Sigismund of Poland) 2 3 asking that his young friend be appointed minister to Venice, a position for which he was eminently fitted by his courage ("he does not fear long journeys"), reliability, and knowledge of Italy. The immunity sought for him as an ambassador was like that which Baldassare Altieri had once enjoyed as the representative of the Schmalkaldic princes. When Lelio arrived at Vienna with the letter, on August 14, 1558, he apparently had difficulty in seeing the king, most likely because of Vergerio, who had failed to keep an appointment with Maximilian in Prague at Christmas time, 1557, and when he kept it at Vienna in February, 1558, exasperated the king by his prevarications. 24 The city was moreover full of envoys from almost everywhere in the empire, met to discuss in the diet the attacks of the Turks on Hungary. Lelio followed the king to Styria (where Maximilian attended the diet at Graz in September, 1558); but if he " Bucholtz, Ferdinand I, IX, 466. "OM VIÜ. 699-723. * Kaiser Maximilian II. bis zu seiner Thronersteigung, p. 266. "Vergerio to Boniface Amerbach, Tübingen, Jan. 13, 1SS9 (G II. 31, 385). "The letters of Dec. 1, 1S57 in OM IX. 379-83 and in Illgen, Symbola, II., nos. XV-XVII. "Holtzmann, op. cit., p. 323.
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saw him, the visit did not preclude a second one next year, and the result is only indicated by the fact that he did not go to Italy until after the death of Paul IV. Maximilian still preserved the outward semblance of a good Catholic, and at Brussels, during the discussions over the succession in 1556, professed himself such to the papal nuncio. He even gave evidence of papal proclivities as against Philip, when an attempt was made to win him for the Spanish policy there by making him imperial vicar in Italy or giving him Siena.28 Meantime, it had become clear to the emperor that, though he might eventually secure the papal recognition, he would never succeed in making the imperial dignity hereditary in his family (a project on which he was bent) unless Maximilian gave proof of return to the bosom of the church and stilled the rumors. Just at the time of Sozini's first visit to Vienna, Ferdinand renewed his efforts to this end and summoned the Jesuit Christoph Roderich to Vienna to work on the religious scruples of Queen Maria and prepare to second her efforts. The old emperor Charles was also besought to bring his influence to bear on his nephew, but he was already on his deathbed when Carranza, the envoy of Philip, appeared with his request. Christoph of Württemberg besought Maximilian not to permit himself to be won over; and Maximilian, threatened by his father with the alternatives of submission or yielding the succession to his brother Ferdinand, hinted to Christoph of a possible flight to the Protestant princes. These gave Ferdinand to understand at the diet of Augsburg in 1559 that he had better abdicate in favor of Maximilian; and Maximilian felt strong enough to demand of his father and brother the abandonment of Bohemia, where the younger Ferdinand, 26 his father's favorite, had been made vicar in manifest sign of the distrust for Maximilian, the nominal king. Until the new papal election, he continued to support Pfauser, who grew bolder in his attacks on the Roman church. Maximilian's prestige rose because of his able management of the peace negotiations with Turkey during his father's absence from Vienna. He did not cease to hope for a reconciliation of the parties and for the freedom of religion of the spiritual estates which had been curtailed by the ecclesiastical reservation in the peace of Augsburg.27 He urged mod"CSP Brown VI, part 1. Vide Holtzmann, pp. 285-86. "Husband of Philippine Weiser of Augsburg, member of the new aristocracy of wealth. The romance of the burgher's daughter and the archduke culminated in their morganatic marriage in 1550. "Holtzmann, op. cit., p. 343.
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eration on Melanchthon when the latter sent him his pamphlet on the Bavarian inquisition articles (March 14, 1559); but the union of the Protestants was not very promising just then, the Flacians having been victorious over their opponents at Jena and imprisoned them. Maximilian was one of those who interceded for the Philippists and secured their release in September. He brought about the release at this time, moreover, of an Anabaptist, Konrad, of whose imprisonment at Vienna he had heard from Pfauser. From the Protestant estates of the diet was directed to Maximilian on July 24, 1559 an intercession in favor of their co-religionists in the hereditary lands of the Hapsburgs. In the war between Philip II and the coalition headed by Pope Paul IV, neither the emperor nor Maximilian took part. Ferdinand however several times tried to prevail upon Paul to use judgment. He permitted Philip to recruit troops on German soil and he allowed his Tyrolese captain, Niccolo Madruzzi, to enter the service of the Spanish governor of Milan (Bishop Madruzzi of Trent, his own brother); but he refused to countenance the mobilization of troops on Tyrolese territory and he denied Cardinal Madruzzi the request of Philip that he be authorized to adopt warlike measures against the neighbors of Milan, vassals of the emperor and not of Spain. FERDINAND I AND THE GERMAN PROTESTANTS 28
Maximilian's hopes for a reconciliation of the parties in Germany evinces an optimism hard to understand unless one remembers that the prospects for union seemed brighter, in spite of the dissensions at Jena, because of the qualities of leadership displayed by the new elector-palatine Friedrich at the very diet of Augsburg in which Maximilian's own strength seemed apparent. At this diet Protestant policy was shaped on the questions of the religious settlement in Germany, the alliance with France (threatened by her retention of the Three Bishoprics), and the council which, prorogued for two years in 1552, had not met again. The chief difficulties which attended the religious settlement in Germany achieved by the religious peace of Augsburg (September 25, 1555) were the inclusion of the ecclesiastical reservation and the omission of the Calvinists. The former excepted the "spiritual" states, those ruled by bishops and abbots in secular as in religious matters, from the principle that a state church accorded with the religion of the ruler. Here " M a u r e n b r e c h e r , "Beiträge zur deutschen Geschichte 1SSS-1SS9" (Historische Zeitschrift, SO, 1-83, 1883).
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the point of departure back to which all argument led was the necessity that such rulers remain Catholic. Abandoning the old faith, they could not, like the rulers of the numerous counties and baronies and duchies and landgraviates, carry their subjects with them. The failure to take account of the Calvinists in the peace of Augsburg was serious because Calvinism, which with its republican theory of government appealed naturally to the cities of southern Germany, had begun to storm the very citadels of Lutheranism and win them for the belief in a state church which, unlike Lutheranism, discountenanced absolute monarchy. Its doctrine of the Eucharist attracted Melanchthon, who had been so profoundly impressed with the young French exile whom he had first met at the colloquy of Worms in 1541 that, after the death of Luther, he gave evidence of leaning toward Calvin's conception of a spiritual presence, though he was far from following him in his stem predestinarianism and was for years estranged from him. It was small wonder that the lucid statements of the Institutes, which although grown from six to eighty chapters and changed in form was in its theology identical with that of 1536, seemed a sure refuge from the "rage of the theologians" of which Melanchthon complained. His bitter opponent was Matthias Flacius Ulyricus (originally Vlach, from Albona in Istria, a countryman then of Vergerio, though Slavic and not Italian). He believed firmly in human corruption, and for him there was no such thing as human "good works." The humanist Melanchthon did not share his contempt, and indeed Flacius was more Lutheran than Luther. These were the prospects of union when a new religious colloquy met at Worms in 1557. 29 At the diet of Regensburg, which closed on March 16, 1557, the demand of the Protestants for a colloquy had been preferred to that of the Catholics for a general council. Ferdinand wanted "peaceful persons, able and experienced in the Scriptures" to come prepared to discuss "sensibly, with self-control and zeal tempered by consideration," 30 that he might lay the result before the diet. Julius Pflug, most prominent of the moderates on the Catholic side, was to be chairman. In the course of August and September, 1557, the leaders of both parties assembled at Worms. Thither came also Lelio Sozini, on his way to interview Maxi" On the colloquy of Worms in 1557, vide Maurenbrecher, in Vol. L of the Historische Zeitschrift, pp. 40-46 and Woif, Geschichte der deutschen Protestanten, pp. 75-109. . . durch taugliche in der heiligen Schrift erfahrene friedliche" persons, to discuss "rathweise, sanftmutig und vertraulich mit gutem Eifer."
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milian; the Frenchman Hotman, one of the most restless spirits among the Huguenots; the venerable Sturm from Strassburg; the Neapolitan márchese d'Oria, famous onlooker of the Reformation. The efforts of the Protestants to come to an agreement among themselves encountered an immediate obstacle in the followers of Flacius Dlyricus, who demanded the condemnation of all heretical sects. Melanchthon led the majority, however, which succeeded for a moment in quieting the champions of the Augsburg Confession and allowing the colloquy to begin on September 11. Catholic leaders were Michael Helding, Staphylus, who later helped Ferdinand with the Libel of Reformation, and the Jesuit Canisius. There were two famous professors from Louvain, Ritthoven and Lindanus. The Catholic chief, Julius Pflug, was assisted by the imperial vicechancellor Seld. Philip had concurred in the presence of theologians from the Netherlands only when assured by Granvella that the Netherlands were not at all bound by the decisions of the German diets and colloquies. Melanchthon emphasized at the beginning the adhesion of all Protestants to the Augsburg Confession, and their repudiation of the council of Trent and the Interim. Helding stressed the peaceful and fraternal intentions of the Catholics and proposed that the points in controversy be taken up with the Augsburg Confession for a guide. Discussion opened with the question of tradition versus the Bible. Original sin came into consideration also, and in the debates with Melanchthon, increasing heat was shown by Helding and Canisius. Even Melanchthon, when he was summoned to specify what doctrinal tendencies the Protestants excluded, responded in anger, for he discerned the intent of showing up the divisions of the Protestants in the innocently-phrased question. The debate had to be broken off. The inner conflict went on in the Protestant ranks. The Flacians were obdurate. They protested that they were theologians and that they could not consider the favor of any prince as something which should influence them. When they embodied in written form their minority report, the Protestant leaders demanded that the chairman exclude the Flacians from the rest of the conferences; they sent for representatives from Württemberg and Saxony to support their side of the argument, though these could obviously appear only as the delegates of a committee; they asserted the right to appoint the spokesmen on their side and make substitutions when these did not suit. This last claim drove the Flacians to leave Worms on October 2. Throughout, the attitude of Pflug was admirably non-partisan.
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T h e Catholics now questioned the exclusion of the Flacians since their credentials had been verified in due order. But the discussions were resumed, and now with more acrimony on the Protestant side. The Catholics demanded that the Protestants give evidence of their unity by condemning all erroneous teachings and doctrines, declaring their adhesion to the Augsburg Confession, which it was evident that the majority no longer regarded as formerly. Melanchthon proposed to proceed to the discussion of the Eucharist and of Justification, but was refused. The Catholics now declared that the chaos of opinion among the Protestants would bring about the failure of the conference. Pflug decided on October 27 that it was necessary to have the judgment of the king of the Romans, 31 and Ferdinand, upon whom the reiterated reproaches on account of his moderation had begun to take effect, had to concede the futility of the colloquy as a means of restoring peace. Even before he received from the papal nuncio Lintar 3 2 the brief in which the pope charged him to use the strife among the Protestants as an excuse for dissolving the assembly, Ferdinand had sent Pflug an official resolution of November 9, 1S57. He refused to dictate the decision and he expressed the wish to see the colloquy continued, the excluded theologians recalled, and the Catholic demand as to the Augsburg Confession withdrawn. But he was really giving the Protestants rope to hang themselves; to the Catholics he let it be understood privately that he was satisfied with the course affairs had taken. In the first days of December, accordingly, the conference dissolved, the onus of the failure unmistakably on the Protestants. Maximilian perceived with regret the growth of the papal influence at his father's court, and unbosomed himself to Christoph of Württemberg. 33 Schroteisen, the chancellor of Württemberg, wrote Boniface Amerbach on January 16, 1558, that the conference dissolved because Erhard Schnepf and his three colleagues protested that, unless the other preachers of the Augsburg Confession condemned the dogmas in controversy up to that time, above all those of Zwingli and Calvin and especially of Osiander, they would not attend " Charles V resigned last of all the imperial crown, and although he had communicated to the Reichskammergericht (Aug. 27, 1556) and to the electors and princes (Sept. 7, 1556) the commission to Ferdinand of the government of the empire, it was not until Feb. 24, 1558 that the princes assembled officially at Frankfurt conferred it on him. K Jacobus Linterius, appointed Nov. 14, 1557 (Pastor XIV, 347). "Letters of Nov. 16 and Dec. 20 in Lebret, Magazin zum Gebrauch der Staatenund Kirchengeschickte (1771 ff.).
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the colloquy. And this in spite of the exertions of Melanchthon, Brenz, and other mediators.34 The Protestant princes were sufficiently chagrined over the outcome to hold a meeting at Frankfurt on March 18, 1558 in order to sign a new recess, designed to supplement and explain the Confession of Augsburg. There were present William of Orange, the three electors (Brandenburg, Saxony, and the Palatinate), duke Christoph of Württemberg, and the count-palatine Wolfgang of Zweibrücken. Christoph and Maximilian hoped much from the new agreement.3® Vergerio, when new plans for a council began to be heard, sounded again the note of warning which had died away when the Council proved no prelude to the extermination of the Protestants, nor even to the cooperation of pope and emperor. At the beginning of May 1558, he submitted a memorandum to Christoph, with the familiar prediction; but this time he proposed to prepare for the coming combat by an embassy of the German Protestant princes to the various Catholic monarchs of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and Poland, urging these powers to bring pressure to bear on the pope that a fair and acceptable council be held. He argues that the refusal of the pope will at any rate forestall prospect of cooperation between the Catholic princes and the pontiff in the inevitable war against the Protestants. And he reiterates his plea for a concerted polemic in all languages against the council.38 New hopes of adjustment were born with the accession at Heidelberg, in February, 1559, of Friedrich "the Pious," a convinced Protestant (soon to be a declared Calvinist) and resolved upon a Protestant policy. He proclaimed that all Protestant states must stand together. A rapprochement with Saxony (home of the disgruntled Flacians) was furthered because Friedrich was the father-in-law of the young Saxon duke Johann Friedrich. At the diet of Augsburg (March 3 to August 19, 1559), where, as has been said, Maximilian seemed on the verge of concluding victoriously his difference with his father, Friedrich induced the ** Bahnmeier, "Nachweisung einer Briefsammlung aus dem löten Jahrhundert" (in Paulus, Sophronizon). We have here the response, accordingly, to the request of the "Philippist" majority for representatives from Württemberg (supra p. 257). Osiander was the reformer of Nürnberg. He fled after the publication of the Interim, and at Königsberg set forth views on justification in which he was opposed by his colleague Stancari. Vide infra pp. 263, 338 and Janssen, German People VII, 12-18. "Bucholts, op. cit., VII, 404-06 and 417. " Hubert, op. cit., pp. 161-62.
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Protestant members to keep each other informed of what they were planning. He demanded the settlement of the religious controversies in favor of the Protestants, and he declared that, until then, the Protestant princes would assent to no measure desired by the emperor, such as the request for a subsidy against the Turks, for example. The Protestants accordingly declared that they would submit to the decrees of a general council if the council were not called by the pope, if the pope would submit to it, if the decrees of the council of Trent should be declared null and void, and if the authority of the Scriptures exclusively should be recognized.37 Of the direction of the council, the future meeting of which seemed to be assured after the conclusion of peace between Paul and Philip and Henry II, the Protestants wanted to assure themselves, while the Catholics proposed to prepare for it by a reform of the clergy. Ferdinand upheld the peace of Augsburg, stood staunchly against the Protestant assaults on the ecclesiastical reservation, and refused to consider the council as long as Paul IV was alive. The Catholics here made an attempt to gain possession of one of the electorates. Of these, the four lay ones were all Protestant if Bohemia be considered such, and the reduction of that number to three would have rendered more certain the Catholic vote of Bohemia if there should ever be question. Before his accession to the Palatinate, Friedrich had concluded one of those inheritance arrangements peculiar to the German princely houses. In case of his succession, he had promised to cede the electoral dignity for 40,000 crowns to Albrecht of Bavaria; and Johann Ulrich Zasius,38 together with Count Georg of Helfenstein, had undertaken in September, 1558, to try and manipulate the emperor to Albrecht's ends. At the diet of Augsburg in 1559, Albrecht petitioned Ferdinand to remind Friedrich of the agreement. The emperor however dared not so offend the Protestants, and at his wish Christoph acted as mediator, arranging disputes over borders, tolls, hunting-rights, etc., while Ferdinand destroyed the correspondence between Friedrich and Albrecht about the electorate, which had been turned over to him.39 Friedrich was determined to maintain friendship with France in spite ** Vergerio now sought to enlist Henry II among the opponents of a continuation of the Council of Trent ( i n f r a p. 320). " Son of the famous jurisconsult, and himself an imperial counsellor under Charles V. His letters to Boniface Amerbach have been published by Stinzing. • Riezler, Geschichte Baierns IV, p. 44. Cf. Maggi to Boniface Amerbach, n.d. in G II. 31, 431.
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of the peril to the alliance constituted by the loss to the empire of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. Henry had, indeed, won over to his interests most of the German princes, but his ambassador at the diet, Charles de Marillac,40 who appeared at Augsburg at the end of February 1559, was to plead lack of instructions if the question of the Three Bishoprics came up. The question was, as the elector of Saxony pointed out, part of a larger one which comprehended the other imperial lands which had been alienated, such as the Spanish possessions in Italy and the Netherlands. On April 26, answer was returned to Marillac which carefully refrained from pointing out the German desire for the return of the provinces. The decision having been reached to send an embassy to France, the electors and the princes differed over the question whether to give offense to Henry or not; and nobody wanted to undertake the task. Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, bishop of Augsburg, and Christoph of Württemberg were appointed; but they were not friends and Christoph refused to travel in the company of the cardinal. Albrecht of Bavaria, appointed in place of the latter, alleged the matter of expense in order to be excused; and ultimately it was Bishop Luigi Madruzzi of Trent and Count Ludwig of Stolberg who went. The embassy, which departed at the close of the diet, accomplished nothing, arriving as it did in the opening days of the reign of the young Francis II. SIGISMUND I I OF POLAND AND THE N E W REFUGE OF THE ITALIAN EXILES
It was to Poland that, since the visit there of Lelio Sozini in 1551, the eyes of the Italian exiles, uncertain of Maximilian because of his friendship for Christoph of Württemberg, turned ever more. The young king Sigismund II, to whom Curione had dedicated the De amplitudine and many another book, had leaned already as crown-prince to the evangelical party. Cochlaeus had written of him to Vergerio in 1537: " I have heard repeatedly that the young king—that is, the son of the king of Poland—is infected with the Lutheran ferment." 41 He had been enabled Vide Pierre de Vaissiere, Charles de Marillac. " W. Friedensburg in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 18, 254. CI. Antoine Danysz, "L' education du roi Sigismond Auguste" (Polskej Akademji Vmiajetnosci Wydziai historycznoßozoficzny Rozprawy, 2 ser., XXXII.)—Ladislas Bogatynski, "Le mariage du roi Sigismond Auguste avec Barbe de Radziwill" (ibid., X X X I V ) . The account above is based on Wotschke, "König Sigismund August und seine evangelischen Hofprediger" (Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte for 1906, pp. 329-50.
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to indulge his inclination towards the Wittenbergers when he came in 1543 to reside at Wilna with his young wife Elizabeth of Austria (daughter of Ferdinand I ) , with whom, from 1544, he ruled the grand-duchy of Lithuania. He spoke often of the necessity of a reformation, allowed his court-preachers to voice perfectly evangelical sentiments, cite the Scriptures and excoriate the sins of the hierarchy. Albrecht of Prussia tried to win him for the Schmalkaldic League in the spring of 1546 and came to Wilna for that purpose in May; but Sigismund preserved a benevolent neutrality, undertook to use his influence with his father, and to prevent Poland from helping the emperor. Thereafter Albrecht supplied the young king with evangelical works, and Sigismund on his part seconded the efforts of Albrecht to win for the Lutheran cause the old king Sigismund I. His first court-preacher was Martin Gallinius, who later returned to the Roman church. 42 About 1547, John Cosmius and Laurentius Diskordia were the court preachers and were both evangelicals. The bishops observed with displeasure the direction of their influence and the chancellor Maciejowski, bishop of Cracow, besought Sigismund by letter to dismiss the heretical preachers and remain true to the Roman church. T h e King defended his preachers in the letter of M a y 24, 1547, declaring that they preached no new teaching, but inveighed against the prevailing abuses and loose morals. He then pointed out the religious and spiritual neglect in which the church left the people. Paganism existed in Lithuania, where the common folk saw gods in oaks, lindens, brooks, stones, and serpents; and prayed to them and brought them offerings. Maciejowski, ill-satisfied, sent Martin Cromer to Wilna some months later; but the diplomat succeeded no better than the bishop as (on February 6, 1548) the bishop of Ermeland, Stanislaus Hosius, is writing to his coadjutor Dantiskus. 43 When, on the first Easter holidays of 1548, the old king died, Polish evangelicals expected that Sigismund Augustus would openly declare his adhesion to the reform, and become its protector in eastern Europe. Expression of this hope lies in a dedication of the young humanist Jacob Kuchler in Posen. 44 But political conditions, the influence of the bishops, as well as his temperamental disinclination to a decided stand, prevented the king from breaking with the old church. He dismissed his courtpreachers in Wilna when he set out for Cracow on his father's death. " H e was at Padua in 1547, where he evidently knew Lelio Sozini. " Wotschke, 333—Hosii " Wotschke, 334.
epp., I, 429. For Hosius, vide infra, pp. 269, 325-26.
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Some months later, he called them to his court in Little Poland, took them with him to Piotrkow to the diet, and at the outset permitted Cosmius to preach as before. But the friction with the nobility—Calvinists, for the most part—on his marriage with Barbara Radziwill turned the scale. When the nobles could not endure that the king should marry a subject, the Catholic clergy were quick to see their advantage. They gained the king's favor by crowning his wife (December 1550) just as the cause of the reform in Poland was further weakened by the dispute between Osiander and Stancari in Königsberg. This famous controversy was over the nature of justification, which Osiander as a mystic considered to be a continual infusion of Christ's divine nature, not a mere imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This, the Lutheran theologians said, obliterated the distinction between justification and sanctification; and so fiercely raged the conflict that the disputants carried fire-arms into the university classrooms, and Stancari asked to be relieved of his professorship because he could not safely walk the streets on account of the bloodhounds Osiander and Aurifaber (court-preacher at Weimar). Meantime Sigismund had restrained the preachers, and every attack on the clergy encountered the resistance of Maciejowski. 45 Presently Cosmius and Diskordia were denounced to the king, and Sigismund was threatened with the withdrawal of support if he did not forbid the preachers publishing their evangelical opinions. The two former favorites stayed in Cracow, hoping for a change in the political situation. Whether they were dismissed is not quite certain. In May 1550, the diet of Piotrkow turned out to have a strong evangelical party who demanded free publication of the word of God and removal of the spiritual jurisdiction. But the king was no longer inclined, as at Wilna, to give his support to this party, and rely on them for a reform of the church in Poland." At Piotrkow Diskordia asked for and received his dismissal. On December 12, 1550, Sigismund paid the price of his coronation and published the well-known mandate against the evangelicals in Poland. But they were still strong enough to exact from the diet of Piotrkow in 1552 an Interim making worship free until the next diet; and three years later to extend it until such time as a national council should meet to settle the question. At that time, Lutomirski's formulation of the beliefs of Polish evangelicals—the first Polish confession—was submitted to the diet. It was printed at Königsberg (1556) by Vergerio's efforts. The author of the first evangelical Polish confession was Stanislaus " Wotschke 336.
" Ibid.,
339.
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Lutomirski, pastor at Little Kasimierz, son-in-law of Laski and brother of that John Lutomirski to whom Curione had written concerning the dedication of the De amplitudine. His work shows the influence of the Strassburg theologians, especially as regards the Eucharist. Lutomirski was marked out for the archbishopric of Gnesen, but ruined his chances of preferment by proclaiming his evangelical faith. He was cited before the primate in February 1555; when he did not appear, he was condemned in contumaciam (April 8, 1555) to perpetual imprisonment. His prosecution was authorized by the king in July 1555, in spite of the Interim, and on January 20, 1556 he was banished by a royal decree issued at Warsaw, where Sigismund and the papal nuncio Lippomani were together.47 The most important publicist among the Polish evangelicals was Andreas Fritsch Modrzewski, who had proposals for the reform of the church in 1552, when he was secretary of the legation that was to have been sent to Trent. 48 He was a disciple of Laski and had studied at Wittenberg; had been one of the Polish envoys at the diet of Augsburg in 1548; and in his "Dialogues" about the communion in both kinds "presents the remarkably modern ideas that priests be married and that services be conducted in the vernacular." A second work of his, "Five books of commentaries on the state" takes up morals, laws, war, the church, the school, and was the object of the hostility of Bishop Hosius, who tried to destroy its influence by his Confessio fidei catholicae. Of these works, the latter was printed by Oporinus at Basel in Latin (1554, 1559) and in German translation as Von Verbesserung der gemeinen Nutz (1557). The former was published in Latin at Prague in May and June 1549. The reason for the king's failure to enforce the will of the clergy, to which he had subscribed, lay partly in the new influence to which he had succumbed, that of the Franciscan Lismanini, former confessor of his mother Bona Sforza and a heretic against whom the efforts of Maciejowski had been fruitless.49 And Lismanini now returned to Poland as superintendent of the evangelical churches of Little Poland at their invitation. Vergerio, after talking with Lismanini in Basel probably in December 1555, had fixed upon Poland as a field for his efforts, years of growth having apparently been assured to the church there by the Interim. Pope Paul 41
Wotschke, "Lutomirski" (Arch, fiir Re). Gesck. I l l , 105-71. 1905). "Krasinski, Geschichte der Reformation in Poland, I, 219-33. " Vide supra, pp. 231-33.
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IV sent Alvise Lippomani (Soranzo's successor as bishop of Bergamo) as nuncio and with him the Jesuit Salmerón; they were to stiffen the resistance of Sigismund to the innovators. Salmerón describes the journey of his companion and himself in a letter to Loyola of January 1, 1SS6. It was thirty-two days from Augsburg to Warsaw, where they arrived on October 28, 1SS5. Thence to Wilna was fifteen days. "Whoever has not travelled through this country," said he, "has not only done penance for all his sins, but has also earned a plenary indulgence." King Sigismund declared to Lippomani and Salmerón that there were but two ways of settling the religious confusion in his kingdom, a general council and a national council. Lippomani pointed out to Sigismund the danger inherent in the latter, and demanded enforcement of strict measures against the enemies of the faith. The bishops, he urged, were not disposed to undertake the work of reform, except for Hosius and the archbishop of Gnesen. The nobles were taking possession of church property. The erection of a Jesuit college was out of the question. A similar report he doubtless made to Paul orally when Lippomani, having decided to remain at Wilna instead of asking to be recalled, sent his colleague back to Rome.50 In May 1556, the ambassador of Sigismund at Rome, Stanislaus Maciejowski, presented to the pope in the name of the king the demands of the reformers, the marriage of priests, communion in both kinds, mass in the vernacular, and a national council in case a general council failed to meet.51 In reply, the pope warned the king of his accountability to God, referring him to the nuncio. Meanwhile Lippomani had a very unhappy time. He had come straight from the diet of Augsburg, where he had failed to block the compromise effected by Germans in Germany, and he was confronted with the prospect of a Polish national settlement. In September 1556 he held a synod at Lowicz, and the Catholic clergy tried to exclude him from the meetings. In a letter to the duke of Paliano (Lowicz, September 22, 1556), he reports the persecutions to which he has been subjected. "In this country," he says, "everyone acts exactly as he pleases, without fear of punishment." He appealed at the outset to Prince Radziwill, palatine of Wilna and cousin of the late queen Barbara, who protected the reformers, but Radziwill's letter of reply, drafted by Vergerio, was soon circulating in print. Vergerio, as the first step of his Polish campaign, had dedicated to the new queen—Catherine of Austria, his own god-child—his Italian trans" Pastor, op. cit., XIV, 327-29. " Ibid., 327.
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lation of the Württemberg Confession (January 1, 1556). On July 11, he arrived at Königsberg. On August 1, he published his Catalogus haereticorum, in which he exposed the licentiousness of the clergy.52 In September, he took up his residence with Prince Radziwill at Wilna, and to his host's seven-year-old son Nicholas he dedicated his Lac spirituale Then, in order to be near the diet, which met at Warsaw in December, he went to the Prussian town of Soldau, hoping to be summoned to take part in the deliberations and to cross weapons with the nuncio Lippomani, who was demanding that the leaders of the evangelical movement be sent to the scaffold. He was disappointed of admission to the diet, and had to content himself with a literary attack carried on from Soldau. At the diet, the demand for complete religious liberty made by the Prussian cities and the Polish knights was refused, the king declaring that the diet must occupy itself only with the defense of the country. An edict followed, prohibiting religious changes.54 The return of Laski in December 1556 marked the beginning of close relations with the Swiss—Polish names become frequent, for instance, on the register of the university of Basel,—and that of Lismanini inaugurated the influx of Italian exiles from persecution, Protestant and papal. With both there entered the ranks of the Polish evangelicals elements of discord which sealed the fate of the movement there. For Laski, whose earliest views on the Eucharist were Zwinglian, had adopted the Consensus Tigurinus only to come forth immediately as the protagonist of Calvin. His tractate regarding the sacrament of the supper 55 appeared in 1552, when he was superintendent of the community of exiles in London in the time of Edward VI. In it Luther and his teaching are condemned, and Calvin's conception described as the true one. Though prompted by the motive of drawing all evangelicals into the promising alliance already entered by Calvin and the Swiss in 1549, Laski only contributed to make permanent the cleft between Lutherans and Reformed, and drew upon himself the undying hatred of those whom he thought to convince. What his Calvinistic friends thought of him can be "Hubert, op. cit., nos. 109-10, apparently the "Catalogue" of 1554 increased by the "Annotations" of 1557 and printed at Königsberg. "Ibid., no. 91. It was a translation of the treatise of Valdes of the same title; Vergerio had made his Latin version from the Italian, and it was now translated into Palish (Heep, Juan de Valdes, p. LIV). " Pastor, op. cit., XIV, 332. K Brevis ac dilucida de sacramentis ecclesiae Christi tractatio. It called forth the Farrago of Westphal.
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deduced from the passage quoted by Dr. Kruske on his title-page. Farel, writing Calvin,58 says: "I do not know why it is, but the harder Laski works, the less is peace in prospect." The diet closed in January 1557. Vergerio entered Warsaw only at its close, and then went to Cracow, where he spent a fortnight in February with Laski, Lismanini, and others, from whom he demanded a public condemnation of the De amplitudineVergerio was in Poland to advertise the Lutheran way into heaven, and there was grave danger in a book which supported the thesis that the love of God is broader. It was in vain that he sought the condemnation of Curione. Laski admitted that some things in it seemed to him not thoroughly founded on the Bible, but refused, with his colleagues, what Vergerio asked. 58 On February 23, the ex-bishop went to Posen; on March 14 to Wittenberg; and on March 28 he was at Leipzig, whence he wrote Amerbach, recommending a poor scholar. At Wilna, in public and in private interviews (March 19-21, 1557), Laski urged the king to make public profession of the evangelical faith; and Sigismund accorded at least his protection. He preached at times at Wilna before the king's household, there and in Little Poland, his message being always a Polish national church in which the Lithuanians of Great Poland as well as the Bohemian Brothers of Little Poland should unite. Lismanini was soon on his way back to Zurich, giving way before the "exceeding rage of Satan and the enemies of Christ the Lord, against which the king—such is his weakness—has not been able entirely to contend." 58 He had been permitted to remain at the intercession of Boner, castellan of Bietz and of Cruciger, superintendent of the reformed churches of Little Poland, when the bishops provoked the king into putting him under the ban, but he never regained Sigismund's favor. He bore on his return to the Cantons report of the progress of Laski. The nuncio succumbed to other shafts than those of Vergerio. He was received by the nobles with buffoonery when he made his entrance into Cracow.
"August 16, 1556 (OC XVI. 259). The reference is to Kruske, Johannes a Lasco und die Sacramentstreit (Leipzig 1901). " Vide infra, p. 287. " Wotschke, Lulomirski, pp. 129 ff. "Utenhove to Bullinger and Vermigli, Wladislaw, June 23, 1557 (Parker Letters II, part 2, p. 596 ff.) For the Belgian Utenhove vide Pijper, Jan Utenhove (Leyden 1883) and Dictionary of National Biography. He was the friend of Sozini and Curione.
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For as he made his entry, the trumpeter, the city-watchman, sounded on his trumpet the melody "Uphold me herein by Thy word," and some of the nobles made a noise with horns, like the bellowing of herdsmen, along the way by which he entered, while others shouted in an extraordinary manner, whereby he might easily understand how acceptable his arrival was to the people of Poland.60 An escort of nobles, moreover, accompanied a preacher summoned to answer before the bishop of Cracow, and demanded in presence of the nuncio (his guest at the time) that he explain his summons. He was terrified into disclaiming having issued any summons and let off with an admonition not to molest the preachers. Back in Württemberg, Vergerio planned to return to Poland at the head of a deputation from the evangelical princes of Germany which should demand of the king and Radziwill the adoption of the Augsburg Confession. Radziwill, influenced by Laski, was however of no mind to promote Lutheranism to the exclusion of other creeds, and the plan failed. Vergerio was reinforced only by Duke Albrecht of Prussia, to whom Laski had gone unsuccessfully at the beginning of 1558 to secure his approval of a confession drawn up by him and directed toward the Polish national church, embracing Calvinists, Lutherans, and Bohemian Brethren. From Tübingen Vergerio continued to combat the demands made upon Sigismund by Paul IV. He wrote to Sigismund (in a letter published in September 1558") advising him to hold a national council. Whether responding to his efforts or not, the Polish diet at Piotrkow was immediately there after debating the idea again. The new nuncio, Camillo Mentuato, who had arrived with his colleague Peter Canisius at Cracow in October 1558, reports his efforts to frustrate it, along with the demand of the nobles and the cities that the bishops be excluded from the forthcoming election of a successor to Sigismund, who had no children, their oath of allegiance to the pope being inconsistent with that to the king. He announces on February 11, 1559 that the diet has closed in great disorder.82 Paul IV now renewed his reproofs of the king for countenancing heretics and heresy, and especially for giving the bishopric of Kujaiwien to Uchanski, bishop of Chelm, and for appointing Radziwill his prime minister. He concluded his letter with a threat to recall his nuncio.68 Hosius also reported to Rome, and Cardinal Puteo wrote to Sigismund. "Burcher to Bullinger, Cracow, March 16, 1558 (Parker Society, op. cit., p. 700). " Hubert, op. cit., p. 163. " Pastor, op. cit., XIV, 333-35. " Ibid, pp. 336-37.
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In face of the impotence of the papal representatives, a new champion of Rome is forthcoming. Stanislaus Hosius, bishop of Ermeland, entered the lists against Vergerio. A war of words was being waged by the Dominican De Soto with Brenz, starting with De Soto's attack on the Württemberg Confession and continuing with the Prolegomena of Brenz against De Soto, which Vergerio translated into Italian and published in January 1S56. Lippomani had been too much at a disadvantage during his Polish mission to carry on the attack against Vergerio, who was regarded with scarcely more favor than he by the Polish leaders; and it was Hosius who now published the Conjutatio prolegomenon Brentii in 1558. It had already been presented in manuscript to King Sigismund. Unquestionably Hosius met the requirements of vigorous invective as they were then understood—his opponents are "parricides, bandits, poisoners, thieves and robbers"; their belief is "Satanism,"—but Vergerio, who accepted the challenge, was his equal in the Dialogi quatuor de libro quern Hosius contra Brentium et Vergerium edidit,64 which was dedicated to Duke Albrecht of Prussia and to Prince Radziwill in date of March 1, 1559. He topped it, when Hosius went to Vienna as nuncio, with a pamphlet addressed to Andreas Tricesius (dated March 15,1560) proving by the familiar device of a dialogue what an incredibly bad choice Hosius is for a nuncio. 85 From Tübingen also Vergerio accused Laski and Utenhove of complaining to Bullinger of his intended Polish mission,88 and he took up the matter with the Polish nobles, threatening public disclosure of the matter in a defense (Apologia) he would publish. Bullinger's correspondent fears not only the danger to the peace of the church, but the exposure of Vergerio's private character, which will certainly be ventilated. Vergerio came back to Poland indeed in 1560, but it was not at the head of a Lutheran delegation; he came as the envoy of Duke Johann Wilhelm of Saxony, suitor for one of Sigismund's sisters.87 Meantime Lelio Sozini had come and gone for the second time; his stay this time lasted from October 1558 to February or March 1559. " Wotschke, Reformation m Polen, p. 164—Kausler and Schott, pp. 199-200— Hubert 163 and 309, no. 131—Vergerio to Amerbach, August 3, 1559 (G II. 31, 401). "Hubert, op. cit., pp. 163-64 and 312, no. 140. " Burcher to Bullinger, Crawcow, Mar. 1, 1558 (Parker Society, op. cit., p. 693). " For Vergerio's first Polish journey, J. Sembrzycki, "Die Reise des Vergerius nach Polen 1556 bis 1557" (Altpreussische Monatschrift, XXVII, 513-84, Oct.-Dec. 1890) and Wotschke, Reformation in Polen.
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Sozini's second Polish trip, though it was utilized by the Swiss leaders to gain first-hand information about their distant protégés, was part of a larger scheme, a business trip to Italy made necessary by the death of his father. Lelio wanted a letter from King Sigismund to Cosimo de' Medici, now sovereign of Siena, to whom he had to apply for the restitution of the property sequestered because of the arrest of his brothers by the Inquisition. He was provided with letters from Calvin to Radziwill —Calvin was in a yielding mood just after his victory over Gribaldi's sympathizers at Geneva and assured Bullinger he would let bygones be bygones,—from Bullinger to Utenhove and Laski, and apparently from Vermigli. He went by way of Vienna, as has been noted, for he wanted to see Maximilian. In Poland, he accomplished satisfactorily his own mission and that with which he had been entrusted by the Swiss reformers. His letter to Bullinger from Cracow on January 23, 1559M speaks of private interviews with the king which were not fruitless, for he has letters from Sigismund to take with him as he returns to Vienna. Perhaps the king reminded him that his letters had saved Lismanini at Milan a few years before. From the letters of Sozini to Calvin from Zürich on his return we know of the religious factions in Poland from one who had been present at their meetings and known their leaders. The king [he says]69 wishes these differences allayed, that he may take his pleasure in peace and quiet; but he says it is not his to set forth any particular doctrine from the word of God ; that is the province of the councils and of the popes. He sees the number of the faithful increasing so that in a brief time the bishops will be obliged to do what they ought to do voluntarily, that is, withdraw their opposition to the reform which they were blocking in the diet. "In the diet of Piotrkow," wrote Utenhove to Calvin, on January 27, 1559,™ "there is now being discussed the matter of excluding bishops from the senate of the realm." And he goes on to tell how the count of Tarnow protested that the nobles swear allegiance to the king while the bishops swear it to the pope. The bishops countered, after a conference at the house of the papal nuncio, that they had possessed their seats for the longer time. Utenhove's own answer is that, according to the canon law—he quotes the sixth book of the Decretum—"the professor "Trechsel, op. cit., II, 197, note 4—Wotschke, Briefwechsel der Schweizer mit den Polen, 164a, etc. ""Sozini to Calvin, Aug. 22, 1559 (OC XVII. 3100). ; "OC XVII. 1302.
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of a proscribed faith at no time prescribes." Sozini thinks that, if Sigismund allowed himself to be overruled, he would be excused even by the pope (who hoped to get the duchy of Ban, of which Sigismund's mother had been duchess); he can say that he is compelled by the laws of the kingdom to approve whatever the senate decrees. And the Sienese concludes: "Would that he had the mind of Maximilian, or that the latter were as free in his kingdom as Sigismund Augustus in his." From the English merchant John Burcher, we learn of the state of feeling between Calvinists and Lutherans. He does not hear of a single man of learning who does not abominate the Lutheran errors; Laski is zealously enforcing the Calvinistic conception of the Eucharist. As to the king: "Sigismund is of an easy and tractable disposition and may without difficulty be brought to our way of thinking." He refused, at the time of the diet, to banish the "gospellers."71 Sozini tells of the nobles who lean to the reform, especially of Radziwill, of whose household he has been an inmate, but who, one gathers, is stronger on promise than on performance. Yet he has had the Bible translated into the vernacular. 72 Burcher says of Radziwill that he is reported to receive bribes from the Jews; and wishes he would consult both his own interests and the interests of the gospel. Sozini mentions John Boner, castellan of Bietz, and Nicholas Olesnicki among the leaders in Little Poland. In the former is recognized the son of a friend of Erasmus, former student at Padua, Bologna and Rome, and the most untiring of the advocates of union in the following years when the Polish evangelists were combating the tritheistic theory championed by the Italians. It was very likely his prolonged illness during 1559 and part of 1560 which furthered the progress of schism. Olesnicki is he who, according to Burcher, "began the opposition to Antichrist and the papists" at Pinczow under the influence of Stancari, who induced him to eject the monks from the monastery and the images from the church there, in order to set up a cult like that of Geneva. Summoned before the court of the bishop of Cracow, he had to promise to restore the monks.73 "Parker Society, op. cit., p. 702. zakonu, etc. It w a s published ™ Biblia swieta tho iest ksiegi storego y noweyo in 1S63. T w o copies are in existence. Alciati, Ochino, and Biandrata were among the seventeen theologians he employed, says Cantu (II, 4 8 3 - 8 4 ) . But the first and last were not theologians. "Sozini to Calvin, Oct. 2, 1559 (OC X V I I . 3121)—Burcher to Bullinger, Cracow, Feb. 16, 1558 (Parker Society, op. cit., p. 690 note).
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NOTE TO CHAPTER X
A word on the geography of Poland might not be out of place. Of the eighteen divisions of old Poland distinguished by Fortunato Giannini (Storia detta Polonia e delle sue relazioni con I'Italia, Milano 1916, pp. 15-16), the three constantly recurring in this and subsequent chapters are thus defined: Great Poland (Wielkopolska), a vast plain with the river Warta, covered with fields, swamps, and sand. The principal cities are Gniezno, Poznan on the Warta, Kalisz on the Prosna, Piotrköw, Sieradz, Weilun, Lfczyca. Little Poland (Malopolska), occupying the central reaches of the Vistula, touching the Beskidy and the Tatra mountains. The cities are Cracow on the Vistula, Wislica on the Nida, Cz^stochowa on the Warta, Wieliczka, Bochnia, Sacz, Dukla, Jaslo, Tarnöw, Sandomierz on the Vistula, Kielce, Radom, Lublin. Prussia (Prusy), the part between the Baltic and the rivers Vistula, Niemen, and Drw?ca. The cities are Torun on the Vistula, Cheimno (Culm), Malborg (Marienburg), Elblag, Krölewiec (Königsberg) on the Pregola, Tylza on the Niemen. Lithuania (Litwa), with many rivers and lakes, rich in forests. The cities are Wilno (Wilna) on the Wilia, Krewo, Grodno on the Niemen, and Kowno.
CHAPTER
XI
T H E MARCHESE D'ORIA 1557-1558 BONIFACIO OF ORIA, T H E AMATEUR PROTESTANT
When Gribaldi, given six months in which to dispose of his property, looked about for a purchaser, he made overtures to the newest comer among the Italians, who, during the three months since his arrival at Basel had been living there in a house of which the rent was paid by Boniface Amerbach. Gian Bernardino Bonifacio, márchese d'Oria in the kingdom of Naples, was not a pensioner of Amerbach; he was a personage whose exalted rank in his own country, joined to a very fascinating personality, made him one whom the old doctor delighted to honor, even to the extent of relieving him of financial obligations which he seems to have been quite able to meet. Among the Italian exiles, the márchese d'Oria is a unique phenomenon. They counted in their number theologians, scholars in profane (i.e. "polite") literature, students and teachers. Nor were those of gentle birth lacking. At Zürich, whither she had come when hostility to the Italians developed at Chiavenna, was Doña Isabella Briseña; at Geneva, Galeazzo Caraccioli, son of the márchese di Vico, a great Neapolitan noble, and persistently called by the reformers "the marquis," a title which was never his. At Basel was Vincenzo Maggi (di Masi), whose family, a widely diffused one in Italy, was related somehow to that of the Bonifacio. But Bonifacio was not precisely an exile for conscience's sake. His departure from Naples had been under pressure, it may be, but not of the Inquisition. The king wanted his property which, had he been condemned as a heretic, would have been forfeit to the state. But the Neapolitan Inquisition, behind which was the grim figure of Cardinal Caraffa, later Pope Paul IV, with whom hatred of the Spaniard was a motive superior even to hatred of heresy, was not likely to condemn one whose goods would go to enrich the hated foreigner. It was only after the Venetian Inquisition had condemned him in July 1558 that his estates were declared forfeited; and the charges brought against him then did not relate to his life at Naples.
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It was after that episode that he began a wandering life unparalleled even in the history of the Italian reformers. The lordship of Oria had been given by King Federigo of Naples, last of the house of Aragon, to Roberto Bonifacio, member of a house which had stood high in the favor of both Angevins and Aragonese. Their palace in Naples is reached today from the via Portanova, where a noble Renaissance portal, above which are sculptured at right and left the arms of the family, contrasts oddly with its squalid surroundings. 1 There is naught to remind one here that the Bonifacio entertained ambassadors to the Aragonese court. T h e country residence of the family was the palace "of the Siren" at Posilipo, which, coming later into the hands of members of the Caraffa family, the princes of Stigliano, was demolished to make room (in 1642) for the well-known "Palazzo Donn' Anna," permanent monument, even in its unfinished state and with the ruin wrought by an earthquake, to the extravagance of the Neapolitan vicereine. The earlier edifice is connected with the name of Dragonetto Bonifacio, either the father or (more probably) the son of Roberto. Both bore the name. From the acquisition of Oria by Roberto in 1500, the family seat was the castle built there by the emperor Frederic II, which is described by Bourget in his Sensations d'ltalie.2 "Smoky Oria" it is called in the countryside, which has a more or less apt legend to account for the peculiar haze which settles at dusk over the towers and battlements. 8 The Terra d'Otranto, in which Oria is situated, is one of the regions of southern Italy which preserves the memory of that Magna Grecia of which it once formed a part, though the Greek idiom spoken there at present dates not from classical times but from the military occupation by Basil the Macedonian. 4 These lands had formed part of the immense feudal holdings of Gian Antonio Orsini, who, it was said, in journeying from Taranto to Naples, could sleep every night in one of his own castles.® It was the problem of the Aragonese kings of Naples, as 1 Nicola Barone, "Il Palazzo Bonifacio a Portanova" (in Napoli nobilissima, I, (n.s.), 83-87, giugno-giulio 1920. * Pages 267 ff. 1 A lord of Oria bore away to the castle the daughter of one of the villagers, and she, to escape his embraces, threw herself headlong from one of the towers. The bereaved mother, invoking a curse on the abductor, prayed that the battlements might thenceforth smoke even as her heart was smoking. 4 Tozer, "The Greek-speaking population of southern Italy" (Journal of Hellenic studies, X , 11-42). 'Gothein, tr. Persico, Il rinascimento nell' Italia meridionale (Firenze 1915),
P 4.
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of their successors of the house of Hapsburg, to thwart the development, in regions where an alien element was strong, of a power that might overshadow the king's own. Roberto Bonifacio was conceded by Charles V the title of marquis of Oria when, in 1522, he purchased the neighboring fiefs of Francavilla and Casalnuovo (now called Manduria). The dignity of justiciar of the scholars of the university was his also; it had been hereditary in the family since the days of Giovanni II. He was skilful in reconciling his loyalty to the Aragonese with acceptance of the rule of Charles VIII in 1494, and assistance (at least indirect) to the French at the time of Lautrec's expedition in 1528; and died, full of years and honors, in 1536. The Bonifacio were of the seggio of Portanova; so too was the wife of Roberto, Lucrezia Cicara, whom he married on June 29, 1499. They had five children. The eldest, Dragonetto, was killed in 1527 by a fall from his horse; and the later story, that he had been overcome by the fumes of a very powerful poison he was distilling, sounds like a popular tale inspired by dark suspicion of what went on up at the castle.9 The second, Andrea, died in childhood ; his monument, with the inscription by Sannazaro, is to be seen in the church of Saints Severino and Sosio in the neighborhood of the palace at Naples. It is the third son, Gian Bernardino, born on April 25, 1517, who concerns us here. There were two daughters, Costanza, whose second marriage with a Mormile made that family the heirs of the Bonifacio, and Isabella, married to Cesare Pignatello, who was scrivano di razione, occupant of one of those posts at the tribunal of San Lorenzo—which might be called the senatehouse of Naples—whose incumbents were distinguished as royal ministers.7 We may think of Gian Bernardino as growing up in the half-Greek atmosphere of the Terra d'Otranto, nourished on the wealth of popular superstition to which that countryside lent itself.8 The irrational side of a nature only too strongly attracted by the bizarre and extraordinary was but deepened. Perhaps he heard from returned soldiers much about strange lands, for the people of the Terra d'Otranto "are brave and love the military service more than a sailor's life, notwithstanding the beautiful coasts."® From seafaring folk too, he could hear much to stir his * Scipione Ammirato, Famiglie nobili napoletane, I, 78. * Cf. Aurelio Romano, La città e il commune di Napoli (Napoli 1908), p. 115. * Cf. Giuseppe Gigli, Pregiudizi, credenze e fiabe popolari nella terra d'Otranto, saggio storico (Lecce 1889). • Camillo Porzio, "Relazione del regno di Napoli al marchese di Mondesciar 1577-1579" (in A. Gervasio, ed., Istoria d'Italia nel 1547. Napoli 1839, pp. 133-47).
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imagination. The vessels which visited the neighboring ports came mostly from Venetian territory, and brought news of the Orient. He took kindly to his books, and profited most likely from the supervision of his older brother's friends, for Dragonetto Bonifacio was a pupil of Fabrizio de Luna, author of the first dictionary of the Italian language, and wrote madrigals as well.10 Gian Bernardino was a pupil of Quinto Mario Corrado, renowned Latin scholar in his native Oria and the discoverer of the Messapian inscriptions. Moreover the Bonifacio had numerous connections among the letterati about the court. Dragonetto, the father of Roberto, was a friend of Masuccio of Salerno, the writer of short stories in the vein of Boccaccio; and his daughter Carmosina, Roberto's sister, was the adored of Sannazaro, whose verses to her attracted the attention of the prince of Altamura who later became King Federigo. The restless passion for wandering that came to characterize the man was early indulged in the youth. His father sent him at the age of fourteen to travel in company of a tutor, and he is said to have visited Rome, France, and Spain.11 To an incident of this first excursion one of his biographers attributes the first step in his alienation from the Catholic church. 12 The boy and his companion, unwittingly trespassing, had an encounter in a church with the master of ceremonies of Clement VII, who drove them forth; and the sensitive youth, dissuaded from returning home at once, nursed his grievance from that time. These travels of the young nobleman fell in a critical period in France, the beginnings of persecution signalized by the execution of Berquin in 1529, by the affair of the Placards, and by the address of Cop. Such events might have made an impression on a boy in his 'teens; but Gian Bernardino, who in later life never felt deeply on religious matters, would hardly have been moved to partisanship. The young marchese, who succeeded his father in 1536, is not mentioned as of the group through which Valdes was giving direction to the current of Italian reform, 13 but he was none the less in touch with the " Cf. E. Pércopo, in Vol. X, of the Giornale storico delia letteratura italiana, pp. 197 ß. u Welsìus, Miscellanea hymnorum. . . . D. Johannis Bernhardini Bonijatii Neapolitan, Dantzic 1599. " Mazzuchelli, Gli scrittori d'Italia, III, 1656. "Except by McCrie in the original English edition (Edinburgh 1827) of his Reformation in Italy. The passage does not appear in the French translation of the work (Paris and Geneva 1831).
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leader, for he is cited among those who met in the house of Giovanni Maria Bernardo to hear Valdes' explanation of the Epistles of St. Paul. 14 He is also associated with the Carduini, who reappear at Geneva,1® and Mazzuchelli says that he heard the preaching of Lorenzo Romano, an Augustinian friar who was disseminating the doctrines of Zwingli.1" But there is nothing to show that he was touched by the spirit of reform, or was anything more than a young pagan full of the humanist's joy in life. Thus the anonymous author of an account of the mission to Naples of the Jesuits Salmerón and Bobadilla17 tells of his entering a church at Naples with a band of cavaliers and refusing to receive the holy water offered him by one of these, saying "essere cosa superstitiosa l'uso di questa acqua sacraméntale" (the use of this sacramental water is a matter of superstition). When he went to mass, moreover, he held before him a copy of Ovid's De tristibus, bound like a book of hours. These actions were used against him as evidence of Lutheran leanings, but show no more than a spirit of levity if taken in connection with what we know else of Gian Bernardino. More umbrage was taken at his retirement from the capital to the rocca sueva, i.e. the Swabian or Hohenstaufen castle at Oria, where he gave himself up to the life of a recluse. It was his studies that occupied him, but of his life so little was known that he was reputed "of strange manners and of nature very different from other Neapolitans." 18 His possession of two Turkish (or rather Berber) slave-girls, who were his sole attendants, gave rise to stories which never shocked the Italians of more sophisticated regions than rural Apulia. His attachment to them, whatever its nature, was deep and lasting; Giulia and Tisiphone, as he called them—finding some singular appropriateness, we may be sure, in the classical names—accompanied "Others were Consalvo Bernardo, Marino Spinella, Donato Antonio Altomare, Bolognetto lettore, il Gargano (Gian Bernardino di Gargano d'Aversa), 1'Alois (Gian Francesco d'Alviso di Caserta), Petraleone, the princes of Ascoli,—according to an anonymous account of the mission to Naples in 1S40 of Bobadilla and Salmerón ( M o n u m e n t o histórica societatis Jesu, Bob. Mon., I, 17-21). " Galiffe, Refuge italien. The anonymous Jesuit, echoing popular opinion, no doubt, speaks of the flight of the marquis in company of the Carduini, "in Ginevra," one city which the indefatigable traveler seems never to have visited. In the correspondence of Calvin he is never mentioned. There "the marquis" always means Caraccioli, whom the Swiss reformers accorded that title long before they heard of the marquis of Oria. "Mazzuchelli, op. cit. For Romano, vide Giannone, Storia civile del regno di Napoli. " Bob. Mon., as above, I, 20. " Ammirato, op. cit., I, 78,
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him in all his subsequent wanderings. It was common report that he did not hear mass within the castle. To his public duties he was so negligent that the Viceroy Toledo wrote him a reproof because, when summoned to the tribunal of San Lorenzo by Scipione di Somma, he would not go. Whether deprivation of his offices was the cause or the result of his conduct is not clear. Summonte says 19 that he was deprived of his office of gran giustiziere del regno on account of his obstinate and overbearing disposition and retired to his castle. The office of which Toledo threatened to deprive him50 was that of grassiero or capitano della grassa, which made him responsible for the provisioning of the city, and had been held by his father before him. The office of giustiziero degli scolari of the university of Naples was hereditary in his family, as has been said. It may be suspected that the family as a whole made notable contributions to the gossip which the grim old castle inspired in the surrounding villages. The old marchese Roberto was something of a Tartar according to the depositions in the suit brought after his death by his daughter Isabella to recover her share of the inheritance of their parents from her brother Gian Bernardino. 21 From these it appears that Isabella on her.marriage was compelled to renounce all claim on the family property and be content with a money dowry, five hundred scudi. She did so under protest, but her father, who was an "homo superbo, terribile et subitaneo et che voleva esser obbedito," had kept her imprisoned both at Naples and at Oria. She was in terror of him even after her marriage and confirmed at his behest the renunciation of "ogni parte et portione, paragio et supplemento de paragio, dote, antefato et ragione dotale de sua madre et ogni successione" which she had made before her marriage. 22 But she bided her time to register a protest against the "Storia del regno di Napoli, I, chap. 7. "The letter, dated Mar. 5, ISSI, is in the state archives of Naples, Curiae collat. cons, (upper privy council), Vol. 13, fol. 33. " Archivio di stato, Naples. Processi della regia camera della sommaria, Pandetta antica, Vol. S20, processo no. 5871, fol. 33 to fol. 45 verso. The suit dragged on through the years 1549-1552. "Ex certa dotalitii sponsione, says Welsius, her brother's friend and biographer many years later. Isabella left Gian Bernardino the family lands and the title of marquis. Evidently the professor did not understand what his friend told him of this episode, for it seems to have been a question of her dowry and not of the succession, the girl's connection with which it is hard to see. Yet to Cesare Pignatello, Isabella's husband since 1527, the Marquis Roberto mortgaged in 1530 (sold with the right of retrovendendo) the city of Oria, in order to meet the payment due the sovereign in accordance with the agreement when he received back his lands after
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cessions exacted of her. Apparently the occasion was furnished by a report of the imminent departure of her brother from Naples in 1549 (probably the date of his retirement to Oria); and it was then that the litigation commenced between her and Gian Bernardino over the matter. The young marchese was always in need of money. Oria was mortgaged to Cesare de Gennaro, Casalnuovo to Gian Bernardino's own wife, Beatrice della Marra. 23 Both these fiefs had apparently been ceded to the emperor Charles V in 1546, in accordance with the offer of Bonifacio himself, who had no child to succeed him. Knowing the loads of books which later regularly followed him on his travels, it may be suspected that his own purchases, and perhaps the financial backing afforded to the literary enterprises of his friends, many of which were dedicated to him,24 were responsible for the state of his purse. There was difficulty in the way of the cession of these lands to the emperor, and may well have been, considering their involved status of mortgage. But it is more than likely that the emperor's failure to push the matter goes back to the old episode first told by Terminio. 25 The father of Gian Bernardino, the marchese Roberto, was, it has been said, in charge of the provisioning of the city. When in 1528, the imperial army came to Naples to defend it against the French under Lautrec, he had been guilty of the gross miscalculation of leaving the city and his duties. It was for this that he had been deprived of his fiefs by the viceroy Philibert of Orange. How he recovered them by personal application to the emperor Charles V when two successive holders of them had died suddenly, one after the other, is told as an example of his guile and nerve. But another consideration suggests itself in view of the complicated fortunes of the lands in the time of his son. Did the emperor, though he smiled at Roberto's assumption of anxiety regarding the fate which seemed to pursue the holders of Oria and Francavilla, really nourish a secret dread lest it be true that the life of the sovereign would be in peril if these fiefs of evil augury lapsed to the crown? Was this the reason that the resignation of Gian Bernardino never took effect? But the viceroy Toledo pressed the matter, and was careful to send his treason of 1528. Cf. Barone, op. cit., and source there cited. It may be that some claim of Isabella's was derived from this transaction. " Barone, op. cit., citing Partium summariae 413, fol. 43 t. " For example of Dolce, Carani, Pasquale, etc. vide Pércopo, op. cit. " Apologia dei tre seggi illustri di Napoli (Venezia 1581), pp. 60-61.
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after the marquis, who had retired from Naples soon after declaring his intention, making inquiry about the deed of gift which, in spite of Gian Bernardino's assurance to the contrary, the notary denied to have been made.2* Nevertheless, in the end, confiscation of the fiefs as those of a heretic was the only recourse left to Philip I I , and popular hostility to a procedure savoring of the Spanish Inquisition (where the goods of a heretic were forfeit to the state) made him hesitate. The pope would not push the prosecution since the profit would go to the king, and when in October 1557, Bonifacio was summoned at last before the Inquisition, it is safe to conclude that Paul had been assured of the transfer of Oria to him and consented for that reason to open the case. Oria had been promised, according to the report of the Venetian ambassador Michele Suriano,27 to the pope for his nephews by the duke of Alva. Paul IV was in September 1557 formally reconciled to the power he had tried to drive from Italy. 28 When Alva knelt to kiss the foot of his vanquished foe at that time, he promised Paul in all probability the fief which may have inspired in him the desire of possession during the brief time of his episcopate there in the days of the marchese Roberto, in the years 1519-1520. If so, Philip's representatives took immediate measures to snatch from the pope's hands the prize, for in October 1557, Pavesi, vicar of the boy-archbishop of Naples, Alfonso Caraffa, wrote twice—on the 10th and again on the 12 th of the month—to the inquisitor Ghislieri (the later Pius V) that royal officials were urging him to institute proceedings against the marchese d'Oria and had shown him a letter from his majesty which made procrastination impossible. "Their solicitude," he added, "is to deprive the marquis of his property." Therefore, with the real intention of preventing Oria from falling into the hands of King Philip and on the grounds that popular opinion would not suffer the confiscation of the culprit's goods, the usual threat was omitted from the citation.29 But Bonifacio was no longer in Naples. About the time that the warclouds began to lower over Italy, he went to Venice. It is not possible to construe his departure as flight. He had been preparing for the press two works of his countryman Galateo Ferrari, the genial physician of * Amabile, 11 sant'officio dell'mquisizione a Napoli, I, 228. The letter is of July 3, 1S46. 17 CSP Brown VI, part 3, no. 1125. w Vide supra, p. 246. "Amabile, op. cit., I, 228. Alva to Ghislieri, Jan. 23, 1558.
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Lecce.30 One of these, Concerning the situation of Iapygia, is an enthusiastic description of the Terra d'Otranto, an Apulian Arcadia. It is a work of the class of Negri's Rhetia. The other is the De situ elemcntorum, likewise a geographical work. It may have been for no other purpose than to launch these little books on the world that their sponsor undertook the journey to Venice, and extended it later to Basel. To Alvise Zorzi, a Venetian patrician whose interest in the work of Ferrari he wanted to bespeak, he had written from Oria on October 1, 1556, that he must come thither "for the sake of weighty business matters." 31 And to Vincenzo Cappello, who was his host during his few days' stay, he afterward wrote that he could hardly tear himself away and that he was exasperated with himself for having left. 32 Nor, when he left Naples, did he intend to return. To Zorzi he expresses the wish to pass "in that flourishing city of yours what remains of my life," and to close his eyes there finally. "What the cradle then did not permit, that shall the tomb grant." There is nothing to show that Bonifacio continued his journey and proceeded to Basel for any other reason than to make acquaintance with another coterie of printer-humanists. The story told by Welsius that Bonifacio had been warned by a senator of the pope's demand that the Venetians give him up as an heretic and that he fled in consequence seems to apply to his later visit. At any rate, on August 15, 1557—two months, therefore, before he was summoned before the Inquisition at Naples—the marchese and three others returning from Italy were given a banquet by the university of Basel. His arrival fell within the month, to judge from a note of Curione to Boniface Amerbach. 33 " Gothein, op. cit., pp. 104-6. n The letter prefaces the De situ lapygiae (Basel 1SS8). An Alvise Zorzi ("Aluigi Giorgi") was capitano of Vicenza at this time. Cf. his report to the Ten, published at Venice in 1843, cited in Arch. stor. ital., VI (n.s.), 119. "Epistola nuncupatoria (Jan. 1, 1558) to the De situ elementorum. Vincenzo Cappello was the namesake and heir of the famous admiral whose funeral-urn and statue by Domenico da Salò are in Santa Formosa. The façade of the church was erected at his expense in 1541. Cf. Tassini, Curiosità veneziane, art. "Cappello." "Arch. Bas. Rationes rectoratus 1553-1569 (Universitátsarchiv K 8), Wissenburg. The marquis of Oria brought with him not only the two Berber girls but also three protégés, of whom were an ex-monk, Annibale of Oria, and a former Franciscan, Gian Tommaso Sirleto of Sicily. The Frenchman Pons ("Pontio francese") was probably the other.
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The marquis of Oria arrived at Basel at the most critical time in the history of the Italian exiles. Above and beyond their disapprobation of the treatment of Servetus at Geneva, which they shared with the Swiss leaders generally, they had been convicted of sympathy with his opinions as advocated by Gribaldi, the boldest spirit among them all, though not necessarily the most radical. His trial and condemnation at Tübingen and Bern fell within the first month of Bonifacio's stay in the Cantons and must have been followed anxiously by Amerbach and his friends, in whose midst the jurist had been as usual, but for the narrow escape from the assassin at Bern, two months before. The most important accession to the colony of exiles was Vincenzo Maggi, upon whom, however, diplomat that he was in religion as in politics, no word of censure fell or breath of suspicion rested, so far as we know. Maggi had come to Basel to enjoy the immunity which strangers could enjoy there as nowhere else in the Cantons. In the fifth and last rectorate of Boniface Amerbach, he had matriculated at the university.34 His linguistic attainments probably stood him in good stead. His Latin was not very strong, and of German he had apparently none, since one of his hasty notes to Amerbach begs the latter to send his famulus to be his interpreter with the council, turning his Latin words into German and the German words of the council into Latin. His letters to Amerbach are clear enough, but obscurities throng in his letters to Bullinger. There is little of the humanist in any of them—rather a suggestion of Oriental circumlocution,—and the quiet humor which explains the reference of the marquis of Oria to him as "cheerful," and the whimsical expressions which he uses, have not their inspiration in classic authors. But it was his knowledge of his mother tongue, as we shall see, that procured him employment; and it was his knowledge of the east that undoubtedly widened his acquaintance in those years of increasing interest in Islam. Maggi seems to have wished to signalize his abandonment of a diplomatic career, upon which the council of Zürich had insisted in such terms as to make him renounce the projected residence there, by calling himself by an epithet which evinces his new interests. Already at Chur, whence he corresponded with Bullinger in 1S5S, he signs himself ** Matr. Univ. Bas. "D. Vincentius Maius Theodidaktus Brixianus, quondam Gallia rum ad Turcam legatus est."
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Theodidaktus, a novel epithet the origin of which it would be pleasant to trace to the residence at Saloniki, since it is found in Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians.35 Maggi was immersed at that time in the reading of Paul's writings; it is clear not only from the fluency of his references, but also from the unrestrained enthusiasm with which he speaks of the apostle to the Gentiles. He compares the letters which Paul sent to the seven churches of Asia with the enigmatic pronouncements which John wrote at the command of the spirit of the seven churches, and clearly thinks it wasted time to ponder on the perplexities of the Apocalypse, Bullinger's sermons on which were published by Oporinus at Basel in the summer of 1557.39 The significance of Maggi's self-assumed surname is not hard to see in view of the state of feeling then existing among Christians. He clearly indicates his stand in the controversies by appending to his name "taught of God" with the context it suggests, "that ye love one another." Pauline Christianity it is which suffices Maggi in the way of religious convictions, but it is the heroic figure of Paul which impresses him who had more than once failed to play the leading part he craved. Paul "thunders" and "lightens" and "scintillates" and "causes to tremble"; he is the "organ of God." 37 But if he does not condemn orthodox Protestantism, like Gribaldi, and is not tortured by doubts concerning it like Sozini, he feels a certain fellowship with any who suffer for a conviction, and he offers consolation to Bullinger, when the affair of the Locamese brought him much adverse criticism. "Theodidaktus" appears significantly about this time in an anti-papal pamphlet, Ochino's Dialogo del Purgatorio, published at Zurich in 1556, to the no small anxiety of the authorities, who regarded it as likely to accentuate the feeling between the reformed and the Catholic cantons. Are we to recognize Maggi in the protagonist in this dialogue of the opponents of purgatory? Theodidaktus is thrown into prison because he has denied this most important of the three realms over which the pope rules. "Had I denied Hell and Paradise, he would not have been M Cf. 1 Thess. 4:9, "For ye are taught of God (0Eo8i8axToi) that ye love one another." " Diarium 51, line 12. These sermons, 100 in number, were published in English translation in 1561 by John Dane of Ipswich (Strype, Annals, I, 1, p. 383). In anticipation of their appearance, Grataroli writes Bullinger on Jan. 8, 1557 a letter which reveals his amateur interest in the exegesis of Rev. X X . " The letters of Maggi to Bullinger from Chur, Oct. 1 and Dec. 16, 1555 are found in QSG XXIII. 293 and 301.
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so angry." Four monks successively visit the prisoner and seek to argue with him, a Carmelite, a Franciscan, a Benedictine, and a Dominican, but Theodidaktus refuses to be convinced from the authority of scripture, church, councils, pope, or angels. He pins his faith on the atonement." If the presence of Maggi produced no disquiet at Basel, the same could not be said of Bernardino Ochino, the pastor of the Italian church at Zürich. Not merely by the debate between Theodidaktus and the four monks, but by other evidence of controversial zeal did Ochino cause his new sponsors to stir uneasily. Another ghost, scarcely laid by the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, had been raised by the Hamburg pastor, Joachim Westphal, that of the strife between Lutherans and reformed over the Eucharist. 39 Calvin had twice defended the side of the latter when Ochino, at the suggestion, it may be, of Vermigli, who had certainly advocated his participation to Bullinger, entered the lists. In January 1556 appeared from the press of Gesner in Zürich his Dejensio of the Swiss doctrine, whose arguments are of much less importance than the sharp reproof he administers at the close to Westphal for advocating the intervention of the government against the blasphemies of the "Sacramentarians," as he calls the followers of Zwingli and Calvin. The Hamburg senate had, pursuant to this recommendation, actually excluded Anabaptists and "Sacramentarians" from the city. Ochino stamps such an attitude as unchristian, as were also the venom which Westphal pours on his opponents and the epithets he applies to them contrary to the demands of Christian love. "Ochino thereby," says Benrath, "appealed to a tolerance for which his time was not ripe." Unfortunately, however, Ochino's characterization of Luther's conception as no better than the Roman was not adapted to conciliate Lutheran friends of the Italians, chief of whom was Christoph of Württemberg. The result was to alienate this powerful patron, and the Locamese suffered with their pastor, the duke's subsidies falling off at this point.40 "In confidence," said Curione to Bullinger, "Ochino should not have answered Westphal . . .but since he did, being a man of direct and open disposition, he must pay for it, and with him the Locarnese; for now they "Benrath, Bernardino Ochino von Siena, 210-13. "Westphal was a strenuous opponent of Calvin's doctrine of the Eucharist, and accused Melanchthon of crypto-Calvinism. Laski he had attacked for his Calvinistic proclivities in his Farrago of 1552 (vide supra, p. 266, note 55). 40 Benrath, Bernardino Ochino von Siena, pp. 214-18.
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gain nothing from the grace which the prince used to display toward them." 41 They were moreover suffering from discriminating legislation on the part of the Zürich council, and were ill-served by the truculence of their aged pastor. Lelio Sozini, who was in Tübingen next year on his way to Austria and Poland, writes indignantly of the new decree of Christoph forbidding the Zwinglian faith in his territories.42 He attributes it to Vergerio, while the latter laid the responsibility for it on the controversy of Ochino with Westphal. Sozini, since his defense by Bullinger in 1555, had lived at Zürich enveloped in a strange silence as regards his former friends, and in growing intimacy, it is always said, with his venerable countryman Bernardino Ochino. Indeed a species of inoculation apparently went on, of the veteran theologian by the keen young student who had learned reticence in relation to the heads of the Swiss churches; and Ochino's thought, in these last years of his life, seems to have been determined by his contact with Sozini just as surely as it had been determined during his stay in Naples by Valdes and at Strassburg and afterwards, by Vermigli. The latter was once more his colleague, for on the death of Konrad Pellikan, in April 1556, the Zürich council had invited the Florentine, excluded from employment at Strassburg because he adhered to the Swiss communion in that Lutheran city, to take the chair of Hebrew at the Carolinium. Vermigli removed to Zürich in July 1556, stopping at Basel to visit Amerbach and be entertained at the inn Zur Krone on St. Margaret's day. 43 But Vermigli and Ochino, if their careers were curiously parallel, were now to win very different places in the history of the Italian reform. It was not long before doubts arose of Ochino's orthodoxy, while Vermigli became the author of another of the great syntheses of evangelical belief. For Sozini, Boniface Amerbach professed an especial affection, for after bespeaking, in the letter to Mariano Sozini of July 31, 1555, the interest of the great jurist for Basil, he proceeds: "I shall do as much for Lelio, your son; and as up to this time I have loved him especially, I will take care that henceforth also he shall have nothing to desire in my zeal and love toward him." 44 Mariano Sozini died on August 19, " Curione to Bullinger, June 20, 1SS7 (Meyer, op. cit., II, 18-19). "Sozini to Bullinger, Tübingen, July 10, 1558 (Trechsel, op. cit., II, 194). "Rationes rectoratus (U. A. K 8 ) ; Tabulae expensae during the fifth rectorate of Boniface Amerbach (1556-1557). 44 Cod. Bas. G I. 26; copy in G I. 22.
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1556 at Bologna, where he had taught since 1542 and whither Basil Amerbach went to study in September 1555. His errant son now found himself, at thirty-one, disinherited by his father on account of the drift of his studies and perhaps brought into suspicion at home by the imprisonment of Pomponio de Algerio.45 He was also without the generous letter of credit which had enabled him to roam far and wide in pursuit of teachers. He was preparing, in the summer of 1557, when his old teacher Gribaldi came to grief at Tubingen, to return to Italy and try to rescue the inheritance of his brothers and nephew, which the Holy Office had sequestered. The unlucky brothers at home must have looked to Lelio with his powerful connections; and the latter evidently hoped to save the inheritance of Celso and Camillo and Fausto, Alessandro's son. It was no longer comparatively easy for heretics to live in Italy, for Paul IV wore the tiara; and if a refuge were to be found elsewhere, it was necessary to look beyond the Cantons and the Leagues, for Italians were no longer favorably regarded there. Therefore Lelio prepared carefully for this second Italian journey, too carefully in the opinion of Calvin, who observes that by his precaution he is alienating all his friends, 4 ' and hints that his exclusion from the inheritance has given rise, besides, to family dissension which will result probably in their all being turned out at once and reduced to indigence. These very disagreements may have helped to draw the attention of the Inquisition to the Sozini. It would be simpler to condemn them all for heresy, since the condemnation of Lelio, propertyless by his father's will, was not worth while.47 Lelio's plans were formulated at first with a view to securing the backing of the republic of Venice. There, through certain friends of his father, he hopes to recover his property in order to sell it; 48 there also he might employ, if he could engage it, the influence of Maximilian of Austria and Sigismund of Poland, the natural allies of Venice against the Turk. He proceeded accordingly to Worms early in November 1557 to find Melanchthon, who was there for the colloquy, and get letters to those princes. He obtained them, but his plans were modified or amplified before he actually set out for Vienna and Cracow to present ** Cf. his letter from Padua, July 21, 1555 (Gerdesius, Specimen). " Calvin to Radziwill, May 22, 1558 (OC XVII. 2876). " Possibly the elder Sozini was thinking of just that possibility. He would not leave his son an inheritance which be was certain to lose as a heretic. "Melanchthon to Maximilian and to Sigismund, Dec. 1, 1557 (OM IX. 379-83). The letters are printed also by IUgen, Symbola, Vol. II, nos. XV-XVII.
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them. Either because of some suggestion of Vergerio (whom he stopped to see at Tübingen, whither he went from Worms in company of the envoy of Duke Christoph at Worms) or because of the news of the death of Bona Sforza (whose duchy of Bari was affectionately regarded in many quarters), Lelio is now found to be aiming at the intercession of Sigismund with Duke Cosimo of Florence, to whom he will present himself doubtless as Sigismund's envoy in the matter of the claims of Bona's son (as Sigismund was) on Bari. 49 There followed his visits to Vienna, where he arrived August 14, 1SS8, and Cracow, where he was in October of that year. Both in Austria and in Poland, he made his observations and deductions as to the probable fortunes of his evangelical countrymen under the régime of a Maximilian or a Sigismund. That he had to fear the reawakened suspicion of Calvin on account of Gribaldi is evident from the efforts of Bullinger, at this time, to bespeak the good will of Calvin in the letters to Poland which Lelio wanted from him.50 Of the rifts in the Italian circle at Basel, the marquis of Oria must have become aware soon after his arrival. The antagonism between Vergerio and Curione had been increased by the journey which Vergerio undertook to Poland in the summer of 1556. There he employed himself, it has been said, in declaiming against the De atnplitudine, which had already been under fire at Stuttgart. 51 Curione was not meek. "Vergerio is a revengeful man,—pardon me if I say frankly what is only too true," he wrote to Bullinger just at the time the ex-bishop and Gribaldi were together in Basel on the eve of the storm that was to break over the head of the latter,—"a man who today talks one way, tomorrow another; one way in Switzerland, another in the Leagues, another way at court." 52 Once more, it is evident, Curione appealed to Amerbach, with whom he had evidently discussed in conversation the matter with which he came forward in the letter of July 29, 1557. Since you so long delay with your response [he wrote], I surmise that you find it hard to make one. . . . I see that we must do one of two things: either you must take up my defense by name, which indeed is denied not even to robbers, or you must respond that everything has been diligently weighed and compared in the whole book, and that nothing is against the " Knowledge of the growing difficulties of the evangelicals at Venice from Bullinger, Vergerio, or the marchese d'Oria, may also have modified his plans. "Vide supra, p. 270—BuUinger to Calvin, May 8, 1558 (OC XVII. 2865). 81 Vide supra, pp. 233-34. And cf. Curione to Laski, Nov. 1, 1558 (Gabbema, Epistolarum . . . centuriae très, 139). "Curione to Bullinger, June 20, 1557 (Meyer, op. cit. II, 18, note).
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Christian religion and Holy Writ. That there is nothing impious in the whole book I am ready to prove. If anyone objects that it contains something novel, you can answer that there are other pious and great men who have written the same. As you know, we have shown as much in our defense. This seems to me the appropriate, right, true, and expedient way to answer. . . . Pardon me, for I do not say this to give you advice, but in order that, at this critical time, I may not fail in my own defense.53 On the heels of the suspicion of heterodoxy resting upon Curione came a graver one. When, in the summer of 1557, Gribaldi fled from Tübingen to avoid answering the charges made against him of Antitrinitarianism, and search was made in his library, there was found the manuscript of his work Concerning the true knowledge oj God, {De vera cognitione Dei). On the margin were annotations in the handwriting of Curione who accordingly laid himself open to attack. Vergerio related with satisfaction to Bullinger how Celio had been found to be a partaker in Gribaldi's guilt. 54 For when Gribaldi was urged to show certain writings which he was preparing to publish, he complied; then appeared everywhere in the book the handwriting of Celio in certainly no less than fifty places, and these most serious and revolutionary. I hope you will see them sometime. Everyone who has written during the last forty years is mentioned in very evil fashion, as if these could not suffer that others write the truth, merely because they are themselves ignorant and unwilling to forego any meed of praise. Before all is Calvin scored, not indeed by name, but in words so clear that it amounts to the same thing. Warn Curione to be silent, or expect this accusation from my prince also. In fact, Duke Christoph wrote at great length to the burgomaster and council of Basel (August 22, 1557) concerning the heresy of Gribaldi and the extent to which a Basel professor was involved in it,— Curione, namely, already under suspicion on account of his book concerning the amplitude of the kingdom of Christ." Evidently the council wrote to reassure him, for the duke resumes the correspondence from Stuttgart, in September, to say that he is convinced as to Curione's good intentions by the letters of August 12 and September 8, but is despatching his clerk of the chancery, Hieronymus Oberrieden, with the book, in order to ascertain if the writing be that of Curione. 59 A commission composed of Wissenburg, rector of the university, Martin Borrhaus, the antistes Sulzer, and Boniface Amerbach, was appointed to "Arch. Bas., KACI 2, 167. "Vergerio to Bullmger, Tübingen, Aug. 4, 1557 (Trechsel II. 296). "Arch. Bas. KA A3, pp. 170-74. "Ibid., 180.
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examine into the share of Curione, who protested that he had written only a few of the notes, which had to do with the improvement in style of the Italian in which the book was written. 57 The task of translation, both of text and of notes, was entrusted to Vincenzo Maggi, who was reminded of his duty to the city—"like other members of the university," he was under oath to it—and admonished as a wolkundiger Sprachen to fulfill it by faithfully translating the content of the suspicious remarks.58 The commission responded to Duke Christoph on September 29, 1557, that the hand of Curione was evident in certain corrections of words and phrases; that most of the notes were in a hand not greatly different from that of the text. As to a number of Crutzle und Zeichen on the margins, which they had similarly taken care to have translated, they were of a nature so shocking that one could only conclude that Curione himself had written them there that Gribaldi might the better see his errors and be confuted. 59 Proceedings against Curione both on account of the De amplitudine and of his association with Gribaldi's book came to a standstill in the council then; but the feud with Vergerio was a personal matter. Next year, Curione is informed by his son Orazio in Poland of the capital which the ex-bishop was again making there out of the De amplitudine, with the object of undermining the Swiss influence on the reform there in the interests of the Augsburg confession.®0 Vergerio, under the orders of Duke Christoph, was leaning ever more to Lutheranism and away from his old friends since the renewal of the sacramentarían strife in which the Italians had become involved since Ochino's answer to Westphal. Curione, mindful no doubt of his precarious position in the Zwinglian church, attacked Melanchthon on the matter of the Eucharist. 81 It is impossible to regard Bonifacio of Oria, in all this, as more than an interested spectator. The reform was a movement of which he never appreciated the deeper issues, let alone the theological niceties. He was but an amateur Protestant and with his friends Francesco Porto and Boniface Amerbach would have said that he was no theologian. In Biblical passages as in his own letters, false syntax gave him incomparably more pain than false dogma. "Ibid., 17S. Basel Oct. 2, 1557. "Ibid., 181. He is called "hern Vincentium Mayum etwan K. Mt. zu Frankreich diener und legat."
"Ibid., 181. " Gabbema 139. Curione to Laski, Nov. 1, 1SS8. " Curione to Melanchthon, Strassburg, Sept. 1, 1SS7.
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When I had read again my clumsy efforts [he says, referring to some translation he had made], 82 I found in the examplar written by Sirletus in the exposition of that verse 'And forgive us our debts . . .' the words cum and turn transposed. I know not if it be his fault or mine, but I think rather mine. I beg that you send it back to me for rectification. In the meantime you see whether it be true or false, what I am accustomed to say frequently of my own ineptitude. His morals, like those of many an Italian humanist, were those of the time reflected in his favorite Ovid, his devotion to whom is attested repeatedly from the time he read the De tristibus during Mass, through the days of his wanderings, when he regarded himself as pursued by a fate similar to that of the poet. It would have been strange indeed had he ventured within the city-limits of Geneva, an orbit where Calvin exercised a censorship over ethical derelictions like his. BONIFACIO PERSONA N O N GRATA AT BASEL
Until he should have set up an establishment, Boniface Amerbach took it upon himself to pay the Neapolitan's house rent, and even exerted himself to find him quarters. Curione sent a billet to Amerbach on August 8, 1SS7—someone has endorsed it, with a palpable slip of the pen "75"— The marquis Joh Bernardinus Bonifacius has just notified me that he cannot give his attention today to inspecting houses because he means to spend the whole day writing letters to Italy. Tomorrow he sends certain of his household whom he does not need, to Naples. You therefore can rest, who have given yourself so much trouble on his account.63 The trouble was gratefully appreciated by the stranger, and he protested against the attentions paid him. If the Frenchman [he writes about this time, referring to his servant], 64 could have repeated the words I spoke to him, you would never have sent the boar's flesh, for which I render you nevertheless the thanks which are due. I had told him to tell you, in my words, "nullo pacto aliquid ad me mittere," for I had protested that I would not accept it and confirmed my assertion with an oath. But since he did not find the interpreter, the boy who brings this letter, he kept silence utterly. " G II. 31, letter dated Oct. 23, 1SS7.
"Cod. Bas. Epp. erudit. virorum, 176. " G II. 31. There is always the possibility that "pontio francese" is one of Bonifacio's witty pseudonyms (of which the flavor has vanished) for those about him. Of his servant Francesco Diputolli (difficult to recognize under the other name), more is to be said.
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He made what graceful return he could. When the wenches were picking up the house day before yesterday, they came upon a crocus, born in Manduria, once my Manduria;65 I thought to do well in sending it to you that you might enjoy a product of our Calabrian, or rather Salentinian, soil. For if, while I was in prosperity, it was not permitted me to send you flowers in bloom, I hope you will not despise the gift of an exile, buffeted by unjust fates, your client and most obedient son. But Amerbach redoubled his courtesies during that winter at Basel. "If you do not make an end, you will certainly drive me away," says the exile, "since I am not Atlas to sustain with Hercules the weight of the heavens." Clearly Amerbach is striving to reconcile his friend with the German cuisine, for "already the Italian fare is beginning to pall," says the Neapolitan more or less sincerely, "and German dishes cannot displease when other things give delight." Amerbach even succeeded in offering his finical friend Italian cooking. "Moreover," says Bonifacio, "while you set before me Italian dainties, I may boast that papal banquets are not missed even by the exile in Germany." 46 Bonifacio heard much, during the months he spent at Basel, of the heir of the Amerbachs, young Basil, who had already spent the greater part of five years in study abroad. When the marquis reached Basel in August 1557 and made the acquaintance of the elder Amerbach, Basil had already been two months at Bourges, for his father had finally yielded to the young man's restlessness, and granted a few more wanderyears. Bonifacio regretted that he had not known of the young man's presence at Naples in the spring of 15 5 6,67 when Basil, then a student at Bologna, made a trip through Italy armed with letters from his father's friends. "If he had known that you were doing Naples last year," wrote Boniface Amerbach to his son on November 13, 1557, "there is no sign of good will that he would have omitted to show you; for he has a palace there, and is in the habit of occupying it frequently." 6 * The marquis of Oria did not meet Basil Amerbach until long after the death of Boniface, but he now began sending messages through the old doctor, and before the latter's death in 1562 had initiated the correspondence " G II. 31. " G II. 31, in date of Jan. 31, 1558. "Basil Amerbach to his father, Bologna, June 9, 1556 (G I. 8, 77; Teichmann, no. X X I ) . " G II. 14, 201. This is the palace in the via Portanova, with the Bonifacio arms still above the entrance portal.
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with Basil that continued at least until 1584, and covers nearly twohundred folio pages in the manuscript. To the members of the Italian circle at Basel, it is pretty clear that Bonifacio was regarded as a bit too exquisite for their ranks; and it may be that even then somebody dubbed him "the Egyptian" in allusion to the fleshpots which he preferred to the privations of an exile.®9 Grataroli the physician, when the marquis began to talk of a return to Venice, asks (February 1558) with the dudgeon to be expected rather of a native Swiss at reflections on his town: "Why seek the stagnant pools of Venice for 'another sort of quiet, purer water?' Here you live safely, if frugally; what more do you want? A wife? Coin? Books? Companions?" 70 With Curione the marquis embarked on a literary feud of which the underlying cause was very likely the impatience felt by Curione towards Bonifacio as towards Vergerio, as one whose evident prosperity gave the lie to his professions of hardship, and who was playing upon the sympathies of his new friends and of his countrymen. Curione himself was always struggling to make both ends meet. This feud resulted in Curione's furthering the diatribes which pursued the marquis after his departure from Basel, if it was not the immediate occasion of them. Curione published at this time his edition of the works of the French humanist Guillaume Bude (Basel, Episcopius 1557), dedicating it to the Frankfurt jurist Johann Fichard; and following this, in 1558, the first edition of the works of Olympia Morata, with dedication to Isabella Brisena ("Isabella Manrique"). What disparagement was offered by the Neapolitan to the dedicatory epistles no evidence remains to show; 71 but Bonifacio said later: "If I had approved the dedication of the works of Bude, I would not now be an Egyptian; and I could have bought with little money the beautiful encomiums and magnificent eulogies which he pays that noble woman."72 And he professed to hav< " Or else to his wanderings, which before long certainly made the name (equivalent to "gypsy") singularly appropriate. ™"Si tibi cetera quies, purior si lympha probatur, Faeces cur venetas Marchio adire cupis? Vivitur his paucis tuto: quid plura requiris? Uxorem ? an nummos? libros? ad haec comites? (G II. 31). " But it need have been nothing more than aspersions cast upon Curione's motives by one who had been often honored in this fashion by poets, and had been in some sort a patron of letters. "Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Trieste, Nov. 23, 1SS8 (G II. 31, 12). "Egyptian" perhaps to be understood as "gypsy."
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made objection not on personal, but on legal, grounds, accusing Curione of not having complied with the law regarding the censorship of new publications; he means the decree of the council of February 23, 1558, charging with the censorship the regents of the university, to whom every bookdealer must submit an exemplar of every newly-printed book as well as of every book appearing in an enlarged edition. Nonconformers with this regulation were to be reported by the rector to the council." To the citizens of Basel at large, Bonifacio seems to have been even less acceptable than to his compatriots, the members of the Italian coterie and their sympathizers. He who at home had been reputed "of strange manners and nature diverse from other Neapolitans" gave umbrage on that account in the new environment also. His new neighbors must have regarded him with even less favor than the old on account of his associations with the two slave girls; and the evidence brought up later at his trial in Venice shows that his departure from Basel was little short of expulsion. Doubtless the patronage of Amerbach procured for him such reprieve as he enjoyed. It must be noted that neither of the Amerbachs allude to any discredit attaching to the name of their friend, and refer to him always as the much-maligned person he always represented himself to be. And the Neapolitan himself thought it worth while to compose a justification of himself and leave it with his friend on his departure. The people of Basel saw the eccentric stranger but intermittently. In the interests of his growing library and yielding to his growing restlessness, he undertook more or less extended trips from Basel to Strassburg, Worms, Augsburg, and other centres of the book trade. To Worms he went, possibly with Lelio Sozini, at the time of the colloquy of 1557, and met and talked with the leaders of the Lutheran movement. He was able now, too, finally to give to the press the two works of Ferrari, both of which were published by Perna in 1558. The visits he received at Basel were such as to preoccupy his hosts. To reclaim him was the task of the Jesuit Salmerón, who passed through Basel in November 1557 and had one or more fruitless interviews with the marquis.74 His ill success may have rankled, for he afterwards retailed, according to Bonifacio, all manner of falsities to the sister of the marquis,—that Boni"Streuber in the Basel versität Basel, 39. "Salmerón to Lainez, "Olvidó di avisar cómo en está obstinado y perdido y
Beiträge III, 89-90. Cf. Thommen, Geschichte der UniBrüssels, Dec. 18, 1557 (MHSJ Epp. Salm. I. 219): Basilea habló con el marqués de Oria, y el pobre hombre sin remedio humano. Remédiale quien todo lo puede."
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fació had lived at Basel contrary to the will of the council, which had decreed his expulsion forthwith (propediem), and that on account of his bad morals. My sister, therefore [he says], 75 credulous as is the way of women and having an extraordinary love for me, was much grieved and wept immoderately. I answered that everything that the Spaniard had written was most false; and in proof thereof showed her a bit of your letter, the one which you sent Francesco Porto, from which she can draw her own conclusions in regard to what I write. At the same time, I promised, if she wished, to procure a true and clear testimonial from the council (of Basel) concerning everything. . . . I have no doubt that the Spaniard learned everything there from our Basel folk. It may be that Cardinal Carlo Caraffa, who reached Brussels by way of the Swiss cantons on December 12, 1557, 76 spoke also with the marquis of Oria at Basel. And not only Caraffa, but the bishop of Terracina, who was presently despatched by Caraffa's brother, the duke of Paliano, to Brussels. He sought to reclaim Curione, as he stopped at Basel; and would certainly not have omitted to see Bonifacio, if the Neapolitan were then in the city, for his errand concerned the marquisate of Oria. He bore a memorandum of demands to be made by the cardinal on King Philip, from whom Oria was to be requested for the marquis of Montebello, the cardinal's nephew, and Bari for the duke of Paliano. 77 Neither of these fiefs did Pope Paul succeed in securing thus for his family, and the Venetian ambassador at Brussels, Michele Suriano, wrote home to the doge and the senate on January 4, 1558, of Caraffa's discontent at Philip's demurring to give up the six thousand crowns rental yielded by Oria, which Alva had promised the pope for his nephews. 78 The two visits paid, according to Francesco Porto, to the marquis of Oria in Venice in May or June 1558, by the secretary of the ambassador of King Philip 78 may have been to forestall papal machinations regarding Oria. "They never spoke of religious matters," asserted the Cretan. Paul, who consented to the prosecution only when he thought he had made sure of the property of Bonifacio, doubtless "Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Trieste, Nov. 23, 1558, as above. I do not hesitate to identify Salmerón with the "Spanish theologian" qui superiore anno dum nundmae agebantur istac transmit. " Duruy, Le cardinal Carlo Carafa, p. 261. And vide supra p. 246. " Ibid., 264. Cf. Arch. stor. ital., XII, 436. " C S P Brown VI, part 3, no. 1125. "PSO busta 13, Portus. Sept. 27, 15S8.
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nursed his disappointment and sought means to circumvent the king. It was probably at this time that he demanded of the Venetians that they give up the Neapolitan as a heretic. Philip did not share his father's superstition and was bent on the completion of the transfer. Therefore the best way to thwart him was to condemn the marquis as a heretic, in which case the Neapolitans could be counted on to protest against the penalty of confiscation. Philip would desist rather than confront a popular insurrection like those of 1510 and 1547, and neither pope nor king would get the prize. Meantime, the peace signed with Spain, Paul girded himself for the prosecution of the war with the heretics. Even before the conclusion of the treaty, Cardinal Morone was thrown into Sant'Angelo; Salmeron, when he passed through Basel, had just been giving testimony in his trial. Bishop Soranzo of Bergamo was haled before the Holy Office, and with him was the friend of Valdes, the archbishop of Otranto. 80 Cardinal Pole was under indictment when he died, opportunely for himself, on November 12, 1558. Giulia Gonzaga received no summons to Rome, though Paul was collecting evidence against her. 81 The former papal prothonotary Carnesecchi had to submit again to interrogatories which again failed in their purpose of conviction. As to the marquis of Oria, his apostasy was regarded as an accomplished fact. A papal agent, he asserted, enlisted the aid of Curione in defaming him,82 and next year, he was, Giulia Gonzaga hears, slated to be burned in effigy at Rome.83 His sister Constanza tried vainly to make good her dower-rights as her brother's heir, and requested especially to be maintained in possession of the house in via Portanova. In March 1558, the regia camera, however, ordered her to consign the key to Cesare Mormile (her husband's brother), who had rented it.84 Oria was administered from 1557 to 1562 by a bailiff of the king (economo regio), and finally in 1562 became the possession of a papal nephew, Federigo Borromeo. " Amabile, op. cit., I, 145. " Paladino, Giulia Gonzaga, p. 110. "Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Villesse, Feb. 5, 1S60 (G II, 31, 19), "Jam qui Portum ilium . . . exulem egit et erronem (ut de misero Aegyptio nihil loquar) istbic etiam post suas victorias et crumenam a papa plenam laetus triumphum parat, cum Celio una vivens." "She hears (July 29, 1SS9) that tomorrow in Rome there is to be an auto da je, in which the picture of the marquis of Oria ("marchese d'Oira") will also appear (Benrath, article "Valdes" in Herzog, Real-encyclopedie, XX, 390). " Barone, op. cit., citing Processi delta regia camera, Vol. 68, no. 487.
296
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Urged by his imagined privations and hastened by the hostile attitude of the people of Basel, the marquis of Oria was planning a return to Venice as early as February 1558, when Grataroli levelled at him his poetic rebuke. He had been in correspondence with a friend whose acquaintance he had probably made during the earlier visit there, the Cretan Francesco Porto. This Greek immigrant, born at Rhethymo, August 22, 1511, of a family originally of Vicenza, had been educated at Venice and at Padua and employed in 1536 by the "academy" of Modena to lecture to them on Greek.85 He had lived at the house of Grillenzone, leader of the group, for fifteen months, in spite of the opposition of the Dominican friars, who argued that a Greek was not a Christian, he was a Turk. The climax was reached when the city invited Porto to lecture publicly, and Cardinal Morone, acting upon the complaints of heresy, for which the circle which employed the Greek was now held responsible, allowed the newly organized Inquisition to take its course. When the academy was dispersed in 1543, Porto was one of those who was required to sign a confession of faith drawn up by Cardinal Contarini; but it was not forgotten that he had absented himself from the city when the summons came to sign, and had been at some pains to justify himself when later, on his return to Modena, the same profession was required of him as of the others. He said, in the discourse pronounced in the senate of Modena after his return and re-installation at the end of three months,9* that he had hardly reached Venice after receiving his leave of absence when the necessity of the long and dangerous journey to Crete was removed by letters he found awaiting him there, which informed him that his sister was to be declared marriageable. At Ferrara, whither he was called by Duke Ercole II in 1546, he attached himself to the Duchess Renée, and taught Greek and Latin to the princesses Lucrezia and Leonora,87 while lecturing at the university. " For Porto, vide Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, II, VII-XX. For the academy of Modena, vide supra, pp. 38-39. The sources are the letters written to Cardinal Sadoleto, who defended it from the charge of heresy, by Grillenzone on July 3, 1542 (Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese, II, 24) and by Porto on July 7, 1542 (Cantù, Eretici II, 163). " Printed in his edition of the tragedies of Sophocles, 1584. " H e received L296.5 in May 1548 "pour la peine d'avoir enseigné les lettres grecques et latines a mesdames les princesses." Cf. Campori, Luigi, Lucrezia, e Leonora d'Esté, p. 30, note 2).
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He was one of those who received their congé in 1554, when the duke cleared the court of the Calvinists, and since then had been living in the Friuli and at Venice, his adopted home. Once he had gone as far as Basel in the search doubtless of a new engagement.88 The correspondence of the Cretan and Bonifacio of Oria after the arrival of the latter at Basel served to promote a friendship between Porto and Boniface Amerbach, who is writing next year to his son Basil of the letters he receives from Porto in Greek, which he shall see when he returns home." They had never met, for Amerbach "began to love without ever having seen" his correspondent, he says; but Amerbach in his letters to Porto sang the praises of the Neapolitan, and as Bonifacio of Oria certainly paid in kind, they were no strangers to each other. It was on Easter day, 1558, that Dr. Amerbach wrote his son of the departure of the marquis of Oria on April 2. On the supper-party of the evening before "in the Neapolitan fashion" (past' asciutta, we may be sure, with sugo di pomadoro and perhaps the sweet heady wine of the south), he dwells at length. He was introduced for the first time to the dusky Giulia, one of those whose position in the entourage of Bonifacio provoked comment. "I had never seen her before," he informs Basil, "since these women, according to the custom of their race, do not show themselves." She was presented as the chief of the maids, the one who ruled the kitchen. Acting in character, she made two genuflections and kissed the old doctor's hand. In lieu of speaking, she presented a card on which was expressed in Latin platitudes the maxim that beauty is only skin-deep; and—possibly in answer to the unspoken comment in Amerbach's appreciative eyes—the rejoinder followed that Giulia of Carthage redeemed by virtue what she lacked in beauty. Then there were gifts to be presented, embroidered handkerchiefs from the maids, and from Bonifacio himself a crystalline vase for the doctor and a silver beaker with a cover for Basil.90 It may have been in return on this The tutor of Anna d'Este, the eldest sister, was Olympia Morata, dismissed soon after the marriage of Anna to Francis of Guise. "'A banquet was given in Sylvester's inn to D. Franciscus Grecus and Arlenius (University archives of Basel, Rationes rectoratus, Expensorum tabulae 1555-June 9, 1556). It is of course possible (and maybe more probable) that this was Lismanini, in spite of the absence of any reference to him ever as "Grecus," a term frequently applied to Porto, who was no more entitled to it. "Boniface Amerbach to Basil, Jan. 1, 1559 (G II, 14, 215). A letter of Porto to Amerbach, written in Greek from Venice, is of Feb. 1558 (G II. 31, 413). •"The letter in G II. 14, 208.
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occasion that Amerbach presented his portrait to his friend. It is not clear in the letters which Basil later wrote to Nürnberg whether it was the Holbein or a later picture. 81 It is evident that the elder Amerbach felt immense pleasure in association with a distinguished family, for his own father had been a parvenu in Basel, and of more remote ancestors he apparently knew nothing. The little comedy enacted for his benefit at the house of the Neapolitan pleased him genuinely, and its significance did not strike him at once. After the household had departed which had been virtually his guests for eight months, he had opportunity to ponder, it is evident, on the town gossip and the charges brought against the marquis at Venice, of which he now learned. It was not the first time his charity had been ill requited. He may have thought of the Pole Susliga, of the Florentine Nardi, of Alvise Vergerio, and of many another; and he seems to have demanded from Bonifacio a justification of himself. The latter defended himself vigorously, as we shall see. The marquis was accompanied from Basel by three women and by a number of friends—if indeed they were not an escort all too gladly provided by the city,—who agreed to accompany him as far as Chur. In his service went also a certain Francesco Diputolli, a Venetian who had been a setter of Greek type in the printing office of Oporinus when the marquis became acquainted with him. They proceeded by way of Zürich, where the marquis paid a duty of two crowns on his baggage, although, in the first instance, ten florins had been demanded. 92 No worse mishap occurred than his fall from his horse on the first day of the journey. At Chur they were kindly received, and the Basel friends turned back. The letters they bore were dated April 8; in them the Neapolitan expresses gratitude toward his escort, especially Junker Hans (Amerbach's son-in-law Wasserhünlein); and greets the burgomaster and city council. As to the Amerbachs and their kindness to him, he will not keep silence. D u m juga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit, Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rorae cicadae; Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt. 0 3
With the letter to his late host is enclosed another to "Nicephorus" Maggi, evidently the ex-ambassador Vincenzo, whose well-known name and expert knowledge of posts made him the safest addressee of the " Ganz and Major, Das amerbach'sche Kunstkabinett. "Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Chur, April 8, 1SS8 (G II. 31, 7). "Virgil Bel. V. 77-79.
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letters by which the fascinating scapegrace, now in one asylum, now in another, kept his Basel friends posted as to his wanderings during the years which now ensued. That the name Nicephorus had some particular aptness, we may be sure.*4 From Chur the diminished party proceeded to Chiavenna. When they reached Luzzana and the borders of the Venetian territory, the fears of the marquis grew lest he be recognized and his head pay the forfeit.®5 He told his servant Francesco, according to the testimony of the latter, that he proposed to get a letter of citizenship entitling him to the protection of the Gray Leagues;®' and the plan was carried out at an expense of ten scudi. Coming into the Venetian territory, they did not at first venture within the city; and only on the 20th or 21st of April did they enter it, lodging for three days at the Cavaletto,87 then at San Luca in the house of donna Margarita reached by the calle Corner, and finally took a house at San Basegio for six months. The marquis remained hidden in order not to be recognized, but received the visits of his friends Francesco Porto and Francesco Stella. It was not surprising that Bonifacio was presently summoned to answer a charge of heresy, and it is likely that he was now watched. Another caller at his house was the secretary of the Spanish ambassador. Paul IV, Oria having slipped from his clutches, had no longer a motive to suspend proceedings, and may have applied to the Venetian government for his arrest. Meanwhile the Neapolitan mote poetry; laid plans for wintering in Germany and summering in Thrace; and gives no sign of anxiety in his letters to Amerbach. 88 In fact the denunciation came from a quarter whence it was least anticipated. Francesco Diputolli, the Venetian ser" The key to the mysterious Nicephorus to whom Amerbach is always being referred to supplement his letters from Bonifacio is afforded by the letter of the Neapolitan to Castellio (vide, infra, p. 341), where he is called Nicephorus Maggi. It is permissible, of course, to see in him some relative, otherwise known, of the Brescian. Giulia and Tisiphone, the two Berber girls, probably owe their sobriquets to the same whim for fanciful names; and the appellation "Miser Aegyptius," if not invented by him, was worn like a decoration. He refers to Curione as "Curiosus." M PSO Busta 13, "Doria." " This was the means by which Altieri secured his safety at Venice and by which Sozini hoped to profit. The "marquis of Vico," as the Swiss reformers called Galeazzo Caraccioli, similarly obtained the citizenship of the Gray Leagues when he returned to Italy in 1558, hoping to induce his wife to share his exile. " Cf. Tassini, Curiosità veneziane, 151-52, for this famous inn. Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Venice, May 17, 1558 (G II. 31, 8). The mention of Thrace recalls the exile of Ovid, with which Bonifacio is comparing his own.
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vant who had accompanied him from Basel and been four months in his service, had given the marquis a note for 20 scudi advanced him by Bonifacio. When Francesco—to follow his own statement—declared himself weary of his service and demanded the means of returning to Basel, the marquis offered him his own note in payment, with the alternative of accepting 10 scudi as a further advance if he would undertake to pay the note to Amerbach in Basel. The Venetian assures us that it was his relatives who, hearing him complain of the treatment he had received, sought to persuade him to take his revenge by denouncing his master as a Lutheran. He avers that he scorned the idea of such treachery; and that, when his cousin Girolamo Belegno declared his intention of lodging the information himself, he begged him to do nothing of the kind. Two days later, it happened that the cousins met on the square, and Belegno announced that he had made the denunciation, naming Diputolli as a witness. The capitano Andrea Albano, who was standing by (evidently by arrangement since he had already, on July 7, presented the denunciation in the name of Belegno), immediately summoned Francesco to appear before the Holy Office. Belegno had charged the marquis Dorian with heretical practices, with having heretical books in his house, with eating only what the slavewomen prepared for him, and with disputing on heretical matters with those who came to see him. Diputolli, questioned by the inquisitors regarding the wages he had received, responded that he had been paid 20 scudi and his traveling expenses; that he did not wish his former master ill; and that they might learn everything from the Frenchman Pons, "che e stato sempre con lui." 100 Asked who consorted with Bonifacio, conversed with him, and brought him news, he gave the names of Francesco Porto and Francesco Stella. When the informer had given his oath not to reveal what he had just told the Holy Office, he left for Basel, where he found it necessary to defend himself from the charge of acting as a spy of the Inquisition there. He applied to Boniface Amerbach to defend him.101 It was just at the time when Vergerio was writing Duke Christoph of the access of inquisitorial activity in Venetian territory following " T h a t he was not a marked man, whose reputation for heresy had followed him from Naples, is shown by the confusion of his name with that of the great Genoese family. "*PSO Busta 13. July 7, 15S8, Marchese Doria. m Diputelli to Amerbach, G II. 31, 25-26. The letter is written in Italian "per non sapere la lingua tedescha ne mancha la latina" and entrusted to messer Vinceazo Maggi to be interpreted to Amerbach.
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his bold preaching trip there in the summer of 1557—if such trip there was. His relatives, he says, are hustled off to prison, together with his friends, and this because they wanted to see him, when he was lately in those regions.102 Of the three mentioned in the denunciation, the marquis of Oria alone got off scot-free—warned very likely, as Welsius says, by a senator. They separated in their flight, for Porto testifies to the Holy Office in September that he had not seen the marquis since July. Francesco Stella was arrested at Gorizia in the fall of 1559. It is his last appearance on the stage of history. Vergerio had induced Duke Christoph to try and secure for his old friend and agent immunity from the king of Bohemia to live in Istria; but before the answer came to the request, he learned that Stella had been thrown (July 1559) into the citadel of Gorizia and suspected that the emperor had connived at the capture and incarceration. Vergerio again wrote to his patron—for he was not high in favor with Maximilian himself just then—begging him not to let the victim fall into the hands of the Venetians or of the pope. The intervention of Christoph was apparently of no avail, for on November 14, 1559, the bishop of Ceneda, Stella's old prosecutor, announced that he had succeeded in putting this heretic into safe-keeping. Of the outcome we know nothing. 103 Porto, if he succeeded in escaping with Bonifacio, was arrested later and brought before the Holy Office in September 1558. He confessed having read prohibited books, the Pasquino, the Tragedia del libero arbitrio, and perhaps Butzer's commentary on the gospels; but only as a man of letters. Of their content he cannot judge, being no theologian.104 He had read them, moreover, when at Ferrara and not at Venice. He denied knowledge of the doctrine contained in copies of the Interim, Melanchthon's De anitna, and Münster's commentary on Matthew, which were found at his house.105 At his third hearing, on October 1, 1558, he assented to transubstantiation, papal authority, indulgences, purgatory, and confession as matters on which it was not his profession to m
Vide supra, p. 223-24, and the reference in the letter of Vergerio to Christoph, Tübingen, June 16, 1SS8 (Kausler und Schott, op. cit., 178). Vergerio to Christoph, Tübingen, Sept. 1, 1559 (KS 86). On Feb. 22, 1S60 (letter of Pius IV to the doge), the pope requested the doge of Venice to give order that Francesco Stella, prisoner with Bishop Michele of Ceneda, be taken to Ancona (Pastor, XVI, 461, and cf. Pius IV to the bishop of Vercelli, nuncio at Venice, Rome, Mar. 29, 1560). m PSO Busta 13. Porto, Sept. 19, 1558. m Ibid., Sept. 27.
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have an opinion. But the fact remained that he had read forbidden books, and he was proved to have been remiss at the confessional in spite of his assertion to the contrary. 106 Anxiety for his family—he had a wife and five sons of tender years 107 —brought Porto to abject pleading with his judges. On October 11, his son Xenofonto appeared before the tribunal with the offer of Francesco to submit a retractation, 108 and on October 13, in presence of Doctor Vettor da Pozzo, Bartolomeo de Rialto. the patriarch Vincenzo Diedo, the inquisitor Fra Felice Peretti, Bernardo Zorzi, and Andrea Barbarigo—"Pietro Sanuto being absent"—the Cretan abjured his heresy "in general" and especially the crimes of having read prohibited books like the Beneficio di Christo, the Pasquino, Butzer on Matthew, and others as confessed; of having been intimate with men suspected of heresy and contumacious against the Holy Office; and of having been negligent to confession and asserted the contrary to the tribunal. He was absolved from the stain of heresy, but condemned to stay in Venice until two years from the day of his sentence, and not depart thence without permission of the Holy Office obtained in writing. During that time he must every day repeat the office of the Virgin and go to confession and Mass three times a year, at Easter, at Christmas, and at Assumption. But Porto did not remain at Venice to fulfill his penance. He escaped and joined the little evangelical community at Chiavenna, where he was joined by his friends, the brothers Castelvetro, and whence Friedrich von Salis (who had known Porto at Venice) wrote to Bullinger on May 21, 1559, recommending the bearer, Francesco Porto, as a man highly esteemed among certain very learned ones, and lately exiled on account of the gospel.108 The latter was, it appears, resuming his wanderings—Crusius speaks of a stay in France at this juncture 110 —but we hear nothing of him until he informs Amerbach from Chiavenna in May 1560 of his arrival there with his family on the Ides of March. How Bonifacio escaped does not appear. His next letters however are from Trieste, and since his presence there does not accord with his Ibid., Oct. 6. ""The most famous of them was Emilio (bom in Ferrara August 13, 1SS0 and died in 1614), who became professor of Greek at Heidelberg. ""The autograph retractation of Porto follows, in Busta 13, in Italian. QSG XXIV. 139. "" Turco-Crecia 222. But it is likely that we have to do here with a confusion with the later visit to France. Porto's brief migration can hardly have been farther than the Cantons.
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expressed intention of going to Germany, perhaps he had to take the direction in which he found convoy, such as a ship opportunely leaving for Trieste. He paid one more visit to Venice before leaving Italy forever. He refers to his departure as having been "in mad haste" and says that he had to leave his books behind.
CHAPTER X I I THE
ITALIANS WEAR
OUT THEIR
WELCOME,
1558-1562
GROWING A N T I P A T H Y TO THE ITALIANS I N THE CANTONS
That Bullinger was becoming weary of the problems thrust upon him by his relations with the Italian evangelicals was inevitable when, as presently happened, their restless genius for speculation weakened authority whether in the Swiss, the Grison, or the Polish communities. Moreover he still bore the brunt of criticism on account of the Locamese, whose reception at Zürich had been due to his efforts exerted in the cause of justice. Since 1557, public opinion had not been so favorable to these. The influx of strangers had brought about competition for means of support with native citizens, the numbers of whom were mounting since the Swiss no longer went soldiering and every house was full of mouths to feed. As early as 1546, it had been decided to receive as citizens for the next ten years none who had been born outside the borders of the confederation. After the immigration of the Locamese it became necessary to stipulate that citizenship should not for that period be conceded to others than Swiss but at the discretion of the Greater Council.1 The exiles were not at all diffident in the meat-markets and the complaint was that they always secured the best pieces, and they bought up the grain to send it to their compatriots in the Italian bailiwicks when for any reason the supply from Italy was cut off.2 To the Zürichers a further grievance was the injury done to their trade with the Milanese by the Italians they were harboring, for these could buy and sell there to better advantage than the Swiss.3 In 1556-1558, investigations into the complaints were made by a commission of the council. It was found that the numbers of the Locamese had been swelled in common report by including among them all who attended the services of the Italian congregation; and these the commission in 1558 carefully distinguished into classes to find the number of those against whom grievances might actually be alleged. With for1
Meyer, op. cit., II, 148-49. Sept. 1556. ' Ibid., 136-40. ' Ibid., 143.
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305
eign students, boys from Locarno or the Milanese in pension, and exiles for the gospel, Ziirichers could have no quarrel. Of the last were Vincenzo Maggi ("de' Masi") of Brescia, who had come in the summer of 1555 from Graubünden and had since departed; Lelio Sozini, who boarded with Hans Wyss the Wattman; a brother and a nephew of his at Peter Martyr's; Francesco Betti of Rome, former secretary of the márchese del Vasto, at Ochino's; two from Bologna and one from Parma; a Lyonnese gentleman at Rudolf Gwalther's, as well as the old Englishman Parkhurst; Isabella Manrique (i.e. Briseña), with four chambermaids and a cook at Frau von Schonau's on the Kirchgasse; her young son at Beccaria's. 4 The Locarnese were now forbidden by the Great Council to acquire houses and shops and to pursue new trades without obtaining official permission. They must also arrange yearly compensation to be paid the gild with which they were competing. 8 In 1560, they were forbidden to exchange their domiciles for others. Renewed complaints arose when the children of the exiles, growing up and marrying, tried to go into business themselves. From a list of the Locarnese in 1564 has disappeared Pariso Appiani, who introduced the silk industry into Zürich, as well as others who had gone to Basel. 4 Calvin was confronted by the Antitrinitarian propaganda of Giampaolo Alciati, Giorgio Biandrata, and others, which he traced to Gribaldi, 1 over whose restoration he was accordingly greatly exercised. Not only the death of Celso Martinenghi (August 1557), who sympathized with the questioning minds of Camillo's party, but also the absence of Caraccioli, who commanded respect among the Italian exiles at Geneva, was responsible for the open defiance of him, he thought; and he urged Caraccioli to come back from Italy as quickly as possible. Already in the lifetime of the late pastor, dissensions had arisen in the Italian congregation at Geneva about things "which are never a subject of controversy among pious people." When he died, in the midst of the trial of Gribaldi, he had exhorted Calvin and his colleagues to take precautions against the growing evil. Three of the disturbers, Biandrata, Alciati, and Silvestre Teglio, had been summoned before the consistory and dismissed with an admonition. Biandrata was not long afterward present at a Bible reading of Calvin's when there entered an officer of the 4
Meyer, op. át., 151-52 and BeOoge XXVII, 2.
'Ibid., 154 and Beilage XXVm.
* Ibid., 157.
' Calvin to Vermigli, May 22, 1556 (OC XVII. 2874).
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law. Already distrustful of Calvin's mildness, he yielded to a sudden panic, and, feigning a violent nose-bleed, left the meeting without waiting to see whether he was in danger. He fled to Zürich, according to Cantii.8 Alciati asked for a safe-conduct. Their suspicions were shown to be justified by the next move of Calvin. A confession was placed before the members of the Italian congregation to sign on May 18, 1558; and it was declared that each one might bring forward his objections to it. Alciati was the only one bold enough to defend his convictions on the subject of coercion, and he did so in uncomprising fashion. In the end, five besides himself refused to sign—Teglio, Francesco da Padua, Filippo the physician, Niccolo Gallo the Sardinian, and Ippolito da Carignan. A sixth of the group, Valentino Gentile the Calabrian, was not at the meeting, alleging sickness as an excuse." A session with the pastor, Lattanzio Rangone of Siena, did not avail to overcome the determination of the recusants, and they were given a day in which to comply or leave Geneva. Alciati took himself out of harm's way—"print tantot la chef des champs." The others complied on May 20, 1558. With Biandrata, Alciati was to be imprisoned if he returned to the city. Gentile, who had meanwhile signed the confession, continued to speak his mind and was thrown into prison, where, fearing the fate of Servetus, he consented to recant. He was condemned to ask pardon with uncovered head, clothed only in his shirt, a torch in his hand; and thus to be led through the four quarters of the city to the sound of a trumpet. His writings he must burn. The sentence was carried out on the 2nd of September—just as proceedings against Gribaldi had been to some extent reversed through the efforts of Zurkinden—and Gentile, after undergoing it with great cheerfulness, followed the example of Biandrata and Alciati, both of whom had found asylum with Gribaldi at Farges.10 In the rectorate of Sphyractes (1558-1559), Alciati is found on the register of the university of Basel. Biandrata we shall next meet in Poland with Lelio Sozini. The bailli of Gex obliged Gentile to make a profession of his faith, and the Calabrian was so complaisant that he not only made it, but even had it printed with a dedication to the bailli himself, upon whom suspicion was accordingly directed.11 'Eretici II, 487. 'Calvin to Caraccioli, July 19, 1558 (OC XVII. 2719). Calvin is relating to the "marquis" of Vico what has taken place in the Italian church at Geneva since the departure of the Neapolitan for Italy on May 7, 1558. " Colladon, Vie de Calvin, 81. Harboring Gentile after this agitation was not one of the charges against Gribaldi at the time of his trial a year before. " Cantii, op. cit., II, 483.
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It may be that Vergerio's attitude in the whole matter of Gribaldi gave dissatisfaction of Duke Christoph besides adding to the disaffection of his Swiss friends, and that it was not only the accesion of Elizabeth at this juncture to the English throne which started the new flow of correspondence between Vergerio and England, of which three letters are summarized in the Calendar of State Papers,11 under date of December 1558 and February 1559. That Amerbach, like Bullinger, was coming to regard the Italians as storm centres in these years of controversy among themselves and with the pastors does not appear from his correspondence, for he was becoming more and more chary of putting on paper his reactions to persons, and of letters we have no longer even the hitherto unintermittent series to his son Basil. The young man came home now to stay. In the spring of 1559, he undertook the return journey from Bourges, coming by way of Lyons, Valence, Avignon, Grenoble, and Geneva to Basel, and arriving in time to catch a glimpse if he chose of his old teacher Gribaldi, who went at the end of the summer to Grenoble again. "Now," said the father, "enough of wandering." But Basil declined to take his degree without some legal practice; and his father was induced to send him to Speyer to observe the procedure of the Reichskammergericht. He took the precaution, indeed, of anchoring him to his native city by betrothing him to Esther Rudin, daughter of the Oberstzunftmeister, head of the gild organization at Basel. Basil was at Speyer from January to September 1560, and only came home then because his father-in-law insisted that the marriage be consummated. 13 Boniface Amerbach was busy throughout the winter of 1558-1559 with the most extraordinary of official investigations, one which concerned the identity of one Johann von Bragg, dead since August 25, 1556 and buried in the church of St. Leonhard's at Basel. His intervention in this matter shows him true to his principle of conduct as a jurist who saw in the dead heresiarch a conspirator against the established order; but we may see in it also his growing impatience with theological license such as the Italians represented. The solution of the matter is distinctly reminiscent of the sentences executed under Mary Tudor, such as the exhuming and dishonoring of the corpse of Vermigli's wife and " CSP Elizabeth, ed. Stevenson, nos. 86, 297, and 298. Christoph certainly entertained the plan of securing the adhesion of the new queen to the Augsburg Confession by offering the inducement of an alliance with the German Protestant princes. "Iselin, "Basilius Amerbach" (in the Basler Taschenbuch for 1863).
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the public burning, in the market place of Cambridge on February 6, 1556, of the bodies of Butzer and Fagius. It may be surmised that the Englishman Foxe, who had been for three years in Basel, and was soon to be enabled to return home on the accession of Elizabeth, had been added to the circle of Amerbach, who was godfather to one of his children.14 But John of Brugg could not hope for inclusion in a Book of Martyrs. Twelve years had he lived as a highly respected citizen of the ancient city of the Rauraci, though perhaps regarded with a shade of jealousy, for he was not only a foreigner, a refugee from the persecutions in the Netherlands, but very wealthy, (that which was not seemly in an exile for conscience's sake) and the patriarch of a whole tribe of fellow refugees who clustered about him at his country-seat of Binningen, not far from Basel. Only after his death, and out of the family quarrels which thereupon ensued (as happened in the case of the Sozini inheritance) came the revelation that the lord of Binningen was David Joris, "Anabaptist," would-be prophet of a new dispensation and founder of a sect which was still strong in the Netherlands and in France." The investigation started from the denunciation laid before pastor Jung of St. Peter's in the spring of 1558, and revealed that the facts had long been known to a number of persons outside the heretic's own circle. In the summer, during which both of the burgomasters died (Bernhard Meyer on March 15 and Theodor Brand 18 on October 4), nothing was accomplished, but in November Doctor Amerbach interfered. He sent for the printer Henricpetri, who was also a deputy or councilman and who had long been in possession of the secret, and in a confidential interview with him in his library, declared himself pledged as a syndic to press the matter. He upbraided the ministers, who had long known of this shameful thing without finding time to attend to it; and pastor Jung was at last stirred into activity. Henricpetri reported to the heads of the council his interview with Amerbach, and the magistrates perforce went to work. The testimony of the chief witness, once the famulus of Joris, was in January 1559 laid before the faculties of 14 8 Sept. 1558. Johanni Foxo dem engellender ein kind, heist Dorcas gfatterig Doctor Bonifacius Amerbach, Margret Riglea, Anna Schülerin (Taufbuch St. Theodors). " W i t h which Amerbach's friend Laski had come into conflict at Emden, when he was superintendent of the churches of East Friesland. "Theodor Brand (1488-1558) distinguished himself at Novarra (1513), Marignano (1515), and Bicocca (1523). He was a mediator in the religious troubles and active in the restoration of the university. Vide Ochs, Geschichte der Stadt Basel, V, 622.
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law and theology with the inquiry how to proceed against men who upheld such ideas as did Joris and his followers. Their decision was that, according to imperial law, the delinquents deserved execution possibly by fire. Even dead heretics might, within five years after their deaths, be so treated. The property of such is to be confiscated in case there are no orthodox children. Repentant followers may be treated more mildly. On March 13, 1559, all the Netherlander were summoned to the town hall, and on their arrival a host of officials were despatched to their houses for the papers and books. These were indeed found in great plenty. The men, who would at first admit nothing, were imprisoned and subsequently—in April—examined individually by various theologians, pastors, and members of the council, until all had made full confessions as to the history of Johann von Brugg and the sect of which they were members. But they denied having held the teachings denounced as his. At the end of April, a second session of the two faculties condemned to be bumed not only a selection of the Joristic writings, but the dead heretic himself. His followers were obliged to make public recantation in the cathedral. On May 13, in the courtyard of the town hall, the historic scene was enacted in which the corpse of David Joris, together with a chest full of his books and a portrait of him set on a pole in the midst, went up in flames. On June 6 occurred the ceremony in which some thirty Jorists renounced the creed of the Netherlander and accepted that of the apostles. From the eldest son and from the sons-in-law of Joris, indemnities of varying amounts were exacted by the council in October 15 59." That heretics could be burned even at Basel, and subsequently to a peaceful death, made Grataroli especially uncomfortable, and he committed himself just at this time to one of those evidences of partisanship for Calvin which caused to be attributed to him the role of Calvin's party-manager at Basel. It must be remembered that the private letters which reveal to us a character probably unknown to his fellow-citizens at Basel, who had not access as have we to Calvin's correspondence, were probably intended as evidence, if evidence were ever needed, to save their writer from the fate of Servetus. The record stands of his unequivocal statement on the threshold of his career against the burning of heretics; and the unfolding of his career since then had probably made him shrink the more from such a fate. He deserves better of us. He was one of the pioneers in the application of alchemy to healing, and in the " Concerning this affair, vide Burckhardt in the Basler Biographien, I, 137 ff.
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practise of his profession suffered from the suspicion which attached to a disciple of Paracelsus. He endeavored to write in a popular vein, aiming to please in his books as in his letters, and succeeded, to judge by the number of editions and translations of them. But he seems to have been obsessed by the fear of failure such as had overtaken Gribaldi,— on whose case, be it noted, Grataroli was silent. He was not courting disaster, and his later letters to Calvin are couched in the same terms as earlier, the cases of Servetus, Gribaldi, and Joris being before his mind. He stood well in his profession and had been received in 1558 into the Consilium jacultatis medicinae ; 18 but it may be that his professional skill, joined with rumors of his relations with Calvin, aroused jealousy just as the industry of the Locamese and their business acumen exasperated their hosts at Zurich. The Zunftmeister at Basel (Basil Amerbach's father-in-law) had been chosen arbiter between Bern and Geneva in regard to the claims for restitution of property of the "Libertine" leaders of the opposition to Calvin, expelled from Geneva in 1555 and received at Bern, where they sought asylum. These Calvin was resolved never to readmit to citizen's rights, and he took measures to secure the decision of the arbiter. It was to Grataroli that he applied in the letter of February 9, 1559,19 in which he charged the physician to use every avenue of approach to the arbiter which could influence his view of the case, taking especial pains to talk confidentially with Amerbach and two other jurisconsults who would probably be called in as counsel. Grataroli addressed himself to the old doctor,20 excusing himself for not treating directly with the Zunftmeister on the ground of unfamiliarity with German and lack of prestige. Boniface promised his assistance, according to the report of Grataroli to Calvin,21 but it is safe to say that the jurist made some shrewd reply which did not commit him. In fact, it was just at the time of the trial of the Jorists, and the settlement was postponed; but Grataroli's part in the matter undoubtedly reacted unfavorably on him. Sulzer, the old critic of Calvin, had also been approached on the matter, and a "good and learned young man" had been despatched from Geneva with letters to the burgomaster, upon whom he waited in company with "Matricula medica, folio 9; vide Miescher, Die medizinische (Basel 1860), p. 17. " O C XVII. 3007. " T h e note in G II. 31 and undated. "Basel, Feb. 26, 1559 (OC XVII, 3020).
Facultät zu Basel
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Grataroli. The latter advocated warmly the cause of Calvin "in the name of the Italians who live there" (i.e. at Geneva); and to Calvin himself he deprecated the failure to employ violence in the first place toward these opponents of his. "The matter could afterward have been composed with the Bernese more quickly and better than you perhaps think;" the rest of the Swiss would have been reluctant to intervene in their favor. 22 Calvin's complaints of the delay continued; Grataroli alleges the matter of the "Davidians" (i.e. Jorists), reassures Calvin as to the freedom of the arbiter from restrictions on his actions, and reminds him that the Genevans had renounced the decision previously rendered by their judges. He assures him of his own verbal intervention with "a senator, a friend of mine and 'protoscribor' of the city." He has not yet dared to speak to the arbiter himself, and in the meantime it would be well if the senate of Geneva write to the latter for the last time with the demand to hasten. Let Calvin himself add a word to the effect that "new inconveniences spring daily from the long delay." If the senate is unwilling, or unable, let it entrust the matter to some learned jurisconsult of Basel, who will decide it according to law.23 The zeal of Grataroli did not, however, avert from him the suspicion which it was his purpose to avoid. Peter Perna revealed the fact that the physician had received from his professional colleague Massario of Vicenza a copy of the book of Servetus; and Grataroli forgot himself so far as to break out in a violent debate with his detractor. Next day, he apologized in writing to the rector, Ulrich Iselin, for his violence, and arraigns Perna as an Anabaptist; 24 and doubtless it is with the same episode that we must connect the record under "fines" at this time in the register of the university of Basel, of 6 livres exacted of Peter Perna and 12 of "Gulielmus Gratolorus." 25 The physician was now thoroughly disgruntled. "Since I am hated by many in this city (not for any other cause, thank God, but that of truth and sincerity) and also because there are more doctors than patients here, all of whom have their relations, connections, friends, and property at Basel, I must think of a place where I can exercise my vocation for the good of the greater number and the " Basel, Mar. 19, 1559. " Grataroli to Calvin, Apr. 22, 1559 OC XVII. 3044). " T h e letter is in G II. 31. * Rationes rectoratus (1559-1S60). In the university library of Basel lies Grataroli's Confessio di fede . . . con una certissima ammonitione a tutti gli huomini che credono l'eterna vita, which may date from this time.
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moderate advantage of me and my little family," he told Calvin.24 Poland seemed to him attractive or else England; and he promises to deserve any recommendation Calvin gives him. It was to Marburg, however, that he went as professor of medicine in 1562. It was at this time of discouragement that Grataroli edited at Basel a collection of works on alchemy,27 in the preface to which he sounds the familiar note of weariness with the "malice, envy, avarice of hypocrites, emulous, and antichristian ones, and the ingratitude of many others, especially of certain powerful ones," which have interfered with the practice of his profession, let alone of this exacting and difficult art. But he playfully confronts the skepticism of those who doubt his knowledge of how to get rich because he is not rich himself or anywhere near it, and promises to be satisfied if some time these writings of his are helpful to somebody who will share with him "if not a piece of the philosopher's stone, then at least a bit of gold or silver, making up for the ingratitude of others." In this year also he published his "Rules for travelers" with its lively account of certain incidents of his own travels.28 Careful study of the letters of the marquis of Oria to Boniface Amerbach fails to reveal any ground for the persecutions of which he complains except the charge of immorality which followed him from Basel, nor indeed any persecutions whatever of a religious nature. From the confession of Diputolli, indeed, we learn of the arraignment—evidently in absentia—before the Holy Office in Venice for reading prohibited books. The perpetual travels in which he was engaged for half a century are chargeable only to his restlessness. He was never without funds, and if he complained to Amerbach, as he did in 1561, that he had but a third remaining of the money which he brought with him from home,29 he evidently invested it to advantage—at Nürnberg, if he carried out the intention then expressed—for he wai, in 1571 or 1572, loaning money "Grataroli to Calvin, Basel, Feb. 21, 1S60 (OC XVIII. 3163).
" Verae alckemiae artisque metallicae, citra aenigmata, doctrina certusque modus scriptis turn novis turn veteribus . . . comprehensus (Basel, Henricpetri, 1561). There is included here the work of his friend Giovanni Bracesco De alchemia dialogi libri duo, of whom Grataroli also published a Latin translation of his II legno della vita, a work explaining what medicine it was by means of which the patriarchs lived 900 years.
* De regimine omnium iter agentium vel equitum vel peditum vel navi vel curru seu Rkeda. . . . "Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, June 30, 1561 (G II, 31, 30).
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to the town council of Vienna.50 He purchased moreover an enormus quantity of books, which he apparently carried everywhere with him on pack animals. It is possible that he received something from Sigismund of Poland for his claims in Italy. 81 He clearly thought himself hounded by the Jesuits, his aversion to whom he expresses in the deed of gift by which his library became the property of the city of Dantzig; 32 and the hostility of Curione followed him implacably.33 The Neapolitan does not seem to have received from Amerbach all the sympathy to which he thought himself entitled. He says pettishly in 1559 that he would write of his misfortunes, but his friend evidently does not care to hear about them since he has not asked about them in any letter.34 Amerbach, when Bonifacio pours upon Curione the vials of his wrath in 1558, deprecates his violence. The hostility of Curione gained him at least the friendship of Vergerio, another of those whom Curione despised for masquerading—from his point of view—as exiles for conscience's sake. Thus Vergerio, accounting for the presence of the marquis at Trieste after his flight from Venice, says that he went thither "because he saw that he could not live in Italy without assenting to prohibited cults." Curione probably made some acid comment if Amerbach showed him the letter which spoke thus of the transitory member of their circle. It may be surmised that Bonifacio was no more inclined to conform with the Protestant than with the Roman cult, and that he would really have preferred—as would many of more definite principles than he—a place where both or any were practised freely. Trieste, where Bonifacio had gone, lay within Venetian territory geographically, but was a vassal of Austria, to whom she had commended herself to escape Venetian domination in 1382. Aquileia, where he wintered, withdrawing with the approach of the malarial air of summer,35 M
Günther, Gian Bernardino Bonifacio, Marchest tTOria der Neapolitaner und die Anfänge der dantziger Stadtbibliothek. He sent money moreover from Antwerp after the death of Boniface Amerbach to buy an estate at Lörrach near Basel. " Marquis of Oria to Basil Amerbach, Brünn, Oct. 21 (1S64). G II. 31, 186. 31 Sept. 28, 1591. " The philippics of the marquis of Oria may be read in his letters to Amerbach from Trieste, Nov. 23, 1558 (G II. 31, 12) and from Villesse, Feb. 5, 1560 (G II. 31, 19). 14 Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Villesse, July 7, 1559 (G II. 31, 435). " Vergerio to Amerbach, Tübingen, Aug. 18, 1559 (G II. 31, 402).
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belonged to the patriarch Giovanni Grimani, one of whose predecessors had ceded the Friuli and Istria to Venice in 1420 and received in recognition an annuity and the cities of Aquileia, San Daniele, and San Vito. Both Trieste and Aquileia were safe enough for fugitives. In the former, heresy was strong from the neighborhood of Capodistria, Vergerio's old diocese, and in July 1547 the inquisitor of Istria had been mortally wounded in broad daylight by an assassin.34 Vergerio says that Bonifacio is free enough there; but the Neapolitan, his domestic peace disturbed by the scandal retailed by the "Spanish theologian" (Salmerón) and by Curione, found no comfort in his surroundings, including a bay almost as lovely as that of Naples. Trieste was a place not conspicuous for its attractions, where the harvest is not so bad, but where there is certainly a dearth of learned men. Would that the same might be said of the flies! Such cold there is not in the icy ocean. If I only had my treasures at least—that is, my books which I left at Venice when I departed in mad haste. Scarcely a single one have I. I am obliged to dispense with my greatest pleasure. . . . " Nor did Aquileia, whose patriarch was the friend and patron of Ochino and of Vergerio, had already been freed from one prosecution and was destined to be summoned to Rome on another charge of heresy in 1561,38 long attract Bonifacio, who was not seeking an asylum. He is presently heard from at Villesse on the Isonzo, whence he wrote to Amerbach on July 7, 1559, and on February 5, 1560, signing himself "Miser Aegyptius," and accusing Curione of helping a papal agent to defame him. Not merely by the tales (slanderous or not) which circulated freely at Basel about the marquis of Oria was his memory kept green there. Two of those who had come with him in the fall of 1557 had remained to profit by the generosity of Amerbach and the fund placed at his disposal by the will of Erasmus. Of one of them, the ex-monk Annibale of Oria, described in Amerbach's account-book as "very learned and expelled on account of religion," we have no means of amplifying or correcting the rather sordid picture furnished by Amerbach's notes in regard to the expenditures for poor scholars.39 Perhaps the poor wretch suffered for his patron's sins when these were bruited about, and could "Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition in Italien, p. 291. "Marquis of Oria to Amerbach, Trieste, Nov. 23, 1SS8 (G II. 31, 12). " Vide Carcereri, Giovanni Grimani, patriarca d'Aquileia, imputato d'eresia t assolto dal concìlio di Trento (Roma 1907). " C o d . Bas. C V n . 19, "Uszug" Bl. 22-23.
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31S
find no work as tutor, or in whatever capacity he supported himself after Bonifacio left Basel. At any rate, and beginning about a year after the departure of the marquis, Amerbach seems to have been subject to constant requisitions from his friend's quondam dependent. Now it is books; now shoes and bath-money; now clothing, for which messer Annibale draws upon the old doctor. In December 1SS9 it is because he is suffering "gross armut frost und hunger"; next year, Amerbach simply notes "abermals gestüret"; and Messer Annibale disappears from the pages after receiving, on the day before Laetare 1560, a viaticum to take him to Geneva. He does not appear in Galiffe's Réjuge Italien de Genève; perhaps he never reached there. Gian Tommaso Sirleto, who had apparently also accompanied the marquis of Oria in his departure from Italy in 1557 and remained behind at Basel, gave better account of himself. He describes himself, and is described on the register of the university (where he matriculated on May 16, 1558, under the rectorate of Wissenburg) as "Siculus," and the one reference to him as "Lucense" may be translated Lucanian perhaps. We have noted already that he apparently served Bonifacio as an amanuensis, and it is evident that he went with him to Venice in 1558, for it was he who brought back from thence the letters of May 17.40 Twice, on October 1, 1559, and April 25, 1560, did Doctor Amerbach pay his expenses on the return journey to Italy. At the intercession of Vincenzo Maggi, moreover, Amerbach paid his house rent—he was a married man—for a year from Crucis 1558. He left his patron a long testimonial of his gratitude for past favors when he finally left Basel; 41 and from Venice, at the first opportunity, wrote to tell of his fortunes, 42 how, after experiencing the difficulties which in a strange town always fall to the lot of travellers, he at last opened a school for twelve noble youths who would pay 120 ducats a year for instruction in grammar. "The marquis," he adds in a postscript, "has gone to Poland, and nothing has been heard from him for many months. If by chance any news reach me, I will let you know as soon as possible." From Villesse, where the calumnies of the Spanish theologian, fostered by Curione, did not cease to exercise the marquis of Oria, he did not immediately set out for Poland. Probably it was to fetch his precious books "Amerbach notes the day of their receipt as July 16, 1SS8 and adds: "Sirletus exhibuit." Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, librarian of the Vatican at this time, was a Calabrian. " G II. 31, 215. " G II. 31, 216, April 2S, 1560.
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—serious impedimenta if he were the fugitive he claimed to be—that he returned to Venice. Nor, considering the access of persecution in the Venetian territory which still raged,43 does it seem that a fugitive would return thither. It was from Venice, however, that Bonifacio wrote (April 26, 1S60) the Basel friends of his plan to spend the rest of his life in Sarmatia. He is in Venice "furtively and with the knowledge of hardly any of his friends" and will leave in ten or fifteen days. But he was detained longer than he expected among the pleasant lagoons, and still hoping (May 30, 1560)" from the projected residence in Sarmatia a little repose. He had already written Porto at Chiavenna, and the latter was at that moment waiting for his friend Botumio of Brescia45 to carry the letter with his own greeting to Amerbach. It was in August that Sirleto, who had evidently joined him in Venice, spoke of the marquis as not having been heard of for many months.46 Boniface Amerbach drew closer in these last years to Vincenzo Maggi, whose letters suggest that the connections he enjoyed once as diplomat were kept up. Most likely they enhanced his position both in Swiss " C f . the letters of Vergerio of 28 June 1560; 26 Aug. 1S61; 30 Oct. 1S61 and S Feb. 1562 (KS 94, 123, etc.). The most famous of the victims was Bartolommeo Fonzio, who was executed by being drowned in the sea (Aug. 4, 1562). 44 G II. 31, 25, 27. Petrarch also expressed the desire to end his days in Sarmatia. " Boturnio de' Boturnei was in Basel in 1560, when his countryman Vincenzo Maggi was godfather of his child of the same name, baptized at St. Martin's in July (St. Martin, Taufregister, 114). He was the almoner whom Renee of Ferrara sent to France with her daughter Anna, the bride of Francis of Guise, to keep her firm in the reformed tenets. Claude Haton devotes chapter XLI of his Memoirs to an account of his private life and his administration of the hospital at Provins (1552-1557) which is intended to support his statement that the Brescian was assez docte—he was a doctor of theology from Bologna—mats non de meilleure vie quant aux moeurs, but which shows only the will to discredit him as a "Lutheran." Madame de Guise blocked the attempt to remove him by having him appointed an almoner of the king, a move which brought his case before the privy council, where it rested. He was dismissed on complaint of Paul IV to Duke Francis when they were together at Rome in 1557. He went first to Geneva and then to Basel, where he bought a house and lived till his death (ibid. p. 42). Cf. Fontana, Renata di Francia, I. " Sirleto's ultimate fate is not doubtful. He surrendered himself to the Inquisition in Turin in January 1570 and was surrendered by the duke of Savoy to Rome in April. Cf. Jalla, op. cit., p. 293 and Bertolotti, Martiri del libero pensiero, no. XXXII, who thinks he recognizes him in a culprit whose sentence was pronounced May 24, 1573.
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minds, exercised over the persecutions in France, and in French ones wishing to preserve the French alliance. His sources of information were ample and exact. Amerbach can have had no better newspaper than the bulletins which this late-coming but not least among his friends hastened to convey to him, to judge by the notes which he despatched by messenger when the gout kept him from dropping in at the house on the Rheinweg. He is able to report fully on the treaty between the sultan and the emperor Ferdinand (February 6, IS59) which closed the long negotiations in which he had once played a part. He follows the course of the fiery old pope Paul IV, whom an indomitable spirit kept alive after his nephews' conduct had broken his heart, and who sent packing the cardinals who had come to Rome to electioneer in view of his approaching death. He has heard "from a very good source" of the proposed route of the emperor, who has left Augsburg on the fruitless outcome of the diet; of the squabble between Albrecht of Bavaria and the electorpalatine Friedrich; of the embassy of Wilhelm Truchsess von Waldburg to the French court on the death of Henry II. 47 That he took the role of Theodidaktus with Amerbach, no scrap of paper remains to testify, but Amerbach refers to him as such and no doubt developed with him in many a conversation the theme 'that ye love one another.' The old diplomat was clearly breaking physically, but his whimsical humor never left him. On Easter Monday, 1S60: The gout has again taken up arms against me. I would have come if the same cruel beast had not stood in the way. 48 [On May 24, 1560] I have come down to my museum [probably "study," unless Maggi was a collector, and maybe of some of the treasures of the Basel museum] but so tired that I am hardly strong enough to sit up; I have no appetite, no taste. Therefore I pray you give me three apples, with which I will try whether I can call back my appetite from the dead. But do not let doctor Grataroli know of the gift. According to the rule you gave me if I sin, I shall say with David, "neither the iniquity nor the sin is mine"; the blame is yours, who ordered me to make requisition with confidence on your wine-cellar as on your garden and your whole house.49 [In 1561] I came to your house and knocked at the door three times, but nobody answered. I would have come again, but the legate of the gout came to me; wherefore I pray you have me excused.50
His circumstances were narrow, presumably because the French pension ceased on the death of Henry II, but his friend's purse was always " Vide the letters to Amerbach in G II. 31, 438, 439, 431, and supra, p. 260. " G II. 31, 437. "Ibid., 431, 429. "Ibid., 433.
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at his disposal. Amerbach records that, on the Friday before St. Martin's day, 1561, he loaned Maggi nine Italian crowns to buy wine, taking his note for the amount. "Wils uf Wienacht wider zalen," he concludes.51 THE EVE OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT; LAST SESSIONS
The election of Pius IV (December 25, 1559) seemed to herald a new epoch. He signalized his condemnation of nepotism by inflicting deserved punishment on the Caraffa princes. The rigors of the Inquisition as of the Index were now to be mitigated, and the new pope, a Lombard schooled not only in canon and civil law but in public affairs, undertook to restrict the power of the Holy Office to its former limits. In the congregation of January 11, 1560, it was declared that henceforth only matters concerning the faith should come before it; simony, blasphemy, and sodomy were no longer in its competence. The case of Cardinal Morone—son, it might be recalled, of the Milanese chancellor who had been the earliest patron of Gian Giacomo de' Medici and his brother, the future pope—was immediately entrusted to an impartial board of cardinals, who decided that his trial had not been valid. He was absolved on March 6, 1560, and it was declared that there was no evidence against him. Bishops Sanfelice of Cava and Foscarari of Modena were likewise exculpated. Carnesecchi came to Rome to get the annulment of the sentence pronounced against him under Paul IV, and was successful (June 15 60). 52 Aonio Paleario, denounced before the Milanese Inquisition on January 13, 1559, presented himself on December 6 and was absolved on February 23, 1560; 53 he was not summoned to Rome as yet. All these cases were to show the sincerity of the declaration of Pius in April 1560 that all who lay under censure, or condemnation to exile or for heresy might submit their causes to fresh juridical examination in spite of the sentences pronounced by the predecessor of the pope. Cardinal Giovanni Grimani was not so fortunate. He had been absolved of an accusation of heresy under Julius III, but lost the red hat nevertheless. Pius had already promised to nominate him at the next creation of cardinals, when Grimani once more attracted unfavorable attention with his views on predestination, which had been the trouble in the earlier prosecution. Again he was to be interrogated before the Inquisition, his request to justify himself in writing having been re" Cod. Bas. C VH. 19, Vszug, p. 36. • Pastor, op. cit., XVI, 305-9.
" Morpurgo, op. at., 125-21.
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fused; but finally, on August 19, 1561, it was granted, and he was given a list of the propositions which had given offense twelve years before with instructions to show that they were in agreement with the Catholic faith. The decision of the commission was unfavorable; and the pope, to whom the report was read in the presence of the cardinals on September 16, decided that he must be interrogated by the Inquisition. Grimani appealed to the council of Trent, which had been given power to absolve heretics by a papal brief of August 8, 1561, but the clause in the brief "saving the rights of the Inquisition" excluded the Patriarch from the jurisdiction of the council.54 The policy of Pius regarding the Inquisition was undoubtedly in great part one of expediency, for the powers of the Inquisition were again augmented in 1562, when the opposition of the Catholic powers to the council had been withdrawn. Vergerio, mindful of the continued activity of the Venetian tribunal, insisted in the interview with Delfino that the pope curb the violence of the Inquisition. As to the Index, Pius gave assurance to Lainez, general of the Jesuits, in March 1560, that it would be modified, and it was Lainez who, in the January following, proposed the removal from the list of anything transcending the general ordinances of the canon law. The new Index, which was discussed in the congregation during the spring of 1561, did not appear as promptly as was contemplated, for there was unwillingness to risk further opposition from the camp of the reformed in view of the council.55 Pius closed one chapter in the strained relations with the emperor Ferdinand by according him the recognition which Paul IV had denied, and another by conceding Maximilian, his son, the lay-chalice, thereby assuring his election to the Roman crown and his succession to the empire. He had consented on his election to extirpate heresy by every means, including that of a council, and the stereotyped phrase was given meaning by his proposal in May 1560 to recall the council to Trent to proceed with its work. The meeting was to be on Easter Sunday 1561. His announcement came within the month following the death of Melanchthon at Wittenberg (April 19, 1560), at which Vergerio had been present, according to Maggi.56 The ex-bishop, always ambitious to be the " Pastor, op. cit., X V I , 320-24. The case of Grimani is the subject of the monograph of Carcereri and was earlier studied by De Leva. " Pastor, op. cit., X V I , 12-16. "Maggi to Amerbach, 24 May 1560. Ex literis d. Lelii Sozzini ad me scriptis, Melanctonum e terns ad caelum ascendisse . . . intellexi, astante Vergerio, in cuius lecto spiritum emisit.
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acknowleged leader of his exiled countrymen, must have dreamed of a larger rôle. It was the opposition of the Huguenots which had to be confronted in France, and the strength of these tributaries of John Calvin is gauged by the fact that in May 1559 (soon after the treaty which reconciled the powers with which they had to reckon) a synod at Paris adopted the Confessio gallic ana, with its statement of theology and provision for organization stamped by the authority of Geneva. French Huguenots, like German Protestants, were irreconcilable with the idea of a council which did not aim at accommodation with them, and in Germany the Protestant princes were slow to recognize that they could now have effective allies in France without renewing the treaty with the king which had always ranged them on the side opposed to their coreligionists. In April 1559, Vergerio had an interview in Lauingen with Marillac, one of the French ambassadors at the diet of Augsburg, and conversed with him the greater part of a day, of the council among other things. When the French envoy asked what those well disposed to the evangelicals at the French court might do for their cause, Vergerio reminded him of the obligation accepted at the peace at Cateau-Cambrésis to promote a general council. The task was then to prevent the suppression of the Gospel by a council that was neither free nor Christian. The French king should promise not to consent to any such council. Marillac at this interview carried more conviction to Vergerio by his courtly phrases than he did to duke Christoph, who shrewdly guessed that he was sounding out his interlocutor and placing himself intentionally in a pro-Protestant light.87 The policy of the princes in Germany was against a breach of the alliance with France, much as they wanted the return of Metz, Toul, and Verdun ; but Henry II died before the envoys appointed at the diet of Augsburg arrived, and another envoy, Wilhelm Truchsess von Waldburg, brother of the cardinal, who was despatched to congratulate the new king, found the duke of Guise who had held Metz against Charles V high in the counsels of Francis II. Metz, where the reformed congregation founded by Farel had been obliged to cease holding public meetings in 1543, was an object of solicitude to French Huguenots as well as German evangelicals.58 The duke of Guise, who governed there for the French king, had inaugurated the " Hubert, op.
cit., pp. 162-63. " Bonet-Maury, ''Farel et l'église reformée de Metz (1525-1565)" in the Bulletin de la Société pour l'étude du protestantisme français, 32, 193-209. 1883.
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new régime by combing the houses for Lutheran books and Bibles and burning them on the place du Palais. He had prepared for the siege by Charles V by clearing the town of the Protestants and suspected Catholics. The exiles went to Strassburg and enlisted the sympathy of the leaders there, who encouraged them, on their return in 1554, to resume their secret meetings and set about getting a pastor. They were encouraged by Calvin too, in his letter "to the faithful of Metz" (September 10, 1558), and favored by the governor, the àre de VieilleviUe," who had a Huguenot son-in-law and who, although he forbade every Protestant association on pain of death, did not enforce the regulation. The intervention of the Count-palatine Wolfgang of Zweibrücken accomplished the release of the preacher they called; his interest was bespoken by Emmanuele Tremellio, the old colleague of Vermigli at Lucca and later professor at Oxford, then tutor of the children of Wolfgang. Tremellio had married a girl from Metz, as had Vermigli. But the most ardent advocate of the reformed of Metz was François Hotman the Huguenot jurist, who writes to Bullinger (October 23, 1558) that Farel had obtained of the "princes" (of the Empire?) a letter demanding for Metz, as free imperial city, liberty of religion. One of his friends, Cappell, has already begun to teach there, but secretly; and writes him that he has met with zeal and piety, and is sanguine of success. François Hotman80 was a former professor of law at the university of Paris, whose conversion to the reform was regarded with distrust because his father was a member of the privy council of Henry II and engaged in the work of the chambre ardente. He had been employed to teach at the academy of Lausanne (where the Greek was in the hands of Theodore Beza) when the difficulty of his Calvinistic faith in a city subject to Bern was overcome by the influence of Musculus; he remained there from 1549 to 1555. He next moved to Strassburg, hoping there to find means of recovering his inheritance—his father had just died—and presenting a letter to the magistrate Gremp from Boniface Amerbach (October 1555). This, together with the recommendation of "François de Scépeaux, sire de VieilleviUe (1509-1571), governor of Metz 15531559. Cf. Brantôme, Œuvres (Paris 1869), V, 49-63, and the monographs of C. Coignet, Un gentilhomme des temps passés, François de Scipeaux (Paris 1886) and C. Marchand, Maréchal François de Scépeaux de VieilleviUe et ses mémoires (Paris 1893). " Dareste, "François Hotman" (Revue historique, II, 1-59, 367-35, 1876). Cf. Stinzing, Geschichte der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft, I, 383 ff. and L. Ehinger in the Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte, N. F., Bd. IV, (Basel 1892).
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Calvin to Sturm and the demands of students who arrived at Strassburg clamoring to hear him and offering to subsidize him from their own pockets, won him a chair at the academy there. He succeeded François Baudouin, whom he had known in Paris as the secretary of Dumoulin. Hotman gave up an offer from Duke Albrecht of Prussia inviting him to Königsberg, and signed an engagement for five years on June 24, 1556. Now began his association with Vermigli and Zanchi ; now began also his negotiations with Boniface Amerbach relative to his doctorate. He matriculated at the university of Basel in 1558-1559 and took his degree in December 1558, without being in residence and without ceasing to give his lectures at Strassburg on civil law. He was already busy with the affairs of the French evangelicals, for the sake of whom he presently gave up teaching entirely; and after the failure of the colloquy of Worms (at which he had been present with Sturm), he had tried at the instance of Calvin to bring about a new conference with the German princes by enlisting the aid of the Swiss and the senate of Strassburg. It failed, however, because Zürich and Bern refused to send delegates. In February 1559, Hotman accompanied Sturm to Heidelberg on a mission to the elector-palatine relative to the French Protestants, regarding which his correspondence with Calvin, Bullinger, and Amerbach contains a host of interesting particulars ; and from the death of Henry I I he becomes a political agent, involved in all the manoeuvres of his party. 8 1 In September, he is deep in a plot to take Metz from the French. A noble of mature years has been found who pledges his property on the success of the venture, the successful conclusion of which is to net him 20,000 florins. Calvin advised caution, for he did not want to antagonize the new French government. The French exiles were now hopeful of return to their homes, and the pastors of Geneva had been requested by the evangelicals of Metz to intercede for them at the diet of Augsburg. Reformed services had been inaugurated in the château of Montoy by the seigneur de Clemant, who had called a preacher from Ghent. Calvin urged upon these co-religionaries more courage still in the letter of July 19, 1559, but on the news of the project of Hotman, he sent Beza to Strassburg to forestall it. The council of Strassburg, however, embraced the idea, demanded liberty for the Protestants of Metz and Trier, abolished the Interim, forbade Catholic worship, and ex" His engagement with Strassburg expired on June 24, 1560, and does not appear to have been renewed. On March S, 1562, the scholarchs gave him a certificate attesting his work for them.
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pelled the Anabaptists. In answer, an edict of Francis II expelled the Huguenots from Metz (October 5, 1559); Hotman attributed it to the cardinal of Lorraine. The magistrates appealed to Catherine de' Medici on November 5, but received the advice to submit for peace's s a k e " At Strassburg arrived a deputation of six to seek asylum for more than four hundred families; the senate granted residence to twenty. At Zweibriicken the seigneur de Clemant and his preacher presented themselves and bespoke the interest of Tremellio. There is little doubt that Basel also was interested in the fortunes of Metz, where an early friend of Amerbach, Claude Chansonette ("Cantiuncula") had been president of the civil court, and where at about this time Maggi is acknowledging receipt of a book from a similar official.63 It was however the death of Francis II which relieved the evangelicals of Metz. A month later, January 8, 1561, Tremellio departed with Didier Robin for Orleans, where the states-general was in session. They were to claim from Antoine de Bourbon, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the free exercise of their religion for the Huguenots of Metz, the recall of the exiles, and the release of one of them who was in prison at Auxerre. They actually obtained the concession of a meeting house outside the walls, where on May 25, 1561 worship was celebrated in public for the first time in seventeen years. Next year Vieilleville authorized it conditionally in one of the quarters of the city. Meantime Hotman had turned to another project, the conspiracy of Amboise, of which he was the soul. Its failure in March 1560 was due to the length of time spent on its preparation and the breadth of its diffusion. Hotman had gone to Heidelberg with Sturm and then to Condé in France to secure the cooperation of the German princes; but returned to Strassburg without having gained any definite assurance from Condé. When the plot failed, Hotman was furious and blamed everybody except himself, who had contributed to the fiasco by his imprudence and intemperate language. Against the cardinal of Lorraine, he launched his pamphlet, Le tigre, which was followed by the arrest of Condé. When the young king died (December 1560), a new mission to " Catherine's reply is translated in Van Dyke, Catherine de Médicis, I, 14S. "Maggi writes Amerbach (? 18, 1561) of the book which he has received as a gift from the "preside metensi" on condition that he let Amerbach and Curione read it also. He wants it back soon because he intends to loan it also to the French envoy (Coignet). The "presides metensis" is probably François de l'Aubespine, brother of Sebastien, who was "président de la justice," according to Marchand (op. cit., p. 119).
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the German princes was projected to block the restoration of the Guises. Hotman took charge of it, visiting Heidelberg, Leipzig, Dresden and Wittenberg, but the rapprochement of Catherine and Antoine of Navarre soon relieved Huguenot anxiety. A third mission to Germany followed the failure of the colloquy of Poissy, when Hotman was sent, with Vieilleville, now ambassador to Ferdinand I, to canvass the German princes on the subject of the Council. Because of the close relations of the Guise princes and Philip of Spain, Catherine de' Medici leaned towards the Huguenots and to the policy of Michel de l'Hôpital, who had been chancellor to the duchess Margaret of Savoy, another protectress of the reform in Italy. The edict of Romorantin (May 1560) restored to ecclesiastical judges their old jurisdiction in religious matters and (by implication) minimized the prospect of a death-penalty for heresy. Pius IV, anxious over the situation, nominated cardinal de Tournon as grand inquisitor for France, with the power of proceeding against heretics even without the assistance of the local bishop. At the same time he appointed as legates cardinals de Tournon and Lorraine, intending that they should promote the reform of the clergy in the land from which the Jesuits were still excluded." But the reaction of the French government from merely repressive measures was next shown by the proposal, in a meeting of the privy council at Fontainebleau (August 1560), that the pope be asked to call again the council. The authors were Montluc, archbishop of Valence, Marillac, archbishop of Vienne, and Coligny, and they contemplated a religious colloquy—virtually a national council—if the pope should demur. A general council was also demanded in the states-general of Orleans after the death of Francis II; the clergy were denounced both by the chancellor and by the spokesman of the Third Estate. Prospect of a national council, announced for January 14, 1561, reconciled all the estates to the general amnesty proposed and passed. There was to be no religious persecution; an edict of January 7, 1561—confirming that of Romorantin—gave added reassurance; and French exiles flocked back from the Swiss Cantons and from Germany. On February 24, 1561, amnesty was granted the Huguenots.85 The death of Paul IV had opened the way to the recall of the coun" Pastor, op. cit., XVI, 156-57. "For Catherine de' Medici and the Huguenots, vide Romier, Le royaume de Catherine de M edicts; la France d la veille des guerres de religion (2 vols.; Paris, 1922).
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cil to Trent (or conceivably elsewhere), but Pius IV hesitated because of divided opinion as to the technical status of the assembly, whether it was to be a new council (as was the contention of Ferdinand and of Francis II) or a continuation of the old one, which was the papal preference conceded by Spain. In the end it was as on previous occasions the prospect of a French national council which spurred the pope into convoking another assembly purporting to be representative of Christendom. In Germany, as in France, the princes were becoming united in spite of the dissensions over the peace of Augsburg, and their rejection of the council prompted Philip of Spain to say that, as the Germans would have nothing to do with the council, and as Spain had no need of it, while France was torn with controversy, the council might be said to be called for the peculiar benefit of France.66 In spite of the declaration of the princes at the diet of Augsburg in 1559, the emperor instructed the envoy, whom he sent to Rome to congratulate Pius IV on his accession, to approach him also in the matter of the council, for Ferdinand was concerned for the spread of Protestantism in the hereditary lands of the Hapsburgs and felt besides his responsibilities as emperor. When the pope, urged on by the threat of a French national council, proposed to summon the council to Trent, continuing the sessions of 1552-1553, Ferdinand acquiesced in conversation with the nuncio Hosius (June 3, 1560), but his privy council objected that it was impossible, in view of the peace of Augsburg, to carry out in Germany the decisions of the council of Trent. He accordingly proposed as an alternative a council on German soil (at Cologne, Regensburg, or Constance), and in the presence of the pope himself. Before the meeting of the council, the pope should introduce the communion in both kinds and the marriage of the clergy, both of which reforms the emperor had been obliged long since to permit in his Austrian dominions.67 Deferring to the opinion expressed by his councillors, he too raised his voice in opposition to the council of Trent. Prolonged fencing now ensued between the emperor and Hosius regarding the lay-chalice and the reform of the university of Vienna. Hosius had been compelled to recognize Ferdinand's intransigence in the matter of clerical marriage, and he now brought forward the reform of " F o r the debates over the recall of the Council of Trent, vide Evennett, The Cardinal of Lorraine and the Council of Trent, Cambridge University Press, 1931. " Vide supra, p. 2S1. For this memorandum of Ferdinand, dated June 20, 1560, vide Gotheim, op. cit., p. 495.
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the university of Vienna, which had been transformed by Ferdinand from a strongly Catholic and autonomous corporation into one controlled and conducted by the state. Protestant professors were not excluded—they had but to promise not to teach anything contrary to the Catholic church,—and there had grown up two parties, the Catholic minority and the majority which was Protestant or indifferent. But here too the nuncio failed. Certain professors—as Georg Tanner 68 and Georg Muschler, tutor of the children of King Maximilian—were suspended, but no further action was taken. Pius now entrusted further dealings with Ferdinand regarding the council to a special legate, Zaccaria Delfino, whose relations with the Emperor during an earlier nunciate (1553-1556) had been unusually pleasant. Delfino, who reached Vienna on September 28, 1560, produced a string of arguments in favor of Trent, and assured Ferdinand that the Protestants would be granted safe-conduct in any form they might demand, and would have a hearing. In Vienna, the Spanish ambassador, Luna, also busied himself to win Ferdinand for the council, while Bochetel, bishop of Rennes ("St. Laurent"), 69 the French ambassador since the preceding June, sought to combine Ferdinand and Francis II in a common effort for a general council at Constance. Delfino's efforts, together with those of Luna, were alike unsuccessful; Ferdinand, in a clear statement of October 9, 1560, declined to give his consent to the council. Indeed Delfino himself came around before long to the emperor's way of thinking, and is found to be recommending to Rome due regard for the Protestants and the participation of the pope in person at the council. When Delfino arrived at Vienna, Maximilian's last hope of resistance to the pressure brought upon him from Rome and by his father had vanished. In January 1560 he had given up Pfauser in obedience to Ferdinand's threat to have the preacher drowned. Ferdinand would make but one concession; he would ask the pope to permit Maximilian the communion in both kinds. But Pfauser did not leave Austria till June, when Maximilian's excuse that his favorite was unfit to travel on account of illness proved vain, and he was then dismissed with a letter of recommendation to Christoph of Württemberg. Toward the nuncio Hosius, Maximilian was unfailingly courteous and ingenious in finding expressions inspiring him with initial hopes of a converson from which he constantly proved as far as ever. But he sent a special envoy to the Lutheran " Vide supra, p. 206.
Vide supra, pp. 183, 225.
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princes, Nicholas von Warmsdorff, to learn the measure of their support of him by proposing a flight to them; and when Warmsdorff returned with their answers at the end of July (or beginning of August) that they dared not risk a schism, he was more amenable. When the diplomatic Delfino succeeded Hosius, a new method supplanted that of interviews. Delfino was careful to report to Pius any utterances of the king which lent themselves to an interpretation favorable to surrender. Maximilian, on his part, convinced that the support of the Princes was a broken reed, was ready for a reconciliation. On November 14, IS60, Pius declared to the consistory his intention of recalling the council to Trent, and entrusted to three cardinals the preparation of the necessary bull. On November 20 the bull of indulgence which must precede the council was published; it used the conflicting words continuare and indkere of the coming assembly, and the bull of November 29, the bull of convocation, preserved the ambiguity on the subject already so long a cause of delay. Lainez was a member of the commission which drafted the bull of convocation. He affirmed that the council must be a continuation of the old one, for any other view of it would be a reflection on it as the work not of God but of men. Moreover, he says, it is not the authority of a council that is involved; it is that of the pope. The error of one is the error of the other. The pope would be making a mistake when trying hardest to avoid one if he called a council for his information. Thus he developed the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope.70 Ferdinand's apprehensions that the breach with the Germans was now irrevocable seemed to be realized when, on January 20, 1561, an assembly of Protestant princes took place at Naumburg and repudiated the council of Trent as not meeting the conditions laid down by the diet of Augsburg in IS59. The emperor wondered whether even the bishops, and especially the three spiritual electors, would go to the council, and he declined to take any official action until be heard from them, though he kept professing his obedience as a Christian to the pope. Neither Ferdinand nor Philip nor Catherine had given their consent nor appointed bishops to attend the new assembly when Pius, on February 14, 1561, named Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, the friend of Vergerio, and Cardinal Puteo (du Puy) as legates to the council, and on March 10 added the names of Seripando, Simonetta, and Hosius. Cardinal Puteo died before he reached Trent, and was succeeded by Hohenems (Al" Gothein, op. cit., p. 496.
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temps), a nephew of Pius IV. Philip of Spain was the first to give way. He wrote to the pope on June 13 that the Spanish bishops would be instructed to present themselves at Trent in August. Catherine yielded the point on the failure of the colloquy of Poissy in October, and on December 1, Ferdinand promised Delfino that his envoys would appear at Trent in the middle of January 1562. T H E ITALIANS AND THE LAST SESSIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
Soon after the appearance of the bull of convocation, Vergerio made new plans to be at the council. He talked the project over with Duke Christoph, who counselled waiting until it was certain that the council would take place; questioned whether it was wise for one of the best hated men in the Protestant camp to take such chances; and tried to curb the zeal of his councillor until the decision of Protestant Germany should be made known at the meeting of theologians and their lay associates, which was to be held at Erfurt in April according to the recess of Naumburg. When the answer to the papal nuncios Delfino and Commendone had been given, Christoph thought that German Protestant opinion of pope and council had been sufficiently conveyed, and refused permission to Vergerio to publish sundry broadsides he had prepared. Vergerio can hardly have waited for the conclusion of the Naumburg meeting when he penned his address to the Italian bishops summoned to Trent; indeed it is dated Augsburg, January IS, 1561." In this as in the publication of the bull of convocation at about the same time, Vergerio seeks to rouse the Italian bishops to consciousness of the undignified part they are expected to play at the council. Bound to the pope as they are by their oath, their votes can be depended upon by him more than those of the cardinals, whose presence is likewise required by the "book of Roman ceremonies." The envoys of the princes will have no vote. He urges them to tell the pope that they have learned from the acts of ancient church councils that bishops were not then merely the mouthpieces of the bishop of Rome; that they did not bind themselves by the strict oath formula; they studied the matters to be considered, in order to vote intelligently. Vergerio inaugurated his renewed polemic against the council concurrently with his application to the cardinal of Trent for a safe-conduct on especially favorable terms. Henceforth his themes are the bishops and the safe-conduct, together with the prospect of war which the council will entail. " Hubert, op. cit., p. 164 and 313-14, nos. 144-45.
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While the German Protestant princes assembled at Erfurt with the theologians in accordance with the recess of Naumburg, Vergerio was preparing to accept the invitation of the two nuncios to an interview. The object was twofold, the reclaiming of the apostate and his attendance at Trent, which was desired even if he refused to be reclaimed. Actually it was only Delfino who appeared for the conferences with Vergerio, which took place mostly at Zabern in Alsace, but partly at Strassburg and in its neighborhood. There were six meetings, Vergerio tells us, and a total of twenty hours consumed. The date was April to May 1561. Meanwhile he had given to the press the recess of Naumburg, of which Christoph had sent him a copy,72 the statement of the nuncios, and the speech of Delfino before the council of Strassburg, with the answer of the latter. 73 When he published the statement of the nuncios, in May 1561, the interview with Delfino was over and Vergerio was recuperating in Baden. He denies that the Protestants can be won over by concessions such as the lay-chalice and the marriage of priests, and he is adamant to the tactful approaches of Delfino. He credits him indeed with sincerity in saying that love and mildness shall reign at the council and that everyone shall have a hearing. But the very different attitude of the pope is shown by his shedding the blood of the brothers of the evangelicals71 and by the wording of the bull of convocation, which does not agree with assurances given by Pius in letters to the emperor, of which Christoph has copies. As to the mildness and zeal of the pope, popes are always spoken of thus as long as they are alive and have honors to hand out. When they can no longer dispense largess, you overturn their statues and put their nephews on trial.76 After the prolonged interviews between ex-bishop and nuncio ensued negotiations with Cardinal Gonzaga, Delfino being intermediary. In the middle of June and again on August 6 and a third time early in September, Delfino keeps Vergerio posted on the progress of them, and assures him that Gonzaga, the emperor, and even the pope want him to come. Vergerio was formulating his terms of safe-conduct—including guarantees from pope and emperor as well as from the council—when Delfino, in obedience to instructions from Rome in November, let the matter " Hubert, op. cit., p. 167. " Hubert, op. cit., pp. 168-70 and 314, nos. 146 and 147. " Vide supra, p. 175 and the reference to Vergerio's letters. ,c As after the death of Paul IV, vide supra, p. 250.
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drop. 76 There is likelihood that the character of Vergerio's literary work during these months in which his affair seemed to be progressing so favorably is at the bottom of the suspension. To Cardinal Gonzaga he sent in August 1561 his Che papa Pió IV non ja da dovere,77 and in October appeared his comparison of the council of Basel with that of Trent, 78 which places the former in a better light. At Basel the safeconduct included security from the pope, while at Trent there is nothing to prevent the pope from clapping into Roman prisons those provided with the safe-conduct of the council. At Basel the council drew up its decrees and published them according to its own judgment. The decrees of Trent are worked over in the Vatican. In June 1561 Delfino met at Strassburg Zanchi and Massario and other Italian exiles to win them for the council. Zanchi had drawn up, at the request of Vergerio and Sturm, a memorandum for the nuncio setting forth the nature of the conflict over the Eucharist in the Protestant ranks. In answer to Delfino, who, quoting St. Jerome, had said that there were as many opinions as heads, Zanchi reveals his hope of a Catholic evangelical church. 79 He now declared himself ready to work for the attendance of Protestants at the council, providing first that the council decide "what things are necessary to salvation, what things are contrary thereto, and what things are indifferent"; secondly that the bishops who attend be freed from their oath of obedience to the pope; thirdly, that the Protestant theologians be granted safe-conduct in the widest sense, and free association with every bishop; fourthly, that a commission of the most learned bishops of the various nations give in secret the vote regarding the doctrines in dispute. The criterion as to the relative necessity for salvation of this or that is to be the canonical writings of the Bible, and failing these the testimony of the oldest church fathers and historians. These demands were backed up by Sturm. 80 They were refused by the pope, although he granted the Protestants safeconduct. 81 Catherine de' Medici had decided to delay publication of the bull of "Hubert, op. cit., 173-80 for this interview. Hubert did not use the report of the nuncio. 71
Ibid., no. ISO.
" Ibid., no. 151.
" T h e memorandum is dated "ex meo Musaeo" May 1, 1561 (Hubert, op. cit., 173, note 492). "Steinherz, Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland (Hosius and Delfino 1560-1561), I, 380 ff.
" Ibid., 277.
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convocation until she could secure from the pope explicit declaration whether it was a new council or a continuation of the old one. The national council—really a religious colloquy recalling those of Charles V, since representative divines were to be invited from abroad—was summoned in June to meet on July 2, 1561, and the objects were declared to be a preliminary consultation about the oecumenical council, the appointment of the delegates to attend it, and the discussion of important matters relating to the Gallican church and the kingdom. It was to be held at Poissy simultaneously with the meeting of the states-general at Pontoise. Safe-conduct to Poissy was assured by the edict of July 25 to all French subjects who wished to bring forward any matter concerning religion. Just before the colloquy (or national council as l'Hôpital called it and as both Gallicans and Huguenots regarded it) 82 the "Edict of July" brought the decision of the parlement of Paris that, until the meeting of a general council of the church, the ecclesiastical courts should have jurisdiction over heresy (as ordered in the edict of Romorantin), but those who, having been found guilty, had been handed over to the secular arm for punishment, could receive no more severe penalty than banishment. 83 Catherine appears to have given private instructions which deprived the edict of any force, and it certainly remained a dead letter. 84 And she wrote to the pope on August 4, 1561, suggesting numerous modifications of the canon law in favor of the Huguenots, acting probably under the influence of Montluc. Though the colloquy was opened at Poissy on July 31, the foreign delegates were slow in coming. Beza came from Geneva on August 22— the Genevese would not allow Calvin to be present,—and from Zurich came Vermigli, who had travelled from the Cantons in company of the French envoy, Coignet, and who arrived on September 11. The German divines were invited, but most of them could not come. On September 9, in the refectory of the Dominican monastery of Poissy, the debates began in the presence of six cardinals, thirty-six bishops and a variety of Catholic clergymen,85 who occupied the choir, while Beza and his ten companions,86 each accompanied by a nobleman of the province from " G o t h e i n , op. cit., p. 496. 84
" V a n Dyke, op. cit., I, 212.
Pastor, op. cit., X V I , 167. 85 "Five cardinals, forty bishops and a throng of learned divines" (Campbell, History of the Jesuits, p. 60. M "Fourteen ministers, chiefly from Switzerland, supported by a score of delegates from the French Reformed churches" (Van Dyke, op. cit., p. 216).
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which he came, seated themselves on the benches in the hall. The conditions to govern the meetings, which had been published in the councilmeeting of August 8, make it clear that the matters in dispute are not to be settled on their religious merits. The princes of the blood are to preside at the disputation, and the clergy are not to be arbiters. The latter were by this time already on the defense, for Beza had employed himself to good purpose with the young king, the queen-mother, Antoine of Navarre, and the privy council. Led by the cardinal de Toumon, the French bishops made it clear that they repudiated the idea of discussing doctrine, but were ready to consider the removal of abuses in the church. But when, at the neighboring Pontoise, the representatives of the second and third estates, albeit in meagre numbers, demanded the cessation of all persecution of the Calvinists, the holding of a national council, and the confiscation of ecclesiastical revenues,87 the religious discussion had evidently to take another character. They now urged that such questions as that of the Eucharist were for a general council to decide; and that the Spanish clergy, soon to be in France on their way to Trent, should be permitted to assist in the discussion. The cardinal of Lorraine urged the young king Charles IX not to set his authority against that of the church in matters of religion. Beza launched a bomb into the discussions at the outset when, in explaining the reformed doctrine of the Eucharist, he declared that "although the body of Christ was truly offered and communicated in a spiritual sense, it was nevertheless materially as far from the bread and wine as heaven is from earth." There were mutterings of protest, Coligny covered with his hands the discomfiture on his face, and the cardinal de Tournon demanded that the speaker be silenced. But the queen allowed Beza to finish and afterward spoke placatingly to Tournon. The speech of the cardinal of Lorraine, to whose lot it fell to refute that of Beza, was evidently able and eloquent, but it converted Pierre Ramus to the Huguenot faith, if we are to believe that famous Aristotelian.88 As it was now evident that debate would be prolonged, Catherine, with the concurrence of the clergy, nominated three bishops and three Catho" Pastor, op. tit., XVI, 169. The estates proposed to "sell all the clerical property of the kingdom, pay the debts out of the resulting capital, establish a loan fund for the use of merchants, pay for army and fortifications, and with the remainder, estimated at about forty per cent of the income of the fund, support the clergy" (Van Dyke, op. cit., 21S). "Van Dyke, op. cit., pp. 216-17. Vide H. O. Evennett, "The Cardinal of Lorraine and the colloquy of Poissy" (.Cambridge Historical Journal, II, 133-50, 1926).
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lie theologians to confer with five of the leading reformed ministers. Of the Catholics named, however, the first was Montluc, who, though a skeptic and a libertine, propagated heresy.®9 The committee drew up a written formula in regard to the Eucharist, which all signed; but it was rejected by the assembly, before which it was laid, on October 4, and also by the Sorbonne.90 Antoine of Navarre is said to have seceded at this point and on this account from the Huguenot side. Lainez, who arrived with the magnificent cardinal of Ferrara, Ippolito d'Este, on September 19, undertook to answer Vermigli when the latter began to speak on the Eucharist. Into his mouth the historian puts a speech which was daring, to say the least, and increased the reputation won at Trent by the Jesuit. Either because of the frankness of Lainez, who told her she had no business at a religious conference, or of the diplomacy of Ippolito d'Este, Catherine went no more to the sessions, and Lainez secured the admission of his order into France (January 14, 1562), a few days after the edict of January. The colloquy dissolved on October 18, 1561, its object, that of clearing the way for a general council to confront that of Trent having failed. But the French court had been won by Beza's eloquence for Calvinism, and the Württemberg theologians departed highly offended. Ippolito d'Este came to Poissy as papal delegate, charged inter alia to secure recognition by the king of the council of Trent and dissolution of the colloquy of Poissy. Ippolito was indifferent in religious matters and often got the reputation of wisdom in political matters which he did not deserve. He was by nature timid in spite of his apparent love of display. When difficulties were made over his reception at the French court and when his niece Anna d'Este, duchess of Guise, was heard to say that he would not find lodging in the royal palace, he yielded the point. He had an entourage of 250 (including eight bishops and nine theologians) and the 600 horses it took to carry them. His credentials as legate were protested by the estates at Pontoise as lacking the seal of the king; but recognized by the privy council, though l'Hôpital consistently refused to affix the seal. n Montluc, when he demanded the archbishopric of Bordeaux in 1551, had encountered the hostility of the consistory, which objected to his dissolute life and even accused him of heresy. Julius m defended him as one who had promised to employ himself with the king in favor of the Holy See. As for his heresy, Frà Montalcino confessed that he had heard Montluc preaching the opinion of the sacramentarians. Cf. Romier, Les origines politiques des guerres de religion, pp. 500-1. Van Dyke, op. cit., p. 218. Cf. Ranke, Geschichte Frankreichs (1868), I, 166.
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At Montargis, Ippolito had an interview with his sister-in-law Renée, the widowed duchess of Ferrara. She had remained in Italy after the death of her husband in 1559 only until the arrival from France of her son, the new duke Alfonso II, permitted her to resign the government which she had carried on in the interval. Returning to her native land she retired to her château of Montargis, where she prepared to make up for her six years of dissimulation by the zeal of her performance in the cause of reform. Montargis was an ardently Catholic town, and there ensued outbreaks between the citizens and the party of the duchess, such as that of May 1561, in which twelve priests were killed and their bodies thrown into a well. Next year, when the Catholics of the city occupied their church for fear that the duchess would set up the reformed cult there, she suppressed the revolt with death and imprisonment, elided by Condé. The king of France sent her daughter, the duchess of Guise, to exhort her to dismiss the preachers and live in Catholic fashion, or else take herself off and escape imprisonment; but she was obdurate, and the duke of Guise had presently to send a garrison to Montargis to defend his mother-in-law from the citizens who were threatening to drive her out because she had given refuge to a number of Huguenot men and women from Orleans.91 Cardinal Ippolito, after talking with her, reported to his nephew, Duke Alfonso, that he has found her "risolutissima in questa nuova setta" and regretful to boot for having ever pretended anything else. Recognizing the failure of the colloquy of Poissy, the French government resolved to send to Trent twenty-five bishops and two archbishops. At the court, the reformed ministers were to alternate with the Catholic orders in the preaching, a day to each party. The Huguenots, on their part, being permitted to preach in private houses or in secluded gardens on condition of not starting any disorder, proceeded to go to their services armed and singing psalms. There were many instances of violence, and in various localities organizations of Huguenots took shape, clear indications of the coming conflict. The massacre of Vassy was the incident which precipitated it. At the beginning of 1562 appeared the safe-conduct. Vergerio protests his disappointment. The safe-conduct proper applies to the Germans; a supplement concerns non-German nations, and in this he finds himself " Sandonnini, ". . . di alcuni documenti relativi a Renata di Francia" (Rivista storica italiana, IV, pp. 542-61). Sandonnini is of course seeking to make out a case for Renée's intolerance.
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clearly shut out of the council. Since the gospel cannot be preached publicly and with impunity in Italy, he, the Italian, is refused admission; this limitation of the safe-conduct has been imposed just on his account. In the memorandum to Delfino of November 1, 1S62, where he recalls all this, he concludes by reiterating his readiness to come with a safeconduct, providing it does not contain the clause which prohibits him from dealing either with the council as such or with a delegation from it.82 He wants a hearing before the assembled bishops.93 Vergerio addressed the bishops again, when they came together in Trent, on the "enormities" of their council. Here, as in the address to the brothers in the Valtelline, he attributes to Pius belligerent intentions from which he has been diverted only by the political situation, particularly in France. 94 A refutation of the letter of Cardinal Hcsius to the duke of Brunswick (Trent, March 24, 1562) occupies him. Hosius had commented on the disunion of the Protestants, recalling the storms which had raged about the head of Melanchthon. Vergerio remarks with heat that he says nothing about the manifold divergences of the Catholic world on the subject of the council. Hosius gives the impression that all the world is assembled at Trent. Vergerio enumerates the countries which are represented scarcely or not at all. As to the Protestant dissensions, a field newly put under the plough is left with much to improve, but the owner would not leave it when there is expectation of grain and wine from it. The Protestants will hang on, for there is expectation of eternal life.95 Boniface Amerbach did not live to see the outcome of the confessional struggle in France, but the tragedy which ushered it in was brought to his attention in a letter from François Hotman, with whose activities he he had long been acquainted. 96 It told of the attack by Francis of Guise on the conventicle at Vassy on March 1, 1562, and begged Amerbach to employ his influence with the town council of Basel to hinder the sending of auxiliaries whom the enemies of the Huguenots are said to have summoned from France. It arrived two days before his death. And of the state of parties in France he had doubtless heard from Vermigli. The K Ci. the third demand in the memorandum of Zanchi (supra, p. 330). "Hubert, op. cit., pp. 192 and 317 (no. 166). " Ibid., pp. 193-94 and nos. 160 and 168. "Hubert, op. cit., pp. 194-97. " H o t m a n to Amerbach, Orleans, April 12, 1562 (Burckhardt-Biedermann, Bonifatius Amerbach und die Reformation, p. 317).
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Italian exiles lost their true friend before his alienation was complete. Boniface Amerbach died on April 24, 1562, and his son Basil lost at almost the same time father, wife, and child. From Briinn in Moravia, the marquis of Oria, who had left Poland, kept writing to him. Receiving no reply, he realized that he was no longer dealing with faithless messengers, bad roads, or press of affairs. Indeed, Boniface's last letter had told of his failing health, and the Neapolitan was not unprepared for the news which came, two years after the elder Amerbach had been laid to rest within the walls of the Carthusian monastery, in a letter from Basil. He gave vent to a grief as whole-hearted as had been his arraignment of Curione. What my mind already presaged [he wrote],®7 and what I greatly feared, has, I see, happened to me. Wretched that I am, wondering what has gone wrong because he omitted to send me letters, and he was looking down on my cares and anxieties from the heaven to which he ascended two years ago, leaving us both orphaned of a parent. . . . I certainly mourned the death of my first father, as was fitting; but he died at a time, in a place, and under circumstances which left me many grounds for lightening my sorrow.98 This second father (I dare to speak of him in this way) departed so unseasonably that the old wound bleeds afresh, although the scar had hardened and memories which seemed sere with age have wakened to new life.
Piermartire Vermigli died a little more than a year after his return from the colloquy of Poissy and after a week's illness with fever. The date was November 12, 1562. "Marquis of Oria to Basil Amerbach, Briinn, April 26, 1564 (G II, 31, 39). " F o r the marchese Roberto Bonifacio, vide supra, pp. 274, 275. What the circumstances were which lightened grief at his taking-off in 1536, I cannot say.
CHAPTER X I I I
VERGERIO'S FAILURE TO SECURE T H E LEADERSHIP 1558-1562 CONTROVERSIES EXCITED BY THE ITALIANS IN POLAND AND IN THE RHETIAN LEAGUES
Lelio Sozini, returning from Poland at the conclusion of his second visit, was in Vienna again, whence he wrote to Bullinger on March 24, 1559.1 It was at the time of the diet of Augsburg, when Maximilian's own hopes were highest of declaring openly his Protestantism and when the hopes of Protestants in him were the strongest. "Maximilian," said Sozini, "left the city today to avoid being present at an idolbearing procession. He himself said to me some other things besides which you will be glad to hear, and for which you will return thanks to God. May he guard me on this most dangerous remnant of my journey." That the king had left Vienna for such a reason is not likely, and Lelio is only expressing popular opinion; but Maximilian was at any rate optimistic over the prospects of Protestantism, and doubtless intimated as much to Sozini for the satisfaction of the Swiss leaders to whom he was going. The tolerant attitude of Maximilian was actually less fruitful of results than was the equally hesitating action of Sigismund of Poland, who in face of the Calvinistic nobility was impotent to enforce the edict which he had published against the reform at the demand of the clergy. Prince Radziwill, late host of Sozini, had a second visit from Vergerio at Wilna about a year after Sozini's departure thence. He remained from February 10 to March 5, 1560, courting for Duke Johann Wilhelm of Saxony; 2 but that plan fell through when the prince gave his hand elsewhere, as he presently did. Vergerio, proceeding to his real mission, demanded, but vainly, the adoption of the Augsburg Confession. By the government, the evangelicals were left to their own divisions, as Sozini told Calvin. In spite of the edict that resulted from thé diet of Warsaw 1
Trechsel, op. cit., II, Beilage VII, 8, with date May 10—Wotschke, Briefwechsel der Schweizer, 171a, etc. 3 For Vergerio's second Polish journey, vide Wotschke, "Vergerios zweite Reise nach Preussen und Lithauen" (Altpreussische Monatschrift, XLVIII, 221-317).
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and forbade secret gatherings, innovations in ceremonies, and other departures from Rome, a declaration of the king once more extended the Interim. The efforts of Laski at union became of less avail through the advance of the Antitrinitarians, a danger that his church might have survived even then but for a new division in its ranks. The Polish reformers were, in fact, in the throes of a new Stancari schism. In May 1559, Francesco Stancari, whose life had been preserved after all at Königsberg, and who had survived his rival, Osiander, returned to Poland with a new bone of contention, fruit of his encounter at Frankfurt on the Oder with Andreas Musculus, who sustained that Christ, mediator both as God and as man, had died as God. He now taught Christ's mediation only according to his corporal nature, since only thus can we avoid implying that he is not equal to God, but in a sense inferior to Him with whom he intercedes. Now it was Melanchthon with whom he took issue, and in Pinczow he published a ten-page pamphlet against the successor of Luther, charging him with Arianism because he taught the doctrine of mediation which subordinates Christ to his father. The Polish reformers, all friends of Melanchthon, cried "Sabellian," burned all the copies of the booklet they could lay their hands on, and took to task the printer. The Mantuan, violent and unruly at best, broke into abuse, while the synod of Pinczow excommunicated him (August 1559) and decreed that every churchman found to be among his followers should be deprived of his office. Lismanini, seconding Laski, then appealed to Calvin and Bullinger; but the responses of these, when they arrived in February 1560, were stigmatized by Stancari as forged. A new opinion in writing was asked of the reformed leaders in the Swiss cantons; and the newest letters, when they arrived, were laid before a synod at Ksionzh (Xion) in September 1560. The Mantuan renewed his charge of forgery, and himself wrote to Calvin, Bullinger (now thoroughly tired of the matter), and others, denouncing his opponents as Arians. Calvin and Vermigli answered for the Genevese and Zürichers respectively, in 1561. But the Stancari squabble ceased now to have any importance except for having opened up wounds in the Polish evangelical church which were aggravated by the Antitrinitarian movement which eclipsed it at this point. With Lelio Sozini on his second visit to Poland was that physician from Saluzzo, Giorgio Biandrata, who had come into conflict with Calvin on the subject of the Trinity and had been obliged to leave Geneva.3 3
Vide supra, pp. 305-306.
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From the suspicion that rested on him on that account, he now cleared himself by laying his confession of faith before the synod of Pinczow. Laski and Calvin both recognized it as orthodox. In the spring of 1559, strong in the reputation he had maintained in his profession and in the favor of King Sigismund, who wished him to attend his sister, Queen Isabella of Hungary, Biandrata left Poland. Returning at the beginning of 1560, he was received by the congregations with confidence, and chosen, with Lismanini—Laski had just died—as presiding elder. There followed renewed attacks from Calvin, and Biandrata had again to submit his confession. It once more passed, and the spectre of Servetism seemed to have been laid. The evangelicals were unaware, however, what sort of an angel they were entertaining. The answers of the Swiss theologians condemning Stancari—the first ones—had just been received, and Lismanini was in a quandary, for he was of much the same mind as the Mantuan on the point at issue; an Italian (at least by adoption), he was, like most of his evangelical fellow countrymen, attracted by rational theses. It was Biandrata who suggested a solution, namely the tritheistic theory of Gribaldi. It won almost general acceptance, and brought upon Lismanini, who adopted it without realizing its purport, the name of Arian and Gentilist. This was the situation when the marquis of Oria arrived in Poland. At the beginning of 1561 he is at Kasimierz in Little Poland, four miles south of Pinczow, his host (following a conjecture of Wotschke 4 ) Stanislaus Lutomirski, pastor at Little Kasimierz, the son-in-law of Laski. Lutomirski, whose banishment had been a dead letter, was at this very time becoming interested in the teachings of Gribaldi, Biandrata, and Gentile; and Biandrata, who was at Kasimierz during Bonifacio's stay there, was doubtless the cause of his defection from the orthodox ranks. We need not be concerned for his influence on the Neapolitan, who did not trouble himself with theological subtleties. Of the long journey thither through the Austrian territories (told in a letter to Maggi, not preserved, and in one to Amerbach which went astray 4 ) we learn nothing. 4
In his Lutomirski, p. 140. ' It was entrusted to "Mercurio cuidam Gallo, Christianam religionera profitenti, qui dicebat Genevae se degere," and the fear of the writer that the messenger of the gods might prove, as not uncommonly, unreliable, were justified. The marquis was having serious trouble with his couriers. "All that I write you this year is doomed," he says (to Amerbach, Kasimierz, June 30, 1561. G II. 31, 30). He had written with similar ill-success from Vienna.
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Of the Basel circle, Castellio now began to take an interest in Poland. His position, difficult enough on account of the affray with Calvin and Beza over the De haereticis, was further jeopardized by the affair of David Joris, tangible evidence that heretics were no longer safe at Basel. Both he and Curione had been absent from the session of the faculties of the university (those of law and theology) which condemned the heresy of the Netherlanders (April 26,1559), though they had afterward formally expressed in writing their disapprobation.6 Castellio had been intimate with the arch-heretic who had been associated with him, according to a very plausible hypothesis of Buisson, in the composition of the book of Martin Bellius—and in a position to denounce him, but had kept silent. It is clear from a letter of the marquis of Oria to him, written on the same day as one to Amerbach (June 30, 1561) and doubtless despatched by the same messenger,7 that he was meditating departure from Basel long before the flight of Ochino to Poland led to the report that he too was about to set out thither. Hearing of the Neapolitan's stopping in Poland, he wrote to make inquiries about the new refuge and the journey thither, its cost and its perils. I know not [responded Bonifacio], whether your Attic letter brought me more joy or grief. For although I do not deny that, on account of its novelty, it gave me great pleasure, I must confess that what I read between the lines grieved me vastly. To come at once to the point, then, I will speak of what seems to me most essential to you. I see them 8 laying aside the mask and wishing to wage open war on you. But, on the other hand, I see your open-mindedness the prey of every scamp almost, since it is perfectly true that "Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas." 9 And if you put any faith in my opinion (that is, in the opinion of one who greatly loves you), you ought by all means to think of seeking a new country. This region would not be uncongenial, if you could put up with the beer. I do not mean that there is no wine here; but that, since it is not native-grown, it cannot be brought in from elsewhere for a low price. In other respects, in my judgment, it is not inferior to Germany; and in some respects it surpasses her. To make this clear, I will attempt without concealment to show as briefly as I can. You would have here great liberty—nay the very greatest—as regards thought and opinion, living, writing, publishing. There would be nobody to * Curione expresses his condemnation in a note still preserved, and with almost too great ardor. Castellio was quite as explicit, but expressed himself in less Ciceronian fashion (Buisson II. 154-55). * It was a man sent from Nürnberg to find an investment of the Neapolitan's funds. The letter to Castellio is in the city library of Bem, MSS. Hist. Helv., VI. 63. ' One suspects Calvin and Beza. "Juvenal, Satires, II. 63 (Adag. Erasmi. Amsterdam 1630), p. 353.
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censure. You would have men who would love and defend you and (what ought to be pleasanter to you) those having a common cause with you. Think it over; you will finally make the decision. Corn is not very dear in this place; I judge that there is little difference between ours and yours. The cold is frightful, and the rivers freeze every year; but Germany is not one whit better. I t remains to speak of the main point, as they say. Would that I were the man I was when in Italy, or even when I left Italy for Basel. Now I have these continual snows, which you might consider when you have thought about the roads, the expense, and the dangers. Nor, after all these have ceased to trouble, have I a certain resting place here, as has been pointed out to you in my own words by Nicephorus Maggi. But if Sarmatia, with its dower of good and evil which I have described, entices you, I should like you to inform me of the sum of money which you would need yearly. This we can learn from no one, however well-informed, except yourself. D o you tell me then, and it shall be my care to conduct the matter diligently and secretly, as is right. N o r would I conceal the fact that Giorgio Bianarata, a friend of mine no less than of yours, is here; he favors this project with all his might, and I am sure, knowing his candor and his sympathy, that he will leave no stone unturned. I t would be necessary to let me know if you have money sufficient for the journey, or what you lack. And this information, like the other, must be supplied by you. Now for the description of the journey which you ask. I hear that there are two routes. One leads by way of the Danube to Vienna; the other to Nürnberg, Prague in Bohemia, and Vratislav in Silesia, which is four, or at most five days' journey from here. All this I have wished to tell you; you will let me know your decision as soon as you can, for the reason that I might depart from here in the meantime. You will have a diligent, if not strenuous coadjutor in your plans; and perhaps, if we see you here, we will change our mind about going away. I t does not seem to me out of place that you talk the whole matter over with Sozini, either going to Zürich yourself, or having him come to Basel or sending him letters by trusty messengers. He is a man who loves you and knows thoroughly all Poland. Perhaps he would be your companion or guide on the f u t u r e joumey. May God bring you to decide that which H e knows will be for your good. 10 10
The rest of the letter is taken up with apologies for an improper use of the dative for the ablative, and concludes thus pleasantly: "I am highly pleased about the barrel-hoop of our little Bonifacius, who is certainly to be thought happy while he can thus play. He will be unhappy enough when he has attained the threshold of manhood, since it is perfectly true what Sophocles says: 'Eu r(p