Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe 9780271090672

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

Habent sua fata libelli

Early Modern Studies Series General Editor Michael Wolfe St. John’s University

Editorial Board of Early Modern Studies Elaine Beilin Framingham State College

Raymond A. Mentzer University of Iowa

Christopher Celenza Johns Hopkins University

Charles G. Nauert University of Missouri, Emeritus

Barbara B. Diefendorf Boston University Paula Findlen Stanford University Scott H. Hendrix Princeton Theological Seminary Jane Campbell Hutchison University of Wisconsin–Madison Mary B. McKinley University of Virginia

Robert V. Schnucker Truman State University, Emeritus Nicholas Terpstra University of Toronto Margo Todd University of Pennsylvania James Tracy University of Minnesota Merry Wiesner-Hanks University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Episcopal and

Reform

Politics

in Early Modern Europe

Edited by

Jennifer Mara DeSilva

Early Modern Studies 10 Truman State University Press Kirksville, MO

Copyright © 2012 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 All rights reserved tsup.truman.edu Cover art: Marco Zoppo (1433–78), A Bishop Saint, perhaps Saint Augustine. Tempera on wood, probably ca. 1468. National Gallery, London. Used with permission of Art Resource, NY. Cover design: Teresa Wheeler Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Episcopal reform and politics in early modern Europe / edited by Jennifer Mara DeSilva. p. cm. — (Early modern studies ; 10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61248-072-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61248-074-9 (ebook) 1. Catholic Church—Bishops—History. 2. Episcopacy—History. 3. Clergy—Office—History. 4. Christianity and politics—Catholic Church—History. 5. Christianity and politics—Europe— History. 6. Council of Trent (1545–1563) 7. Europe—Church history. I. DeSilva, Jennifer Mara, 1976– BX1905.E63 2012 262'.1224—dc23 2012030760 No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher. The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–­1992.

Contents Illustrations vii Foreword ix The Local Nature of Episcopal Reform in the Age of the Council of Trent William V. Hudon

Introduction 1 A Living Example

Jennifer Mara DeSilva

Part 1: Episcopal Authority A Hierarchy that Had Fought

Episcopal Promotion during the Reign of Mary I (1553–58) and the Roots of Episcopal Resistance to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement

26

Raymond A. Powell

Bishops in the Habsburg Netherlands on the Eve of the Catholic Renewal, 1515–59

46

Office and Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Tortona

63

Hans Cools

Antonella Perin and John Alexander

Part 2: Pastoral Practice The Absentee Bishop in Residence

Paris de’ Grassi, Bishop of Pesaro, 1513–28

88

Jennifer Mara DeSilva

Papal Authority, Episcopal Reservation, and Abortion in Sixteenth-Century Italy

110

Ministering to Catholics and Protestants Alike

128

John Christopoulos

The Preaching, Polemics, and Pastoral Care of François de Sales Jill Fehleison

Part 3: Clerical Reform Gender, Resistance, and the Limits of Episcopal Authority Sébastien Zamet’s Relationships with Nuns, 1615–55

147

Linda Lierheimer

Challenges to Episcopal Authority in Seventeenth-Century Padua

173

Trials that Should Have Been

194

Celeste McNamara

The Question of Judicial Jurisdiction over French Bishops in the Seventeenth Century and the Self-Narration of the Roman Inquisition Jean-Pascal Gay

Contributors 215 Index 217

Illustrations Bishops in the Habsburg Netherlands on the Eve of the Catholic Renewal, 1515–59 (Cools) Table 1. Bishops in the Netherlands, 1515–59

Office and Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Tortona (Perin and Alexander) Figure 1. Seventeenth-century view of Tortona Figure 2. Exterior of the cathedral of Tortona, showing the modern façade Figure 3. Plan and section of the cathedral Figure 4. Interior of the cathedral Figure 5. Exterior of the episcopal palace of Tortona Figure 6. Historical property map of Tortona

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65 66 66 67 67 68

The Absentee Bishop in Residence (DeSilva)

Figure 1. The modern Chapel of San Terenzio in the cathedral of Pesaro, showing the saint’s remains Figure 2. Exterior of the cathedral of Pesaro

Ministering to Catholics and Protestants Alike (Fehleison)

99 100

Figure 1. St. François de Sales Preaching in the Chablais 134

BLANK

Foreword

The Local Nature of Episcopal Reform in the Age of the Council of Trent William V. Hudon In 1935, the man who would later become the fifty-fifth Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill (1912–94), lost an election for a seat on the Cambridge (Massachusetts) city council. He allegedly then came to the conclusion embodied in his best-known phrase: “All politics is local.”1 The idea that most people make political choices more out of concern for what affects them locally than for broader state, national, and constitutional issues has become a truism in American political culture, but a truism with considerable implications. Under this way of thinking, local politics may not so much reflect wider trends at state and national levels as it reflects the ways in which people negotiate their commitment to broader political positions in light of practical realities closer to home. Might it be useful to consider all religious reform—and particularly that of the Roman church in the age after the Council of Trent—a local story? Recent historical consideration of the Reformation, including analysis of the implementation of Tridentine and post-Tridentine reforms at the local diocesan level, such as the studies contained in this volume, suggest that this consideration may indeed be useful. Scholars in the last century and in the early part of this one have engaged in a profound reconsideration of the character of the age of Reformation, and of the religious entities that emerged from its tumult. The reconsideration began 1.  Late in life, O’Neill used the phrase in the title of a political memoir: O’Neill and Hymel, All Politics Is Local.

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in an effort to find a less polemical, more historically accurate account of a religious history that was polemicized from the beginning. Many historians, on both sides of the Atlantic, struggled to find adequate terminology to apply to the rich diversity of religious thought and behavior that led into—and emerged from— the Council of Trent. They hoped to leave behind the confessional polemics that drove historical accounts of Roman Christianity from the age of Paolo Sarpi to that of Jacob Burckhardt, Francesco De Sanctis, and Benedetto Croce. They also hoped to move past what some considered the continuation of these polemics among mid–twentieth-century historians, and even later ones, among them Hubert Jedin, Paolo Simoncelli, Eric Cochrane, John O’Malley, and Massimo Firpo. Old terms like “Counter-Reformation,” “Catholic Reform,” “evangelismo,” “spirituali,” and “intransigenti,” and new ones like “social disciplining” and “confessionalization” have all come under fire. While those engaged in the debate undertook reconsideration that was hardly fruitless, it would be an understatement to say that no consensus emerged among historians on suitable replacement terminology.2 A host of scholars in more latter days, including those whose essays are contained in this volume, have adopted a slightly different approach, one that perhaps the late Speaker would find admirable. While never turning completely aside from the larger historiographic implications of their investigations, they have focused on local “individuals,” that is, individual bishops, individual dioceses, individual episcopal visitations, individual local tribunals, individual social practices, individual religious behaviors, individual reformers, and individual reform initiatives. They have traced the action of these local individuals and local actions in the half-century or so before the opening sessions at Trent, and the more than approximately one hundred and fifty years after the council closed, in many dozens of articles and books. What they have found, of course, is that the individual local stories reveal deep complexities in the history of religious reform in the early modern era. The complexities are so striking that all attempts to construct overview characterizations that will adequately account for the stunning array of local variations are rendered fairly—maybe even completely—vain. What they have found, moreover, is that what appeared to be one-size-fits-all ecclesiastical legislation from the Council of Trent simply did not operate in local practice. The Tridentine legislation may have been reinforced and even amplified by popes 2.  For some useful overviews of the historiography, see Alberigo, “Dinamiche religiose del Cinquecento italiano”; Cochrane, “Counter Reformation or Tridentine Reformation?”; Simoncelli, “Inquisizione romana e riforma in Italia”; Hudon, “Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy”; Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1–24; O’Malley, Trent and All That; Hudon, “Black and White and Re-read All Over.”

Foreword xi

who backed the decrees with additional directives of their own, but all of these collided head-on with competing, legitimate, and well-recognized religious and social values in the diocesan contexts where local administrators tried to apply the rules. Penalties threatening clerics under investigation were mitigated in reality by numerous factors. Local diocesan populations had much more in common with the clerics under threat than with the bishops and tribunals threatening them, and they took sides accordingly. Monolithically written conciliar, papal, and curial decrees could be, and regularly were, dispensed with in the face of local episcopal appeals, and even in the face of petitions from individual members of the laity. Historians have found vivid concern for practical, day-to-day realities, like protecting family patrimony and galvanizing patron-client relationships, trumping any fear of ecclesiastical penalties for failure to follow Tridentine rules on marriage and choosing godparents. They have also found local bishops with impeccable “reform” credentials operating in perfectly unreformed ways at times, on matters ranging from the acquisition of benefices and the appointment of family members in lucrative service positions to “policing”—or it might be better to say “looking the other way” when encountering—potentially heretical preachers. The historiographic background for both this recent rethinking of the characteristics of early modern Roman Christianity, plus this late focusing on local stories is rich. That background should not be ignored, for while recent investigations have yielded profound insights and data that are surely critical to fuller understanding of the era, in some ways we are merely deepening furrows first plowed long ago. It has been more than sixty years since Hubert Jedin wrote an essay challenging the standard image of Roman action in the age of reform as a simple, monolithic “counter” to Protestant initiatives.3 When he did, he had combed considerable archival material scattered locally across Europe, not just the massive conciliar documentation gathered by the Görres Gesellschaft in thirteen folio volumes. He found far more complexity than the terminology associated with the old image of early modern Roman religiosity could explain, and so, he followed his famous essay with what became a definitive history of the Council of Trent.4 He found that there were plenty of individuals to blame—and outside, not just inside, the papal curia—when looking for persons and causes obstructing the opening of the reform council we still imagine to have been ardently 3.  Jedin, Katholische Reformations oder Gegenreformation? 4.  Concilium tridentinum (13 vols.) for the documentation, and of course, Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient (4 vols.) for the definitive retelling. Jedin and some collaborators provided a very useful overview that includes both his basic insights on the council, plus developed consideration of initiatives within the Roman church after Trent. See Iserloh, History of the Church, Vol. 5, Reformation and Counter Reformation, 431–645.

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desired by everyone in Europe. He found conciliar debates consistently complicated by positions adopted among relatively small political, religious, social, and economic groupings of prelates attending; they simply were not driven by antiLutheran sentiment alone. He found some well-informed, humanist-educated prelates with sophisticated theological commitments. But he also found poorly prepared attendees, ignorant of the history of Christian doctrine and likely more concerned about subsidies providing them food and shelter in that often inhospitable city than about battling Protestants, or about arguing whether their episcopal authority came from the pope or directly from the Holy Spirit. He found a plethora of particular—including local—concerns profoundly affecting the conciliar proceedings. It should come as no surprise that in the end, Jedin left the impression that the Tridentine decrees were a set of compromises hashed out among myriad competing personalities, interests, and pressures attendant at the council. But “compromise” was never a word regularly associated with early modern Roman Catholicism, and so while Jedin’s intellectual heirs may have been numerous, his detractors have been also. Likewise, those who study local reformers and reform initiatives, especially those in an episcopal setting, were preceded by a mid–twentieth-century pioneer, the late Giuseppe Alberigo (1926–2007). In his brilliant 1959 work on bishops at the Council of Trent, he privileged local conditions, regional problems, and other particularisms when considering the actions taken and positions held by Italian bishops attending the first Tridentine sessions.5 He found them most comprehensible after subdividing them by the regions they represented. But, he indicated, even the common interests held by Venetians, or by Tuscans, or by those from Spanish holdings in southern Italy at the council were complicated by the educational background, economic assets, familial commitments, and pastoral experience—or lack thereof—among them. He implied in this analysis, of course, that to understand Italian clerics at the council, the first thing that must be abandoned are any presumptions about their homogeneity. Alberigo, rightly lionized for his central role in Istituto per le scienze religiose in Bologna and for the definitive analysis of another council, Vatican II, that the Istituto provided under his leadership, was for some just as polarizing a figure as some found in Jedin.6 Still, in many ways we continue to struggle with the reconsiderations recommended by both of these scholars. 5.  Alberigo, I vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento. 6.  There is an English edition of the Istituto volumes on Vatican II: History of Vatican II, eds. Alberigo and Komonchak (5 vols.). Alberigo is still regularly attacked on the Internet by conservative analysts disconcerted

Foreword xiii

Today, with a new generation of historians mining the rich veins of ecclesiastical documentation preserved from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there is more to fit into the reconsideration than Jedin or Alberigo likely ever imagined. Now, adding the massive records of local bishops, local reformers, and local tribunals scattered in episcopal, municipal, and confraternal archives—not to mention the records of central administrative offices (like the Roman Inquisition, the Datary, and the Penitentiary) detailing negotiations with local petitioners—we find still more human realities necessary for any sensitive, nuanced retelling of the early modern past. Jedin and Alberigo were peculiarly sensitive to the complex of ideas, personalities, and agendas feeding into the creation of the Tridentine rules. That sensitivity made it impossible for them to see the emergence of Roman Catholicism in the early modern period resembling the standard images associated with its history, and led them to highlight some local and individual realities behind the broader development of the Roman church as an institution. We are now peculiarly sensitive not just to the complex that they identified, but also to the daily compromises, negotiations, disagreements, examples of subservience—and of independent self-assertion—revealed in the slow, decades-long process of episcopal implementation of Tridentine legislation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. How these laws were implemented depended on the relative value in any local community of competing authorities. It depended on the ability of those contesting religious, social, and political authorities in any local community to manipulate the rules, and the skills of their fellow contestants. The studies contained in this volume beautifully illustrate the fits and starts, the ugliness and the beauty, the inconsistencies and the regularizations that were—all of them—part of the early modern past. Taken together, they contribute to the profound truth revealed over the last twenty-five years through local studies on reform activity after the Council of Trent: conciliar and curial plans for centralized reform, not to mention plans for control of thought and behavior, did not operate with any consistent effectiveness at the local level, at least not with the effectiveness that the plan makers seem to have envisioned. Of course, we all can hope one day to fully comprehend that past in which the plan-makers, the administrators, the bishops, those inclined to follow the directions of their pastors, and those inclined to oppose it, lived. We may reach such a full comprehension, it seems to me, if we remember that all religious reform— especially the episcopal—is fundamentally a local story. with his view of Vatican II as a break from the ecclesiology of the age of the Council of Trent.

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Works Cited Printed Primary Sources

Concilium tridentinum. 13 vols. Freiburg: Herder, 1901–38. History of Vatican II. 5 vols. Edited by Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak. New York: Orbis, 1995–2006.

Secondary Sources

Alberigo, Giuseppe. “Dinamiche religiose del Cinquecento italiano tra Riforma, Riforma cattolica, Controriforma.” Cristianesimo nella storia 6 (1985): 543–60. ———. I vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1959. Bireley, Robert. The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999. Cochrane, Eric W. “Counter Reformation or Tridentine Reformation? Italy in the age of Carlo Borromeo.” In San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, edited by John M. Headley and John B. Tomaro, 31–46. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988. Hudon, William V. “Black and White and Re-read All Over: Conceptualizing Reform across the Long Sixteenth Century, 1414–1633.” In Reassessing Reform: An Historical Investigation in Church Renewal, edited by Christopher M. Bellitto and D. Zachariah Flanagin, 254–77. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012. ———. “Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy—Old Questions, New Insights.” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 783–804. Iserloh, Erwin, Joseph Glazik, and Hubert Jedin, History of the Church. Vol. 5, Reformation and Counter Reformation. New York: Seabury Press, 1980. Jedin, Hubert. Geschichte des Konzils von Trient. 4 vols. Freiburg: Herder, 1949–75. ———. Katholische Reformations oder Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung über das Trienter Konzil. Lucerne: Josef Stocker, 1946. O’Malley, John W. Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. O’Neill, Thomas P., and Gary Hymel. All Politics Is Local and Other Rules of the Game. New York: Random House, 1994. Simoncelli, Paolo. “Inquisizione romana e riforma in Italia.” Rivista storica italiana 100 (1988): 1–125.

Introduction A Living Example

Jennifer Mara DeSilva The early modern period is arguably the age of the bishop. Just as historians have debated whether to call Catholicism post 1517 the Counter-­Reformation or the Catholic Reformation, one might debate whether to cite it as “the age of episcopal crisis” or “the age of episcopal reform.” In each title there is implicit judgement, just as there was in Europe through the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Prior to the Council of Trent (1545–­63), which is sometimes called the Council of Bishops, critics decried the venality, ambition, absenteeism, and ignorance of bishops, and marshaled the example of Antonino Pierozzi of Florence or Pietro Barozzi of Padua to encourage reform. After the Council of Trent, critics pointed to the conciliar decrees enjoining episcopal residence, visitations, synods, and seminaries, and invoked the example of Gian Matteo Giberti of Verona or Carlo Borromeo of Milan as a model.1 Contemporary sources suggested a convenient dichotomy of corruption succeeded by reform, urged by the elite Catholic Church, yearned for by the diocesan faithful, and embraced by enthusiastic bishops. In fact, there were enthusiastic men committed to diocesan work long before the Council of Trent and men without pastoral vocations long afterwards. This introductory essay’s title, “A Living Example,” originates with the Latin phrase “exemplum vivum,” used by the Camaldolese reformers Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini in their program of reform (Libellus ad Leonem X) sent to Pope Leo X in 1513, and by many other reformers after them.2 Giustiniani and Quirini considered the ideal 1. Gios, L’attività pastorale del vescovo Pietro Barozzi; Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma; Alberigo, “Carlo Borromeo”; Headley and Tomaro, San Carlo Borromeo. 2.  Giustiniani and Quirini, Lettera al Papa, 124–­29; Alberigo, “Reform of the Episcopate.”

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bishop to be focused exclusively on his diocese and its salvation, and that the chief issues in episcopal reform were non-­residence and disinterest. In contrast to this view, the contributors to this volume have shown that bishops indeed acted as living examples of the challenges met by Christian clergy, but that they modeled a variety of behaviors, substantial interest in reform, and many preoccupations beyond salvation. As these essays show, the key to the early modern episcopate is privileging the local needs and challenges when transposing reform models and hierarchical directives from the elite center to the parish church.3 In this volume, “local” is interpreted variously as geographically within the bishop’s diocese, interpersonally through his relations with individuals and local institutions, or professionally in terms of challenges to his immediate mandate and practical authority. As this collection of essays shows, a deeper examination of the early modern episcopate reveals a spectrum of behaviors and backgrounds that do not easily divide into groups traditionally labeled “corrupt” and “reformed.”4 A similar diversity existed in the plethora of challenges that bishops faced in fulfilling their duties. Not withstanding this reality, one of the Tridentine conclusions that all members acknowledged was the importance of the bishop in creating an orthodox community of virtuous and active Christians that would serve as a bulwark against the further encroachment of Protestantism.5 Perhaps the disagreement that appeared in other Tridentine discussions encouraged the conciliar fathers to assert their unity on what had become a universally accepted issue: the ideal bishop. While there is little to surprise the reader in the discussion of the Tridentine episcopal ideal, the vehemence surrounding episcopal reform is striking. This emphasis on the bishop as the linchpin in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, connecting the salt of the earth to the princes of the Catholic Church, portrays the bishop as a Janus figure. Caught between the demands and politics of his superiors and the salvation and demands of local individuals and groups, the bishop might appear two-­faced, looking both up and down the hierarchy and prepared to minister in both directions. This would be an oversimplification of the situation. However, as the essays in this collection indicate, the bishop was everything to everyone, functioning in fundamentally different spheres (ecclesiastical and secular), just as he might have spoken different languages to the elites in Rome and to the faithful in 3.  Ditchfield, “‘In Search of Local Knowledge,’” 256, 291–­95. 4.  In addition to the examples of bishops that acted “between” those labels presented in this volume, see Murphy, Ruling Peacefully; Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, 179–­85. 5.  Note that not all Protestant churches dispensed with the episcopate; in Great Britain and Scandinavia bishops worked with secular rulers to implement ecclesiastical reform campaigns; Grell, Scandinavian Reformation; Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, chaps. 9–­11.

Introduction 3

his diocese. In many areas the bishop held secular rights and responsibilities that naturally grew out of his historic role as a local landowner and judge. Rather than two heads, the bishop needed many eyes, ears, and mouths to watch over, listen to, and negotiate with his clergy, confraternities, monastic orders, secular governors, local patrons, and many other diverse groups involved in early modern life. Following the exhortation of Jesus and Peter to the apostles and disciples (Acts 2:14–­47), the fabled precursors of the episcopate, to preach the gospel, teach the Christian lifestyle, and aid the indigent,6 the literature, letters, and conciliar decrees of the early modern period urged bishops to do the same. John Colet’s “Convocation Sermon,” preached at the opening of the Convocation of Clergy in the English province of Canterbury in 1512, is infused with scriptural invocations to reform that assert the enduring challenges in achieving the episcopal ideal. Through a combination of scriptural exegesis and exhortation to his audience, Colet reveals that both in spirit and in actions the bishops were considered a motley crew whose reform was of great consequence for the health of the church.7 Across the centuries and the continent, Colet’s words would reverberate: Let the laws be rehearsed concerning the residence of bishops in their dioceses, which command that they watch over the salvation of souls, that they disseminate the word of God, that they personally appear in their churches at least on great festivals, that they sacrifice for their people, that they hear the causes of the poor, that they sustain the fatherless and widows, that they exercise themselves always in works of piety.8

Yet, as H. Outram Evennett argued, corruption and reform existed side by side in the period before Trent: “the fifteenth century—­so full of contradictions—­was full of reforms and reformers who between them could not make a reformation.”9 Notwithstanding several examples of excellent episcopal virtue, who likely witnessed Colet’s sermon,10 his exhortation shows that, by 1512, the corrupt bishop, the absentee bishop, the bureaucrat bishop, and the pluralist bishop had become rhetorical standards that were familiar to most Christians.11 As mediators between 6. Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops. This is echoed in the Pastoral Rule (ca. 590) of Pope Gregory I that became the foundation of the “mirror of bishops” literature; Evans, Thought of Gregory the Great, 123–­30. 7. Carleton, Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 31–­32. 8.  Colet, “Colet’s Convocation Sermon, 1512,” 37. 9. Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter-­Reformation, 25. 10. Haigh, English Reformations, 8–­11. 11.  Francesco C. Cesareo has written that “by the beginning of the sixteenth century the Italian episcopacy was in a state of degeneration”; Cesareo, “Episcopacy in Sixteenth-­Century Italy,” 67. Oliver Logan’s study of the Venetian “mirror of bishops” literature supports this contemporary perception; Logan, “Ideal of the Bishop

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the lay faithful and the elite clergy, the bishops were emblems of both groups, and their behavior could be mobilized variously as an example of the elite clergy’s privilege of politics over pastoral care or as an example of the ignorance and venality of the local community. While the unreformed bishop seemed forever available to prove the church’s need for reform, the pious, learned, and locally active bishop is underrepresented in the historical literature.12 The gospel invocation that the bishop “is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife [the church], temperate, self-­controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach”13 contrasts with the bishops lives’ that edified and entertained early modern readers. Vespasiano da Bisticci’s Lives of Illustrious Men of the Fifteenth Century (1480–­98) shows the challenges faced by historians when approaching contemporary depictions of bishops. This well-­known collection includes a section entirely devoted to clergy, containing twenty-­one bishops and four archbishops. The first biographical sketch, a life of Antonino Pierozzi (archbishop of Florence 1446–­59), is the longest in this section by far at nearly seven full pages.14 Antonino’s life functions as an ideal standard by which the twenty-­four other clergy are implicitly judged. Vespasiano eulogizes Antonino as a learned, pious, and honest bishop who made himself accessible to his diocese and distinguished himself as a diplomat, while maintaining a modest and ascetic lifestyle. Many of the other bishops shared one or two of Antonino’s characteristics, usually his learning and good relations with the papal court, but few shared his concern to avoid high office or his interest in charity. By comparison, the other bishops, drawn from Italy, England, Iberia, and Hungary, are renowned for their elite scholarship, are ambitious for a cardinal’s hat, and are likely to meet an unfortunate end. Vespasiano closes several biographical sketches by warning the reader that “His [the bishop’s] end would have been better had he turned more to Almighty God.”15 This conclusion rests on the modest praise of good administration, very few anecdotes of the bishop’s piety or pity for the poor, and the insinuation that the bishop must make a greater

and the Venetian Patriciate.” In his sermon at Canterbury, Colet noted that his encouragement was not towards innovation, and thus “not for the enactment of new laws and constitutions, but for the observance of those already enacted”; Haigh, English Reformations, 9. 12.  Georgianna, “Anticlericalism in Boccaccio and Chaucer,” 148–­76. 13.  1 Timothy 3:2. 14.  Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vespasiano Memoirs, 157–­68. 15.  Ibid., 174.

Introduction 5

local impact. Vespasiano makes his standard clear in his description of the bishop of Volterra, Antonio degli Agli (1470–­77): When the bishopric of Fiesole became vacant the Pope gave it to him, and afterwards offered him Raugia, which he declined because, situated as he was, he could not reside there. [ . . . ] He cared nothing for state and spent most of his time there [at his abbacy of S. Maria in Pruneta], going occasionally to visit his bishopric of Volterra. He lived with great simplicity and spent his time between Divine offices and reading and writing. His income was expended in helping the poor to the honour of God, and few went away without succour. [ . . . ] He left an excellent name, both in life and habit, for he lived as a good prelate ought to live; no one was more studious and efficient. He was an excellent preacher and often spoke from his own pulpit.16

While Vespasiano’s purpose in writing the Lives was to document and preserve briefly the deeds of great men, both rulers and intellectuals, as his translator indicated, the collection offers a snapshot of elite fifteenth-­century Italy and a sharp judgement on each profiled man’s goals and practices. While Vespasiano knew very well of both the church’s and state’s dependence on prelates who served as administrators, the bishops who balanced these duties with diocesan involvement or eschewed administration for charity, preaching, and performing the divine offices generally received a more flattering portrayal. Vespasiano’s bishops show that this division of duties characterized the bishops in either pastoral or administrative roles, decades before the opening of the Council of Trent.

The Evolution of the Episcopate before the Council of Trent The combination of idealism and challenges that appears in Vespasiano’s Lives has characterized the office of bishop from its origin. As noted, the episcopal experience has been historically and geographically diverse. The earliest bishops were the organizers and overseers of local churches, episkopoi, who eventually became “bishops” in the hierarchical sense. These men performed a variety of functions, but are best identified as the individuals that organized and presided over the group of presbyters that ministered to a single community.17 By the time of the Council of Nicaea (325 ce) bishops were common enough figures to necessitate some clarity regarding their authority and jurisdiction. Canon 6 of Nicaea provides a sense 16.  Ibid., 180. 17.  The Gospel of Luke notes this hierarchy (20:17, 28), while Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (1:1) identifies episkopoi as chosen by the Holy Spirit; Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops, 64–­65.

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of the emergence of dioceses and documents the existence of bishops in the cities of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, with large dioceses extending far beyond the urban limits.18 By 500 ce the Eastern Empire’s bishops had taken on many of the tasks formerly done by secular urban authorities (curiales), including substantial poor relief, maintenance of public buildings, and protection from attackers. This expansion of duties occurred as a result of ecclesiastical organizational systems that remained strong even as imperial systems experienced shrinking resources.19 The Roman provinces of Gaul and Spain, settled throughout with towns and rural villas, were Christianized early and turned to both the bishop and the walled cathedral towns when Germanic tribes swept through Europe in the mid-­fifth century. Generally these bishops came from the landed aristocracy, a class that had a traditional role in Roman civic administration and that began to invest its energy in the church, which emerged as the local authority with growing resources and a social mandate. Among other scholars, Peter Brown has shown the importance of fifth-­century Gallic bishops in defending their towns against the Huns, maintaining Christian morale, dispensing charity to offset the effects of attacks, and ransoming captured serfs.20 In the ninth century, Byzantine sources identify the bare essentials for a territory’s Christianization as “baptism and a bishop,” both of which usually originated from a secular ruler’s request.21 More than simply performing the baptismal rite, the bishop became the local mediator and organizer of both clergy and laity in his new church, often proving by his own virtues, preaching, and companionship the strength of Christianity to the converting ruler and the local elites. Sean Gilsdorf has described the early medieval bishop as “in the middle of things, not as a permeable membrane or medium of interaction, but as a node or nexus, a mediator in the fullest sense of the term.”22 This description reflects the bishop’s liminal role as a negotiator, which he would retain into the modern period, between clerical and lay, elite and common, and saint and sinner. Throughout 18.  At this time, the bishopric of Rome included central and southern Italy, while the metropolitan bishopric of Alexandria supervised Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis. Canons 4 and 5 discuss the method of electing bishops and the necessity of biannual episcopal synods, which suggest close communication within a network of bishops in the East; Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:7–­8 (Council of Nicaea, 325); Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops, 171. 19.  Whittow, “Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City,” 21–­29. 20. Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, 106–­11; Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 59–­68, 141–­56; Arnold, “German Bishops.” 21.  This was noted in connection to light efforts at Christianizing Rus territories in the ninth centuries; Fennell, History of the Russian Church, 23. 22.  Gilsdorf, “Preface,” xiii.

Introduction 7

the early Middle Ages, Frankish kings had sought the promotion of court officials to bishoprics and incorporated bishops into royal administration in order to establish local loyalty to central authority, acquire information, establish a common culture, and maintain judicial roles and civil institutions.23 By the year 1000 in western Europe, both ecclesiastically and topographically, “all roads led through the bishops, their churches, and their institutions.”24 As medieval rulers established increasingly more reliable systems of communication, taxation, and security, the bishops, as a corps of educated men with organizational skills and local connections, played a greater role in state development. Through the Middle Ages, diocesan centers were equally important in facilitating travel, commerce, and government, as frequently they were established at the intersection of several Roman roads, for example the Gallo-­Roman towns of Tours, Orléans, Toulouse, and Rheims in Francia.25 Beyond merely the bishop’s role as a functionary and mediator, the bishop’s involvement on behalf of the ruler brought his office and his diocese more land, prestige, and authority. One consequence of this elevation to the role of royal advisor or lord was the model of the courtier bishop that developed from the tenth to twelfth centuries.26 An extant letter from the twelfth century reveals the ideal bishop from a royal perspective and emphasizes the crossover between secular and ecclesiastical functions as well as the Christian embrace of classical virtues. The letter dictates that the bishop should be moderate in all things (“circumspecta moderatio”), be educated (“sublimis scientia”), be of noble birth (“nobilitas generis”), maintain high morals and personal discipline (“elegantia morum, continentia laudabilis”), and show complete devotion to his congregation and the wider secular community (“amor civium, sollicitudo pastoralis”).27 While the former characteristics identify good leadership candidates, the latter characteristic emphasizes the flexible quality of episcopal skills and the close proximity between ecclesiastical diocese and secular district in the premodern period. 23. James, Franks, 183–­85; Moore, Sacred Kingdom; Coates, “Bishop as Benefactor and Civic Patron”; Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia, 123–­25. 24.  Gilsdorf, “Preface,” xiv. 25.  Halfond, “Transportation, Communication, and the Movement of Peoples,” 1560–­61; Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, chap. 10. For a more general understanding of the interactions between cities, ecclesiastical culture, and travel, see Goodson, Lester, and Symes, Cities, Texts, and Social Networks. 26.  Although C. Stephen Jaeger has identified this figure at the Ottonian Imperial court, similar examples can be found across Europe; Jaeger, “The Courtier Bishop in Vitae,” 291–­325; Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness, chaps. 1–­5. 27.  “Epistola ad regem pro eligendo episcopo,” PL 162:807, as quoted by Parisse, “The Bishop,” 4–­5.

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

Although secular leaders found bishops to be effective provincial agents, periodically in the Middle Ages bishops drew criticism for the diversity of their responsibilities. In the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I (r. 858–­67) chastised Frankish bishops for not attending a Roman council due to their involvement in secular affairs.28 While strength of virtue, organizational skills, and literacy had prompted the close relationship between lay and clerical elites and the episcopacy’s initial entry into areas other than ecclesiastical supervision, the increasing criticism of “spiritual vassals,” who worked in tandem with the royal court or on international issues, focused on the bishop’s essential role in local pastoral care and diocese administration.29 Over the centuries in the Holy Roman Empire and France, noble titles evolved that emphasized certain bishops’ territorial and political roles (i.e., Fürstbischof and évêque-­duc). While this perception of distance from diocesan concerns gained ground during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, late medieval bishops themselves would have found it alien and impractical to disentangle their role as the local diocesan administrator and judge from a greater role in provincial and national affairs. On becoming the bishop of Rome, Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590–­604) described the paradox of the episcopate, being an office dedicated to local and individual salvation, but steeped in the acquisition of political support, economic advantage, and territorial privileges and security: “Under the colours of episcopacy, I have been brought back to the world, in which I am subject to as many worldly responsibilities as I remember myself to have had in my life as a layman.”30 Through the Middle Ages this dichotomy grew, of the local pastor and the royal advisor, both potentially bishops. Meanwhile, the potential distance between bishops and the secular world shrank, as provision to the episcopate increasingly became a site of conflict between the pope and secular princes. The Concordat of Worms (1122), which brought an end to the Investiture Controversy, describes the limited influence that either the pope or the Holy Roman Emperor should exert over the provision to a bishopric. Neither man should provide candidates to the episcopal office as a reward to clients or in order to covertly appropriate resources.31 Nevertheless, the attraction of the bishopric as a conduit for centralizing authority and accessing ecclesiastical wealth persisted. Where the Concordat of Worms states 28.  Norwood, “Political Pretensions of Pope Nicholas I,” 277–­78. 29.  For excellent and detailed studies of episcopal diocesan practice and absenteeism, see Tyler, Lord of the Sacred City; Van Engen, “Late Medieval Anticlericalism.” 30. Evans, Thought of Gregory the Great, 123. 31.  “Concordat of Worms,” 408–­9.

Introduction 9

specifically that there should be free and canonical election of bishops, protected from secular influence, the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) insinuates that there was continued secular intervention: “the king, or the princes of his kingdom, without violating the canonical rules, may make recommendations when elections are to occur in the chapters or the monasteries.”32 The episcopacy’s place between these two powerful individuals, who were so often at odds over bishops for reasons of authority, had the effect of reaffirming the bishops as instruments of administration and politics, rather than as the shepherds of souls. Moreover, through the late medieval period there is no doubt that, as prelates, bishops were tarred with the same brush as cardinals and popes while the papacy was in exile in Avignon (1305–­78) and divided during the Great Schism (1378–­1417). The initial expansion of the papal bureaucracy at Avignon increased the administrative hunger for men educated in Latin letters, who themselves hungered for the prestige and wealth of the episcopate, but would seek a dispensation for absenteeism and remain at the papal court. The codependency of the papal court and the absentee bishop-­bureaucrat would become a trope of sixteenth-­ century reformers33 and prompt centuries of both hostile and apologetic historians.34 Francesco Petrarch’s dismay at the expanded papal court at Avignon further reduced the episcopacy’s image as provided by God to effect local salvation.35 This emphasis on the corruption of prelates remained dominant through the early modern period, encouraged by the Council of Constance’s (1414–­18) recourse to the secular leadership of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund III and decrees that underlined the separation between clergy and laity in dress and behavior.36 The growing interest in the Observant Reform movement of the late fourteenth century makes a stark comparison with the call for reformatio in capite et in membris that echoed through this period and gained support from Petrarch’s remark.

32.  “Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges,” 77–­78. 33. Weiß, “Luxury at the Papal Court”; Bellitto, “Reform Context of the Great Western Schism”; D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome. 34.  The complexity of Italian historiography of ecclesiastical reform and Italian historians’ perception of the early modern period’s effect on the modern period is skillfully presented in Ditchfield, “In Sarpi’s Shadow.” 35.  “Here reign the successors of the poor fishermen of Galilee; they have strangely forgotten their origin. I am astounded, as I recall their predecessors, to see these men loaded with gold and clad in purple, boasting of the spoils of princes and nations; to see luxurious palaces and heights crowned with fortifications, instead of a boat turned downward for shelter”; Petrarch, “Letter to a friend criticizing the Avignon papacy (1340–­53).” See also Kendrick, “Medieval Satire.” 36.  “On the Life and Probity of Clerics,” Council of Constance, Session 43 (21 March 1418); Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements, 243–­46; Scribner, Religion and Culture, chaps. 6 and 7.

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

From the close of Constance to the close of Trent, bishops occupied an important place in the culture of reform variously as models of best pastoral practice or as ambitious villains responsible for Protestantism’s popularity.37 The Council of Trent focused on reform of the episcopate as the solution to criticism of both elite and popular practices. In the two final sessions of the council (September to December, 1563), the debate turned to church reform, a vast topic that almost entirely fit within the bishop’s organizational and supervisory mandate. The issues discussed included authority over chapters, colleges, and monastic communities, restricting appeals to Rome, regularizing episcopal visitations, enforcing clerical residence, and removing unchaste clergy from office.38 While the council intended that the resulting decrees help to build a stronger and more virtuous church, they presented the episcopate with a list of challenges, none of which would prove easy to conquer, and all of which depended upon the bishop’s own entrenchment of the authority delegated to him through the decrees. While Catholic reform and renewal was an institutional campaign fought by the church across continents, it was also a deeply personal battle fought by every bishop in his diocese. As William Hudon discusses in the foreword to this volume, the council’s “one-­size-­fits-­all ecclesiastical legislation” was designed to guide all bishops towards the energetic, residential, pious, and pedagogical ideal, who in turn would inspire the same character in his hungering diocese.39 Yet, the legislation assumed that the bishop occupied an ideal world in which every diocese was financially secure, every monastic house valued episcopal guidance and reform, secular leaders acknowledged clerical autonomy, the bishop was in residence, and the lay faithful lived uncomplicated lives and always asked the bishop’s advice before acting. While the Council of Trent’s achievement was substantial, it was a work in progress, which continued through the seventeenth century as individual bishops implemented conciliar decrees and proposed solutions to frequent challenges to the Tridentine mandate.40 Viewing the history of the European bishop from late antiquity to the early modern period, there is no doubt that the episcopate came by its broad responsibilities organically, by circumstance and skill, rather than as a rule through ambition 37. Stump, Reforms of the Council of Constance; Minnich, “Proposals for an Episcopal College at Lateran V.” 38. Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, trans. Graf, vol. 2. 39.  Hudon, “Local Nature of Episcopal Reform.” 40.  John Bossy has described the chief goal of the Council of Trent as creating “a system of parochial conformity” that would be instructed and monitored by a new vigorous episcopate; Bossy, “Counter-­Reformation,” 52, 54–­56, 59–­61; Po-­Chia Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, chaps. 1 and 7.

Introduction 11

and a desire to evade pastoral duties. The episcopate’s history weaves spiritual and secular concerns together in an attempt to create communities of healthy, economically and physically secure, pious Christians. Nonetheless, as secular authorities sought increasingly centralized systems of government and socially the model of the interior spiritual life grew in popularity, critics connected the historic, worldly, extra-­diocesan responsibilities of the bishop with a venal preoccupation inappropriate to a local shepherd. It is likely that by singling out individual bishops for study, historians have implicitly enforced the dichotomy seen in Vespasiano’s memoirs that polarized pastoral care. Rather than evaluating the bishop in isolation, this volume’s multidimensional perspective contextualizes the bishop at the center of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and surrounded by local, provincial, and regional organizations with their varied activities and demands.

Bishops and Historians Undoubtedly, modern historians have been influenced in their analytical perspectives by their sources, which can be deeply partisan and committed to goals vastly different from the goals of modern scholars. This is best seen in the Middle Ages when traditionally the line between episcopal history and biography was thin and blurred. The Gesta episcoporum celebrated the deeds of Carolingian bishops, often with the intention of bolstering enthusiasm for canonization or establishing a local public record, precedent, or cult. Joaquín Martínez Pizarro has argued that these texts intended to present the bishop and his diocese spiritually, politically, and architecturally as a cultural center, just as Gilsdorf asserted.41 Biographies of bishops that proved to be more extensive than those by Vespasiano became common through the Middle Ages as diocesan boundaries solidified, local cults focused on bishop saints grew, and clergy found them to be useful pedagogical tools. In the early modern period there was a shift from using Gesta or Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea (ca. 1260) as rough models to a more document-­based practice imbued with contemporary reform ideals. At the same time, though, Simon Ditchfield has shown that Tridentine sacred biography continued to bear evidence of these earlier influences, just as late antiquity and early medieval saints continued to offer models of ideal behaviors to Christians. In the same vein, Alison Knowles Frazier has shown the renewed enthusiasm of both lay and clerical authors for 41.  Pizarro argues that the gesta episcoporum established the bishop’s elite character based on the sacral quality inherent in his role as a mediator between the papacy and the secular authority, and as a patron and custodian of church property; Pizarro, Writing Ravenna, 31–­36; Sot, “Le Liber de episcopis Mettensibus”; Gilsdorf, “Preface,” xiii.

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

writing episcopal biographies during the Italian Renaissance, and cited those texts as having the most straightforward message with a clear pedagogical purpose.42 This enthusiasm for bishops has not persisted into the modern period. In the nineteenth century, when a renewed interest in the Italian Renaissance prompted Ludwig von Pastor, Leopold von Ranke, and Ferdinand Gregorovius to write monumental histories of Rome and the papacy, the episcopacy remained a target for criticism. In Ranke’s work, the early modern bishops were a frequent cause of division and factionalism within the church, whereas Gregorovius portrayed them as venal and grasping. Pastor leaned more toward the traditional arc of episcopal development, noting the change in episcopal devotion and quality after the Council of Trent and citing the influence of the archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo as a certain spur to change.43 In the same period, the Whig tradition of English history “exaggerates conflict, accelerates change, and gives a one-­sided story of protest and victory,” implicitly judging the Catholic episcopacy to be corrupt, since by the nineteenth century all English bishops were Protestants.44 The combined effect of historians following these two groups has been to marginalize bishops as ineffective and obstructive hurdles negotiated by heroic reformers with varying success. Fortunately, the increased access to episcopal and papal archives in the last several decades has moved the scholarly discussion beyond an anticlerical analysis and toward a more clear knowledge of episcopal activity. However, in the past couple of decades only a small number of volumes have attempted to situate the bishop within a period of several centuries, across the European continent, amid the competing secular and spiritual demands, and within a sometimes historically unfriendly historiography.45 In their introduction to the 2007 collection entitled The Bishop Reformed, John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones noted that in modern scholarship the medieval bishop was generally ignored, even though 42. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History, 170–­72; Frazier, Possible Lives, 31–­34. 43.  “The results of his [Borromeo’s] unwearied labours in Milan were wonderfully great, [ . . . giving] rise in Milan to the conviction that a new era had begun, and that everyone was bound to prove himself worthy definitely to break with the mistakes of the past. [ . . . ] Posterity has bestowed upon him the noble title of ‘model of Catholic bishops’”; Pastor, History of the Popes, 19:93–­95; Ranke, History of the Popes; Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. 44. Haigh, English Reformations, 15–­17. 45.  It has been commonplace in some surveys of premodern Europe to assert the disinterest, ignorance, and absence of bishops, leading directly to the need for local reform. A decree from the Anglican national synod of 1555 to 1556 states the contemporary European prejudice against “the great abuse” of absentee bishops succinctly: “which thing has been the cause of almost all the evils that afflict the Church”; Carleton, Bishops and Reform, 55. Denys Hay asserted that Italian bishops “usually had little interest in their flocks. [ . . . ] Thus, it is, in a way, somewhat irrelevant to ask who the bishops were, since most of them did not reside in their bishoprics”; Hay, Church in Italy, 18–­20.

Introduction 13

the bishop and his cathedral acted as the spiritual, territorial, social, and juridical center of medieval life.46 A few years earlier in 2004, Sean Gilsdorf edited a collection entitled The Bishop: Power and Piety at the First Millennium, which grew out of a 1999 conference at the University of Chicago. Much like the present volume, Gilsdorf found an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars working on bishops that lacked connections and a venue in which to explore, exchange, and expand their ideas on diverse men sharing a centuries-­old office. Episcopal historians needed a facilitator. The extremely valuable website Episcopus, which is sponsored and maintained by John Ott and Evan Gatti, strives to serve this purpose by collecting open-­access primary source translations and notices of publications and conferences from the late antique to the early modern periods.47 Through Episcopus, the international community of episcopal scholars has become more accessible, increasing the flow of information and the dissemination of publications. Unlike medievalists, early modern scholars have been slow to join Episcopus, or create their own similar communities. In addition, there has been no scholarly vogue for bishops in the same way that has occurred for popes in the past two decades.48 This is due to the bishop’s relative ubiquity compared to the singularity of the pope, and the centuries-­ old public rituals that still attract observers to papal Rome. Nonetheless, the ubiquity,49 constancy, and substantial historical agency of the European episcopate demand attention. In France, the Groupe de recherches pour l’édition des actes des évêques de France des origins à 1200, led by Michel Parisse,50 as well as the successor group Répertoire prosopographique des évêques, dignitaires et chanoines des diocèses de France de 1200 à 1500 that publishes Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, have worked to preserve French episcopal acts and other texts.51 A similar project, the English Episcopal Acta, begun by the eminent historian 46.  Ott and Trumbore Jones, “Introduction,” 3–­4. 47.  Episcopus: Society for the Study of Bishops and Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages (http://www.episcopus. org/). One might also add the website maintained by Salvador Miranda that among other things provides prosopographical information on the episcopal careers of men who achieved the cardinalate between 492 and 2012 ce; The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church (http://www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas/cardinals.htm). 48. Norwich, Popes; O’Malley, History of the Popes; Duffy, Saints and Sinners. 49.  There are currently between 3,000 and 3,100 bishops in the Roman Catholic Church. 50.  This group has already published the acts of the bishops of Limoges, Laon, and the archbishops of Rheims through CNRS Éditions (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), as well as sponsoring conferences and publications on other episcopal centers. 51.  Now under the direction of Vincent Tabbagh and published by CNRS Éditions and Brepols; for more information see Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae (http://fasti.univ-paris1.fr/groupe_organigramme.php, accessed 4 May 2011).

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

Frank Barlow and with the support of the British Academy, has resulted in the publication of episcopal acts from many medieval English sees.52 In Germany, Monumenta Germaniae Historica has produced a shorter series of Capitula Episcoporum that has proved valuable to historians working on German bishops of the same period.53 In Italy, which had far more bishoprics than any other state and has needed no encouragement to publish,54 there has been a great deal of work done on bishops, dioceses, and primary sources, but few large-scale projects that collect and organize the predominantly local studies. The best attempt at this sort of collection is Vescovi e Diocesi in Italia dal XIV alla metà del XVI Secolo, which resulted from a conference in Brescia in 1987. These two volumes provide information about the political, social, and spiritual contexts of bishops, their clergy, and the cure of souls across the Italian peninsula from some of the best-known Italian ecclesiastical historians.55 While these projects have done much to preserve and reconstruct medieval episcopal documents, there are no such projects for the early modern period. There is a similar absence of studies on the European episcopate or comparative studies of episcopacies, which is mitigated slightly by several excellent monographs on national churches or regional episcopates.56 Part of this phenomenon 52.  At the time of writing there were thirty-seven volumes in the English Episcopal Acta series, published by Oxford University Press and collecting documents from sixteen bishoprics during the period 1061 to 1305. 53.  Originally published by Hahnsche Buchhandlung (eds. Peter Brommer, Martina Stratmann, and Rudolf Pokorny, 1984–95), the three-volume set is now distributed by Brepols and includes the Monumenta Historiae Germanicae Online searchable database. 54.  In the year 1500 there were 253 episcopal sees in Italy, compared to 131 in France and 67 in Britain (including 34 in Ireland), which goes a long way toward explaining the enthusiasm for episcopal studies among Italianists; Hay, Church in Italy, 10. 55.  De Sandre Gasparini, Rigon, Trolese, and Varanini, Vescovi e Diocesi in Italia dal XIV alla metà del XVI Secolo, 2 vols. 56.  In England, which has a strong interest in local history coupled with a desire to connect with the secular center, these studies include Berlatsky, “Elizabethan Episcopate”; Chibi, Henry VIII’s Bishops; Fincham, Prelate as Pastor; and O’Day and Heal, Continuity and Change. In France, which has a strong historical interest in the episcopacy, these studies include Bergin, Crown, Church, and Episcopate; Bergin, Making of the French Episcopate; Baumgartner, Change and Continuity; and Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings. In Spain, where historical interest has drifted variously more toward the activities of the Inquisition and lay religion (as opposed to the laity’s relations with bishops), these studies include Domínguez Ortiz, “Aspectos sociales de la vida ecclesiastica”; and Nalle, God in La Mancha. In Portugal, there is ample documentation concerning the monarchy’s provision of candidates to bishoprics both on the mainland and in the overseas possessions, which a few historians have used to show the growth of an elaborate system of patronage and the consolidated relationship between the king and the church; Paiva, “Appointment of Bishops in Early-­Modern Portugal (1495–­1777)”; Paiva, Os bispos de Portugal e do império (1495–­1777); Boxer, Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770. In Italy, where there is a plethora of diocesan studies and deep interest in the historiography of ecclesiastical reform, these studies include Prosperi, “La figura del vescovo”; and Jedin and Alberigo, Il tipo ideale di vescovo. In Germany and central Europe, where there is broad scholarly interest but uneven focus, foundational studies include Po-­chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the

Introduction 15

is linked to the sustained interest in the actions of kings and princes, and the revival of studies on the college of cardinals. In the early modern period the cardinals faced similar criticism of worldliness, and were often bishops themselves. Yet, the cardinals’ superior resources, political position, and periodically more abundant extant documentation have attracted more scholars who find a college of fifty men to be a more manageable study than a perennially changing episcopal cohort of more than 600.57 In their recent study The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–­1700, Mary Hollingsworth and Carol Richardson noted that scholars have adopted the case-­study approach in order to explore the intersection of spiritual, familial, political, and corporate pressures in substantial detail and with minimal confusion. In collecting case studies, historians are not tempted to consider the regional idiosyncrasies found in each cardinal’s goals and experiences to be indicative of a cardinal’s standard experience.58 Likewise, the essays in this volume focus less on geographic or national episcopates than on models, tensions, and relations common to bishops across Christendom.

Context, Strategy, and Struggle As part of the ongoing discussion of bishops and early modern European society, this collection offers examples of episcopal contexts, strategies, and struggles. By no means did all of the bishops discussed here enthusiastically adopt the ideals articulated by contemporary reformers. This volume expands the current discussion by offering commentary on how some bishops viewed their mandate and authority, interacted with other groups and institutions both lay and ecclesiastical, and occupied an increasingly challenging position in the social hierarchy. As a supposed public embodiment of Christian knowledge and virtue, the bishop was on constant display and judged against the local mores. Moreover, contemporaries compared him to an ideal standard developed by the Gospels, perpetuated by church fathers, venerated by individual dioceses, and passionately invoked by early moderns. Continued enthusiasm for medieval bishop-­saints attests to the popularity of the episcopal ideal,59 but the absence of many new bishop-­saints in Reformation; and Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque. For a survey of early modern reform ideas and practices, see Po-­chia Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal. 57.  In 1600 there were 620 episcopal dioceses, while Pope Sixtus V fixed the size of the Sacred College of Cardinals at seventy in 1587; Antonovics, “Counter-­Reformation Cardinals”; Bergin, “Counter-­Reformation Church and Its Bishops,” 41. 58.  Hollingsworth and Richardson, Possessions of a Cardinal, xv–­xvi. 59. Finucane, Contested Canonizations.

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

the post-­Trent period shows the difficulty in balancing the contradictions found in the bishop’s spiritual and secular responsibilities.60 This collection brings together an international group of scholars who first presented aspects of their research at the 2010 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Montréal, Canada. The interest in the experiences of bishops shown by presenters and the audience was exciting, and the events related by these historians were diverse and compelling. The essays that evolved from these presentations discuss in detail the timeless pressures of financial exigency, the tyranny of distance, enthusiastic patrons, vocal reformers, and untiring and resourceful opponents. These studies reveal the episcopate’s importance at a variety of levels, from the local laity to the elite monarch, and every level’s interest in influencing the bishop’s behavior or appropriating his role. The essays in this collection divide relatively easily into three parts—­Episcopal Authority, Clerical Reform, and Pastoral Practice—­although, as with the bishops themselves, each essay involves issues far beyond the single broad heading. To some degree these divisions are artificial, for one advantage in studying bishops is the opportunity to examine the convergence of several themes, groups, and conflicts in one incident, place, or career. Just as Gregory the Great lamented, the bishop did not live in isolation and these studies reflect the multifaceted obligations and the challenges of the early modern episcopate. The first section, entitled Episcopal Authority, includes three studies examining different facets of the episcopate simultaneously as leaders and recipients of patronage in England, the Netherlands, and Italy. In the first essay, Raymond A. Powell investigates trends in Queen Mary Tudor’s (r. 1553–­58) promotion of bishops. Rather than seeking models of Tridentine reform, Mary privileged men who had connections to herself and her late mother, Queen Katherine of Aragon, and who had suffered deposition or imprisonment due to these connections or as a result of English Protestantism. As Powell shows, the Marian episcopate, charged with re-­establishing English Catholicism, was influenced very little initially by Cardinal Reginald Pole (archbp. Canterbury 1556–­58), who had attended Trent from 1545 to 1547. Rather Queen Mary’s choices had everything 60.  Peter Burke has shown that between 1588 and 1767 the Catholic Church canonized fifty-­six new saints, including only three bishops (Carlo Borromeo, François de Sales, and Turibio Alfonso) who had lived in the period characterized by the Tridentine decrees on the episcopate; Burke, Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy, 48–­62. In contrast, the heyday of bishop saints and their invocation as patrons was the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when urban centers, especially in Italy, sought protection of their local privileges from an external secular ruler intent on expropriating wealth and centralizing authority. Ideally, the bishop-­saint could balance sanctity with an understanding of worldly strategy in order to protect his diocese from harm; Golinelli, Città e culto dei santi, 65–­86.

Introduction 17

to do with the more traditional values of restoration, retention, and restitution. There was a similar fashion of regal intervention in the provision to bishoprics in the Low Countries. As Hans Cools shows, the geographic distribution of bishoprics across Imperial-­French borders necessitated that Habsburg rulers control the provision to the episcopal thrones in order to maintain civil peace and political loyalty in the diocese. The added responsibility of secular rule that was attached to several bishoprics intensified their importance during the struggles between the Valois and Habsburgs, as well as during the religious wars that followed. Cools compares the background of bishops in the Low Countries from 1515 to 1559, nearly all of whom were aristocratic, and finds notable similarities to their episcopal contemporaries in France, some of whom also served as metropolitan archbishops over these Dutch bishops. In contrast to the theme of acquiring episcopal authority that both Powell and Cools pursue, Antonella Perin and John Alexander use the lens of patronage in order to qualify the limits of Cesare Gambara’s (bp. of Tortona 1548–­91) power at several levels. The bishop’s inability to fund and implement his own plan for rebuilding his cathedral reflects his weakness in relation to external forces that otherwise could have provided him with support: the archbishop of Milan, Tortona’s feudal lord, and a local cardinal. The campaign to rebuild the cathedral moved quickly from episcopal control into negotiation amongst these three individuals, all of whom ranked above Gambara on the social hierarchy. Instead of embracing the bishop as the proper local leader and putting their resources at his disposal, these three privileged their own standards and desires, supported with their more extensive wealth and justified by their elite status. As Perin and Alexander show, in contrast to contemporary reform rhetoric, the bishop in residence did not always know best, nor did he receive the support or resources to fulfill his acknowledged mandate. Whereas the first section examines ways of using, bestowing, or subverting episcopal authority, the second section, entitled Clerical Reform, reveals the bishop at work reforming his diocese and being reformed himself. While Tridentine decrees and reform rhetoric alike emphasized episcopal residence and supervision to be the cure of all religious conflict and ignorance, this section shows the challenges encountered by bishops in France and Italy as they sought to implement reform programs within their diocese. As these essays show, the traditional reference to the bishop as the proper local spiritual authority ignores centuries of reservation by monastic houses, continued local intervention, and, as seen in Perin and Alexander’s study, conflict between the bishop and his own superiors, or even Rome and secular authorities. Linda Lierheimer’s study of

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Sébastien Zamet, the bishop of Langres (1615–­55), reveals the strategies pursued by nuns, who resisted cloistering and more general reform programs introduced variously by the bishop and sometimes in collaboration with other nuns. Although the Council of Trent insisted on episcopal authority over convents, several communities fought to maintain their autonomy using a variety of resources and supporters that put the lie to the universality of episcopal privilege and the desire for religious reform. Lierheimer shows plainly the interaction between various levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy throughout the decades-­long conflicts, explores the fundamental gendering of clerical rights, as well as the application to the French Parlements of Dijon and Paris for support against the bishop. Celeste McNamara encounters similar objections to reform in her study of Gregorio Barbarigo, the bishop of Padua (1664–97). As another conscientious bishop eager to follow the Tridentine episcopal injunctions to supervise and educate the laity, Barbarigo spent much of his episcopate conducting visitations of the parishes in his diocese, most of which were small, poor, and ill-­supervised. McNamara presents examples that show the independence of local populations, who seemed to consider episcopal authority to operate only when the bishop was present in their town. Using Barbarigo’s voluminous visitation records, McNamara shows how the tyranny of distance, personal desires, and local toleration combined to thwart the observance of episcopal decrees. Moreover, McNamara reveals that there was substantial understanding of the practice and theory of reform among the laity that could join with a disinclination to follow it. Jean-Pascal Gay pursues a similar theme of negotiation between local and ecclesiastical authorities in his study of judicial jurisdiction over the French episcopate. This discussion moves the focus from concern for the orthodoxy of local populations to the international level in which the bishops themselves faced trial for heresy. In France jurisdiction over the episcopacy was fraught with diplomatic struggles between the monarchy and the papacy, both of which saw bishops as their own agents who were to be judged exclusively under their authority. Through the seventeenth century the reform of certain French bishops was an opportunity to discuss the episcopate’s authority, either as a divine appointee or an earthly creation, and the bishop’s place in the greater hierarchy, as well as negotiate relations between two international powers. The third section, entitled Pastoral Practice, draws together themes seen elsewhere in the volume, but focuses on the mechanics of the episcopal duty amid the evolving atmosphere of sixteenth-­century reform rhetoric. John Christopoulos’ study of confessing the sin of abortion allows a close examination of

Introduction 19

the politics behind the episcopal and papal reservation of the power of absolution. This negotiation of ecclesiastical authority was undermined by the practical reality of how one acquired absolution. Individual penitents were forced to travel either to the episcopal center or to Rome in order to be absolved, and the challenges in doing so destroyed the privacy of confession. Christopoulos examines the process by which individual bishops and popes colluded in undermining papal reservation of abortion in order to avoid scandal and preserve the honor of the penitent. Jennifer Mara DeSilva continues this theme of episcopal preservation of social norms in her examination of Paris de’ Grassi, the bishop of Pesaro (1513–­28), in order to explore how a non-­resident bishop contributed to his diocese through a series of brief visits. De’ Grassi’s conception of episcopal responsibility was consistent in theory with contemporary reformers, but limited by his commitment to work and reside at the papal court in Rome. Records from several visits made over the course of his fifteen-­year episcopate provide an opportunity to follow a well-­informed and conscientious bishop whose activities sought maximal benefit to and connections within his diocese. De’ Grassi was fully aware of the physical and spiritual needs of the Pesaresi and sought to provide them with salvation, security, and episcopal leadership, while paradoxically living permanently outside the diocese. Moving north, Jill Fehleison examines preaching in the strategies of François de Sales, the exiled bishop of Geneva (1602–­22), as a means of preventing Protestant growth and drawing people back to Catholicism. Undoubtedly, the sermon was one of the most powerful clerical tools, as it could reach both aural and print audiences and had both an intellectual and emotional force. Consistently biographers and reformers alike celebrated preaching as both good for society and as an episcopal prerogative. In order to explore de Sales’s strategies and his conception of the difference between Catholic and Protestant beliefs, Fehleison discusses the imagery of the Eucharist and crucifixion employed in de Sales’s sermons and the Catholic activities that made those images real to listeners and readers. All three of these essays examine the actions of reform-­minded bishops who worked to establish strong Christian communities in spite of practical interference and systemic challenges. The ambition of this collection is to show the mechanics of episcopal action and mentalities across Europe by dispelling unfounded stereotypes, presenting new documents, and answering important questions. This collection presents a broad perspective of episcopal responsibilities and concerns in the expectation that it will inspire further work on other early modern bishops, their challenges, experiments, and networks in an age of reform. To this end the following essays

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provide a framework for understanding the early modern episcopate in its global, regional, and local contexts. The contributors to this volume have identified bishops whose experiences were living examples to their congregation, but also to other bishops. Through this collection, these men provide an avenue for connecting the church hierarchy with the Catholic faithful, and unravel the knot of diverse lives, exhortations to reform, and practical limitations that personified the early modern bishop.

Works Cited Printed Primary Sources

Colet, John. “Colet’s Convocation Sermon, 1512.” In The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola, edited by John C. Olin, 27–­39. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. “The Concordat of Worms.” In Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, edited by Ernest Flagg Henderson, 408–­9. London: George Bell and Sons, 1910. Contarini, Gasparo. The Office of a Bishop. Translated and edited by John Patrick Donnelly. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2002. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1. Edited by Norman P. Tanner. London and Washington, DC: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990. Giustiniani, Paolo, and Pietro Quirini. Lettera al Papa: Libellus ad Leonem X. Edited by Geminiano Bianchini. Modena: Artioli Editore, 1995. Petrarch, Francesco. “Letter to a friend criticizing the Avignon papacy (1340–­1353).” In Readings in European History, edited by J. H. Robinson, 502. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1904. “The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.” In The Great Documents of Western Civilization, edited by Milton Viorst, 77–­78. Philadelphia: Chilton Books 1965. Vespasiano da Bisticci. The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century. Translated by William George and Emily Waters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Secondary Sources

Alberigo, Giuseppe. “The Reform of the Episcopate in the Libellus to Leo X by the Camaldolese hermits Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani.” In Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems, and Approaches, edited by Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton, 139–­52. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. ———. “Carlo Borromeo come modello di vescovo nella Chiesa post-­Tridentina.” Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 1031–­52. Antonovics, A. V. “Counter-­Reformation Cardinals: 1534–­1590.” European Studies Review 2 (1972): 301–­28. Arnold, Benjamin. “German Bishops and their Military Retinues in the Medieval Empire.” German History 7 (1989): 161–­83.

Introduction 21 Baumgartner, Frederic J. Change and Continuity in the French Episcopate: The Bishops and the Wars of Religion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986. Bellitto, Christopher M. “The Reform Context of the Great Western Schism.” In A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378–­1417), edited by Joëlle Rollo-­Koster and Thomas M. Izbicki, 303–­31. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Bergin, Joseph. Crown, Church, and Episcopate under Louis XIV. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. ———. “The Counter-­Reformation Church and its Bishops.” Past and Present 165 (1999): 30–­73. ———. The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–­1661. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Berlatsky, Joel. “The Elizabethan Episcopate: Patterns of Life and Expenditure.” In Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500–­1800, edited by Rosemary O’Day and Felicity Heal, 111–­28. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981. Bossy, John. “The Counter-­Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe.” Past and Present 47 (1970): 51–­70. Boxer, Charles R. The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440–­1770. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Burke, Peter. The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Carleton, Kenneth. Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520–­1559. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2001. Cesareo, Francesco C. “The Episcopacy in Sixteenth-­Century Italy.” In Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, edited by Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel, 67–­83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Chibi, Andrew A. Henry VIII’s Bishops: Diplomats, Administrators, Scholars and Shepherds. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2003. Coates, Simon. “The Bishop as Benefactor and Civic Patron: Alcuin, York, and Episcopal Authority in Anglo-­Saxon England.” Speculum 71 (1996): 529–­58. D’Amico, John F. Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. De Sandre Gasparini, Giuseppina, Antonio Rigon, Francesco Trolese, and Gian Maria Varanini, eds. Vescovi e Diocesi in Italia dal XIV alla metà del XVI Secolo: Atti del VII Convegno di Storia della Chiesa in Italia. 2 vols. Rome: Herder, 1990. Ditchfield, Simon. “In Sarpi’s Shadow: Coping with Trent the Italian Way.” In Studi in Memoria di Cesare Mozzarelli, edited by Danilo Zardin, 1:585–­606. Milan: Vita & Pensiero, 2008. ———. “‘In Search of Local Knowledge’: Rewriting Early Modern Italian Religious History.” Christianesimo nella storia 19 (1998): 255–­96. ———. Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio. “Aspectos sociales de la vida ecclesiastica en los siglos XVII y XVIII.” In Historia de la Iglesia en España, edited by Ricardo Garcia-­Villoslada, 5–­72. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1979. Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Evans, G. R. The Thought of Gregory the Great. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Evennett, H. Outram. The Spirit of the Counter-­Reformation. Edited by John Bossy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970. Fennell, John L. I. A History of the Russian Church to 1448. London: Longman, 1995. Fincham, Kenneth. Prelate as Pastor: the Episcopate of James I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Finucane, Ronald C. Contested Canonizations: The Last Medieval Saints, 1482–­1523. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Forrestal, Alison. Fathers, Pastors and Kings: Visions of Episcopacy in Seventeenth-­Century France. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. Forster, Marc R. Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–­1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Frazier, Alison Knowles. Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Georgianna, Linda. “Anticlericalism in Boccaccio and Chaucer: The Bark and the Bite.” In The Decameron and Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question, edited by Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, 148–­76. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2000. Gilsdorf, Sean. “Preface.” In The Bishop: Power and Piety at the First Millennium, edited by Sean Gilsdorf, xiii–­xvii. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004. Gios, Pierantonio. L’attività pastorale del vescovo Pietro Barozzi a Padova (1487–­1507). Padua: Istituto per la Storia Ecclesiastica Padovana, 1977. Gleason, Elisabeth G. Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Golinelli, Paolo. Città e culto dei santi nel medioevo italiano, 2nd edition. Bologna: CLUEB, 1996. Goodson, Caroline, Anne E. Lester, and Carol Symes, eds. Cities, Texts, and Social Networks, 400–­1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010. Gregorovius, Ferdinand. History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. Translated by Annie Hamilton. 8 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Grell, Ole Peter, ed. The Scandinavian Reformation: from Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Halfond, Gregory I. “Transportation, Communication, and the Movement of Peoples in the Frankish Kingdom, ca. 500–­900 C.E.” History Compass 7 (2009): 1554–­69.

Introduction 23 Hay, Denys. The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century: The Birkbeck Lectures, 1971. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Headley, John M., and John B. Tomaro, eds. San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the second half of the Sixteenth Century. Washington, DC and London: Folger Shakespeare Library and Associated University Presses, 1988. Heal, Felicity. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Hollingsworth, Mary, and Carol M. Richardson, eds. The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. James, Edward. The Franks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–­1210. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985. ———. “The Courtier Bishop in Vitae from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century.” Speculum 58 (1983): 291–­325. Jedin, Hubert, and Giuseppe Alberigo. Il tipo ideale di vescovo secondo la Riforma cattolica. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1985. Jedin, Hubert. A History of the Council of Trent. Vol. 2. Translated by Ernest Graf. London: Thomas Nelson, 1961. Kendrick, Laura. “Medieval Satire.” In A Companion to Satire, edited by Ruben Quintero, 52–­69. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2007. Kulikowski, Michael. Late Roman Spain and its Cities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Logan, Oliver. “The Ideal of the Bishop and the Venetian Patriciate: c. 1430–­c. 1630.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29 (1978): 415–­50. Minnich, Nelson H. “The proposals for an Episcopal College at Lateran V.” In The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–­17): Studies on Its Membership, Diplomacy and Proposals for Reform, edited by Nelson H. Minnich, 213–­32. Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1993. Moore, Michael Edward. A Sacred Kingdom: Bishops and the Rise of Frankish Kingship. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Murphy, Paul V. Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga And Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-­Century Italy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Nalle, Sara T. God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca 1500–­1650. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Norwich, John Julius. The Popes: A History. London: Chatto and Windus, 2011. Norwood, Frederick A. “The Political Pretensions of Pope Nicholas I.” Church History 15 (1946): 271–­85. O’Day, Rosemary, and Felicity Heal, eds. Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England, 1500–­1642. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1976. O’Malley, John W. A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present. London: Sheed & Ward, 2009.

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Ott, John S., and Anna Trumbore Jones. “Introduction.” In The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, edited by John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones, 1–­20. Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 2007. Paiva, José Pedro. “The Appointment of Bishops in Early-­Modern Portugal (1495–­ 1777).” Catholic Historical Review 97 (2011): 461–­83. ———. Os bispos de Portugal e do império (1495–­1777). Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 2006. Parisse, Michel. “The Bishop: Prince and Prelate.” In The Bishop: Power and Piety at the First Millennium, edited by Sean Gilsdorf, translated by Barbara Rosenwein, 1–­22. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004. Pizarro, Joaquín Martínez. Writing Ravenna: The Liber pontificalis of Andreas Agnellus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Po-­chia Hsia, R. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–­1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ———. Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–­1770. London: Routledge, 1989. Prosperi, Adriano. “La figura del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento: Persistenze, disagi e novità.” In La Chiesa e il potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, edited by Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccioli, 217–­62. Turin: Einaudi Editore, 1986. ———. Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G M. Giberti (1495–­1543). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969. Sawyer, Birgit, and Peter Sawyer. Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–­1500. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Scribner, Robert W. Religion and Culture in Germany (1400–­1800). Edited by Lyndal Roper. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 81. Leiden: Brill, 2001. ———. Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany. London: Hambledon Press, 1987. Sot, Michel. “Le Liber de episcopis Mettensibus dans l’histoire du genre ‘Gesta episcoporum.’” In Paolo Diacono: Uno scrittore fra tradizione longobarda e rinnovamento carolingio, edited by Paolo Chiesa, 527–­49. Udine: Forum Edizioni, 2000. Stump, Phillip H. The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–­1418). Leiden: Brill, 1994. Sullivan, Francis Aloysius. From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church. New York: Paulist Press, 2001. Tyler, J. Jeffery. Lord of the Sacred City: The Episcopus Exclusus in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Van Dam, Raymond. Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Van Engen, John. “Late Medieval Anticlericalism: The Case of the New Devout.” In Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Peter A. Dykema and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, 19–­52. Leiden: Brill, 1993. Von Pastor, Ludwig. The History of the Popes from the close of the Middle Ages. Translated by Ralph Francis Kerr. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1930.

Introduction 25 Von Ranke, Leopold. The History of the Popes during the Last Four Centuries. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913. Weiß, Stefan. “Luxury at the Papal Court and the Great Schism.” A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378–­1417), edited by Joëlle Rollo-­Koster and Thomas M. Izbicki, translated by Charlotte Masemann, 67–­86. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Whittow, Mark. “Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: A Continuous History.” Past and Present 129 (1990): 3–­29.

A Hierarchy that Had Fought

Episcopal Promotion during the Reign of Mary I (1553–­58) and the Roots of Episcopal Resistance to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement Raymond A. Powell The Marian Episcopate and Resistance to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement When the Catholic confessional historian Philip Hughes told the story of English bishops and the religious settlement of Elizabeth I, he entitled his article “A Hierarchy that Fought.”1 All but one of the men on Elizabeth’s bench suffered deposition rather than submit to her Protestant establishment, a remarkable feat in an era in which senior churchmen frequently followed lockstep the twists and turns of the Crown’s religious policy. Hughes largely credited this unexpected act of unified resistance to the stiffening formerly wavering Catholics received during Mary’s brief Catholic restoration. In doing so, he seems remarkably prescient; the majority of more recent scholars similarly credit Marian Catholicism for creating subsequent Catholic resistance.2 Yet the significance of the English bishops’ principled stand is not as obvious as the bald facts might suggest. Presuming Marian Catholicism did have such a bracing effect, it is curious that while all but one of the bishops resisted, at the next rank of clergy—­suffragens, cathedral canons, archdeacons—­a large percentage accepted the new state of affairs. And at all layers save the top, even the majority of 1.  Hughes, “Hierarchy that Fought.” 2.  Eamon Duffy argues for this position; his claims will be discussed below.

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27

future recusants initially conformed. Indeed, in one or two puzzling cases, such as that of bishop nominate to Salisbury, Francis Mallet, important ecclesiastical officials who had been jailed or exiled rather than conforming under Edward VI never did reject the Elizabethan settlement.3 It was only upon reflection, and after some time, that most Catholics committed themselves to various forms of resistance. So what made the difference for the bishops? Why were they so swift to stand firm when other equally devout Catholics were slower to follow their lead or never followed it at all? There are two simple answers. The first is that Mary had some luck in death’s lottery. Yes, untimely demise robbed the Catholics of champions such as Cardinal Reginald Pole or Bishop Stephen Gardiner who might otherwise have led the resistance to the Elizabethan settlement.4 But equally, death stripped the bench of those Henrician bishops retained by Mary who were most likely to conform to the new settlement. If Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely, had lived longer, Anthony Kitchin of Landaff would certainly not have been alone when he took the oath, and the two might well have been joined by bishops such as John Chambers of Peterborough, Robert King of Oxford, John Capon of Salisbury, Robert Aldrich of Carlisle, or even Maurice Griffin, Mary’s bishop of Rochester, or Robert Parfew, whom Mary herself translated from St. Asaph’s to Hereford.5 The second, and more important, answer is that Mary chose and promoted as bishops the sort of men liable to have resisted Protestant innovation in the past and who were, accordingly, most likely to take a stand in the future. But Mary did not select her bishops solely on this criterion of past resistance to Protestant settlements. Indeed, she passed over some obvious candidates and selected others of somewhat dubious commitment to serve as leaders in her restored Catholic Church. This paper will examine the basis for episcopal promotion in Marian England. It will suggest that the queen did in fact personally choose most of her bishops, analyze the grounds for her choices, and show that while Mary did not necessarily select candidates for their previous resistance to Protestantism, the 3.  Mallet remained as dean of Lincoln until his death in 1570; the Edwardian exile Thomas Neale offers another prominent example of resistance followed by conformity. Neale, Bishop Edmund Bonner’s chaplain and end-­of-­the-­reign regius professor of Hebrew at Marian Oxford, remained in England under the Elizabethan settlement, held his chair until 1569, and afterwards (at least occasionally) conformed; Aston, Collegiate University, 3:357, 382, 414. 4.  Pole died in 1558, according to tradition, succumbing within hours of the death of Queen Mary; Gardiner had died in 1555. 5.  Goodrich died in 1554; Aldrich in 1555; Chambers in 1556; Capon and Parfew (alias Warton) in 1557; and Griffin and King in 1558.

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factors behind her decision making favored candidates who had resisted heterodox settlements in the past and were likely to do so in the future. Using this information, this essay will try to explain the basis for initial resistance to the Elizabethan settlement, perhaps providing a new perspective on the actual achievements of the Marian restoration.

The Queen and Episcopal Promotion In studying the leadership of the Marian church, it is crucial to realize that Queen Mary personally chose her bishops. The majority of the men nominated to the episcopate by the queen can be shown to have had some personal tie with her before their promotion. The number is seventeen out of twenty-­seven, with five more moving in circles that almost certainly merited a personal introduction to Princess Mary during Edward’s reign. Thus only five of her candidates for the episcopate do not appear to have had any personal link to the queen—­and one of these was an exile who had no opportunity for personal contact, but who earned Mary’s gratitude through his defense of her mother.6 The most important and obvious personal tie between the queen and her nominees was service as her chaplain. John Hopton of Norwich, John Holyman of Bristol, John Christopherson of Chichester, Thomas Wood, nominated for St. Asaph’s, and several others were all former chaplains of Mary’s, many of them from her difficult days as princess when the office was sometimes more a burden than a sinecure, and relationships were apt to be close.7 One former chaplain, Gilbert Bourne, elevated to Bath and Wells in 1554, could claim another link. He was also the nephew of Mary’s principal secretary, Sir John Bourne, a critical supporter during the Edwardian regime.8 Thomas Goldwell, initially raised by the queen to St. Asaph’s, had been Cardinal Pole’s envoy to Mary early in her reign and may have acted as her Latin secretary.9 Shared resistance to Henrician and 6.  The percentage of those demonstrably known to the queen might well be higher if more information were available on the careers of some of the more obscure nominees; the number twenty-­seven includes all candidates nominated to the episcopate as well as any bishops translated by Mary from one see to another. 7.  Mary elevated both Hopton and Holyman to the episcopate in 1554, and both died in 1558. Christopherson also died in 1558, only a year after assuming his diocese. The exact date and details of Wood’s death are unknown, though he was alive and in custody as late as 1580. 8.  The relationship between the two Bournes is discussed in Hill, “Marian ‘Experience of Defeat,’” 535. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography disagrees with Hill, following the traditional assumption that Sir John Bourne was indeed the uncle of Bishop Gilbert Bourne; Louisa, “Bourne, Gilbert.” Cf. David Loades, “Marian Episcopate,” 40–­41. 9.  Mayer, “Goldwell, Thomas.” Goldwell was another of the Marian appointees of 1554—­he would die in 1585, the last survivor of Queen Mary’s bench.

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Edwardian innovations or through critical support for her claim to the throne was another tie that bound Mary to many of her bishops. As will be discussed below, the majority of her nominees had suffered either for her sake or for her mother’s. If Mary did not select her own bishops or chose them primarily from a list of suggestions, who did supply the names? Perhaps surprisingly, it was not Cardinal Reginald Pole, Mary’s cousin, her confidant, and her future archbishop of Canterbury (bp. 1556–­58). Pole was out of the country when Mary ascended to the throne, and remained abroad until late in 1554. An extensive correspondence between the two survives, yet there is no record that either brought up the question of specific candidates for the crosier. Mary certainly asked about the technicalities of filling vacant sees, and, among much other advice, Pole spoke to the qualities of character necessary in her nominees, but names were never requested or offered. When it comes to evaluating Pole’s role in shaping the composition of the English episcopate, it is perhaps telling that, as a recent biographer noted, Pole was surprisingly unsuccessful at having episcopal vacancies filled with members of his own household—­typically any of his men enthroned were given second-­ rate Irish sees. The only one of Pole’s close associates promoted to an English bishopric was Thomas Goldwell, who had St. Asaph’s and would have possessed Oxford had Mary lived a few months longer but who, as noted above, was personally known to Mary before his elevation.10 Perhaps more importantly, some of the Marian episcopal nominations were not entirely consistent with Pole’s reforming commitments to a more disciplined clergy and against clerical absenteeism. The evidence strongly suggests Pole did not influence episcopal promotion. There is no record that he tried to do so, the men he trusted most were rarely nominated, many of those actually selected were not particularly close to the cardinal, and at least some of the new bishops failed to match Pole’s standards. Other senior ecclesiastics were no more successful than Pole in promoting the careers of their protégées. Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, a critical figure in the restoration, had a number of close associates elevated to the episcopal bench, but there was no exact relationship between their promotion and his influence. Far and away the most important preferment offered to Gardiner’s men occurred after Gardiner’s death in 1555, when one of his former clients was translated from 10. Mayer, Reginald Pole, 268–­69. Maurice Clenock (or Clynog, d. 1581), one of Pole’s men but also a royal chaplain, was nominated to Bangor at the end of the reign—­this was hardly a plum assignment, but more importantly, Clenock may have exaggerated the extent of his service to the cardinal; Mayer, “Clenock, Maurice.” Richard Pate (d. 1565) was also of Pole’s household, but his initial appointment to Worcester came from the pope prior to Mary’s reign, and he had other claims on Mary’s gratitude.

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Lincoln to Gardiner’s old see of Winchester, and another then filled the vacancy at Lincoln. This is particularly telling in the case of Thomas Watson (d. 1584), the man who ended up with Lincoln—­he was one of Gardiner’s close collaborators and an extremely worthy candidate for a crosier, yet he received promotion only after the death of his patron. More importantly for evaluating Gardiner’s role in episcopal promotion, the basic patterns of episcopal preferment remained unaltered after his death. Yet no other lord, whether spiritual or temporal, had anything approximating the influence of Gardiner. No claim is being made that Mary did not consult trusted advisors before appointing bishops or that no one else had any influence at all. Patronage obviously played a role in directing some episcopal preferment—­Maurice Griffith’s elevation to Rochester, for instance, must be attributed in part to his close ties with the critical Marian ally Sir William Petre. What is being claimed is that Mary was directly responsible for her choices. As in so many other areas of her rule, Queen Mary put her personal stamp on her episcopal bench. The pattern of appointments reflects her values, values easily recognizable in her non-­ecclesiastical policy. While her selections display the imprint of her own commitments, some fit oddly with the new standards Pole and his allies were trying to inculcate in the restored Catholic Church. Henry VIII routinely appointed bishops chiefly on the recommendation of advisors such as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey or Thomas Cromwell, and frequently as a result of some political or financial quid pro quo. Mary chose as bishops men she knew, trusted, and felt confident in. During Mary’s reign, it was not the Crown in the abstract, but the queen in person who filled vacant sees. Recognizing that the queen personally chose her bishop makes it possible to identify a series of principles that shaped the episcopal bench in the Marian church: relationship, restoration and retention, and restitution. With only three exceptions, the elevation or translation of every bishop during Mary’s reign can be understood through the first and third category, while the three together explain the composition of Mary’s house of bishops.11

11.  The three exceptions are Robert Parfew, James Turberville, and John Bourchier. Mary translated Parfew, who had been given St. Asaph’s by Henry VIII in 1536, to Hereford in 1554; he was a thoroughgoing conformist with off-­and-­on reforming tendencies aligned with conservative instincts. He did not suffer during Edward’s reign and had no obvious ties to Mary. Turberville of Exeter (bp. 1555–­59) was a conservative who conformed quietly to the Edwardian regime and had no apparent ties to Mary at all. Bourchier, nominated for Gloucester at the end of the reign, was another career conformist who had not publicly resisted religious innovations and, like Turberville, had no apparent ties to Mary at all.

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Restoration and Retention One of the hallmarks of Marian religious policy was the expressed desire to put things back as they had been before the recent religious innovations. While an absolute return to the past was not possible (or even genuinely desirable), it was a way of expressing a vision for the Restoration Church. Mary’s injunctions commanding “that the laudable and honest ceremonies which were wont to be used, frequented, and observed in the church, be also hereafter frequented, used, and observed,” nicely summarized the attitude of English Catholics towards the restoration as one of a return to tradition.12 The appeal of restoring what had been lost lay behind the Marian recreation of much of the pre-­Edwardian episcopal bench. By the last year of Edward’s reign, a number of conservative bishops were in prison, most of them legally deprived of office. Among these bishops, Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, Edmund Bonner of London, Nicholas Heath of Worcester, and George Day of Chichester had been deposed, John Veysey of Exeter forced to resign, and Cuthbert Tunstall’s diocese of Durham had been dissolved. Mary insisted on returning all these men to their sees. Mary’s obvious decision to restore deposed conservatives did benefit English Catholicism. While not all the newly restored diocesans were men of weight, those deprived of office included the most important and talented of the conservative bishops, and all the men returned to their dioceses were not only committed Catholics, but also experienced officials.13 Most of them would prove to be assets to the restored Catholic Church. Yet if Mary’s impulse to restore deposed Catholic bishops was understandable, her commitment to upholding the past also led to the restoration or retention of several Henrician diocesans of dubious worth or suspect Catholic credentials, moves that did not so obviously benefit English Catholicism. John Veysey, forced to resign as bishop of Exeter in 1551, was certainly a conservative, but he had been noted for his extravagant lifestyle over the years and was over ninety years old.14 He was certainly no ornament to a renewed Catholic hierarchy 12.  Mary I, “A Copie of a Letter”; this article is not claiming that the English Catholic restoration actually was a return to the past, only that most English Catholics envisioned it that way. 13.  Not only had all the men deprived under Edward earned their crosiers through active government service, they all had extensive experience as bishops. Tunstall had been given Durham in 1530; Gardiner obtained Winchester in 1531; Bonner had initially been elevated to Hereford in 1538 and was subsequently translated to London the following year; Nicholas Heath was appointed to Rochester in 1539, then translated to Worcester in 1543, the same year in which George Day became bishop of Chichester. Of these bishops, all but Gardiner and Day (d. 1556) would survive to confront Elizabeth’s settlement. 14. Carleton, Bishops and Reform, 199; Veyzey had been elevated to the episcopate in 1519.

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in 1553. It would have been simple, and canonically permissible, to take his resignation at face value, expel the current Protestant incumbent (as was done), and appoint a solid candidate such as James Turberville, Veysey’s ultimate successor. But Veysey was restored. At least he was Catholic and perhaps Mary was attempting to repay him for wrongs done during the previous regime. An even more curious retention was Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely since 1534 and a committed evangelical. As Edward’s chancellor, Goodrich had played an essential role in the plot to replace Mary with Jane Grey and even had the dubious honor of holding the chancellorship under Jane! As deeply implicated as Goodrich was in treason, Mary could easily have deprived him of office or forced him to resign and replaced him with a loyal Catholic. But the queen permitted Goodrich to conform. He retired to his diocese and remained in office until his death in 1554.15 Nothing but Mary’s determined efforts to recreate the pre-­Edwardian past could explain Thomas Goodrich as a Marian bishop. Mary’s commitment to the retention of bishops past did have limits. Most importantly, she would not permit bishops who had married during Edward’s reign to retain their sees. The expulsion of married incumbents swept several convinced Catholics out of high office, including Paul Bush of Bristol, along with John Bird of Chester, and probably Henry Mann of Soder and Man.16 Official policy required married priests to vacate their benefices, separate from their “concubines,” and undergo penance; only then were the disgraced clerics permitted to take new cures (but never to resume their old posts). Theoretically the government could have rehabilitated the deprived bishops, at the very least using them to assist overworked ordinaries as suffragens, yet these three ended their lives as rectors. Previous possession of a see weighed heavily with Mary. Under certain circumstances she might ignore an otherwise legitimate claim because of severe moral and sacramental failing. However, recreation of the past bench was an extremely important factor, one that, at least in one case, outweighed questionable orthodoxy, a heterodox past, and political disloyalty.

Restitution Although Queen Mary did not share Cardinal Pole’s intense antipathy to Henry VIII, she clearly believed that her exalted father had wronged specific people and 15. Carleton, Bishops and Reform, 193; Loades, “Marian Episcopate,” 37; Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, 2:171, 177–­80. 16.  Henry VIII had appointed Bush to Bristol in 1542, Bird to Bangor in 1539, later translating him to Chester in 1541, and Mann to Soder and Man in 1546; both Bush and Bird died in 1558, Mann in 1556.

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that it was her responsibility to make amends for these wrongs. This sense of obligation towards restitution is one of the most important factors to be considered in understanding Marian policy within or outside of the church. In terms of the Marian episcopate, it is vital to recognize the role restitution played in Mary’s choices. John Holyman, for instance, a trained theologian and a prominent anti-­Lutheran preacher, sacrificed his career through his opposition to the divorce.17 Mary’s choice of him for Bristol was an attempt to recompense one of the men who had suffered for his defense of her mother. John Hopton of Norwich earned his promotion during Edward’s reign when, as Mary’s chaplain, he defied the Council and continued to celebrate the Mass until he was arrested.18 Francis Mallet, another of her chaplains later nominated to a diocese, was jailed on the same charge.19 If several of Mary’s senior prelates had been persecuted or jailed for their Catholic commitments, a number of others had endured exile because of opposition to religious change. The most prominent among these was Mary’s cousin Cardinal Reginald Pole. Although Pole merited Canterbury on other grounds, his own suffering, and that of his family, for the sake of Katherine and the Catholic faith certainly commended him to the queen. Other exiles elevated to the bench included Pate of Worcester, Christopherson of Chichester, Goldwell of St. Asaph’s, and Ralph Baynes of Coventry and Litchfield. While not every Marian nominee could boast of imprisonment or exile for the faith, most had suffered hardships or taken risks in defense of conservative religion. Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle (d. 1559) lost his posts as vice chancellor of Oxford and canon of Christ Church during Edward’s reign. The experience of William Glyn of Bangor (d. 1558) was similar, only he lost his Lady Margaret professorship at Cambridge. Others had paid a lesser price for their Catholic commitments. Cuthbert Scott of Chester (d. 1564), an outspoken conservative, avoided any dire consequences by retiring from Cambridge to a Yorkshire parish and remaining there as long as Edward was on the throne. Other Marian bishops, such as James Turberville of Exeter, may not have suffered great losses, but certainly saw their careers founder because of their traditional commitments. Marian appointments also reflected other forms of repayment. Thomas Tresham, the widowed layman appointed by Mary as English prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, owed his elevation not to past hardship but to more recent service—­he had taken a leading role in championing Mary’s claim to the throne 17.  Dictionary of National Biography, 9:1109. 18.  Loades, “Marian Episcopate,” 42–­43. 19. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 896.

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during the accession crisis. Mary’s choice of David Pole for Peterborough represents another kind of restitution she frequently practiced in the secular realm, restoring wealth or status to the heirs of those unjustly dealt with.20 Past suffering for Catholicism could be just as easily linked to advantageous episcopal translation. Nicholas Heath (d. 1578) would prove to be a trusted favorite, but he earned his promotion from Worcester to metropolitan of York in part through his recent faithfulness to Mary and the Catholic Church during Edward’s reign. Even Thomas Thirlby (d. 1570), who escaped prison and deprivation by virtue of his diplomatic value to the Edwardian government, had proved himself a loyal Catholic in difficult times, which was reflected in his promotion to Ely. All in all, seventeen of the twenty-­seven men Mary chose for episcopal elevation or promotion had suffered serious hardships on behalf of the Catholic Church during previous reigns, with several others paying at least some price for their loyalty to traditional religion. Queen Mary did not set out to appoint as bishops only men who had opposed Protestant innovations. Thomas Reynolds, nominated to St. Asaph’s at the close of the reign, had been a successful conformist and had certainly not suffered in any way under the Edwardian settlement, and two or three of her other appointees had been obvious careerists. But Mary’s choices tended to favor men who had fought. She relied heavily on personal knowledge of candidates, and naturally those most likely to be introduced to her by men or women in her circles tended to be outspoken conservatives. Likewise, her desire to repay those who had been wronged during previous reigns resulted in a majority of bishops who had taken active stands against the Henrician or Edwardian settlements. Mary did not necessarily intend to pack her bench with men who had opposed previous religious innovation, but that was indeed the result of her choices.

Marian Nominations and Traditional Patterns of Preferment While the composition of Queen Mary’s bench can be understood in terms of relationship, restoration and retention, or restitution, a fuller understanding of the Marian episcopate requires a consideration of the queen’s choices in the context of traditional patterns of prelate selection. In some cases, her selections clearly reflected emerging trends. On the other hand, in several critical ways, she broke from recent patterns of preferment to return to an older tradition. These

20. Duffy, Fires of Faith, 24; David Pole was bishop from 1557 to 1558, and died in 1568.

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cases are particularly helpful in understanding the Marian episcopate, and in underlining Mary’s personal role in decision-­making. During the reigns of Henry and Edward, more and more episcopal nominees were drawn from the ranks of theologians and academics, not from the legists who had previously predominated. Mary too chose pastors and teachers instead of civil servants for her bench. James Brooks of Gloucester, Christopherson of Chichester, and Ralph Baynes of Coventry and Litchfield all held senior university posts. Thomas Watson was an academic but also one of the most active Marian preachers, both before and after his elevation to Lincoln. John Feckenham (d. 1584), prior of Westminster, was also an extremely active pulpiteer. Mary promoted a number of former religious to the episcopate, just as her father had. One always assumes that Henry was intent on saving the cost of their pensions or perhaps was rewarding them for services rendered in surrendering their houses. In contrast, loyalty to Mary or her mother as well as general steadfastness to Catholicism in difficult times lay behind Mary’s nominations of religious or ex-­religious such as John Hopton, a former Dominican prior, or the Theatine Thomas Goldwell. Henry had frequently promoted ex-­religious to Welsh sees, a custom Mary continued.21 One area where Mary broke decisively with the recent past and returned to the habits of earlier monarchs was her distinct preference for episcopal chancellors. Henry relied on a mix of laymen and prelates to fill the office. Both churchmen such as Cardinal Wolsey and non-­churchmen such as Sir Thomas More held the post during Henry’s reign, but laymen predominated over clerks. Edward’s government had relied predominantly on laymen, such as Lord Rich, though he had appointed as chancellor Bishop Thomas Goodrich. When Mary came to the throne, Stephen Gardiner, with his vast political experience, his recognized ability, and the credit of his recent stint in prison for opposing the Edwardian settlement, was a natural choice as chancellor. When Gardiner died, Mary wanted Thirlby of Ely for the post. Philip countered with the layman Lord Paget and later with clerical civil servant Nicholas Wotton. Either before or after the queen opted for Thirlby and he was vetoed by Philip, they offered the chancellorship to Cardinal Pole, who declined; although the pope had previously ordered him to avoid the office, he almost certainly would have refused on his own account.22 Ultimately the job went to Nicholas Heath, archbishop of York. A number of observers have 21. Carleton, Bishops and Reform, 73. In addition to the Theatine Goldwell at St. Asaph’s, his nominated successor, Thomas Wood, may have been a Franciscan. 22. Brown, Calendar of State Papers . . . Venice, 6:16–­31, 250–­67, 283–­301; Loades, Mary Tudor, 259.

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suggested that Heath’s lack of ability made it that much more difficult for the queen to secure legislation in Parliament.23 Mary appointed one other national chancellor, this one of Ireland, and the post went to her archbishop of Dublin, Hugh Curwen. Thus, all five of the men Mary consented to have as chancellors were bishops, while her consort’s known preferences were for a layman and a (non-­episcopal) bureaucrat in orders. Especially considering that there were a number of equally strong candidates besides Heath, the evidence suggests that Mary preferred the traditional clerical chancellor to the more recent practice of lay chancellors. Although scholars have frequently noted that Mary promoted men with no government service to the episcopate, she was comfortable with bishop bureaucrats. In general, Mary’s policies saw “bishops returned to their traditional roles in high office and public life,” with Gardiner, Heath, Tunstall, and Thirlby all serving as privy councilors.24 Gardiner as chancellor and Heath as president of the Council of the North were authorized to retain. Thirlby’s work as an ambassador, financial expert, and troubleshooter, or Tunstall’s place as head of a county palatine, or Heath’s work with the Council of the North, were all continuations of their previous careers. But Mary also put Bishop Gilbert Bourne at the head of a regional council late in her reign, and at the time of her death she was sending Goldwell, now nominated for translation from St. Asaph’s to Oxford, as ambassador to the papal court.25 Sir Thomas Tresham’s service to the regime was not interrupted by his elevation to prior of the English Knights of St. John, in which capacity he remained busy in royal service, as for instance commanding an expedition meant to recover Calais.26 While Mary may have inherited some of her bureaucrat bishops, she personally promoted Heath and Thirlby, and she elevated Goldwell and Bourne. Tresham was her choice too, though in fairness, there apparently was not any other suitable candidate. If in filling her episcopal bench with academics and theologians, Mary was in line with recent trends under Henry and Edward, she was much more traditional in the way she used senior prelates in government and was willing to elevate or promote men dedicated to government service. This difference is telling, because a return to senior ecclesiastics as government bureaucrats flew in the face of Reginald Pole’s conviction that bishops were to concentrate their efforts and attentions on service to the church. 23. Erickson, Bloody Mary, 433–­34; Loades, Politics and the Nation 1450–­1660, 201. 24.  Loades, “Bishops of the Restored Catholic Church,” 195. 25. Hembry, Bishops of Bath and Wells, 99; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3.2:136. 26.  Carter, “Tresham, Sir Thomas,” www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27711.

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It was not only with respect to Crown servants that Mary’s episcopal selections were at odds with the new ethos of ecclesiastical leadership Cardinal Pole was struggling to create. In many areas, Mary’s appointments seemed to flout the synodical legislation often recognized as Pole’s greatest contribution to the restored Catholic Church. Mary certainly appointed worthy men and good Catholics. All of her nominees actually provided to English sees refused to conform under Elizabeth. Mary’s archbishop of Dublin, Hugh Corwen, conformed, as did her nominees to Salisbury and Gloucester.27 The only English bishop who accepted Elizabeth’s Church of England, Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff, was one of Henry’s selections. Mary’s appointee to Soder and Man, Thomas Stanley, kept his see under Elizabeth, but it is unclear whether he conformed or was simply allowed to stay on because of the difficulty of removing him.28 Yet if Mary appointed generally decent men to high ecclesiastical office, some of her candidates for the episcopate were not the most obvious choices. One of the dissonances between Marian nominations and official church policy was with respect to absenteeism. At a time when Pole was emphasizing residence as a primary requirement for faithful pastors, a surprising number of Marian appointees were absentees. Non-­residents fall into two categories. There were, of course, those who were away from their sees on government business, including Chancellor Heath of York and Thirlby of Ely. Goldwell of St. Asaph’s/Oxford was about to leave on embassy to Rome when Mary’s reign ended, though this was perhaps as much church business as government business. However, the trend for a generation or so had been for England’s resident agents in Rome to be laymen. And in order to keep him nearby, Mary denied Pole’s repeated requests to depart court for his diocese of Canterbury. The second principle cause of absenteeism was academic service. Without the excuse of pressing duty or the queen’s command, several other Marian appointees spent much more time at their university posts than they did in their sees. James Brooks of Gloucester, for instance, kept himself busy with matters at Oxford and Cambridge, leaving his diocese to the care of a local archdeacon.29 27. Carleton, Bishops and Reform, 190n, 200; Cocks, “Bourchier, John.” Curwen, who died in 1568, would finish his career as bishop of Oxford. The case of John Bouchier, Mary’s candidate for Gloucester, will be discussed below. 28.  Carleton records that Stanley actually took the Oath of Supremacy—­but taking the oath was not necessarily the same thing as conforming in the long run; Bishops and Reform, 208. G. E. Phillips claims Stanley kept his post despite not conforming; Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy, 14. In truth, there is considerable uncertainty about most of the bishops of Soder and Man during the Tudor period. Stanley died in 1568. 29. Litzenberger, English Reformation and the Laity, 87; Brooks died in 1560.

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Another area of dissonance involved episcopal estates. At a time when part of the drive for reform concerned an increasing emphasis on clerical discipline, an issue addressed by Pole’s synod, at least two Marian bishops (Bourne of Bath and Wells, and Christopherson of Chichester) were unfortunately prone to favoring family members with lucrative leases.30 At Exeter, one of many impoverished sees, James Turberville managed to recover a valuable estate that had been lost to the Crown, and immediately let it to his nephew.31 The worst offender was Bourne. At the end of Mary’s reign and the beginning of Elizabeth’s, he may be excused for his wholesale looting of his diocese on the understandable grounds of “making friends with unrighteous mammon” and for the potentially laudable goal of diverting as much as possible from his Protestant successor. However, Bourne had already used the resources of his see to enrich family members beyond what was seemly.32 Christopherson’s financial shenanigans occurred at Cambridge during Mary’s reign but prior to his elevation. There was a nasty public confrontation with Pole’s official visitor; the strain was so great that the future bishop collapsed in public several times in the following days.33 Such careless acts of nepotism, particularly at a time of financial hardship in the church and during a period of calls for higher standards by leading clerics, were unfortunate to say the least. Mary chose her candidates according to her own standards, even when those standards were at odds with those of her recent predecessors or with the stated policy of her restored church. When considering in addition that Mary retained the services of a Protestant such as Thomas Goodrich, or overturned the resignation of the feeble and slightly-­worldly John Veysey, while passing over more obvious candidates, hardworking, reliable, and dedicated church administrators such as Nicholas Harpsfield (d. 1575), one can only conclude that Mary’s selections were definitely her own, slightly idiosyncratic, and, in the end, surprisingly effective.

30.  The tenth decree of the legatine synod addressed the alienation of church property, including the leases of ecclesiastical land; Bray, “Legatine Constitutions,” in his Anglican Canons, 124–­27, 156–­59. 31.  Orme, “Turberville, James.” 32. Hembry, Bishops of Bath and Wells, 90–­92, 124, 127, 134–­37. Examples of Bourne’s largesse to family, friends, and potential allies include grants of reversions on anticipated deaths in 1554, not long after being granted temporalities, and the gift of leases and the right to fill prebends as late as August of 1559, just prior to his deprivation; Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells 2:278, 281. Bourne was not the only bishop to divest his diocese of resources in anticipation of a change of religion. The Protestant bishop of Lincoln, John Taylor, gave away a good deal of his sees resources between the death of Edward and his own deprivation; Cole, Chapter Acts of Lincoln, 12:x–­xi. 33. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge 2:122, 127–­28.

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The Marian Episcopate and Resistance to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement There were sixteen English bishops in possession of their sees to confront the Elizabethan settlement in January 1559. Five of these (Heath of York, Bonner of London, Tunstall of Durham, Watson of Lincoln, and John White of Winchester) had suffered imprisonment under Edward VI, the first three losing their sees as well. Three more (Baynes of Coventry and Litchfield, Goldwell of St. Asaph’s/ Oxford, Pate of Worcester) had previously chosen exile over conformity to Protestant religious settlements. Several others, while escaping jail or exile, had very publicly nailed their colors to the mast before Mary came to the throne and paid a price for their allegiance. Thomas Thirlby of Ely certainly would have joined Heath, Bonner, and Tunstall in jail if the regime had not needed his services as ambassador so badly. Gilbert Bourne of Bath and Wells escaped jail but stood by his patron, Bonner, during trial and imprisonment. Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle had been stripped of his senior university posts for his conservatism, while Cuthbert Scott, a vocal conservative under Henry, had abandoned his academic career at Cambridge for the duration of Edward’s reign. Twelve of the sixteen surviving Marian bishops had already lined up against previous Protestant settlements. Four of the bishops confronting the Elizabethan settlement had no pre-­Marian public record of opposition to Protestantism. Pole of Peterborough and Turberville of Exeter retained their posts under Edward through quiet and minimal conformity. Neither suffered any obvious hardship, though their failure to achieve preferment to the level of their qualifications (especially in the case of Turberville) suggests known Catholic sympathies. Only two of the surviving Marian bishops had uninterrupted records of positive cooperation with Edward’s Protestant innovations. Henry Morgan (d. 1559) was an obvious careerist, advancing up the ecclesiastical ladder even under Edward before Mary elevated him from being her chaplain to being her bishop of St. David’s. Anthony Kitchin had occupied the diocese of Landaff through every Tudor religious settlement since Henry VIII had nominated him to it in 1545. Elizabeth’s regime apparently had hopes for Tuberville—­even after his initial refusal of the oath, his diocese was kept vacant for an extended period just in case.34 Similar generosity may have been extended to Morgan. On the other hand, Kitchin wavered for some time before opting to keep his see under his fourth sovereign and at least his fourth settlement. In the end, only one conformed.35 34.  Orme, “Turberville, James.” 35.  In this instance, Eamon Duffy was being more than unfair to Kitchin in labeling him “a classic timeserver who would doubtless have become a Hindu if required, provided he was allowed to hold on to the

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Different historians have found all sorts of significance in the principled last stand of the Marian hierarchy. Hughes attributed it to the nourishing influence of five years of restoration Catholicism. Others have seen resistance as evidence of lessons learned, particularly about papal headship: “The behavior of the surviving bishops indicates that the events of the schism . . . had clarified the need for Roman loyalty.”36 But what conclusion can be drawn from the fifteen bishops who chose deposition and prison rather than accept a new Protestant settlement? Mary’s prior of Westminster, John Feckenham, aligned himself with the bishops in this instance, but he had been in the Tower with some of them at the end of Edward’s reign as well. Thomas Tresham, last prior of the English hospital, did not survive the Elizabethan settlement for long, but evidently he planned on the same outward conformity and secret attendance at the Mass that had carried him through Edward’s reign.37 Mary’s nominees to Bangor, St. Asaph’s, and Hereford stood with the consecrated bishops and refused to conform, but, as mentioned above, her nominee to Salisbury remained a part of the Elizabethan church despite having once been jailed for defying the Edwardian settlement. Another of Mary’s nominees, John Bourchier, designated for Gloucester, did ultimately reject the Elizabethan settlement, but only after some years of minimal conformity.38 Further examples could be taken from the next levels of the English hierarchy, where one finds instances of resistance, pretended obedience, and genuine conformity. Only in future decades would many English Catholics reach any clarity about recusancy. The noted historian Eamon Duffy has pointed out that over half of the cathedral prebendaries in England resigned rather than conform to Elizabeth’s settlement and that other office holders surrendered their posts at an even higher rate, in marked contrast to the beginning of Mary’s reign when only about one third of the higher clergy gave up preferment for the sake of conscience. To Duffy, this stark contrast demonstrates that there had been a “dramatic stiffening of spine and principle among the higher clergy” as a result of the Catholic restoration.39 There is a significant problem, however, in contrasting resistance during the two epochs. By and large, the highest offices in the Edwardian church had not been filled with evangelical loyalists—­Protestants would complain loudly about See of Landaff ”; Fires of Faith, 24. 36.  Pogson, “Legacy of the Schism,” 127. 37.  Carter, “Tresham, Sir Thomas.” Cf. Brown, Calendar of State Papers . . . Venice, 7:24–­41. 38.  Bourchier retained his benefice until 1570, and only went into exile in 1577. 39. Duffy, Fires of Faith, 196–­97.

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this same trend during Elizabeth’s reign, when conservatives of various stripes retained a great number of important posts. Only towards the close of Edward’s reign had the regime started to replace conservative bishops, and outside of the universities most conservative churchmen kept their positions. In marked contrast, the Marian regime made it a matter of policy to remove those with Protestant leanings and replace them with staunch Catholics. This was true not just in the realm of the church, but also extended to the secular authorities as well; the Marian regime had carried out a purge of Protestant justices that was unique in Tudor England for its extent and thoroughness.40 According to Duffy, four-­ fifths of the high-­ranking justices who resigned during Elizabeth’s reign had been appointed by Mary. It remains an open question whether the higher ranks of the Marian clergy were stiffened, or merely packed. The latter seems more likely, in which case such statistical comparisons are of limited value, and still begs the question of what the Marian restoration accomplished in terms of transforming the convictions of individual Catholic consciences. So what had English Catholics learned by 1559, after five years of restoration Catholicism and many years of various heterodox settlements? What exactly were the bishops refusing to conform to when they refused their oath to Elizabeth? When trying to pinpoint the grounds on which the bishops rejected the Elizabethan settlement, it may be that there is no single answer. Not all fifteen bishops may have been equally opposed to the same elements. A number of historians have pointed out an unfortunate tendency to substitute assumptions about affiliation for analysis when considering sixteenth-­century English religion, a tendency particularly common with respect to conservatives, given the fact that most historians are tolerably aware of the different varieties of Protestantism.41 While it is fair for the Catholic Church to claim the resisting English bishops as its own, it is equally legitimate for historians to investigate the question of exactly what the nonconforming bishops were resisting. The evidence suggests that different bishops drew their lines in the sand in different places. A few of Mary’s bishops, including John White of Winchester and Cuthbert Scott of Chester, were committed papalists by the end of the reign, and would unquestionably have rejected any settlement that did not continue Roman obedience. On the other hand, some of their fellow bishops were not nearly as committed to the authority of the pope. It seems quite possible that at 40. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors, 166, 168; Clark, English Provincial Society, 98–­100. 41. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation, 5–­7; Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism, 1–­11; Maltby, Prayer Book and People, 11–­12; 16–­19; Marshall, “When Did Protestants Become Protestants?”

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least a few of the men on Mary’s bench could have been won over by some return to a conservative Six-­Articles style settlement. One prime candidate for conformity to a conservative settlement was the bishop of Durham. Prior to refusing the oath of supremacy and his subsequent deprivation, Tunstall, in a letter to Elizabeth’s secretary of state William Cecil, offered to continue in office, but only under very specific conditions. He objected to the removal of altars and crucifixes in his diocese and announced he would not participate in their suppression: “I cannot in my conscience consent to it, being pastor there; because my conscience will not suffer me to receive or allow any doctrine in my diocese other than Catholic.”42 The implications of this admission are spelled out in testimony from Matthew Parker’s secretary: the bishop of Durham was willing to concede the papal primacy (as well as clerical marriage) in 1559.43 Apparently Nicholas Heath was willing to make the same compromise. Although a subsequent public statement did refer to Roman obedience, there was no mention of the papacy in the circumstantial and moving account of Heath’s personal interview with the new queen in which he made a final plea for an acceptably Catholic settlement.44 What were the bishops resisting when they refused to submit to Elizabeth’s religious settlement? In most cases, there was a desire to avoid the same thing(s) they had resisted when refusing to submit to Edward’s settlement. For some bishops, the critical issue was the maintenance of Catholic ceremony, particularly the Catholic Eucharist. However, other bishops, equally committed to the Catholic Eucharist, had additional doctrines, such as papal supremacy, on which they would have taken their stand as well. There are two important lessons to be drawn from this study. First, instead of crediting the Marian church for creating the basis for opposition to the Elizabethan settlement, historians must recognize that Mary used those who had opposed the Edwardian settlement to create her church’s leadership. Next, it is important to recognize that Catholic bishops in 1559 had still not achieved absolute clarity about the breadth and substance of Catholic orthodoxy. They stood together, but not necessarily on the same ground. The Marian church provides a unique and vital window into the process of Catholic reform. It was a laboratory in which Catholics who knew Protestantism firsthand, but had not yet received definitive guidance from the Council of 42.  Morley, “Tunstal: Trimmer or Martyr?” 350. 43. Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstall, 326. 44.  Sanders, “Dr. Nicholas Sanders Report,” 25–­26.

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Trent, worked to define their own faith. As such, historians will find it beneficial to move beyond convenient labels in order to clarify beliefs and values. Any insight into the Catholic restoration in England will lead to understanding the course of Catholic reform.

Works Cited Printed Primary Sources

Brown, Rawdon, ed. Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, and in other libraries of northern Italy. Vol. 6, 1555–­1558. London: Longman Green, 1877. Available online: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source. aspx?pubid=1004 (accessed 30 January 2011). ———, and G. Cavendish Bentinck, eds. Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice. Vol. 7, 1558–­1580. London: Longman Green, 1890. Available online: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=1006 (accessed 30 January 2011). Mary I. “A Copie of a Letter wyth Articles Sente from the Queenes Maiestie unto the Byshoppe of London.” London: John Cawood, 1554. Sanders, Nicholas. “Dr. Nicholas Sanders Report to Cardinal Morone,” edited by Francis R. Ward. Catholic Record Society Miscellanea 1 (1905): 1–­46.

Secondary Sources

Aston, T. H., ed. The Collegiate University. Vol. 3 of The History of the University of Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Bray, Gerald, ed. The Anglican Canons 1529–­1947. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1998. Campbell, John, Lord Campbell. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England and Keepers of the Great Seal of England. 7th ed. New York: Cockcraft & Co., 1878. Carleton, Kenneth W. T. Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520–­1559. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2001. Carter, P. R. N. “Tresham, Sir Thomas (c.1500–­1559).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition, January 2008: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27711 (accessed 26 January 2011). Clark, Peter. English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500–­1640. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1977. Cocks, T. Y. “Bourchier, John (b. 1493, d. in or after 1577).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition, January 2008: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47174 (accessed 26 January 2011). Cole, R. E. G., ed. Chapter Acts of the Cathedral Church of St. Mary of Lincoln, 1547–­1559. Lincoln Record Society 15. Horncastle: Lincoln Record Society, 1915. Cooper, Charles Henry. Annals of Cambridge. Cambridge: Warwick and Co., 1843.

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Duffy, Eamon. Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Erickson, Carolly. Bloody Mary. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1978. Foxe, John. Acts and Monuments.  .  .  . London: John Day, 1563. Online edition, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online. Sheffield, UK: HRI Online, 2011. http:// www.johnfoxe.org (accessed 30 January 2011). Hembry, Phyllis M. The Bishops of Bath and Wells, 1540–­1560. London: Athlone Press, 1967. Hill, L. M. “The Marian ‘Experience of Defeat’: The Case of Sir John Bourne.” Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994): 531–­49. Hughes, Philip. “A Hierarchy that Fought.” Clergy Review 18 (1940): 25–­39. Litzenberger, Caroline. The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540–­ 1580. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Loades, David. “The Bishops of the Restored Catholic Church under Queen Mary.” In Politics, Censorship and the English Reformation, by David Loades, 190–­99. London: Pinter Publishers, 1991. ———. “The Marian Episcopate.” In The Church of Mary Tudor, edited by Eamon Duffy and David Loades, 33–­56. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. ———. Politics and the Nation 1450–­1660: Obedience, Resistance, and Public Order. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1974. Louisa, Angelo J. “Bourne, Gilbert (c.1510–­1569).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition, January 2008: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3003 (accessed 26 January 2011). MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500–­1600. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Maltby, Judith. Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Marshall, Peter. “When Did Protestants Become Protestants?” Paper delivered at annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Society, Montreal, Canada, 14–­17 October 2010. Mayer, Thomas F. “Clenock, Maurice (c.1525–­1580?).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition, January 2008: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5610 (accessed 26 January 2011). ———. “Goldwell, Thomas (d. 1585).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition, January 2008: http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10927 (accessed 26 January 2011). ———. Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Morely, Thomas. “Tunstal: Trimmer or Martyr?” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 24 (1973): 337–­56. Orme, Nicholas. “Turberville, James (1494–­ 1570?).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition,

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January 2008: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27828 (accessed 26 January 2011). Philips, G. E. The Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy. London: Sands and Col, 1905. Pogson, Rex. “Legacy of the Schism: Confusion, Continuity and Change in the Marian Clergy.” In The Mid-­Tudor Polity c. 1540–­1560, edited by Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler, 116–­36. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells. London: HM Stationery Office, 1907–­14. Shagan, Ethan. Popular Politics and the English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Stephen, Leslie, and Sidney Lee, eds. Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Strype, John. Ecclesiastical Memorials, relating chiefly to religion, and the reformation of it, and the emergencies of the Church of England, under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I, with large appendixes, containing original papers, records, &c. 3 vols. in 6. London: Clarendon Press, 1822. Sturge, Charles. Cuthbert Tunstall: Churchman, Scholar, Statesman, Administrator. London: Longmans, 1938. Wooding, Lucy. Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

Bishops in the Habsburg Netherlands on the Eve of the Catholic Renewal, 1515–59 Hans Cools In May 1559 Pope Paul IV Carata (r. 1555–59) issued the bull Super Universas, an act that thoroughly changed the ecclesiastical map of the Low Countries.1 Before that date all these lands (an area roughly corresponding to modern Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and northern France), an area of roughly 90,000 square kilometers and with a population of about three million people, were divided into only six bishoprics. Utrecht, the youngest of these sees, had been created in the eighth century. Its territory corresponded more or less with the actual kingdom of the Netherlands. The five remaining sees, Arras, Cambrai, Liège, Thérouanne, and Tournai, dated back to late antiquity and they were all situated at the southern edges, if not across the borders of the Netherlands. Four of the six Low Countries bishoprics (Arras, Cambrai, Tournai, and Thérouanne) were part of the French archbishopric of Reims. The other two, Liège and Utrecht, were under the authority of the German archbishop of Cologne. The proclamation of Super Universas can be considered as the apogee of a century-­long struggle by the Burgundian dukes and their Habsburg successors to create a “national” church for their Netherlands dominions. Since the early fifteenth century and in 1.  For a recent sketch of ecclesiastical life in the Netherlands prior to 1559, see Bijsterveld and Caspers, “Voorgeschiedenis,” 15–­61. The most comprehensive reconstruction of the introduction of the new Netherlands bishopric scheme remains Dierickx, De oprichting. An abridged translation in French was published as L’érection. In the past decades valuable updates have been provided, among others, by Marnef, “The Netherlands,” 344–­64; Postma, “Nieuw licht,” 10–­27; and Gielis, “Utinam,” 194–­207.

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the wake of conciliarism, they had gradually succeeded in providing ever more benefices and had obtained the right to intervene in the electoral processes of most monastic houses in the Low Countries. By then, they finally controlled the hierarchy of virtually all ecclesiastical institutions.2 After May 1559, the Habsburg Netherlands was divided into three archbishoprics: Mechelen, Cambrai, and Utrecht. Fifteen episcopal sees, most newly created, completed the ecclesiastical structure of the Low Countries. Under Super Universas,3 the Habsburg prince obtained the privilege of proposing nominees for each of these sees. After that time, the papal administration only had to ensure that the candidates met the canonical requirements and then could effect their nomination.4 The introduction of this new bishopric scheme met with huge resistance. Aristocrats feared that their scions would lose access to ecclesiastical wealth, and abbots objected that their revenues would be used to provide the new bishops with an income. Both groups feared the loss of political influence. Within society at large, many thought the bishopric scheme prepared the ground for the introduction of a Spanish-­styled inquisition.5 The fact that the Habsburg ruler filled several vacant bishoprics with men who had previously acted as inquisitors contributed to that fear.6 Thus the introduction of the new bishopric scheme was one of the causes for the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt (1566). Due to that revolt, the scheme was only partially successful. Since the 1580s, all sees within the territories of the United Provinces had remained vacant. Catholic communities in those territories were administered by so-­called apostolic vicars, who for many decades resided in exile, first in Cologne and later in Brussels.7 Nevertheless, the new bishopric scheme was of vital importance for Catholic renewal in provinces that had stayed loyal or had returned to Habsburg obedience.

2.  Cauchies, “Église,” 193–­209; Van Peteghem, “Les rôles,” 229–­46. 3.  The bull has been published in Romeinsche bronnen, ed. Brom and Hensen, 69–­74; and in Recueil des Ordonnances, ed. Terlinden and Bolsée, 435–­39, no. 205. Among others, it has been analyzed by Dierickx, De oprichting, 62–­69. 4.  Marnef, “Een maat voor niets?” 67. 5.  This story has been told often, yet the most recent and authoritative way has been by Juliaan J. Woltjer who has summarized decades of his own scholarship and that of others; Woltjer, Op weg, 332–­35. 6. Woltjer, Op weg, 333; Gielis, “Utinam,” 206. Nicolaus de Castro, Franciscus Sonnius, and Wilhelmus Lindanus, respectively the first bishops of Middelburg, ’s-­Hertogenbosch, and later onwards Antwerp, and the bishop of Roermond had previously acted as inquisitors. 7. Ackermans, Herders, 12–­17; Parker, Faith on the Margins, 1–­37; Spiertz, L’Église catholique, 9–­30.

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In recent decades, several biographies of Counter-­Reformation bishops in the Habsburg Netherlands have been published.8 Although the social origins and career paths of these men varied, all of them conformed to the image of the post-­ Tridentine prelate as university-­trained and zealous. As these bishops had been selected by Habsburg rulers and their officials, relationships with government circles could be tense from time to time, but most often both parties cooperated well.9 Jointly they strived to transform the Habsburg Netherlands into an exemplary outpost of the worldwide Catholic community.10 In contrast, far less is known about the men who preceded the first generations of Counter-­Reformation bishops. Where did they come from? To which social groups did they belong? To what extent were they government nominees? This essay will address these questions and briefly compare the results with research that has been carried out on the French episcopacy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thereby, this essay focuses upon the twenty-­two bishops who served in the Netherlands between 1515 and 1559, and thus between the start of Charles V’s personal rule and the proclamation of the bull Super Universas.11 Just as the medieval border between the Holy Roman Empire and France had straddled the Netherlands, the six old bishoprics belonged to these various polities. Cambrai, Liège, and Utrecht were part of the empire. At the start of the period under investigation, the prelates who resided in these cities were not only spiritual pastors, but they also administered some territories as secular princes. However, these territories were vulnerable possessions. Already in the 1470s, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold had plundered the city of Liège and incorporated its principality into his lands.12 That bond was severed in the turmoil that followed the duke’s untimely death, but the principality of Liège continued to exist, until it was suppressed in the wake of the French Revolution.13 The two other ecclesiastical principalities in the Low Countries, however, did not maintain their independence. In 1528, Emperor Charles V annexed the principality of 8.  For two excellent examples, see among others, Harline and Put, A Bishop’s Tale; Marinus, Laevinius Torrentius. 9.  Compare for instance the portraits of bishops in Het aartsbisdom, ed. De Maeyer et al.; Het bisdom Brugge, ed. Cloet; Het bisdom Gent, ed. Cloet. 10.  Van Bruaene, “Habsburg Theatre State,” 136–­43; Duerloo, “Pietas Albertina,” 1–­18. 11.  Appended to this study is a list of all the bishops discussed. More biographical information can be found in Cools, Mannen, 310–­17. A complete list of all medieval and early modern bishops in the Netherlands has been published by Strubbe and Voet, De chronologie, 225–­317. 12. Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 11–­40. 13.  Bijsterveld and Caspers, “Voorgeschiedenis,” 60–­61.

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Utrecht14 and in 1543 the emperor also integrated the small ecclesiastical duchy of Cambrai into the Netherlands.15 By order of Charles V, both Utrecht and Cambrai were provided with citadels that served to keep their populations at bay.16 In contrast, the cities of Arras, Thérouanne, and Tournai were situated within the borders of the French kingdom and, at least in theory, the Concordat of Bologna (1516) applied to episcopal nominations to these sees.17 In practice, Arras had been firmly under Habsburg control since the Treaty of Senlis, which was concluded in 1493.18 Moreover, in 1521 Habsburg armies conquered the enclave of Tournai and the surrounding twelve villages, which originally comprised a fief that the bishops held from the French crown.19 Finally in 1553, the city of Thérouanne, until then most of the time firmly in French hands, was completely destroyed and never rebuilt, on the express orders of Charles V. Until that moment the French kings had approved all elections to the episcopal see of Thérouanne. In 1521 for instance, Pope Leo X had confirmed the nomination of Cardinal Jean de Lorraine to that see. The cardinal’s close friendship with Francis I made him the richest prelate in France. During his lifetime he occupied twelve different episcopal and archepiscopal sees.20 After the city was destroyed in 1553, the bishopric of Thérouanne was split into two different sees, a French one at Boulogne-­sur-­Mer and a Habsburg one at Ypres.21 Therefore, in the five other places here under study—­Arras, Cambrai, Liège, Tournai, and Utrecht—­local canons were, in theory, free to choose the bishops they preferred; however, throughout these territories the Habsburg government had considerable influence. Where the canons failed to present a candidate that suited government officials, elections were contested and local schisms erupted. Government interference was especially great where bishops also acted as secular princes. After the death of Louis de Bourbon, bishop of Liège, in 1482, Maximilian, king of the Romans (and grandfather of Charles V), and his agents in Rome lobbied for the suppression of the see of Liège and its replacement with two new bishoprics, one in Namur and one in Louvain or Maastricht; all three of these cities 14. Israel, Dutch Republic, 61–­62; Tracy, Holland, 75–­76, 159, 210–­11. 15.  Trénard, “Le rendez-­vous des guerriers,” 107–­10. 16.  Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 73. 17.  Edelstein, “Social Origins,” 377–­78. For more on the nomination process in France under the Concordat of Bologna, see Baumgartner, Change, 10–­28. 18.  Blockmans, “La position,” 71–­89. 19.  Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 14, 58, 65–­67. 20.  Michon, “Les richesses,” 38–­40; Edelstein, “Social Origins,” 380. 21.  Delmaire, “Thérouanne,” 127–­53.

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were under Habsburg control. Eventually, the plan failed when Maximilian’s chief lobbyist, Cardinal Ferry de Clugny, died prematurely in 1483. For the next eight years, a civil war raged in the principality of Liège between the supporters of the various candidates.22 That war was closely interwoven with the wider Habsburg-­ Valois conflict and with the rebellions in the western parts of the Low Countries, primarily in Flanders and Holland. In the cities of Ghent and Bruges, the magistrates, together with some high-­ranking noblemen, opposed Maximilian’s authority.23 However, in the end, just as had happened in Flanders, Maximilian’s candidate, Jan of Horn, won the office due to the fact that after 1489 the French withdrew their support from his opponents.24 In Tournai, various claimants to the episcopal see opposed each other nearly continuously between 1484 and 1525.25 Most of the time, there was one claimant who administered the French part of the bishopric and one claimant who controlled the Habsburg part of the bishopric. But matters were complicated further when English troops took the city of Tournai in 1513. The English stayed there for six years and introduced a new candidate to the see, royal confidante Cardinal Thomas Wolsey26 Only in 1525 did Charles V succeed in removing the French-­sponsored claimant, Bishop Louis Guillard, by forcing him to accept a complicated compromise that brought Guillard to Chartres.27 Charles V then made sure the local canons chose Charles de Croÿ, a member of one of the most prominent noble houses in the Low Countries, as bishop of Tournai.28 At that time the young Charles de Croÿ was still studying in Italy, but a few years earlier he had already been appointed administrator of the Hainaut abbey of Hautmont. In 1529 he was elected as abbot of Saint-­Ghislain and only a decade later, in 1539, Charles de Croÿ was installed effectively as bishop of Tournai.29 As becomes clear from these examples, controlling nominations to all sees were vital to the Habsburg government: bishops either administered (smaller) ecclesiastical principalities, in addition to their (larger) bishoprics, or their sees 22. Cools, Mannen, 134–­35. 23.  On these conflicts and the links between them, see Haemers, For the Common Good. 24. Cools, Mannen, 134–­38; Harsin, La principauté, 236–­241, 253–­264. 25.  A detailed study of the Tournai schism has been carried out by Callewier, Qui esset episcopus, 1–­21. 26.  Davies, “Tournai and the English Crown,” 1–­26. For an overview of Wolsey’s career, see Gunn and Lindley, Cardinal Wolsey. 27.  de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église, 182–­87; Dubief, “Les opérations commericiales,” 149–­54. 28.  On the prominence of the Croÿ family in the Habsburg Netherlands, see Cools, Mannen, 85–­117; Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 134–­35. 29.  A biographical sketch of Charles and further bibliographical references are to be found in Cools, Mannen, 139.

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were situated in border regions where the threat of French influence loomed. For these reasons, government officials everywhere wanted to install bishops who could be trusted politically. Therefore, the twenty-­two individuals who, between 1515 and 1559, were promoted to one of the episcopal sees in the Netherlands came from a very limited social group. Two of these bishops were illegitimate descendants of the Burgundian-­ Habsburg princes. In 1517 Philip of Burgundy, an illegitimate son of the Burgundian duke Philip the Good, was elected bishop of Utrecht.30 In that city, near relatives of the Burgundian dukes had governed since the mid fifteenth century; however, their successes were limited. David of Burgundy, a younger half-­brother of Philip the Good, had been trapped by an endless series of revolts against his authority. He was opposed especially by the Utrecht guilds, factions of the local nobility, and smaller cities in his principality. In 1481, David was forced into exile and had to be rescued by Habsburg troops. Two years later, Maximilian laid siege to Utrecht and eventually forced the inhabitants to reinstate David to his see.31 After David’s death in 1496, Maximilian (then Holy Roman Emperor) made sure that the canons elected his cousin Friedrich von Baden as bishop; however, this nomination turned out to be another disappointment to the Habsburg government. In 1514 Friedrich threatened to pass on his see to a candidate favourable to King Louis XII of France, and officials in Brussels reacted by forcing Friedrich to abdicate.32 Their new nominee, Philip of Burgundy, until then admiral of the Netherlands, had no particular religious vocation, but he was well acquainted with the tense political situation in Utrecht and the surrounding territories. Philip, however, was also unsuccessful in pacifying the region. Therefore, in 1528, four years after Philip’s death, Charles V annexed the principality of Utrecht and ordered the construction of a citadel in its capital. In Liège, George of Austria, bishop from 1544 until 1557, and an illegitimate son of Emperor Maximilian, did not leave a deep impression on the collective memory. As bishop, George did, however, timidly promote Catholic renewal in his diocese by reforming the ecclesiastical tribunals and by requiring his clergy to conform to the standards of canon law.33

30.  The best biography remains Sterk, Philips van Bourgondië. 31.  Cf. his biography by Zilverberg, David van Bourgondië; Gent, Pertijelike saken, 360–­67. 32. Kalveen, Utrecht-­Rome, 4–­52. 33. Halkin, Histoire religieuse, 244–­56.

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Apart from these two members of the princely family, pre-­Tridentine bishops in the Netherlands were for the most part members of the aristocracy.34 Eleven out of the twenty-­two bishops under consideration here came from that group. Especially prominent are the Croÿ and the Glymes-­Berghes families,35 which between them provided no fewer than eight bishops. The dominance of the Croÿ family in the southwestern part of the Netherlands was especially strong.36 Between 1502 and 1556 they provided three consecutive bishops of Cambrai: Jacques, Guillaume, and Robert. As noted already, Robert could not prevent his small secular territory from being absorbed into the Habsburg Netherlands in 1543. Nevertheless, the see of Cambrai retained an exceptional status after 1559. According to Super Universas, the see was promoted to the rank of an archbishopric; moreover, it became the only see where the pope could directly nominate candidates without interference of the Habsburg government. This privilege provided the local canons with enough latitude to regularly present their own candidates.37 At Tournai, Charles de Croÿ was bishop from 1525 until his death in 1564. Another member of that family, Eustache de Croÿ, administered the see of Arras for fifteen years between 1523 and 1538.38 His magnificent funeral monument, sculpted by Jacques du Broeucq, has been preserved in the Saint-­Omer church of Sainte-­Marie (today the local cathedral), where he had been a canon. In addition, the Croÿ family provided abbots to the most prestigious religious houses in the region, such as Saint-­Amand on the river Scheldt.39 In the same years, Eustache’s older brother, Adrien de Croÿ, the count of Roeulx, occupied the position of provincial governor of Flanders, Walloon Flanders, and Artois.40 Therefore it would be no exaggeration to label the southwestern Netherlands in the first half of the sixteenth century as Croÿ country. In fact, in these territories, different members of the family occupied the positions that wielded the most influence in the various secular and religious administrations. Obviously, the Habsburgs were keen to exploit such connections. In the mid-­1540s, regent Mary of Hungary, sister 34.  For a tentative definition of the Netherlands aristocracy, see Cools, Mannen, 25–­46. 35.  For a discussion on the influence of the Glymes-­Berghes family in the Habsburg Netherlands, see Cools, “Les frères,” 123–­33. 36.  Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 134–­35. 37.  Brulez, “L’élection,” 517–­19; Postma “Nieuw licht,” 25–­26. 38.  For more on Eustache de Croÿ, see Cools, Mannen, 139; Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 134, 199, 213. 39.  Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 213. 40.  For more on Adrien de Croÿ, see Cools, Mannen, 78, 139, 191–­92; and Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, War, 155–­58, 163–­64, 198–­99, 213–­14.

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of Emperor Charles V, sent Philippe de Croÿ41 to convince his brother Robert, bishop of Cambrai, to let her troops occupy his city. Elsewhere, governor Adrien de Croÿ was pressuring Eustache, bishop of Arras and speaker for the bench of clerics, to make the Artois estates accept some tough compromises.42 The case of the Glymes-­Berghes family is interesting as well. In the late fifteenth century, the learned Henry of Glymes-­Berghes had already served as bishop of Cambrai and chancellor of the Order of the Golden Fleece. In the 1480s and ’90s, Henry and his brothers had staunchly supported the cause of Maximilian of Austria.43 However, Henry’s anti-­French sentiments had brought him into conflict with Maximilian’s son the young Philip the Fair, who hoped to appease Louis XII in order to safeguard his ambitions to the Iberian crowns.44 Under Charles V, the Glymes-­Berghes family regained prominence.45 In 1538, Charles V assured the promotion of Corneille de Glymes-­Berghes to the see of Liège, hoping that he would protect the imperial interests in this border region, which was constantly under French pressure.46 Although as bishop, Corneille never left Brussels, ensuring that Habsburg interests were privileged in his principality, he showed very little interest in the religious administration of his diocese. In the end, the emperor and his sister, regent Mary of Hungary, forced Corneille to abdicate in 1544 in order to make room for George of Austria.47 Corneille’s nephew Robert de Glymes-­Berghes succeeded George of Austria as bishop of Liège in 1557. But this administration too was a failure. Suffering from insanity, Robert was forced to abdicate in 1564.48 More successful was Robert’s cousin Maximilien de Glymes-Berghes, who had been elected bishop of Cambrai in 1559 and two years later became the first archbishop of that see. The redrawn borders of the vastly reduced (arch)bishopric nearly coincided with those of the county of Hainaut, where Maximilien’s relative Jean de Glymes, marquis of B ­ ergen op Zoom, served as governor from 1560 until his 49 death in 1567. Although Maximilien de Glymes-­Berghes organized a provincial 41.  For a biographical sketch of Philippe de Croÿ and more bibliographical references, see Cools, Mannen, 196–­97. 42.  Ibid., 214. 43.  Cools, “Les frères,” 124–­25. 44. Cauchies, Philippe le Beau, 144. 45.  Cools, “Het markizaat,” 20. 46. Halkin, Histoire religieuse. 47.  Halkin, “Contribution,” 954–­63. 48. Tihon, La principauté. 49.  van Ham, Macht, 94–­95, 98–­99; Woltjer, Op weg, 314–­20, 322–­27.

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synod, assisted at the opening of the University of Douai, and allowed the Jesuits to establish themselves in his archdiocese, he proved rather reluctant to staunchly prosecute Calvinists.50 Therefore, when Maximilien died in 1579, the Duke of Alba was pleased to see him succeeded by the more zealous Louis de Berlaymont.51 A final group of bishops are the career clerics. William of Enckenvoirt, born in 1464 and bishop of Utrecht between 1529 and his death in 1534, is the only person of humble descent in that group. William had studied theology at Louvain and was sent from there to Rome, where he made a career at the curia. Upon his election, Pope Hadrian VI Floriszoon (r. 1521–­23), who most likely had lectured William in Louvain, chose this fellow Dutchman to become his most trusted adviser in Rome and bestowed honors upon his client. William succeeded Adrian as bishop of Tortosa in Spain and was the only cardinal created during Hadrian’s brief pontificate. Such papal favor detained William in Rome, and he never visited the dioceses to which he had been nominated.52 Although Érard la Marck and Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle were the only two other persons out of this group who were created cardinals, the social origins of William of Enckenvoirt can hardly be compared with that of those two men.53 Érard de la Marck belonged to an aristocratic family that claimed to hold its vast lands—­which stretched around the upper Meuse valley and where the French kings and the dukes of Lorraine and Burgundy vied for power—­directly from the German emperors.54 The troops that murdered the bishop of Liége Louis de Bourbon in 1482, as part of an effort to stop the expansion of Habsburg successors to the Burgundian claims, were under the command of Érard’s uncle, Guillaume de la Marck.55 For the next few years, Guillaume tried—­unsuccessfully—­to get his son Jean accepted as the new occupant of the episcopal throne. But at the next occasion, in 1505, Guillaume’s cousin Érard de la Marck was elected bishop, in a large degree thanks to the support of King Louis XII of France.56 Two years later, Érard acquired as well the rich and prestigious French diocese of Chartres. However when in 1518 Érard had not yet received the desired red hat, he shifted 50.  Brulez, “L’élection,” 510–­11; Postma, “Nieuw licht,” 26–­27. 51.  Soen, “Collaborators,” 27. 52.  Touber, “Willem van Enckenvoirt”; Fagel, “Charles Quint,” 222. 53.  The most recent collection of essays on the cardinal de Granvelle that offers a good overview of his career is Les Granvelle, ed. De Jonge and Janssens. 54.  Arenberg, 25. 55. Harsin, La principauté, 89–91. 56.  Érard is one of the best-­studied prince-­bishops of Liège. See, among others, Halkin, Le cardinal; Harsin, Le règne. For more on his election, see Harsin, “Notes critiques,” 273–­80.

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his allegiance to the Habsburgs. In 1520, Érard acquired the Iberian archdiocese of Valencia, and his promotion to the cardinalate followed a year later.57 Although Érard shared Charles V’s dislike of Lutheranism and took a seat in the successive privy councils of the regents Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary, the two men and their advisers continued to quarrel over the precise borders of their respective territories. Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, the son of Charles V’s principal minister, Nicolas, later became the principal advisor to Charles’s son, Philip II. Therefore Antoine’s nomination to the see of Arras in 1543 has to be considered above all as the starting point of his brilliant career. As first archbishop of Mechelen, Antoine was one of the main beneficiaries of Philip II’s new bishopric scheme, and therefore his adversaries often considered him, in a way not entirely justified, to be the malign genius behind that scheme.58 That scheme, however, entirely changed the social composition of the episcopate in the Netherlands, as bishops would no longer be recruited nearly exclusively from among the ranks of the nobility. Nevertheless it is striking that the first pastors of new archbishoprics all three descended from the highest ranks of the aristocracy. Around the same time that Maximilien de Glymes-­Berghes and Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle were made bishops of Cambrai and Mechelen, respectively, in 1560, Frederik van Schenk Toutenburg was promoted to the newly created archepiscopal see of Utrecht. In the 1520s and 1530s, his father, Joris, had played a crucial role in the conquest of Friesland, Drenthe, and Groningen, the three northernmost provinces of the Netherlands.59 Joris’s main rewards were election as a knight of the Golden Fleece in 1531 and appointment to the governorship of those provinces. Moreover, in 1538, two years before Joris’s death and with explicit reference to the services he had rendered to the dynasty, his son Frederik had been received in the Utrecht chapter of Oudmunster.60 Frederik was a learned canon and civil lawyer, with a vivid interest in Renaissance thought. His library contained, among others works, the works of Erasmus and those of the classical authors Cicero and Ovid. He also fathered at least two illegitimate children. Frederik’s ministry as an archbishop did not prove successful. At the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt, he failed to adequately negotiate between the Spanish garrison that occupied the local citadel and the Utrecht population. Once the city 57.  Fagel, “Charles Quint,” 221–­22. 58.  Gielis, “Utinam,” 204–­05. 59. Cools, Mannen, 291; Gorter-­van Royen, Maria, 211, 223, 229. 60.  van den Hoven van Genderen, De heren, 330, 472.

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was in the hands of the rebels, the public exercise of Roman Catholic worship was prohibited. A few weeks later, in August 1580, Frederik died. The city magistrate then granted exceptional permission to stage a simple funeral according to the Catholic rite in the local cathedral; this would prove the last service of this nature for about a century, until 1672/73 when the Utrecht Minster was briefly returned to the Catholic community during the French occupation.61 Also, throughout the next generations after Frederik, the old and prestigious sees of Cambrai and Liège would remain firmly in the hands of aristocrats, whereas men of humbler stock directed the newly created archbishopric of Mechelen. Obviously this changed recruitment strategy had a lasting impact upon the nature of the Catholic renewal in the Netherlands. Indeed, the public perceived the first generation of reform-­minded bishops appointed after 1559 as being very tied to the hugely unpopular government circles of Philip II and his successive regents. Three of those, including Franciscus Sonnius, had served as inquisitors, and therefore it was often years before they could take up their posts. Sonnius, for instance, could make his way to ’s-Hertogenbosch only in 1562, and even then his installation was boycotted by the local guilds, the confraternities, and the civic militia. Four years later, in 1566, on the eve of a wave of iconoclasm, six bishops had still not yet made a public entry into their cathedrals.62 These developments were in line with, although for somewhat different reasons, what happened in neighbouring France, where after 1438, the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges had established a practice similar to the one that existed until the middle of the sixteenth century in the Netherlands. Originally French canons had elected their bishops, but these elections hardly ever went smoothly. The system produced an endless series of contested elections that fostered political instability.63 But in contrast to Charles V, who remained dependent upon struggling chapters, Francis I had obtained in 1516, through the Concordat of Bologna, the right to appoint bishops. However—­and this is often overlooked—­the Concordat of Bologna had already laid down various requirements for prospective bishops, so that in theory, French bishops were supposed to be at least twenty-­six years old and hold an academic degree.64 The changed regulation at first did not alter the social composition of the French episcopate. Just as had happened in the past, Francis I and his successors recruited “their” bishops overwhelmingly out 61.  Graswinckel, “De erfenis,” 232. 62. Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 77. 63.  Edelstein, “Les origins,” 241–­42. 64. Bergin, Church, 155–­56.

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of the upper strata of the nobility;65 however, the religious crisis, the ensuing civil wars, and the loss of royal authority in the second half of the sixteenth century resulted in many vacancies—­in 1595 about one-­third of all French bishoprics had no bishop at all—­and made other dioceses, especially those with large Protestant populations, wholly inaccessible to their bishops. During the five decades from the outbreak of the wars of religion in the 1560s until the death of Henry IV in 1610, one-­third to one-­half of French bishops were from non-­noble descent.66 In the Netherlands, on the other hand, the first generation of bishops who served in the freshly created archdioceses of Mechelen and Utrecht after the promulgation of Super Universas were university-­trained clerics. Among these men, Louvain theologians were dominant, and apart from Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, who was transferred from Arras to the new archbishopric of Mechelen, and Frederik van Schenk Toutenburg, who was appointed as the first archbishop of Utrecht, none of them was a nobleman.67 Also in France, the number of university-­trained bishops gradually rose, but well into the seventeenth century, they had predominantly studied law rather than theology, as was the case in the Low Countries.68 This difference may account for the fact that French bishops seem to have concentrated somewhat later than their colleagues in the Netherlands on the need for reform. This explains why later seventeenth-­century religious developments in France, such as the spread and the perceived threat of Jansenism, were profoundly marked by theological currents that had surfaced earlier in the Habsburg Netherlands.69 In conclusion, government involvement in the selection of bishops was not new in seventeenth-­century France, just as it had not been new in the Habsburg Netherlands. Nonetheless, what did change with the introduction of the new bishopric scheme of 1559 was the government’s expectations of the bishops. After that time, the bishops did not only have to support the monarch’s strictly secular policy goals, but their religious objectives as well.

65.  Edelstein, “Social Origins,” 377–­81; Baumgartner, Change, 29–­44. 66. Bergin, Church, 156–­57. 67.  Gielis, “Utinam,” 206–­7. 68.  Forrestal, “Fathers, Leaders, Kings,” 24–­26; Bergin, The Making, 227–­33. 69.  On the birth of “proto-­Jansenism” as an offshoot from the struggle of Louvain theologians against Calvinism, see Marnef, “Een maat voor niets?” 84–­86, 94–­96. For more on its consequences for French political, cultural and social life, see Maire, “Port-­Royal: La fracture janséniste,” 2605–­52.

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Table 1: Bishops in the Netherlands, 1515–59 Arras (archbishopric of Reims) François de Melun (bp. 1510–13) (†Nov. 22, 1521) Pietro Accolti (bp. 1518–23) Eustache de Croÿ (bp. 1523–38) (†Oct. 3, 1538) Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (bp. 1538–61) (†Sep. 21, 1586) Tournai (archbishopric of Reims) (schism from 1484 until 1505) Louis Guillard (bp. 1513–25) Thomas Wolsey (administrator of the diocese between 1514 and 1518) (†Nov. 29, 1530) Charles de Croÿ (bp. 1525–64) (†Dec. 13, 1564) Cambrai (archbishopric of Reims) Jacques de Croÿ (bp. 1502–16) (†Aug. 15, 1516) Guillaume de Croÿ (bp. 1517–19) (†Jan. 6, 1521) Robert de Croÿ (bp. 1519–56) (†Aug. 31, 1556) Maximilien de Glymes–Berghes (bp. 1556–70; in 1559 his see was elevated to an archbishopric) (†Aug. 29, 1570) Thérouanne (archbishopric of Reims) François de Melun (bp. 1516–21) (†Nov. 22, 1521) [see also above under Arras] Jean de Lorraine (bp. 1521–before Nov. 8, 1535) François de Créqui (bp. 1535–52) (†Feb. 28, 1552) Antoine de Créqui (bp. 1552–59) Liège (archbishopric of Cologne) Érard de la Marck (bp. 1505–38; cardinal since 1521) (†Feb. 16, 1538) Corneille de Glymes-Berghes (bp. 1538–44) (†1545) George d’Autriche (bp. 1544–57) (†May 4/5, 1557) Robert de Glymes-Berghes (bp. 1557–64) Utrecht (archbishopric of Cologne) Philippe de Bourgonge (bp. 1517–24) (†April 7, 1524) Henry of Bavaria and the Palatinate (bp. 1524–29) (†Jan. 3, 1552) William of Enckenvoirt (bp. 1529–34) (†July 19, 1534) George of Egmond (bp. 1534–59) (†Sept. 26, 1559)

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Peteghem, Paul Van. “Le rôle des bénéfices à la collation princière. L’Église Belgique au service des Bourguignons et des Habsbourg.” Publications du Centre Européen des Etudes bourguignonnes 38 (1998): 229–­46. Pollmann, Judith. Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–­1635. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Postma, Folkert. “Nieuw licht op een oude zaak. De oprichting van de nieuwe bisdommen in 1559.” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 103 (1990): 10–­27. Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-­Bas. Deuxième série: 1506–­1700. Vol. 7, Règne de Philippe II. I. Contenant des ordonnances du 26 octobre 1555 au 27 août 1559, edited by Charles Terlinden and Jacques Bolsée. Brussels: Commission royale pour la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique, 1957. Soen, Violet. “Collaborators and Parvenus? Berlaymont and Noircarmes. Loyal Noblemen in the Dutch Revolt.” Dutch Crossing 35 (2011): 20–­38. Spiertz, Mathieu G. L’Église catholique des Provinces-­Unies et le Saint-­Siège pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle. Louvain: Publications universitaires de Louvain, 1975. Sterk, Johannes. Philips van Bourgondië (1465–­1524): Bisschop van Utrecht als protoganist van de renaissance, zijn leven en maecenaat. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1980. Strubbe, Egied I., and Léon Voet. De chronologie van de Middeleeuwen en de Moderne Tijden in de Nederlanden. Brussels: Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 1960. Tihon, Camille. La principauté et le diocèse de Liège sous Robert de Berghes (1557–­1564). Liège: Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, 1922. Touber, Jetze. “Willem van Enckenvoirt and the Dutch network in Rome in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.” Fragmenta: Journal of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome 4 (2010): 121–­43. Tracy, James D. Holland under Habsburg Rule, 1506–­1566: The Formation of a Body Politic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Trénard, Louis. “Le rendez-­vous des guerriers (Michelet). 1529–­1598.” In Histoire de Cambrai, edited by Louis Trénard, 105–­24. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1982. Vaughan, R. Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy. London: Longman, 1973. Reprint, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2002. Woltjer, Juliaan J. Op weg naar tachtig jaar oorlog: Het verhaal van de eeuw waarin ons land ontstond. Amsterdam: Balans, 2011. Zilverberg, Siegfried B. J. David van Bourgondië: Bisschop van Terwaan en van Utrecht (1427–­1496). Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1951.

Office and Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Tortona Antonella Perin and John Alexander One often conceives of the bishop as the leading religious authority in a diocese. Indeed, the edicts of the Council of Trent (1545–­63) entrusted most of the reforms to the bishop, empowering him to be the agent for change in the Catholic Church. However, in the sixteenth century, the bishop’s ideal power and autonomy were often sharply curtailed by other ecclesiastical entities, by local political bodies, or by the nobility. The decades immediately following the conclusion of the Council of Trent were filled with conflict among the competing parties, as reflected in the architectural and urbanistic developments in Tortona. While the council gave the local bishop responsibility for churches in his diocese, the project for the new cathedral, episcopal palace, and cathedral square in that northern Italian city pitted the bishop against a variety of secular and ecclesiastical authorities who eventually overruled him. Interestingly, the bishop did not support those projects, which brings this history into marked contrast with other, perhaps more typical examples in which the local bishop inaugurated and promoted projects to renovate or construct ex novo cathedrals. While the historical trend was clearly toward greater episcopal control over cathedrals, the story of Tortona’s ecclesiastical center complicates that seemingly clear pattern but allows for greater nuance in understanding the Tridentine era. Tortona was a small city in northwestern Italy, located where the northern edge of the Ligurian Apennines flattens into the Po valley. It was an ancient Roman foundation that—­in the mid-­sixteenth century—­was in the Spanish-­ ruled duchy of Milan. However, it had an unfortunate location on the political 63

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map: it was near the frontiers with the territorial states of Genoa, Monferrato, and Turin, and on a major highway between Milan and Genoa. Consequently it had been overrun more than once during the Italian wars and, not surprisingly, was both underpopulated and desperately poor. It was also an ancient diocese within the ecclesiastical province of Milan, and thus under the jurisdiction of Carlo Borromeo (1538–­84), the reforming archbishop of Milan.1 The historic part of the town occupied a hilltop, which is where the medieval fortress, cathedral, and episcopal palace were located. At the base of the hill, a late-­medieval urban area had expanded the city onto the plain (fig. 1). The ruling Spanish authorities had requisitioned all of the hilltop in the 1540s with the goal of expanding the fortifications to consolidate military control of the territory. Construction eventually encompassed the old cathedral and episcopal palace, and in 1557 the bishop found himself without a seat.2 He subsequently officiated in a series of existing churches provisionally designated to serve as the cathedral. By the end of the century, however, Tortona had a new ecclesiastical center, in the center of the lower city and along its main road, consisting of a new cathedral (figs. 2–­4), an episcopal palace formed from preexisting buildings (fig. 5), and a regular urban space created in a previously occupied area (fig. 6).3 These developments involved a whole series of individuals, but the bishop did not inaugurate the project. The bishop of Tortona was Cesare Gambara (1516–­91). He was the scion of a minor branch of a noble Brescian family that had achieved renown for the cultural achievements of some members, and the ecclesiastical careers of others.4 He began a career in the administration of the Catholic Church, obtaining diplomatic missions and governmental positions. He was invested with the diocese of Tortona in 1548 when his cousin Uberto Gambara (1489–­1549) renounced the see in his favor. His career in the temporal governance of the church did not advance, and so he chose to reside in Tortona from 1551. However Cesare Gambara’s career received new impulse during the reign of Pope Pius IV Medici (r. 1559–­65), with whom he shared Lombard origins and family connections. Gambara was nominated vice-­legate to the march of Ancona for a brief period, during which time 1.  Important sources for the history of Tortona include: Enciclopedia cattolica, 1954, s.v. “Tortona”; Cartasegna, Una città fortificata, 13–­50; Cortemiglia, “Le porte urbiche,” 24–­34; De Carlini, “Note di demografia,” 5–­13; Perin, “La città e il forte,” 53–­61; Rozzo, “Appunti per una storia,” 5–­26; Vigo, “La città di Cristierna,” 149–­61. 2.  Perin, “Nuovi documenti,” 297–­99. 3.  Perin, “La città e il forte,” 53–­61. Churches that served as the cathedral in addition to S. Stefano include S. Domenico and S. Maria Canale. See Perin, “Architettura,” 41–­42. 4.  De Carlini, “I Gambara,” 215–­19; Pagano, Il cardinale Uberto; Viscardi, Pralboino, Milzano e Verolanuova, 35–­107.

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Figure 1. Seventeenth-century view of Tortona. The Romanesque cathedral had been on the hilltop (in the area englobed by the outer extent of new bastions). The provisional cathedral—S. Stefano—is to the far right of the view, within the city walls. The new cathedral is in the center of the view, towards the bottom, within the city walls and presenting its apse and belfry to the viewer. Engraving from P. Bertelli, Teatro della città d’Italia (Vicenza, 1616), fol. 115. Property of Dr. Guiseppe de Carlini. Used with permission.

he promoted the newly founded Jesuit college at Macerata. He also participated briefly in one of the last sessions of the Council of Trent, but spent most of the rest of his life in Tortona, with extended sojourns at his family’s seat.5 In Tortona, Gambara was constantly frustrated by jurisdictional conflicts over the diocese’s land holdings and a chronic lack of income.6 Despite these and other hardships, he was still attentive to his duties. He resided and was active in an 5.  See the transcribed letters and commentary found in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 15–­16, 25–­27, 195 note 10; see also Giordano, “Gambara, Cesare,” 37–­38; Serangeli and Zambuto, “Sui rapporti”; Tacchella, “Cesare Gambara,” 6–­12. 6. Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 15–­54, 84–­89, 107–­08, 111. Controversies over the feudal landholdings of the diocese continued through the episcopacy of Cesare Gambara’s successor (and nephew), Maffeo Gambara (1554–­1611). See ibid., 127–­64.

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Figure 2. Exterior of the cathedral of Tortona, showing the current façade, which dates to the nineteenth century. Photo by John Alexander.

Figure 3. Plan and section of the cathedral. Drawing by Antonella Perin.

Office and Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Tortona  67 Figure 4. Interior of the cathedral. Photo by John Alexander.

Figure 5. Exterior of the episcopal palace of Tortona. Photo by John Alexander.

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Figure 6. Historical property map of Tortona, showing the location of the cathedral on an urban space that opens off of the main road through the city. The episcopal palace is on the lot numbered 4787. Detail of map no. 55 of the tax survey of 1720–1726, Archivio di Stato di Torino, Catasti, Tortona, allegato A. pf. 116. Used with permission.

insignificant diocese during a period in which many noble prelates still neglected their duties, regardless of papal or conciliar decrees that required more assiduous fulfillment of responsibilities. Even before the Tridentine decrees demanded that bishops conduct pastoral visits to evaluate parishes and religious institutions throughout their dioceses, Gambara held a round of visitations in 1554. He (or a vicar) occasionally repeated the process during the following years. There is evidence that Gambara organized at least one diocesan synod (although the exact date remains a mystery). He also founded a diocesan seminary for the education and training of priests, which opened in December of 1565. This fulfilled one of the decrees from the recently concluded Council of Trent; indeed, it was among the earliest Tridentine seminaries in Italy, although it remained underfunded and achieved only modest results during the sixteenth century.7 In many ways, Gambara could be considered a better bishop than many of his peers. One would have

7.  Interestingly, Gambara and Cristierna of Denmark attempted to bring Jesuits to Tortona to found a college, which perhaps would have functioned as the seminary. Tacchella, La riforma tridentina, 58–­63, 74–­75, 79–­83; Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 19–­20, 27–­33, 42–­45, 51–­52, 63, 70, 91–­96, 99, 110, 116–­18.

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thought that this would have recommended him to the young, energetic archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, but that was not the case. Borromeo’s biography is so well known as to make any in-­depth discussion unnecessary. For the purposes of this article, it is important to note that he developed administrative skills in the Curia of his maternal uncle Pope Pius IV; as papal secretary he followed the discussions at the last sessions of Trent (1562–­63) and learned of the decisions and decrees. Given his connections and his abilities, he could certainly have had a long and important career in ecclesiastical administration in Rome. However, he believed that he had a vocation as a reforming bishop and wanted to fulfill his responsibilities in Milan by enacting the Tridentine decrees. Pius’s death in 1565 liberated Borromeo from his duties in the Curia, and following the conclave that elected Pope Pius V Ghislieri (r. 1566–­72), Borromeo moved to his archdiocesan see. As archbishop, he demanded strict observance of religious duties and responsibilities, founded a number of seminaries, and served the sick and dying during the plague of 1575/76. His episcopacy was characterized by bold decisions (many aimed at asserting the authority of the bishop) that often led to jurisdictional disputes with the laity, the Spanish authorities, and religious orders.8 Borromeo fulfilled his duties as the leading authority in the Milanese ecclesiastical province by holding regular provincial councils and conducting pastoral visits (either personally or through an authorized vicar) of dioceses under his jurisdiction. Executing Tridentine decrees, following personal interests, and exploiting architecture’s potential to inspire people, he evaluated the churches in his archdiocese and provided instructions for the renovation of the building fabric, the design of additions, and the furnishing of interiors. The culmination of years of practical experience was a publication written by him and his assistants, Instructionum Fabbricae et Suppellectilis Ecclesiasticae (Milan, 1577). A guide for the design or renovation of churches, it sought to establish an appropriate setting for the sacraments (especially the Eucharist) with a standardized set of furnishings organized in recognizable configurations of spaces.9 Considering the state of the Catholic Church and all that Borromeo had to accomplish, one would have thought that he might have been relieved to have Gambara in Tortona: Gambara actually resided in his diocese, made efforts to 8.  The most thorough and concise biography of Borromeo remains Mols, “Charles Borromée,” 486–­ 530. For information on jurisdictional disputes, see Alexander, From Renaissance, 150–­52, 166–­72; Bendiscioli, “Politica, amministrazione e religione.” The official account of the most violent opposition to Borromeo’s actions—­an assassination attempt—­has been republished: Vera relatione del successo. 9.  Buratti Mazzotta, “L’ufficio per le fabbriche”; Alexander, From Renaissance, 133–­52, 200–­40.

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fulfill Tridentine decrees, and—­like Borromeo—­promoted clerical education. Gambara’s accomplishments paled in comparison to those of his younger, more ardent superior, but he faced great difficulties with few resources. However, the correspondence between the two demonstrates that, over the years, Borromeo lost faith in Gambara’s ability or willingness to fulfill his responsibilities with adequate zeal. Gambara was closely tied to his family and, to assist them in the noble business of obtaining lucrative posts and contracting advantageous marriages (if not to enjoy a reprieve from the duties and deprivations of Tortona), he returned to Brescian territory almost annually and for considerable lengths of time. Borromeo reminded Gambara more than once of his responsibilities in Tortona and was only begrudgingly satisfied with the bishop’s claim to have received papal permission to absent himself from his diocese. In 1580, after years of enduring his subordinate’s lack of religious ardor, Borromeo lost patience: Confesso che vederei volentieri V[ostra] S[ignoria] staccata dal troppo affetto et sollecitudine che ha de quei suoi nipoti, el che fa ch’ella molte volte sia lontana dalla sua Chiesa; et sopraggiungono poi le pioggie, le febbri et altri mali che la tengono absente per buoni pezzi né occorrería quest’altro inconveniente di ammalarsi fuori della sua Diocesi o che le impedisse di aiutar la sua Chiesa in quelle parti, che stanno in particolare pericolo et hanno bisogno di più continua sollecitudine et vigilanza. È necessario che V[ostra] S[ignoria] procuri et mi esibisca il rimedio che le ricordai intorno all’assenza degli anni passati perché altrimenti sarebbe necesssario che io osservassi quello che mi comanda il Concilio Tridentino in questa materia. [I confess that I would happily see Your Grace detached from the excessive affection for and willingness to serve your nephews, which leads you to be absent from your diocese. Then the rains make the roads impassable, or fevers or other sicknesses delay your departure, keeping you away for significant periods. The misfortune of falling ill outside your diocese impedes you from helping your flock in areas under your jurisdiction, where people are in noteworthy danger and require greater care and watchfulness. Your Grace will have to obtain and show me the permission for past absences that you have told me about; otherwise I will be required to fulfill the Council of Trent’s demands for such matters.]10

10.  Letter from Carlo Borromeo to Cesare Gambara, 23 January 1580, BAMi, F 56 inf., fol. 33r, transcribed in Cammaratta, Lettere da Tortona, 89. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by John Alexander, loosely translating the original Italian into English.

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Gambara’s ties to his family and his lengthy absences obscured any of his accomplishments in Borromeo’s eyes. Rumors spread that Gambara might ask to resign from his episcopal duties (which, in the end, did not occur) and Borromeo opined that appointing a bishop more dedicated to reform would be preferable to keeping Gambara in his office.11 A major difficulty that Gambara encountered was the lack of both a cathedral and an episcopal palace. Although Gambara had petitioned the Spanish authorities for financial compensation, it seems that the full amount never materialized.12 Existing churches served temporarily as the cathedral, and finally Pius V designated a monastic church in Tortona (S. Stefano) as the cathedral.13 Gambara felt that the matter was resolved, but in the early 1570s, Cardinal Gian Paolo Della Chiesa (1521–­75) embarked on a program to provide Tortona with a new cathedral on a new and regular urban space that would serve as the ecclesiastical center of the city. Della Chiesa was a native of Tortona and a legal prodigy. His skills landed him positions in the secular government of Milan and those responsibilities brought him into conflict with Borromeo. Shortly after his return to Milan, Borromeo began to exert historical but unutilized prerogatives of the archbishop, including arming an ecclesiastical police force, and arresting and imprisoning individuals who violated the religious or moral code of the Catholic Church. The citizens and Spanish authorities objected to such measures, and in 1567 a delegation from the Milanese Senate went to Rome to argue against them before the pope. Della Chiesa led that effort but was unsuccessful in obtaining a papal decision against Borromeo. When Della Chiesa’s wife died prematurely, the young lawyer opted for a career in the church. In 1568 he received a cardinalate from Pius V, who hailed from the diocese of Tortona and was purportedly a kinsman of Della Chiesa.14 Yet the cardinal’s role in that protracted, highly polemical, and even embarrassing jurisdictional dispute could hardly have been forgotten by Borromeo. The two men had apparently known each other from their early years, for prior to Della Chiesa’s mission, Borromeo had asked him to serve as his proxy at a baptism noting 11.  Ibid., 19–­20, 33–­38, 46–­47, 55–­59, 72–­75, 87–­92, 96–­97, 111, 118, 121–­22. Interestingly, the citizens of Tortona pleaded with Gambara not to retire when he made motions of doing so towards the end of his life; ibid., 119, 122. 12.  As late at 1601, Maffeo Gambara claimed that the full amount due the diocese for the loss of the old cathedral and episcopal palace had not yet been received. See ibid., 167. 13.  Ibid., 16, 19, 24, 28–­40, 83, 88. See note 3 above. 14. Berruti, Tortona insigne, 205–­7; Rozzo, “Della Chiesa (Chiesa), Gian Paolo,” 751–­53; Bendiscioli, “Politica, amministrazione e religione.”

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“la memoria gioconda et grata dell’amicitia havuto seco” and “il n[ost]ro antico amore.”15 However strained their relationship might have become, correspondence from the late 1560s and early 1570s demonstrates collaboration on a variety of issues that Della Chiesa—­then in Rome—­could assist with or resolve on Borromeo’s behalf.16 Della Chiesa was often carefully deferential in the correspondence, yet the two men shared common goals, at least in some specific matters.17 The cardinal returned to Tortona for extended periods in the early 1570s and involved himself deeply in the urban and architectural development of the city. Della Chiesa’s most far-­reaching project was for the new ecclesiastical center. It is not known whether he approached Gambara on this matter or not, but he obtained the consensus of the cathedral chapter and the civic authorities. Della Chiesa requisitioned a few of the preexisting buildings (including the small church of S. Quirino) on the extensive site and obtained the services of a local master mason to begin construction on the cathedral in 1574. It is not known who designed the building, but Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527–­ 96), the preferred architect of Archbishop Borromeo, was involved in some capacity. He had inaugurated construction on the Collegio Borromeo in Pavia in 1564, while Della Chiesa served as podestà of that city on behalf of the Milanese Senate. Della Chiesa must have become acquainted with Tibaldi at that time: he resolved property disputes in favor of the Collegio and he attended the ceremonial inauguration of construction. It is entirely possible that years later Della Chiesa would turn to Tibaldi for the design of Tortona’s new cathedral. Documents indicate that Tibaldi traveled to Tortona in 1572 specifically “per visitare la cattedrale di Tortona”18 and was paid for a drawing in 1579. While these notices may document Tibaldi’s architectural design of the building, the evidence is not conclusive. S. Stefano still served as the cathedral in 1572, and it is possible that Tibaldi supplied advice about that church (and not a design for a new building). In 1578, as construction on Della Chiesa’s church proceeded, Borromeo sent a copy of his recently published Instructionum to Tortona and Gambara assured him that he would employ it for the new cathedral. It is possible that Tibaldi’s 15.  Letter from Carlo Borromeo to Gian Paolo Della Chiesa, 24 June 1564, BAMi, S.Q.+.II.7, fol. 216v. 16.  See, for example, letter from Carlo Borromeo to Gian Paolo Della Chiesa, 23 November 1568, BAMi, P 3 inf., fol. 291v. 17.  An important example is the settlement of the canonry of the Brera in Milan, which was given to Della Chiesa after the suppression of the Humiliati, but which Borromeo wanted for a Jesuit college. See, for example, letter of Gian Paolo Della Chiesa to Carlo Borromeo, 24 February 1571 (BAMi, F 97bis inf., fol. 371r) and letter of Carlo Borromeo to Gian Paolo Della Chiesa, 25 April 1571 (BAMi, P 6 inf., fols. 257v–­257bis r). 18.  Annuali della Fabbrica, 24, as quoted in Perin, “Architettura,” 63n1.

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drawing of 1579 provided a design for the liturgical furnishings of the new church, in conformity with Borromeo’s norms. Such a hypothesis corresponds with the construction history of the building, for the apse was completed by the end of 1582 and was outfitted for the liturgical rites in 1584. Whoever designed the church, construction proceeded for a few months before Della Chiesa died unexpectedly in 1575. His daughter donated the family silver to fund continued construction on the new cathedral, but the death of this crucial patron brought the completion of the entire project into question.19 Gambara had been officiating in S. Stefano since the late 1560s20 and when it came to the new cathedral, he was less than enthusiastic. Archbishop Borromeo had been conducting pastoral visits of dioceses within his ecclesiastical province and had obtained the services of another bishop, Gerolamo Ragazzoni (1536–­ 92), to conduct them in the dioceses to the southwest of Milan. Ragazzoni’s visit to Tortona was imminent, and he would surely report on the state of the cathedral project.21 Acting preemptively, Bishop Gambara wrote a Memoriale to Borromeo (dated 13 January 1576) explaining his views on the project. Io credo che V[ostra] S[ignoria] sia informata che fra questi della città e me nasce differenza circa il luogo della chiesa cathedrale cioè se si deve fabbricare nel luogo dove il cardinale [Della] Chiesa la principiò, . . . ovvero se si deve lasciare nel luogo dove è. [I believe that Your Excellency has been informed that a difference of opinion has arisen between me and certain people in Tortona about the cathedral church, specifically whether it should be built where Cardinal Della Chiesa began new construction, . . . or it should be left where it currently is.]

Noting that he would not have adequate space at the new cathedral for the canonry, he continued: mi è parso di darle parte di questo fatto con mandarle le ragioni per le quali la Cathedrale si deve di necessità mantenere nell’Abbatia di San Stefano. 19.  For the connections between Della Chiesa and Tibaldi, see Perin, “La città e il forte,” 57–­58, 61nn90–­91. See also Baroni, Il Collegio Borromeo, 59–­63. For notification of the Instructionum’s arrival in Tortona, see letter from Cesare Gambara to Carlo Borromeo, 23 October 1578, BAMi, F 93 inf., fol. 103r, transcribed in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 78; Perin, La cattedrale di Tortona, 1–­10; Perin, “Architettura,” 22–­56. 20.  Gambara had possession of the church in the latter half of 1566, but it was in a ruinous state (and thus probably required renovation before being usable). Letters of Cesare Gambara to Carlo Borromeo, 7 May 1566, 11 June 1566, 21 June 1566, and 15 December 1566, BAMi, F 94 inf., fols. 349r–­349v, 356r, 357r–­357v, 362r, 365r, partially transcribed in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 33–­35. 21. Tacchella, La riforma tridentina, 93–­99.

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe [It occurred to me to communicate these facts while informing you about the reasons why the cathedral must necessarily remain in the abbey church of S. Stefano.]22 [L]a chiesa di San Stefano [fù] per cathedrale assegnata da Pio V Pontefice di felice memoria come n’appare Bolla authentica e dell’accettatione di tal chiesa in Cathedrale, fatta da noi e dal Capitolo, n’è rogato pubblic instromento. Essendo adunque il luogo già fermato per la cathedrale di Torthona per S[ua] S[antità], non si è validamente venuto a nuova elettione del luogo di San Quirino per cathedrale di Torthona. [The church of S. Stefano had been designated to serve as the cathedral by Pope Pius V of blessed memory, as documented by a papal bull and by the official, notarized document by which we and the chapter of canons accepted it as such. Thus, His Holiness established the location of the cathedral of Tortona, and no contravening document has selected the location of S. Quirino for the new cathedral of Tortona.]23

Gambara felt that S. Stefano had much to recommend it. The monastic complex could easily be adapted to serve the cathedral, bishop, and chapter of canons, and the urban setting was ideal; future needs could be accommodated by adjacent buildings. The location of the new cathedral, on the other hand, had none of these benefits. The costs of property and new construction required to accommodate the necessary administrative and residential buildings would render the project impossible to realize, especially after the death of its primary (and wealthy) proponent. Gambara commented that it was an error “di metter il studio e l’opera sua in cose impossibili ad eseguirsi o difficili a riuscirne da onde ne viene poi che si dice non essersi fatto ben conto e che si è cominciato a edificare e non s’è potuto finire.” [“to put one’s attention and effort into things that are impossible to execute or difficult to realize, which would lead others to say that one did not adequately study the matter yet began to build what one could not finish”].24 In the document and the letter accompanying it, Gambara took a number of swipes at the people who promoted the project: he claimed that Della Chiesa 22.  Letter of Cesare Gambara to Carlo Borromeo, 13 January 1576, ASDMi, Carteggio “Extraprovinciali,” XVIII, as transcribed in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 60. 23.  Memoriale of Cesare Gambara (13 January 1576?), ASDMi, Carteggio “Extraprovinciali,” XVIII, as transcribed in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 60. 24.  Memoriale of Cesare Gambara, as transcribed in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 60. Gambara’s opinions are contained in his letter to Borromeo of 13 January 1576, and in his Memoriale; see Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 60–­63.

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had been pressured by people in Tortona to found the new cathedral. This is not entirely credible because Della Chiesa appears as the predominant actor in the acts of the city council, the contracts, and the foundation ceremony for the new church.25 Gambara claimed that the cardinal misused papal approval for funding work on the cathedral, which should have gone to S. Stefano (and not a new church). He also stated that Della Chiesa laid the foundation stone for the building when Gambara was absent and gravely ill, all of which may have been correct. He noted the extreme poverty of the city and doubted whether the city officials, or any other authority, could or would provide the necessary money.26 It fell to Borromeo’s authorized vicar, Gerolamo Ragazzoni, to decide. From a Bergamasca family, Ragazzoni was a Venetian who had entered the church and briefly attended the final sessions of the Council of Trent. In 1561 he was named coadjutor bishop of Famagosta, a city on Cyprus that was wrested from the Venetians by the Ottoman Empire in 1571. Somehow (either by selection or by appointment) he had become Borromeo’s vicar for pastoral visits to a number of dioceses in the Milanese ecclesiastical province. Borromeo understood that various religious houses and churches could claim exemptions from episcopal control, and prior to conducting visitations he was always careful to obtain authority from the pope to override those privileges. He sought similar authorization for his vicars. A papal bull of 15 May 1575 invested Ragazzoni with wide-­ranging and irrefutable powers for a number of dioceses in the Milanese province; in technical terms, he had been nominated a visitor apostolic. Ragazzoni attended a provincial council in Milan and then began conducting the visitation of the diocese of Tortona, probably in early June 1576. He consigned decrees for the early portion of the visitations to Gambara on 29 October 1576. Because of the outbreak of the plague, with subsequent quarantines and diversions to avoid affected areas, Ragazzoni’s visitation was prolonged. He finished in 1577 and provided Gambara with another set of decrees on 2 December 1577. While conducting these visitations for Borromeo, Ragazzoni had been named bishop of Novara, but in 1577, he accepted the diocese of Bergamo in its stead. In all of his efforts, Ragazzoni proved himself to be a faithful collaborator of Borromeo; the two men 25.  The city council effectively supported Della Chiesa’s plans to enlarge the city when it approved them on 25 July 1570. In addition, see the contract between master mason Pietro Solarino da Breno and Cardinal Giovanni Paolo Della Chiesa for the construction of the cathedral (7 August 1574) and the official record of laying the foundation stone (10 September 1574), both in ASA, carte notaio G. A. Ribrocchi, faldone 2073, Notarile Tortona. See also Perin, La cattedrale de Tortona, 4–­5; Perin, “La città e il forte,” 57. 26.  Letter of Cesare Gambara to Carlo Borromeo, 13 January 1576, and Memoriale; see Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 60–­63.

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seemed to share common conceptions about their offices and the reforms necessary for the Catholic Church.27 It appears that Tortona’s long-­standing lack of a cathedral, and the disagreements over Della Chiesa’s project, had come to the attention of Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni (r. 1572–­85). By the summer of 1576—­or just shortly after the visitation of Tortona began—­papal funding had already been set aside for the cathedral and episcopal palace. On 14 August 1576 Ragazzoni wrote, N[ostro] S[ignore] rimette a me l’elettione del sito per far la fabbrica della Cathedrale in Tortona, la quale fu già cominciata dal cardinale Dalla Chiesa in un luogo che si chiama S. Quirino, il qual luogo a me pare, et così a tutta la città, molto a proposito ma non così a monsignor Vescovo il quale, se bene acconsentì allora che vi si gettassero i fondamenti, anzi ve li gettò esso stesso, si è poi, non so per che causa, mutato in tal proposito, et applicato l’animo alla chiesa di S. Stefano. [His Holiness has invested me with the authority to decide about the project for the cathedral in Tortona, which Cardinal Della Chiesa had begun on a site called S. Quirino. In my opinion, and that of everyone in the city, that site appears to be well suited to the purpose. However, it does not appear so to the bishop, even though he agreed to it when they laid the foundation stone (indeed, he laid it himself!). For some unknown reason, he has since changed his mind and insists upon staying at S. Stefano.]28

Ragazzoni’s report contradicts Gambara’s statements and the official records of the foundation ceremony, but the visitor decided in favor of Della Chiesa’s project. In early November money was about to be transferred, and Gambara relented: he participated in negotiations to obtain properties next to the cathedral, and then oversaw their radical renovation into the new episcopal residence. The pace of construction on the church increased, probably following the initial design.29 27. Bottani, Girolamo Ragazzoni, 13–­89; Tacchella, La riforma tridentina, 93. 28.  Letter from Gerolamo Ragazzoni to Carlo Borromeo, 14 August 1576, BAMi, F 136 inf., fol. 469r, as transcribed in Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 65. For the documentation about the funding, see the letters transcribed in ibid., 64–­65. 29.  The documents confirming the decision to proceed with Della Chiesa’s church (with papal funding, which also aimed at purchasing nearby property to serve as the episcopal palace) date to August 1576, and are transcribed in Perin, “Architettura,” 201–­3. The transfer of funding, and negotiations for purchasing the property for the episcopal palace, followed in the autumn of that year; Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 65, 67, 88, 96, 99–­100, 111–­14, 118, 125; Perin, La cattedrale de Tortona, 7–­13; Perin, “Architettura,” 57–­58. Other, later work on the cathedral includes a new design for the facade, which dates to the 1870s; see Perin, La cattedrale de Tortona, 7–­15; Perin, “Architettura,” 57–­77. For information on the episcopal palace, see De Carlini, “Per la storia,” 71–­76; Perin, “Architettura,” 80–­81, 201–­03.

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Other buildings in the proximity without doubt varied in design and quality, but they surrounded an area in front of the cathedral that was destined to be the new piazza. However the completion of that square—­requisitioning the buildings, demolishing them and paving the open area—­had been delayed by Della Chiesa’s death. This unsatisfactory state elicited the involvement of yet another patron, Cristierna of Denmark (1521–­90), daughter of King Christian II of Denmark (1481–1559) and niece of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–­58). In 1534 she had become the young bride of the last duke of Milan and then (after only seventeen months of marriage) his young widow. One part of the marriage negotiations had given her the city of Tortona and its territory. She maintained her rights to the city, even though she later married the duke of Lorraine and spent over forty years north of the Alps. Political vicissitudes made Cristierna’s presence in Lorraine incommodious, and the northern climate proved unhealthy for her, so she returned to Italy late in life and took up residence in Tortona from the summer of 1579 until her death in September of 1590. Throughout her life, Cristierna was a pawn in the international politics of the Habsburg dynasty. While she occupied the highest ranks of European nobility, her position was fundamentally compromised when her father was deposed from the Danish throne. Her status was then dependent upon her utility in serving the diplomatic needs of Charles V; her hand in marriage became a tool in solidifying the adhesion of peripheral or contested territories to the Holy Roman Empire. Following the death of her first husband (Francesco Maria Sforza, 1495–­1535), the duchy of Milan was absorbed into Habsburg lands, and eventually passed to Charles’s son Philip II of Spain (1527–­98). Despite Cristierna’s marriage to Duke Francis I of Lorraine (1517–­45), the Habsburg goals were not achieved: the duke’s untimely death provided an opportunity for France to exert its influence and bring the duchy more firmly into French orbit. Cristierna had to negotiate a difficult situation with little assistance from the Habsburgs. Her retreat to Tortona late in life demonstrates both her loss of status in Lorraine and her attempts to maintain some autonomy. Her later years included regular attempts to acquire funding from her cousin Philip II and to establish her rights as a fief-­ holder from the Spanish Crown.30 There is little documentation to indicate how the male protagonists in this story regarded her, but Borromeo’s letters always addressed her in a respectful manner. While in Tortona, Cristierna commissioned a discrete number of projects and she attended to the new piazza. Because that project dragged on, she appeared 30. Cammarata, Alla corte di Cristierna.

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at a meeting of the city council in the first half of 1588 to urge its completion. Some councilors walked out in protest, but the rest unanimously agreed to find a way to bring it to completion. Nevertheless, nothing happened and a few months later—­in July of 1588—­Cristierna had to attend another meeting to shame the councilors into acting. She was preparing to leave for her annual vacation and threatened not to return to Tortona if the obstructive buildings were not requisitioned and demolished. That was all the warning the councilors needed: they moved forward with the project, although the inevitable delays soon cropped up and the piazza was only completed years later.31 The history of this project reveals that a number of different patrons and promoters acted sequentially, but not always in concert. Even brief biographical studies reveal the great diversity in background, viewpoint, and motivation among them, rendering truly surprising their consensus on the buildings and urban space that Tortona required as a diocesan see. However, the bishop’s opposition and the politics of the process require further investigation. Gambara stated his opposition to the project because Pope Pius V had designated S. Stefano as the cathedral and there was no contravening decision or order. However, considering the frequency with which Gambara left his responsibilities in Tortona to attend to family matters, suddenly having qualms about such a point of ecclesiastical order seems out of character. One imagines that if he had sincerely wanted to transfer the cathedral, he would have found a way to do so. His opinion that after the death of Della Chiesa, the project’s influential and wealthy proponent, the new church would never be finished may have reflected years of hard experience. Tortona was, by all accounts, desperately poor, and the Spanish authorities had yet to make good on their promises of compensation for requisitioning the old cathedral and episcopal palace. With no other funding sources available, Gambara was just being practical. Gambara also suggested that the citizens of Tortona had pressured Della Chiesa into promoting the project. However, that is consistent with neither the documentary evidence nor Della Chiesa’s numerous plans for the city. Della Chiesa had attempted to manipulate religious institutions and the urban form of Tortona, sometimes to his own benefit. One clear example was his plan for the convent of S. Eufemia. Located close to the city walls and the newly expanded fortress, it was vulnerable to attack and lacked the impregnable visual enclosure required for the convent’s complete clausura. As a solution, Della Chiesa proposed to move the nuns 31.  Perin, “Appunti di ricerca,” 23–­25. For more on Cristierna, see Cammarata, Alla corte di Cristierna, 99–­103, 254–­55.

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into existing monastic buildings in the lower town, take possession of the convent, and develop it as his own villa suburbana.32 With less self-­interest, he also proposed to extend Tortona’s city walls to incorporate the extramural friary and church of S. Francesco, thereby enlarging the urban fabric of the lower town. So the new cathedral and its square appear to be consistent with Della Chiesa’s more magnanimous goals for Tortona: even though he was not the constituted religious authority, his project would beautify the city, bring greater glory to God, augment the prestige of the Catholic Church, and serve the bishop whether Gambara liked it or not. The discrepancies between Gambara’s statements and the reality of the situation suggest a hidden agenda; one senses umbrage over disregarded authority and perhaps also a political divide. Della Chiesa had clearly marginalized the bishop by forming a coalition with the cathedral’s canons and civic officers to support the project. In effect, he usurped the bishop’s prerogatives, and his energetic initiatives for the city may also have rankled Gambara, who found himself economically and politically hamstrung in so many ways. Yet the citizens of Tortona may have seen in Della Chiesa’s efforts a unique opportunity to develop the city. Neither they nor the bishop had the wherewithal to accomplish such sweeping changes to the urban form, and they may have welcomed such a munificent patron, regardless of the finer points of ecclesiastical authority. For their part, the canons of the cathedral may have believed that it was their prerogative to make crucial decisions about the cathedral. Always an important corporate body, a cathedral’s chapter in many cases was the preeminent ecclesiastical authority in a diocese because of the power vacuum left by a nonresident bishop. Canons had typically accumulated rights and privileges over the years through the absence of an effective bishop, the decisions of ecclesiastical authorities, or time-­honored practice, and this extended to the building fabric of the cathedral. Trent overturned that: the conciliar decrees placed many of the practical matters for the reform of the Catholic Church in the hands of the local bishop. They demanded that bishops reside in their episcopal sees, conduct themselves like men with a religious vocation, carry out traditional sacramental roles and administrative responsibilities, and shoulder some new tasks such as the foundation of seminaries.33 In addition, the bishop was given responsibility for the 32. Rozzo, Appunti per una storia, 21; Perin, “La città e il forte,” 57; Miotti, “Annotazioni storiche,” 21–­23. 33.  The general decree giving responsibility for reform to the bishops is Session VI (13 January 1547), “Decretum de residentia episcoporum et aliorum inferiorum,” chap. 1 in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner, 1:681–­82. Other important decrees include Session V (17 June 1546), “Decretum secondum: Super lectione et praedicatione,” 9, 10, 11; Session VII (3 March 1547), “Decretum Secondum: Super reformatione,” 7, 8; Session XIV (25 November 1551), “Decretum de reformatione,” Introduction; Session XXI (16 July

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churches in his diocese, including the sacred images and relics found in them.34 Considered contextually, this amounted to a restoration of the office;35 it assumed that a bishop would have authority over the canons and take responsibility for a number of tasks that they may have traditionally executed. Not surprisingly, this led to conflict between bishops and the cathedral chapters. In his scholarship on the cathedrals in Vercelli and Bologna, T. Barton Thurber has demonstrated how these conflicting privileges and authorities extended to the church buildings. He convincingly argued that the canons saw the old cathedrals with their hallowed walls and traditional spaces as appropriate settings for the old liturgies; they understood the accumulated inscriptions, memorials, and chapels to be physical manifestations of their constituted and time-­honored roles within the government and spiritual life of the Catholic Church. The bishops of Vercelli and Bologna desired new cathedrals for the reformed liturgies. They believed that the new buildings—­in both cases inspired by Roman architecture—­would represent the restored authority of the bishop and hierarchical organization of the church, with a papally appointed bishop governing the clergy and laity in his diocese. Interestingly, Pellegrino Tibaldi was involved in both projects. He produced a design for the new cathedral in Vercelli, although only the eastern sections were completed according to his scheme. His brother, Domenico (1541–­83), had responsibility for the cathedral in Bologna, and Pellegrino collaborated with him on it. That design, too, was only partially completed.36 There was also discord between canons and bishop in Tortona,37 and it is easy to imagine that many of the motives for antagonism seen in other dioceses also affected relations there. With regard to the cathedral project, however, the different camps found themselves in positions that were atypical: the canons did 1562), “Decretum de reformatione,” canons 6, 8; Session XXII (17 September 1562), “Decretum de observandis et vitandis in celebratione missarum”; Session XXIII (15 July 1563), 6, 7, and “Decreta super reformatione,” canons 1, 10–­18; Session XXIV (11 November 1563), “Decretum de reformatione,” canons 2–­4, 12; Session XXV (3–­4 December 1563), “Decretum de reformatione generali,” chap. 1 in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner, 1:669, 688, 714, 730–­31, 736–­37, 744–­45, 748–­53, 761–­63, 766–­67, 784. 34.  Session XXI (16 July 1562), “Decretum de reformatione,” canon 7; Session XXV (3–­4 December 1563), “De invocatione, veneratione et reliquiis sanctorum, et de sacris imaginibus,” in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner, 1:730–­31, 774–­76. 35.  Among the numerous sources, see Mullet, Catholic Reformation, 3–­68; Tellechea Idígoras, “El obispo ideal.” 36.  Thurber, “Architecture and Civic Identity”; Thurber, “Architecture and Religious Conflict,” 14–­160; Thurber, “L’architettura religiosa,” 395–­96; Thurber, “Pellegrino Tibaldi.” 37.  As in many other locations, the introduction of the reformed liturgy caused problems, although it occurred in Tortona rather late, in 1603; see Cammarata, Lettere da Tortona, 170.

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want the new cathedral, but the bishop did not. Gambara was well aware of rank; he clearly felt that the decision to build a new cathedral had been made by others whose ecclesiastical authority was inferior to his own. His Memoriale, sent to Archbishop Borromeo, attempted to convince his superior with all manner of arguments, from practical considerations and ecclesiastical process to innuendo, about the motivation for the project. Faced with the papal authority Ragazzoni wielded to decide that matter, Gambara had no option but to concede. Beyond these conflicts, the loss of the ancient cathedral could well have affected the religious sentiments of the people and clergy of Tortona. That building, probably dating to the ninth century, was a basilican-­plan church with rows of monolithic columns and apses at the end of each nave. The origins of the church were obscure, and to the Tortonesi it may have seemed to reach back to the very origins of Christian belief in their city. As the building fabric of cathedrals had layers of significance beyond the mere shelter that they provided for worship, so Tortona’s cathedral served as a sacred symbol of the religious and civic identity of the community. With the expansion of the Spanish fortifications on the hilltop, the cathedral—­deconsecrated, inaccessible, and turned into a powder magazine (and consequently blown up by a lightning strike in 1609)38—­no longer fulfilled that role. How to best fill that void and repair the fabric of religious continuity in Tortona must have been a consideration in the minds of all of the Tortonesi. S. Stefano could suffice, but almost everyone agreed that the new cathedral would be better. Into this fray stepped Borromeo and his representative, Ragazzoni. When considering Tortona, Borromeo surely considered issues about authority and jurisdiction. In his own archdiocese, he appears to have had some difficulties in reorganizing and reforming the diocesan clergy, but his conflicts with the religious orders were legendary, culminating in an attempt on Borromeo’s life by a former friar of the Humiliati order. Similarly, he skirmished with the laity and nobility in Milan about customs and burial practices, and his ongoing conflicts with the Spanish authorities were never fully resolved in his lifetime.39 In the conflicts in Tortona, one would expect Borromeo to have sided with the local bishop out of principle, and bow to Pius V’s decision about the cathedral, which had been neither superseded nor countermanded. For his part, Ragazzoni must have been keenly aware of the divide between a bishop’s ideal authority and the contemporary state of ecclesiastical affairs. However, Borromeo had authority over Tortona, and the pope had charged Ragazzoni with making decisions about the 38. Montemerlo, Raccoglimento di Nuova Historia, 395–96. 39.  See the citations in note 8 above.

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cathedral and disbursing papal funds. With Ragazzoni’s advice, Borromeo agreed to support the project for the new cathedral and the new ecclesiastical center. He appears to have decided that they would benefit the Catholic Church in the long run, regardless of the precedent set by the particulars of the project’s history. When Ragazzoni and Borromeo decided in favor of Della Chiesa’s project, Gambara had no option but to capitulate. The bishop had to acquiesce to a coalition of religious and civic officers who had succeeded in usurping his own rights and responsibilities because higher ecclesiastical authorities decided in their favor. The fact that Ragazzoni brought papal funding for the cathedral project should have assuaged at least some of Gambara’s opposition to it. In the end, the bishop participated in the project, notably overseeing the continued construction of the cathedral, its furnishing and consecration; he also supervised the acquisition of property for the palace and its renovation. This history demonstrates that many people—­often with diverse backgrounds or on opposite sides of ecclesiastical debates—­held common conceptions about what a city required in terms of architecture and urbanism in order to serve as a diocesan see. In the case of Tortona, the proponents of Della Chiesa’s project agreed that a cathedral ought to be located in the principal public space in the center of town, forming an ecclesiastical center with the episcopal palace (if not other ecclesiastical buildings). Some of those conceptions were traditional; many northern Italian cities had ecclesiastical centers focused on the cathedral and bishop’s palace. Yet medieval cathedrals in Italy were sometimes on the edge of what had been the ancient city, on a site hallowed by the patronage of saints and continuous worship. Such had been the case for Milan’s principal church, although the city expanded around the cathedral in the post-­antique period so that it came to be in the center of the sixteenth-­century city.40 Tortona’s new cathedral was in the center of the inhabited town by design; it was freestanding and at the far end (with respect to the major points of entry) of a large, regular rectangular piazza. Obviously the proponents of Tortona’s new ecclesiastical center considered its combination of monumental architecture and ideal space to be appropriate for a cathedral. Considered in terms of Renaissance theory, the new center can be interpreted as proclaiming an ecclesiastical basis for the structure of the city. In his treatise De Re Aedificatoria, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–­72) had proposed that 40.  Important examples of ecclesiastical centers are located in Florence, Parma, and Milan. Originally, the locations of the Florentine and Milanese cathedrals were on the periphery of the Roman cities. For information on Milan’s ecclesiastical center see Ceresa Mori, “L’isolata in età romana.”

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architecture (and urban form) could describe the organization of a city, and in one specific passage he advocated establishing churches as fulcrum points for urban districts. He actually allowed for a variety of specific locations for “temples,” but among his suggestions are the qualities found in Tortona’s new piazza: the cathedral was in the center of the city, on a busy and principle square, freestanding and visible.41 Alberti’s text continued to be a reference point for sixteenth-­century architects, as evidenced by both the 1565 translation that Cosimo Bartoli (1503–­72) published, and the unfinished theoretical work of Pellegrino Tibaldi. At the end of his career, Tibaldi worked on a commentary of Alberti, preceded by his own prescriptions for urban design and architecture. He described the city as a series of piazze, the most important of which presented churches as civic monuments, both functional and symbolic. Given Tibaldi’s role in Borromeo’s architectural program and in various northern Italian cathedral projects (Milan, Vercelli, Bologna, and, in some capacity, Tortona), his writings may be considered to record the contemporary ideal. Tortona’s new ecclesiastical center proclaimed the city a diocesan see; it is an example of descriptive, Renaissance urban form utilized for the needs of the Tridentine Catholic Church.42 Historically, political authorities were often the patrons of cathedrals, paying for and making decisions about the buildings. Again, the examples of Florence’s and Milan’s cathedrals (whose initial construction was funded and directed by the civic government and the Visconti dukes, respectively) demonstrate that reality in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, the situation appears to have changed after the Council of Trent. As seen in the cases of the contemporary projects for the cathedrals in Vercelli and Bologna, the bishop ideally made the decisions about his cathedral, yet reality sometimes contravened. In Vercelli, opposition by the canons was so vociferous and support for the new project so weak as to delay the project significantly. In Bologna, civic attention to the church of S. Petronio left the canons without the support of the city government, and the bishops were able to achieve their plans for the cathedral, albeit slowly and cautiously. The history of Tortona contrasts with that pattern, suggesting that in the complicated world of real versus ideal, alliances and funding made all the difference. Surprisingly, the cathedral in Tortona also differed from the other cathedrals in the speed of its completion. At Vercelli, only the eastern end of the new design 41.  It should be noted that Alberti’s prescriptions sometimes contradict each other, and therefore Tortona’s new center appears to disregard some of Alberti’s suggestions; Alberti, On the Art, IV.1 (pp. 92–­95), V.6 (126), VII.1–­VII.5 (190–­99). 42. Alberti, L’Architectura, ed. Bartoli; Pellegrini, L’Architettura, ed. Panizza; Simoncini, “Umanesimo, religiosità e scienze.”

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was completed in 1581, but the rest of the old cathedral remained in an incongruous conjunction with the new for over a century. The project to complete the building proceeded according to a new design that turned Tibaldi’s centralized plan into a composite plan, with domed crossing and nave. At Bologna, the crossing and choir were completed within nine years, or in 1584. Apparently the new construction compromised the vaulting in the rest of the church, and reconstruction of the nave and chapels began in 1605 with plans that differed significantly from the Tibaldi brothers’ original design. Construction continued up to 1622, but the façade was only completed in the 1740s.43 At Tortona, construction continued until the cathedral’s completion, unevenly but without an extended hiatus. By the end of 1584, the building was half complete, however the chancel was outfitted with the necessary furnishings and Bishop Gambara was officiating in it. By the end of the century, the brick structure of the façade was completed and finishes on the interior surfaces were well underway. The architectural articulation of the original facade was begun in 1602, and the final bays of vaulting were completed soon after 1610.44 Thus it was Tortona’s cathedral, initially unwanted by its bishop, that was finished more rapidly than other contemporary examples. The example of Tortona may be unique in Tridentine Italy because of the specific combination of forces that promoted the cathedral without (or perhaps even in spite of) the bishop. The great diversity among its proponents renders their common approval of the urbanism and architecture of the new ecclesiastical center unexpected, or even surprising. Nevertheless Tortona teaches important lessons about Tridentine bishops in northern Italy: 1) they did not immediately enjoy the ideal autonomy and authority imagined by the church fathers gathered at Trent; and 2) they were not the only patrons who understood the nature of architecture and urbanism required to serve the church, and even represent it, in the context of a reformed Catholicism.

43.  Thurber, “Architecture and Civic Identity,” 473–­74; Thurber, “Architecture and Religious Conflict,” 141–­60; Thurber, “Pellegrino Tibaldi,” 162. 44.  See citations in note 29 above.

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Archivio di Stato di Alessandria. Notarile Tortona. Archivio di Stato di Torini. Catasti, Tortona. Archivio storico diocesano di Milano. Carteggio “Extraprovinciali.” Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. Manuscript codices.

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Alberti, Leon Battistia. L’Architectura di Leon Batista Alberti, tradotta in lingua fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli gentil’huomo & accademico fiorentino. Con l’aggiunta de disegni. Et altri diversi trattati del medesimo autore. Edited by Cosimo Bartoli. Monteregale: Leonardo Torrentino, 1565. ———. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. Annuali della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano. Milan, 1881. Cammarata, Italo. Lettere da Tortona: La storia della città nella corrispondenza dei vescovi bresciani Gambara con Carlo e Federico Borromeo. Voghera: Edo-­Edizioni Oltrepò, 2003. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Edited by Norman P. Tanner. London: Sheed and Ward, 1990. Montemerlo, Niccolò. Raccoglimento di Nuova Historia dell’Antica città di Tortona. Tortona: N. Viola, 1618. Reprinted, Bologna: Forni, 1973. Pellegrini, Pellegrino. L’Architettura. Edited by Giorgio Panizza. Trattati di architettura 7. Milan: Il Polifilo, 1990. Vera relatione del successo dell’archibuggiata tirata a S. Carlo Borromeo, arcivescovo di Milano (N.d.) Edited by Giulia Bologna. Milan: La Vita Felice, 1995.

Secondary Sources

Alexander, John. From Renaissance to Counter-­Reformation: The Architectural Patronage of Carlo Borromeo during the Reign of Pius IV. Fonti e Studi 7. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Bendiscioli, Mario.“Politica, amministrazione e religione nell’età dei Borromei.” In Storia di Milano, 10:200–­35. Milan: Fondazione Traccani degli Alfieri, 1957. Baroni, Costantino. Il Collegio Borromeo. Pavia: Tipografia già Cooperativa, 1937. Berruti, Aldo. Tortona insigne: Un millennaio di storia delle famiglie tortonesi. Tortona: Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona, 1978. Bottani, Tarcisio. Girolamo Ragazzoni, vescovo di Bergamo. Bergamo: Editrice Corponove, 1994. Buratti Mazzotta, Adele. “L’ufficio per le fabbriche ecclesiastiche e i suoi disegni di progetto e di restauro nella riforma di Carlo e Federico Borromeo.” In Studi in onore di Mons. Angelo Majo, per il suo 70o compleanno, edited by Fausto Ruggeri and Angelo Majo, 149–­61. Milan: NED, 1996.

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Cammarata, Italo. Alla corte di Cristierna: Quando Tortona aveva una regina. Voghera: Edo-­Edizione Oltrepò, 2009. Cartasegna, Roberto. Una città fortificata di confine: Tortona nei secoli. Tortona: Litocoop Srl, 2009. Ceresa Mori, Anna. “L’isolata in età romana.” In Domus Ambrosii: Il complesso monumentale dell’Arcivescovado, edited by Adele Buratti Mazzotta, 21–­34. Milan: Silvana, 1994. Cortemiglia, Gian Camillo. “Le porte urbiche e le cinte murarie difensive nella storia dell’insediamento abitativo di Tortona.” Iulia Dertona ser. 2, 54.94 (2006): 15–­54. De Carlini, Giuseppe. “I Gambara: Testimonianze a Tortona e in diocesi.” In Fasti e splendore dei Gambara: L’apice della potente famiglia bresciana in età rinascimentale e barocca, edited by Dezio Paoletti, 215–­19. Brescia: Grafo, 2010. ———. “Note di demografia storica tortonese (sec. XV–­XIX).” Iulia Dertona ser. 2, 44.74 (1996): 5–­25. ———. “Per la storia del Palazzo Vescovile.” Iulia Dertona ser. 2, 55.95 (2007): 71–­92. Giordano, S. “Gambara, Cesare.” In Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 52:37–­38. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 1999. Miotti, Fausto. “Annotazioni storiche sul colle Ronchetto tra i secoli XVI e XVII.” Iulia Dertona ser. 2, 50.85 (2002): 21–­23. Mols, Roger. “Charles Borromée, (Saint), cardinal, archevêque de Milan (2 oct. 1538–†­3 nov. 1584).” In Dictionnaire d’histoire et géographie ecclesiastiques, edited by Alfred Baudrillart et al., 12:486–­534. Paris: Letousey et Ané, 1953. Mullet, Michael A. The Catholic Reformation. London: Routledge, 1999. Pagano, Sergio. Il cardinale Uberto Gambara, vescovo di Tortona. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1995. Perin, Antonella. “Appunti di ricerca sulla sistemazione cinquecentesca di piazza del Duomo.” In Storia, arte e restuaro nel tortonese: Il palazzetto medioevale dipinti e sculture, edited by Pierluigi Giussani, 23–­25. Tortona: Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona, 1993. ———. “Architettura tra Controriforma e Barocco nel tortonese.” Undergraduate thesis, Politecnico di Torino, 1988–­89. ———. La cattedrale di Tortona. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1992. ———. “La città e il forte nel XVI secolo.” In Tortona e il suo castello dal dominio spagnolo al periodo postunitartio, edited by Vera Comoli Mandracci and Anna Marotta, 53–­ 56. Alessandria: Cassa di Risparmio di Alessandria, 1995. ———. “Nuovi documenti sulla costruzione del forte spagnolo di Tortona.” In La difesa della Lombardia spagnola, edited by Graziella Colmuto Zanella and Lucaino Roncai, 297–­303. Cremona: Ronca editore, 2004. Rozzo, Ugo. “Appunti per una storia urbana di Tortona fino al primo Ottocento.” In Storia urbana di Tortona, 5–­26. Quaderini della Biblioteca civica 5. Tortona: N.p., 1983. ———. “Della Chiesa (Chiesa), Gian Paolo.” In Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 36:751–­53. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1988.

Office and Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Tortona  87 Serangeli, Sergio, and Raffaella Zambuto. “Sui rapporti tra Gesuiti e Università di Macerata: una fonte male intesa.” Annali di Storia delle Università italiane 9 (2005): unpaginated (http://www.cisui.unibo.it/annali/09/testi/18Serangeli-Zambuto_ frameset.htm). Simoncini, Giorgio. “Umanesimo, religiosità e scienze della natura nella concezione architettonica di Pellegrino Tibaldi.” In “L’Architettura” di Leon Battista Alberti nel commento di Pellegrino Tibaldi, edited by Giorgio Simoncini, 11–­43. Rome: De Luca Edizioni d’Arte, 1988. Tacchella, Lorenzo. “Cesare Gambara Vescovo di Tortona e riformatore.” Iulia Dertona ser. 2, 23/24/25 (1975–­77): 6–­12. ———. La riforma tridentina nella diocesi di Tortona. Genoa: Mario Bozzi, 1966. Tellechea Idígoras, J. “El obispo ideal segùn el Concilio de Trento.” In I tempi del Concilio: Religione, cultura e società nell’Europe tridentina, edited by Cesare Mozzarelli and Danilo Zardin, 207–­20. Rome: Bulzoni, 1997. Thurber, T. Barton. “Architecture and Civic Identity in Late Sixteenth-­Century Bologna: Domenico and Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Projects for the Rebuilding of the Cathedral of San Pietro and Andrea Palladio’s Designs for the Façade of the Basilica of San Petronio.” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 455–­66. ———. “Architecture and Religious Conflict in Late Sixteenth-­Century Italy: Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Planned Reconstruction of the Vercelli Cathedral.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1994. ———. “L’architettura religiosa nell’arcidiocesi di Carlo Borromeo.” In Il secondo Cinquecento: Storia dell’architettura italiana, edited by Claudia Conforti and Richard J. Tuttle, 390–­405. Milan: Electa, 2001. ———. “Pellegrino Tibaldi and the Rebuilding of Cathedrals in Post Tridentine Italy: The Planned Reconstruction of the Duomo di Vercelli.” Studia Borromaica 11 (1997): 153–­66. Vigo, Giovanni. “La città di Cristierna: Un’immagine dell’economia di Tortona alla fine del Cinquecento.” Rivista milanese di economia 69–­70 (1999): 149–­61. Viscardi, Bruna. Pralboino, Milzano e Verolanuova, feudo dei Gambara. Brescia: N.p., 1994.

The Absentee Bishop in Residence

Paris de’ Grassi, Bishop of Pesaro, 1513–­28 Jennifer Mara DeSilva In a treatise of 1513 delineating targets of reform within the church, the Camaldolese monks Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini established the bishop as the foundation of a pious and orthodox, well-­organized and well-­behaved community. Describing the bishop as “the attentive observer” (l’attento osservatore),1 Giustiniani and Quirini emphatically argued that his physical presence was the key to his pastoral success. As the mediator between elite prelates and local clergy, the bishop was responsible for the supervision, education, and reform of the members of his diocese, and could only achieve this by offering himself as a model for correct behaviour. Thus the early modern ideal bishop became a “living example” (vivum exemplum) in piety, morality, discipline, and community involvement.2 Through the sixteenth century, as more voices called for ecclesiastical reform and self-­described “reformed” churches grew, the Catholic elite clung to Giustiniani and Quirini’s identification of the bishop as the linchpin for pastoral success. When the Council of Trent (1545–­63) proposed strategies for combating the Protestant threat, the episcopate carried the burden of responsibility for action. The sixth session ( January 1547) promulgated Decretum de residentia 1.  “[I]l vescovo è propriamente l’attento osservatore, tu [il papa], il perfetto Vescovo dei Vescovi, costituto come l’osservatore più premuroso sopra tutti i Vescovi nel più alto osservatorio”; Giustiniani and Quirini, Lettera al Papa, ed. Bianchini, 86. 2.  Giustiniani and Quirini placed the bishop as an implicit model and corrector within the clerical and lay communities; ibid., 126.

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episcoporum et aliorum inferiorum, elevating Giustiniani and Quirini’s model of episcopal residence to nearly a Tridentine commandment.3 While the decretum acknowledged that prelates might also undertake administrative or diplomatic tasks that kept them away from their diocese, the Tridentine fathers mandated that extended and unnecessary absences could incur the pain of interdict.4 In the world of Catholic renewal, establishing a bulwark against Protestant expansion by protecting the diocese from ignorance and heresy was more important than the church’s need for competent administrators based in Rome. Only decades earlier, when Martin Luther first became known to Pope Leo X de’ Medici (r. 1513–­21), the situation had been reversed. The rapidly expanding papal court necessitated educated clergy to fill secretarial, juridical, and diplomatic roles in the church administration.5 While the many attractions of employment in Rome made episcopal absenteeism a common practice, through the early sixteenth century, criticism of nonresident bishops grew. In a treatise entitled The Office of the Bishop (1517) Gasparo Contarini (1483–­1542), the Venetian diplomat, future cardinal, and friend of the Camaldolese reformers, called the practice “the disaster of our times,” disparaging those men who “think they are performing their duty well enough if they shall have handed over the city’s management to a procurator, while they take over the income.”6 Contarini’s words echo the distaste of Francesco Guicciardini, another sixteenth-­century lay diplomat whose intimate interactions with the church resulted in contempt and criticism in his History of Italy (1537–­40). The words of both Guicciardini and Contarini have had an immense effect on the historical judgment of the early modern church and both its need and desire to be reformed. Where Contarini saw episcopal behavior in black and white, many contemporary clergy practiced various shades of light and dark.

3.  “In omnibus laborent et ministerium suum impleant. Implere autem illud se nequaquam posse sciant, si greges sibi commissos mercenariorum more deserant atque ovium suarum, quarum sanguis de eorum est manibus a supremo iudice requirendus, custodiae minime incumbant, cum certissimum sit, non admitti pastoris excusationem, si lupus oves comedit, et pastor nescit.” Sessio VI, “De residential I,” in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, 658; Prosperi, “La figura del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento,” 255. 4.  “Crescente vero contumacia, ut severiori sacrorum canonum censurae subiiciatur, metropolitanus suffrageneos episcopos absentes, metropolitanianum vero absentem suffraganeus episcopus antiquior residens sub poena interdicti ingressus ecclesiae eo ipso incurrenda infra tres menses per litteras seu nuntium Romano pontifici denuntiare teneatur”; Sessio VI, “De residential I,” in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, 658. 5. Partner, The Pope’s Men; D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome. 6.  Contarini wrote his treatise at the request of the adolescent bishop-­elect of Bergamo, Pietro Lippomano; Contarini, Office of a Bishop, trans. and ed. Donnelly, 13–­14, 69.

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Until recently, the intricacies and the reality of episcopal absenteeism have attracted few scholars. Perhaps this is due to the complexities of defining abuse, collecting evidence across many dioceses and episcopates, and weighing the real costs and benefits to the bureaucratic church and the Catholic faithful.7 Yet, as Paul V. Murphy has shown in his study of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (bp. of Mantova, 1521–­63), a more profitable historical focus examines interactions across ecclesiastical offices and the lay-­clerical divide in order to banish the bipolar spectrum of corruption and reformation, and investigate a plethora of intermediary positions.8 In pursuit of similar variegated shades and practices, this essay seeks to uncover the connections that a single bishop, Paris de’ Grassi, established with his diocese in an effort to fulfill the contemporary call to reform the local church while managing his own absenteeism. Throughout his tenure as the bishop of Pesaro (1513–­28), Paris de’ Grassi also served as the master of ceremonies at the papal court (1504–­28), which prevented his continuous residence in his bishopric.9 Nonetheless, he maintained a relationship with his diocese that involved several visits made over the fifteen years of his episcopate.10 While none of the visits lasted more than three months, during these brief periods de’ Grassi modeled his behavior on the contemporary reform ideals known to Contarini, Giustiniani, and Quirini, and discussed at the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–­17). As a participant in its sessions and as the liturgical director of the Council,11 de’ Grassi had intimate knowledge of the tension between the popular ideal of the pastoral bishop resident in his diocese and the commonality of episcopal absenteeism. During his episcopate, de’ Grassi carried out an examination and reform of the cathedral chapter, established himself as a 7.  While Adriano Prosperi sees in sixteenth-­century authors two episcopal models—­“good” oriented toward the cure of souls and “evil” oriented towards wealth and power—­D. S. Chambers ends his study of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga’s arguments excusing non-­residence by stating “that the definition of abuse in that period was no simple matter.” Chambers, “Defence of Non-­Residence in the later Fifteenth Century,” 624; Prosperi, “La figura del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento,” 253–­254. 8. Murphy, Ruling Peacefully; Murphy, “A Worldly Reform.” 9.  From a practical perspective, the financial rewards of episcopal residence were slim in comparison to the income that de’ Grassi collected at the papal court to fund his ecclesiastical patronage. Before subtracting any reserved pensions, the bishop of Pesaro received three hundred ducats as an annual stipend; Hay, Church in Italy, 112. For de’ Grassi’s income from his duties at the papal court see DeSilva, Ritual negotiations, chap. 2 and app. 1–­3. 10.  This article will not discuss de’ Grassi’s last visit to Pesaro, made only weeks before his death in 1528. According to his colleague Biagio Martinelli, he traveled from Pesaro to the papal court at Orvieto, staying from 17 to 23 May, in order to resign his post as ceremonialist. However, after returning to Pesaro, de’ Grassi quickly departed for Rome, where he died on 10 June. There are no other references to this episcopal visit and it is probable that if de’ Grassi arrived in Pesaro, he did not stay long or participate in the public events or initiatives that characterized his other visits; BAV, Ms. Vat. lat. 12276, Martinelli, Diaria, 103. 11.  Minnich, “Paride de Grassi’s Diary.”

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patron of the local community, built connections with local spiritual protectors, and cultivated good spiritual models for the laity. Moreover, de’ Grassi’s absenteeism encouraged him to cooperate with the institutions already established, including confraternities, in order to direct reform and pastoral care to the widest audience most efficiently. His contributions to Pesaro, while intermittent, were a combination of architectural, liturgical, and charitable projects that emphasized utility, both earthly and spiritual, to assist a community just emerging from a period of political and military strife.

Pesaro and the Bishop de’ Grassi As Giuseppe Alberigo has shown, Giustiniani and Quirini wrote that the bishop should reform his subjects by observing four rules: legitimate election, a virtuous life, exemplary relations with preachers and ecclesiastical institutions, and cultivation of the life of the good shepherd.12 In the same vein, Contarini maintained the importance of episcopal residence, theological knowledge, virtue, and activity, but avoided specifying how to implement these attributes beyond episcopal visitations and “employing all diligence and effort in governing his flock.”13 While these strategies might have inspired a reputation for holiness and commitment to the community, it was hardly radical theology or a particularly detailed plan for leadership. There is little discussion of how to build the virtuous city beyond traditional modeling of personal sanctity and supervision. What is absent from the contemporary discussion of reform of the early modern episcopacy is a practical plan for bishops who wished to emulate this ideal but could commit only intermittent residence to their see. These men needed a clear vision of how to work in tandem with local institutions in order to maximize their resources, establish an authoritative presence, and use their time most effectively. While the scattered nature of episcopal records prevents collecting a complete understanding of the early modern episcopal experience, Paris de’ Grassi’s connection to the papal court, the heart of reform discussions, and his repeated visits to Pesaro suggest him as a realistic model of episcopal action in the pre-­ Tridentine age. While it is likely that de’ Grassi considered himself to be as pious, learned, and eager as the good shepherd enjoined by Quirini and Giustiniani, his general inaccessibility ruled out the model of the “attentive observer.” Instead, de’ Grassi combined the personal virtue described by contemporary reformers 12.  Alberigo, “Reform of the Episcopate,” 145. 13. Contarini, Office of a Bishop, trans. and ed. Donnelly, 67.

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with an emphasis on contributions to local institutions that reformers implied but did not describe in detail. An examination of de’ Grassi’s interactions with the Pesaresi and his initiatives suggest his adoption of a custodial model that incorporated both spiritual and physical needs. In the period from 1500 to 1523, characterized by political change and military threat, the city and citizens of Pesaro needed a more practical model of care than one that hinged on dispelling ignorance and modeling virtue. Although the image of the good shepherd is traditionally invoked to symbolize spiritual and emotional guidance, de’ Grassi’s custodial model focused on renovating public ecclesiastical spaces, revitalizing the bishop’s interactions with lay confraternities, and establishing strong connections between the city and its spiritual intercessors. Through these goals, de’ Grassi took responsibility for the fabric, the souls, and the protectors of his diocese with the intention of renewing Pesaro’s faith, the episcopal throne, and the city itself. Between his provision in April 1513 and his death in June 1528, de’ Grassi made at least three working visits to Pesaro. The distinction of “working visit” is important since de’ Grassi had no intention of residing permanently in Pesaro. The brevity of these visits, which mixed both administrative (ecclesiastical) and liturgical (public) events, coupled with the high rate of activity leads to the belief that de’ Grassi envisioned his role in Pesaro as one of active contribution, rather than passive observation or silent and implicit modeling. Compared to his colleague bishops at the papal court, who spent little time in their dioceses as episcopal leaders, de’ Grassi’s activity suggests both interest and enthusiasm for the pastoral responsibilities of the episcopacy at a time when Pesaro desperately needed a protector.14 The city’s period of political and economic instability began in October 1500 when Cesare Borgia’s army approached Pesaro, causing a division among the citizens between defending their lord Giovanni Sforza and supporting the pope.15 Borgia and his army entered the city, publicly embraced cooperative government with Il Popolo and set fire to many of the public buildings and archives as a destructive sign of the change in leadership.16 On 3 September 1503, following 14.  Certainly, it is difficult to gauge how de’ Grassi’s involvement compared to that of other bishops living in Rome, since individual responsibilities, distance, personal connection, and length of episcopate were such important influencing factors. Nonetheless, Paul Murphy asserts that “the nearly complete lack of other Italian bishops who resided in and reformed their dioceses in the 1530s and 1540s makes the examples of Giberti and Gonzaga rather unique”; Ruling Peacefully, 47. 15.  Lettere di Galeazzo Sforza, ed. Feliciangeli. 16.  Rafael Sabatini’s description of “the splendid discipline” supposedly ingrained in Borgia’s troops is not borne out by eyewitness reports; Sabatini, Life of Cesare Borgia, 124–­26; Bertuccioli, Mutamenti governativi, 24–­25.

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the death of Pope Alexander VI and the arrest of Cesare, Giovanni returned to Pesaro, prompting the remains of Borgia’s army to fortify themselves within the Rocca and turn its artillery on the city, severely damaging parts of the bell towers of the cathedral and the church of San Francesco as well as other buildings. Citizens who had supported the pope fled, and their neighbors sacked the abandoned houses and set fire a second time to the books and records of the fallen regime.17 On 3 June 1516, war returned to Pesaro as Francesco Maria della Rovere, the duke of Urbino, met the Medici army in battle outside the city.18 Many armed citizens assembled in the Piazza Persino while the gates of the city stood open and “tutti andati con Dio.” The arrival of the Medici army in the contado resulted in a scarcity of food and the maltreatment of locals by billeted soldiers.19 On 1 July 1516, Pope Leo X invested Lorenzo de’ Medici with the lordship of Pesaro in consistory at Rome, while a correspondent of the Venetian Signoria wrote that the territory “had been so ruined that he was unable to describe the great damage.”20 Only a few months later, Francesco Maria returned and the city experienced an even more damaging attack that returned de facto control, if not de iure control, of Pesaro to the former duke.21 On 6 February 1517, he entered Urbino with seven hundred men and at mid-­month had driven the papal garrison into the Rocca under bombardment. By the end of February, della Rovere’s men had sacked the town of Fano and another castello between Fano and Pesaro. In response to these signs of strength, the pope made plans to strike by sea in order to intercept the ships that carried provisions to Pesaro and to eject della Rovere’s troops from the countryside.22 On 4 March in Pesaro, a mix of mercenaries, hired but not yet paid by the pope, attacked the Palazzo del Podestà, destroyed many of its records, and stole provisions. Witnesses declared that the papal commander 17. Bertuccioli, Mutamenti governativi, 25. 18.  Francesco Maria, supported by 1,500 men, fought virilmente, but was still forced to flee. The Rocca remained for a month under della Rovere control, falling to the Medici army on 6 July 1516; Sanudo, I diarii, 22:273, 277, 286, 312, 353–­54. 19.  “Sumario di una letera scrita in Pexaro a dì 14 Zugno per Piero di Marzetto . . .” included in ibid., 22:309–­12. 20.  “Ha ruinato questa terra di sorta che non il posso dire el danno grando; [ . . . ] Credeva mi ruinasse la casa de le bombarde. Non posso scriver el danno zeneral è stato per tutta questa cità, di sort ache non pare più sia Pexaro: tutta la terra piena di ledame e fango e mosche, di sort ache non si pol viver e si crepa. E gran carestia di roba di magnare per la grandissima moltitudine di brigata vi sono”; Bortolomeo and Joanni di Nari, “Sumario di una letera scrita in Pexaro a dì 6 Lujo 1516 . . .” included in ibid., 22:342, 353–­54. 21.  Ibid., 23:569. 22.  Ibid., 23:570, 590, 598, 601, 610; 24:12, 34.

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Signor Renzo Orsini had allowed his soldiers to wreak great destruction on the city.23 When the pope finally made a truce with Francesco Maria, the treaty grew out of the pope’s inability to continue funding the war rather than an acknowledgement of local exhaustion or Francesco Maria’s greater strength or prior claim to the duchy.24 As Antonio Carile has argued, Pesaro’s strained economic resources did not justify the effort expended by papal dynasts,25 whose interest in the city was just a small part of strategies designed to appropriate a permanent place in the Italian peninsula and signori.26 Nonetheless, their attacks on the city and its government established a fragile and exigent environment that undoubtedly influenced de’ Grassi’s model of the bishop as a custodian of both physical and spiritual health. Where Contarini and the Camaldolese monks privileged observation as a tool for monitoring orthodox belief and moral living, de’ Grassi focused on the practical issues of rebuilding spaces for worship, participating in lay religious rituals, and patronizing local cults. Moreover, the instability of Pesaro’s secular leadership implicitly put a greater emphasis on the permanence and dependability of episcopal leadership. De’ Grassi’s absence from the city was mitigated somewhat by his willingness to aid local institutions with episcopal money and his public interactions with members of his diocese. The bishop’s initiatives were neither silent nor emanating from a distant and unknown authority, as on each visit he publicized his custodial leadership through events and contributions that fortified Pesaro’s clergy, institutions, and spiritual protectors. While de’ Grassi received provision to the bishopric of Pesaro in April 1513 and wasted no time in being consecrated at Pentecost,27 he did not hurry to visit his diocese. Only in January 1515 could de’ Grassi spare three months away from Rome to visit Pesaro, returning in time to participate in the tenth session of the 23.  Ibid., 24:48–­49, 53, 81, 99–­100. 24.  Although Francesco Maria successfully reoccupied the duchy, Leo refused to invest him with the title of duke even after the death of Lorenzo in 1519. Only in 1522 did Leo’s successor, Pope Hadrian VI, confirm Francesco Maria as duke, and the ducal court take up residence in Pesaro. There is a copy of the brief that Pope Leo sent to the city of Pesaro confirming the continuance of papal rule after Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death in 1519 in BOP, ms. 380, III, Memorie di Pesaro, fols. 5r–­v: “Breve Leonis X ad civitate Pisauri post mortem Laurentij Medices.” See also von Pastor, History of the Popes, 7:210–­12; Verstegen, “Francesco Maria and the Duchy of Urbino,” 146–­48. 25.  Popes Alexander VI, Julius II, and Leo X all desired the same goal: to assure the security of Rome and expand his family’s rule beyond Florence by bestowing a hereditary papal vicariate on a lay nephew. 26.  “La sua costituzionale fragilità e inadeguatezza economica furono la causa dei disagi ricorrenti sotto forma di crisi militari fra XIV e XV secolo, fino al ingresso dei della Rovere, che di tale regime rappresentò una momento di sintesi”; Carile, “Pesaro nel Medioevo,” 47. 27.  BAV, Vat. lat. 12275, de Grassi, Diarium, fols. 27r–­v (4 April 1513), 41v–­42r (15 May 1513).

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Fifth Lateran Council (4 May 1515).28 In contrast to his episcopal predecessor, Albertino della Rovere (bp. 1508–­13), who never visited Pesaro,29 all of de’ Grassi’s visits were a whirlwind of organized activities.30 The chief intent of this first visit was to establish his personal connection and authority as bishop through the ritual of episcopal possession (28 February 1515).31 Once established in his see, de’ Grassi’s first acts focused on physical and spiritual reconstruction, reflecting the episcopal custodian’s responsibility for both the body and soul of the individual and the community. Thus, de’ Grassi immediately hired an architect to rebuild the cathedral’s bell tower. Inside the church, he engaged a sculptor to build a marble chest (arca) that would enclose the remains of San Terenzio (il Protettore), offering the saint greater protection and prestige, and the community hope for the future.32 Assuredly, there were no more public monuments to the church and its dependents than the city’s patron saint and the campanile, whose presence and assistance were simultaneously spiritual, patriotic, and constant. In order to repair the damage done to the Pesarese population, on this first visit the new bishop declared that on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (15 August) dowries would be provided to twelve honorable and poor virgins.33 The donation of dowries was a popular form of charity that sought to create new households that functioned as building blocks of the local economy, microcosms of the Christian community, and purposefully encouraged population growth.34 Dowry provision was simultaneously a spiritual and social act that could not fail 28.  De’ Grassi’s diary records that he left Rome on 11 January and remained in Pesaro until Easter 1515; BAV, Vat. lat. 12275, de Grassi, Diarium, fols. 130r–­v. 29.  Cambrini, “Le Constitutiones Antiquae,” 60n3. Cambrini cites the claim of the local historian Teofilo Betti in his Cronica Vescovile Pesarese. 30.  As de’ Grassi’s diary ends in December 1521, and in the years from 1519 to 1521 the diary focuses exclusively on the activities of the papal court, there is no certain record of his movements and his time spent in Pesaro. While the number of visits that de’ Grassi made to his bishopric is uncertain, based upon scattered evidence he visited at least four times: 11 January to before 4 May 1515; 23 May to before 29 June 1519; likely twice between 1520 and 1522; and lastly sometime before 17 May and possibly 24 May 1528 (but he may not have reached Pesaro before returning to Rome where he died). 31.  Traditionally, the bishop’s first visit functioned as an ecclesiastical version of the secular triumphant entry through which the bishop showed himself to his congregation and ritually took possession of the episcopal office and the responsibility of its cure of souls by saying mass at the cathedral. 32.  Annibale degli Abbati Olivieri described de’ Grassi’s patronage as lifting the saint up from among the ruins; BOP, ms. 380, III, Memorie di Pesaro, fol. 190r. 33.  BOP, ms. 937, XII, squarcio BM, Almerci, Memorie, fols. 35v (26 February 1515) to 37r (17 March 1515). 34.  This was a common form of charity across early modern Italy organized by both ecclesiastical and lay patrons, and which de’ Grassi was familiar with in Rome through the papal liturgy for celebrating the Assumption at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore and Roman confraternal activity; Dykmans, L’oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, 2:432; Esposito, “Men and Women in Roman Confraternities,” 95.

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to show de’ Grassi’s desire to restore Pesaro’s congregation. Through these very public initiatives, both the provision of dowries and the rebuilding of the cathedral, de’ Grassi established himself as interested in the community’s health and prepared to use episcopal resources for its maintenance. Beyond these expensive and public projects, de’ Grassi turned his attention to the state of the Pesarese clergy. Supposedly, during his first visit he conducted a visitation of all the churches within the diocese.35 As Adriano Prosperi has noted, the episcopal visitation was “a particularly solemn ritual moment in which the clergy exhibits the signs of its power and of its social function to control and to discipline.”36 The energy required to do this was substantial, and reinforced de’ Grassi’s reputation as a bishop determined to uphold ecclesiastical standards and his authority as an investigator and evaluator. Although Quirini and Giustiniani encouraged their readers to conduct annual visitation tours, coupled with provincial synods, there were few bishops who did so in the early sixteenth century.37 In addition to the visitation, de’ Grassi reviewed the constitutiones of the cathedral chapter. In 1512, under the authority of Bishop Albertino della Rovere, a synod took place that reviewed and published the constitutiones in a fine manuscript approved by the cathedral canons, the vicar, and the absentee bishop.38 The extant manuscript shows de’ Grassi’s own exceedingly brief notes highlighting important issues in the relationship between the bishop and the canons. Although in the ensuing decades both Bishops Giacomo Simonetta (1530) and Giulio Simonetta (1564) examined the cathedral constitutiones, leaving collections in print (1531) and in manuscript (1576), the historical process of intervention and the individual bishop’s goals remain frustratingly vague.39 Excluding these notes, generally there are few documents extant that reveal the details of de’ Grassi’s interactions with the clergy of Pesaro.40 If, as Angelo 35.  There are no extant episcopal records of this visitation, only statements by later sources that it occurred. 36.  Prosperi, “La figura del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento,” 260. 37.  In Pesaro episcopal synods took place in 1373 (Bishop Leale Malatesta), 1414 (Bishop Giovanni Benedetti), 1435 (Bishop Bartolomeo Casini), 1519 (Bishop Paris de’ Grassi), 1530 (Giacomo Simonetta), 1564 (Giulio Simonetta), and 1580 (Roberto Sassatelli); Turchini, “La chiesa di Pesaro,” 110; Luchetti, “Il ‘Sinodo,’” 37–­44. 38.  The resulting volume is ASDP, Archivio del Capitolo, Raccoglitori, fasc. 137, Constitutiones antiquae Reverendissimi Capituli Pisaurensis Episcopi Domino Albertino de Ruvere MDXII. 39.  BOP, ms. 457, II, fasc. LXII, Porzione di sinodo di mons. Giulio Simonetta Vescovo di Pesaro; “Con. Syn. Ep. pis. Prohemium,” in Statuta civitatis pisauri (1531); Cambrini, “Le Constitutiones Antiquae.” 40.  Although Pesarese historians argue that de’ Grassi was disappointed overall with what he encountered in the chapter and within the diocese, without specifically documented reforms the very least that we can say is that the bishop’s concern for ecclesiastical standards drove him to assemble documents and men, but he may or not have produced any institutional reform. “Invero si ha solo notizia di una visita pastorale del 1515 al

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Turchini has noted, the results of the visitation tour were troubling, as he found parishes and monastic houses showing poor behavior and ramshackle buildings,41 for the new and energetic bishop this was an opportunity to articulate more fully the clerical ideal of personal piety and proper ecclesiastical management. Not surprisingly, de’ Grassi’s desire to review the diocesan clergy quickly brought him into conflict with the cathedral chapter’s praepositus, Giovanni Francesco Soperchi. Known in Rome as Filomuso, Soperchi was not only a long-­standing member of the chapter (praepositus, 1502–­35) but also a poet in the circle of Pope Leo’s secretary Pietro Bembo.42 Evidently, de’ Grassi reprimanded Soperchi’s behavior, which the praepositus challenged, for the situation was only resolved when the pope issued a bull supporting the new bishop. The bull ordered Soperchi on pain of interdict to reform his behavior toward other canons, respect the property of the church, and wear the tonsure, “all of which is fitting for the true and good Pastor.”43 De’ Grassi’s willingness to oppose Soperchi and the swiftness with which this situation was resolved shows the bishop’s drive and the pope’s support of his reforming energy. Yet, simultaneously de’ Grassi exhibits a paradoxical desire to extirpate abuse and reform clerical behavior while managing his own identity as a nonresident bishop.44 The dates of de’ Grassi’s second visit depend on his diary, which reveals that de’ Grassi left Rome for Pesaro on 23 May 1519, following the burial of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, the duke of Urbino. He returned sometime before 29 June, for a record of the papal court’s celebration of the feast of SS. Peter and Paul occupies the next diary entry.45 Based on the brevity of this visit one must assume that it was the result of long planning rather than sympathy for the ruinous effects of the War of Urbino as his diary stated. Following the completion of the episcopal visitation and confirmation of the cathedral statutes in 1515, an organizing bishop would logically seek to establish an understanding on important issues Capitolo, come si è visto, ma nulla di più”; Turchini, “La chiesa di Pesaro,” 107. 41.  Turchini wrote that “la visita del vescovo nel 1515 aveva sollevato, come si è detto, qualche contrasto,” presumably with the Constitutiones of the cathedral chapter that de’ Grassi then reviewed; Turchini, “La chiesa di Pesaro,” 104. 42. Giovio, Italian Portrait Gallery, 115. 43.  Bonamini provides the text of the bull dated July 1515 in his chronicle; BOP, ms. 966, III, Bonamini, Cronaca, 2–­4: “[P]raesertim quia mandaveras omnibus Presbyteris in tua Catedrali Ecclesia servientibus ut sub certis p[a]enis in obitu et tonsum laudabili secundum Sac. Canones incederent, capi et carcerari feceris, licet eodem pene contextu ad nonnullorum consanguineorum ejusdem Jo. Fran[cis]ci preces relaxaveris, et alia feceris, qu[a]e verum ac bonum Pastorem decent.” 44.  Turchini, “La chiesa di Pesaro,” 100. 45.  BAV, Vat. lat. 12275, de Grassi, Diarium, fol. 354v.

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across the entire diocese and investigate the progress of his reforms. The spontaneity described by de’ Grassi’s diary is incompatible with the convocation of a diocesan synod, which necessitated substantial planning and was the main event of his second visit. The tenth session of the Fifth Lateran Council (May 1515) had discussed the importance of episcopal visitations and synods in maintaining orthodoxy and authority over the diocese. The resulting bull, entitled Regimini universalis Ecclesiae, encouraged bishops to hold provincial synods every three years in emulation of the apostolic church.46 For the absentee bishop de’ Grassi, the synod was a rare opportunity to reinforce his authority as leader of all the Pesaresi clergy and survey the pastoral standard. While there are no records extant that reflect the discussions of de’ Grassi’s synod, historians agree that the bishop led the synod instead of his vicar, further establishing de’ Grassi as a bishop who valued personal contact with his diocese, if only intermittently. In addition to the synod on 16 June,47 during his 1519 visit de’ Grassi supervised the translation of San Terenzio’s remains from a fifteenth-­century wooden urn to the new arca that he commissioned in 1515.48 This act allowed de’ Grassi to bring publicly an expensive and important project to completion, align himself with the city’s patron saint, and emphasize his role as the physical and spiritual custodian of Pesaro. Symbolically, by providing a new and secure home for San Terenzio’s remains (see fig. 1), as well as vestments and cloths,49 the bishop asserted his own ability to care for his congregation. Sara Benvenuti, who has written the definitive work on San Terenzio, sees in this event a deeper significance than merely episcopal patronage. She argues that the translation was a tangible sign of the community’s will to rebuild following the political fracture and physical deprivation that began with Cesare Borgia’s conquest and ended only weeks before with the death of the heirless Medici duke of Urbino.50 De’ Grassi’s 46.  “Regimini universalis Ecclesiae (Fifth Lateran Council, Tenth Session, 4 May 1515),” in Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum, 5:621. 47.  In contrast to the evidence of de’ Grassi’s diary, Teofilo Betti’s chronicle claims that the translation took place on 17 July 1519; ASDPs, Betti, Cronica vescovile paesarese sino al MDCC, capo LXIII, 8. 48.  This urn, commissioned in 1447 by Bishop Giovanni Benedetti from the artist Giovanni Antonio Bellinzoni, is now preserved in the Museo Diocesano in Pesaro. 49.  The records of the Fabbrica di S. Terenzio note the bishop’s purchase of cloth (silk, satin, and leather) and decorative accents (fringe and braid) for tunics for the saint, as well as payments for their manufacture, and other cloths need for the saint’s translation; ASCP, Fabbrica di S. Terenzio, cassetta 73, fasc. III, fols. 38 (6 April 1517), 41 (23 March 1518), 43 (27 May 1518), 44 (29 May 1518), 79 (15 August 1519); Benvenuti, San Terenzio, 380–­81n830. 50.  “[I]l segno tangibile di una volontà di rigenerazione e di ripresa, di cui le reliquie patronali rappresentarono una simbolica garanzia: la loro restituzione alla pubblica venerazione garantì l’effettiva riparazione di uno

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Figure 1. The modern Chapel of San Terenzio in the cathedral of Pesaro, showing the saint’s remains. Photo by Jennifer Mara DeSilva.

contributions to San Terenzio and the wider diocese have convinced Benvenuti that he was an active and resolute force, providing both encouragement and authority that was simultaneously local and concrete.51 Sometime between 1520 and 1522, de’ Grassi made a third visit to Pesaro, during which he wrapped up more extensive renovations to the cathedral (fig. 2), specifically to the choir and cappella magna. He also showed his concern for his historical reputation by erecting public monuments to his reconstruction of the cathedral. Two inscriptions document firstly the bishop’s general renovations (1522)52 strappo provocato dal traumatico arrivo del Valentino. Sopratutto in questo caso pare che la gestione del corpo di Terenzio non abbia rappresentato un campo di sconto o di contesa, pur tenendo conto dell’appiattimento determinato dalla parzialità delle fonti dell’epoca”; ibid., 389. 51.  I suspect that Benvenuti’s judgement of de’ Grassi’s episcopate is closest to the early modern view. “[ . . . ] fin dal suo primo ingresso in città egli manifestò una personalità risoluta, osservante delle regole, rispettosa fino all’eccesso delle pratiche liturgiche [ . . . ] durante queste periodi di transizione per la comunità rivestono un ruolo attivo, raggiungendo una preminenza non solo simbolica in ambito locale”; ibid., 390–­91. 52.  Bonamini notes that de’ Grassi “Risarcì la Capella maggiore del Duomo, che grandissimo danno avea

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Figure 2. Exterior of the cathedral of Pesaro. Photo by Jennifer Mara DeSilva.

and secondly his role in San Terenzio’s translation (1519).53 The renovations initiated by de’ Grassi increased both Terenzio and Pesaro’s spiritual prestige and reinforced the bishop’s custodial identity with bricks and mortar, presenting him again as simultaneously the cultivator and servant of the city’s patron saint. As well, one can imagine that in a small way these public inscriptions were intended to mitigate the bishop’s physical absence. Perhaps on this third visit or on a fourth visit dated to Pentecost 1522,54 de’ Grassi turned his focus to another group in Pesaro. Scholars of early modern Italy have already shown the importance of confraternities to the urban social fabric sofferto dal canone del Duca.” He also erected an inscription to this effect—­“PARIS EPISCOPUS MONU. ISTUD INTER RUINAS REPERTUM HOC LOCO REPOS MDXXII.” BOP, ms. 966, III, Bonamini, Cronaca, 5–­6. 53.  In 1522 de’ Grassi erected this inscription in the chapel dedicated to Terenzio where he placed the arca beneath a new marble altar; Benvenuti, San Terenzio, 380–­83, also 433–­34n833. 54.  This visit might have been substantially longer than previous visits, as the historian Ortolani records that de’ Grassi only returned to Rome in December 1522. Unfortunately, as yet there is no evidence to corroborate this departure or the length of the visit; BOP, ms. 1663, II, Ortolani, Della Chiesa Pesarese, fol. 406r.

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as a source of spiritual encouragement and social assistance.55 When de’ Grassi became bishop in 1513, there was already an active community of confraternities in Pesaro.56 Edward Muir has noted the importance of cooperation between church authorities and the laity, particularly through confraternal participation in civic religion as one method of channeling lay piety into church-­regulated religious practices.57 In Rome, as archpriest of the church of SS. Celso and Giuliano, de’ Grassi facilitated the activities of the Society of S. Giuliano,58 while in his hometown of Bologna the beatified bishop Niccolò Albergati (bp. 1417–­43) had used confraternities very successfully as a vehicle for doctrinal education, spiritual development, and entrenching a civic cult.59 Albergati’s episcopal energy resulted in the foundation of four confraternities, the reform of six others, and a general concern for clerical and lay spiritual development seen in his three diocesan visitation tours.60 By participating in confraternal events, de’ Grassi could assert his role as the city’s ecclesiastical authority, while joining his congregation in liturgical praise as a fellow worshipper. Moreover, a close relationship between the absentee bishop and the local confraternal leaders might mitigate the absence of one authority by establishing other local nodes of activity and supervision.61 Although contemporary reformers say little about episcopal relations with confraternities, the connections forged could be powerful both in accessing spiritual intercessors and ensuring that the local liturgical activities consistently reinforced the episcopal-­sanctioned civic cult. On the feast of Pentecost, 8 June 1522,62 accompanied by members of Pesaro’s popular Fraternity of the Annunciation, de’ Grassi processed through the 55. Terpstra, Lay Confraternities. 56.  Turchini, “La chiesa di Pesaro,” 121–­26. 57. Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 230. 58.  As archpriest, de’ Grassi was responsible for ensuring that the confraternity had access to priests for confession and communion, that its members participated in parish devotional activities focused on S. Giuliano, and that the confraternity and the chapter of canons maintained good relations; ASV, Capitolario SS. Celso e Giuliano, Istrumenti 200, fols. 4r–­v. 59.  De’ Grassi’s pride in his Bolognese roots as seen in his diary, his brother Achilles’ service as the bishop of Bologna (1511–­23), and his liturgical guide that incorporates Bolognese practice (De cerimoniis cardinalium et episcoporum in eorum diocesibus, pub. 1564) all argue for the city acting as a partial model in his own clerical work. On Albergati’s relations with Bolognese confraternities, see Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 19–­31. 60. Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 19–­20. 61.  The sixteenth-­century statues of the Fraternity of St. Andrew the Apostle of Pesaro note that the election of each prior must be approved by the bishop; BOP, ms. 461, Capitoli delle 4 Compagnie dell’Unione. I, “La Fraternita del’Apostolo S. Andrea,” fols. 98r–­v. 62.  While Adele Brancati argues that the procession took place in 1520, there are other documents that corroborate de’ Grassi’s illness and suggest the date of 1522; Brancati, “La confraternita e la Chiesa dell’Annunziata,” 141; DeSilva, “Appropriating Sacred Space.”

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city in order to translate the miraculous image of the Madonna del Popolo to its new position in the confraternity’s church. The image moved from an exterior wall of the Church of the Annunciation to a new protected position inside, establishing greater parity with the city’s more famous image, the Madonna delle Grazie.63 The confraternity’s printed statutes of 1575 record de’ Grassi’s participation and insinuate that the holy image had a role in the bishop’s recovery from a life-­threatening illness sometime before Pentecost.64 The popularity of Marian devotion in Pesaro provides a link with de’ Grassi’s youth in Bologna,65 as does the number of Marian images that inspired liturgical processions during his episcopate. The eighteenth-­century historian Domenico Bonamini noted that de’ Grassi donated an ex voto to the cathedral in the form of an image of the Virgin, supposedly after his recovery from illness.66 This image joined the two images noted above and a third image in the church of S. Agostino that de’ Grassi’s vicar investigated in 1526 for reportedly weeping continuously for eight days.67 De’ Grassi’s illness provided a spiritual platform for establishing a closer relationship as bishop with important intercessors and lay organizations in Pesaro. Following San Terenzio, the Virgin Mary and the Fraternity of the Annunciation’s holy founders Beato Cecco (†1350) and Beata Michelina (†1356) stood as emblems of devotion and guardians of the Pesaresi, offering inspiration and assistance just as the bishop should. De’ Grassi’s participation in the translation of the Madonna del Popolo allowed him the opportunity to express his gratitude and devotion as a recipient of the Virgin’s grace and as the active episcopal custodian, while following the proven pastoral strategies of the Bolognese bishop Albergati.68 Through the Pentecost procession, de’ Grassi followed in Beato Cecco’s footsteps, 63.  Calegari, “Chiesa dell’Annunziata,” 216–­21. 64.  BOP, ms. 461, Capitoli delle 4 Compagnie dell’Unione. I, “Capitoli dell Fraternita dell Nuntiata,” chap. 20: “all’incontro della Chiesa, pochi anni dipoi era nel muro vno quadretto, dove che era l’imagine della gloriosa Madonna, laquale fece molti segni & miracoli, dove che Monsignor Reverendissimo Paris de Grassi Bolognese, con solenissima processione, insieme con tutto il popolo, e fratelli leuorno il detto quadro, & el misino in a detta Chiesa a mane dritta quando s’entra dentro chiamata & titolata la gloriosa Madonna del popolo come la sua festa si fa il secondo dì de Pasqua rosata.” 65.  In addition, the de’ Grassi family chapel in the Bolognese cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin Annunciate; Fanti, “La cattedrale di san Pietro,” 37–­41; Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 23, 56. 66.  BOP, ms. 968, Bonamini, Memorie ecclesiastiche. Betti dates this donation (“il gran quadro”) to 1519 and identifies the artists as “pittore francese Matteo Presciutti”; Betti, Cronica vescovile paesarese sino al MDCC, capo LXIII, 8. 67.  BOP, ms. 961, Betti, Cronica Vescovile Pesarese, fol. 276r; BOP, ms. 1663, II, Ortolani, Della Chiesa Pesarese, fol. 400r. 68.  Albergati was instrumental in expanding the cult of the Madonna del Monte della Guardia through the institution of an annual procession that brought the Marian image from its shrine into Bologna; Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 24–­27.

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modeling both the role of the pastoral leader and the devout Christian to the city surrounding him.

Episcopal Examples and Accord Most likely de’ Grassi died in 1528 satisfied with his episcopal contribution to the city of Pesaro. Compared to many of his colleague bishops at the papal court, he had spent a great deal of time in residence in his diocese. As the bishop of Belluno (bp. 1536–­42), Contarini himself spent only two months resident in his diocese.69 Unless the city had the added attraction of being one’s home town or a center of papal government, few bishops followed the residential example set by Pietro Barozzi in Padua (bp. 1487–­1507). Nonetheless, in Pesaro de’ Grassi’s activities reflected the contemporary emphasis on instilling piety and reform in both clerical and lay populations, including the review of the cathedral chapter, a diocesan synod, and a diocesan visitation. Unlike some other bishops, de’ Grassi presided personally at these events, rather than delegating the authority to his vicar as Giulio de’ Medici, Ercole Gonzaga, Jacopo Sadoleto, and Robert Giubé did.70 The fact that de’ Grassi ignored the injunction to convene these labor-­ intensive events annually is not unusual. In his long tenure as bishop of Parma (1509–­34), Alessandro Farnese seniore only conducted a pastoral visitation of Parma in 1516 and celebrated a diocesan synod in 1519. A brief examination of the sources suggests that those bishops that convened a synod (many only once) were more likely to do so in the early years of their episcopacy, which sometimes coincided with taking possession of the see. In 1488 Pietro Barozzi took possession of Padua, called a synod, and immediately after began diocesan visitations. Albergati arrived in Bologna as bishop in 1417 and convened a synod of the Bolognese clergy in 1418. Melchior von Meckau (bp. Brixen 1489–­1509) followed the same course, holding a diocesan synod in 1489 only five months after accepting the bishopric. Determining whether this custom was a sign of efficiency or the enthusiasm of the newly elevated demands deeper research, yet this 69.  Gleason notes the similarities between the behavior castigated in The Office of a Bishop and Contarini’s experience as bishop of Belluno. The substantial difference between the two models was Contarini’s choice of “serious and able vicars,” especially Girolamo Negri, to cultivate the diocese in his absence; Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, 179–­181. 70.  As archbishop of Florence (1513–­23) de’ Medici authorized a synod in 1517, which his vicar, Pietro Andrea Gammaro, organized and led. In Mantova, Ercole Gonzaga’s vicars carried out extensive visitations during the 1530s. Robert Giubé’s vicar general convened an episcopal synod in Nantes in May 1507. Due to Jacopo Sadoleto’s periodic residency in Carpentras (1527–­36, 1538–­42, 1543–­45) his episcopal vicars supervised the annual synods. Prosperi, “La figura del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento,” 232–­33; Murphy, Ruling Peacefully, 69–­72; Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto, 49, 62.

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cohort clearly shows that de’ Grassi’s level of involvement reflected the practice of certain contemporaries, several of whom were also absentee bishops. Very few pre-­Tridentine bishops held annual or frequent synods or diocesan visitations in the fashion of the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, or the bishop of Brixen, Nicholas of Cusa.71 Just as there is ample evidence that some bishops never visited their dioceses, clearly there is evidence for episcopal activity that falls between the poles of pastoral idealism and absenteeism and that did not depend upon permanent episcopal residence. Other episcopal activities are variously more challenging to establish with certainty. A bishop’s building campaigns tend to be written in stone, or at least memorialized through inscriptions or local historians. Building campaigns were a popular method of establishing one’s presence in the community, even if the builder was wholly or most frequently absent. Oliviero Carafa provides an important example of absentee patronage in Naples (archbp. 1458–­84, 1503–­ 05), where he built the extravagant Succorpo Chapel beneath the cathedral. As the archbishop of Avignon (1475–­1503), Giuliano della Rovere financed repairs to the cathedral building and within it the creation of a boys’ school for plainchant.72 Evidence of interactions with local confraternities and sacred cults tend to be more scattered and thus more challenging to judge with great conviction. The presence of the bishop facilitated these connections, but even an infrequent visitor could initiate and encourage local organizations. Although Francesco Soderini spent little time in his see of Volterra (bp. 1478–­1509), he was involved in the creation of the Monte di Pietà and the re-­establishment of the Fraternità, a charitable association that funded four young men at university and provided dowries to four young women.73 Unfortunately few bishops described the extent of their involvements with local lay organizations or wrote guidelines for their diocese in the manner of Gian Matteo Giberti’s Capitoli Ordinati (1540). The scarcity of specific prescriptive evidence on this topic from bishops or reformers suggests that in the pre-­Tridentine period there was an implicit understanding of the bishop’s role as a sponsor of lay piety, which was traditional but also extemporaneous, and 71.  Thomas Bourchier (archbp. 1454–­86) held provincial synods in London in 1461, 1463, 1472, 1473, 1474 and 1475. Nicholas of Cusa (bp. 1450–­64) presided at synods in Salzburg (February 1451), Bamberg (May 1451), Magdebourg ( June 1451), Mainz (November 1451), Cologne (1452), and also at Brixen (1453, 1454, 1455 and 1457). 72.  Carafa resided permanently at the papal court from 1467 to 1511, visiting Naples only four times in the role of papal legate, not exclusively as the city’s bishop; Norman, “Cardinal of Naples,” 77–­91; Reynolds, Papal Patronage, 129–­30. 73. Lowe, Church and Politics, 16–­17, 19.

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thus more challenging to qualify textually.74 Pre-­Tridentine reformers’ focus on the episcopal virtues of accessibility, ascetic morality, and charity suggests that a bishop bearing these virtues would reside in his see, and that once the appropriate model was in residence all else would follow. In 1516, three years after Giustiniani and Quirini wrote to Pope Leo X, Desiderius Erasmus urged ecclesiastical and secular authorities to teach what he called “the philosophy of Christ.” Within the preface to his edition of the Novum Testamentum, Erasmus emphasized the role of princes, bishops, and teachers, the people principally tasked with “renewing or advancing the Christian religion,” to instill a deeper understanding of, enthusiasm for, and peace within Christianity. Although it is unlikely that de’ Grassi saw Pesaro’s spiritual and physical health centered exclusively on individuals reading the New Testament, as Erasmus’ preface urged, as bishop he had worked diligently to cultivate a strong and active community. Principally he worked through existing institutions and with confraternities in order to emphasize right practice, the importance of local spiritual protectors, and episcopal involvement. Using the existing Pesaresi cults and lay organizations, de’ Grassi followed examples set by other successful bishops who sought to establish episcopal authority while facilitating greater spiritual activity in their diocese. The model of episcopal behavior described by Quirini and Giustiniani belied the experiences of many prelates at the papal court through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For a variety of reasons, including penury, professional ambition, and administrative need, the ecclesiastical bureaucracy housed in Rome had become a magnet for highly literate clergy, many of whom were also bishops. Yet their residence in Rome did not mean that absentee bishops could not fashion a model distinct from the “attentive observer” that reenvisioned the bishop’s pastoral role. The disruption and instability experienced by the diocese of Pesaro through the early sixteenth century, coupled with limited availability, encouraged de’ Grassi to eschew Giustiniani and Quirini’s model of the attentive observer for a more flexible yet equally giving custodial model. Over the course of his fifteen-­ year episcopate, de’ Grassi’s visits to Pesaro reflected his concern for the city’s physical and spiritual restoration. By investing in the buildings and people, while establishing links with local holy intercessors and a confraternity, de’ Grassi cultivated an image as a custodian of the Pesarese Church and its people. Through his 74.  The Council of Trent’s decree (September 1562) establishing greater parish control over lay confraternities formalized this implicit expectation of episcopal involvement; The canons and decrees of the sacred and oecumenical Council of Trent, Session 22, Chapter IX.

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visitations and synod, de’ Grassi strove to observe and evaluate ecclesiastical structures just as reformers directed.75 There is no doubt that de’ Grassi supported Erasmus and Contarini’s elevation of the episcopal office as “a far greater dignity than the prince’s” since the bishop was charged by God “to educate the city entrusted to him in Christian teaching and divine laws and to keep it to its duty.”76 In 1517 their only disagreement concerned how that teaching should proceed.

Works Cited Archives

ASCP = Archivio Storico Comunale, Pesaro Fabbrica di S. Terenzio, cassetta 7 ASDPs = Archivio Storico Diocesano di Pesaro Archivio del Capitolo, Raccoglitori, Constitutiones antiquae Reverendissimi Capituli Pisaurensis Episcopi Domino Albertino de Ruvere MDXII. Teofilo Betti, Cronica vescovile paesarese sino al MDCC. ASV = Archivio Storico del Vicariato, Vatican City Capitolario SS Celso e Giuliano, Istrumenti 200. BAV = Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City ms. Vat. lat. 12275, Paridis de Grassi, Diarium ceremoniarum (1513–­21). ms. Vat. lat. 12276, Biagio Martinelli, Diaria caeremoniarum Blasii Baronii de Martinellis, (1518–­32). BOP = Biblioteca Oliveriana, Pesaro ms. 380, vol. III, Memorie di Pesaro. ms. 457, vol. II, fasc. LXII, Porzione di sinodo di mons. Giulio Simonetta Vescovo di Pesaro. ms. 937, vol. XII, squarcio BM, C. B. Almerici, Memorie. ms. 961, Teofilo Betti, Cronica Vescovile Pesarese. ms. 966, vol. III, Domenico Bonamini, Cronaca della Città di Pesaro da Cav. Domenico Bonamini. ms. 968, Domenico Bonamini, Memorie ecclesiastiche pesaresi con la diligente notizia dei vescovi di Pesaro. ms. 1663, vol. II, Salvatore Ortolani, Della Chiesa Pesarese incominciando dalla sua origine fino al 1860.

75.  Francesco Cesareo encapsulated the sixteenth-­century reformed bishop as “one who resided within his diocese, convened synods regularly, undertook pastoral visitations, dedicated himself to the preaching of the Word, concerned himself with the religious reformation of both the clergy and the laity—­in short, one who undertook the cura animarum”; Cesareo, “The Episcopacy in Sixteenth-­Century Italy,” 78. 76. Contarini, The Office of a Bishop, 35.

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Printed Primary Sources

Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificium Taurinensis editio. Vol. 5. Turin: Seb. Franco et Henrico Dalmazzo editoribus, 1857. The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Œcumenical Council of Trent. Edited and translated by James Waterworth. London: Dolman, 1848. Capitoli dell Fraternita dell Nuntiata. Pesaro: Girolamo Concordia, 1575. Conciliorum Œcumenicorum Decreta. Bologna: Herder, 1962. Contarini, Gasparo. The Office of a Bishop. Introduced, edited, and translated by John Patrick Donnelly. Reformation Texts with Translation, 1350–­1650. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2002. Giovio, Paolo. An Italian Portrait Gallery. Edited and translated by Florence Alden Gragg. Boston: Chapman & Grimes, 1935. Giustiniani, Paolo, and Pietro Quirini. Lettere al Papa: Libellus ad Leonem X. Edited by Geminiano Bianchini. Modena: Artioli Editore, 1995. Lettere di Galeazzo Sforza al fratello Giovanni Signore di Pesaro, ottobre–­novembre MDII. Edited by Bernardino Feliciangeli. Sanseverino-­Marche: 1915. Sanudo, Marino. I diarii di Marino Sanuto. Vols. 22–­24. Venice: F. Visentini, 1879–­1903. Statuta civitatis pisauri. Noviter impressa. Pesaro: Baldassar Francisci de Carthularis, 1531.

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Alberigo, Giuseppe. “The Reform of the Episcopate in the Libellus to Leo X by the Camaldolese hermits Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani.” In Reforming the Church before Modernity, edited by Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton, 139–­52. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. Bassett, William W. “The Office of Episcopal Vicar.” The Jurist 30 (1970): 285–­313. Benvenuti, Sara. San Terenzio patrono di Pesaro: Il culto patronale a Pesaro dalle origini al settecento. Pesaro: Walter Stafoggia, 2005. Bertuccioli, Luigi. Mutamenti governativi nella città di Pesaro. Pesaro: A. Nobili, 1853. Black, Christopher F. Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Brancati, Adele. “La confraternita e la Chiesa dell’Annunziata: vicende storiche.” In La Confraternita e la Chiesa dell’Annunziata di Pesaro: Il fenomeno confraternale in Italia, edited by Angelo Brancati, 77–­205. Pesaro: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pesaro, 2005. Calegari, Grazia. “Chiesa dell’Annunziata: sette secoli d’arte.” In La Confraternita e la Chiesa dell’Annunziata di Pesaro: Il fenomeno confraternale in Italia, edited by Angelo Brancati, 215–­71. Pesaro: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pesaro, 2005. Cambrini, Sara. “Le Constitutiones Antiquae del Capitolo della cattedrale di Pesaro (1512).” Frammenti 4 (1999): 59–­112. Carile, Antonio. “Pesaro nel Medioveo: Problemi di storia delle instituzioni e della società.” In Pesaro tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Historica Pisaurensia), edited by Scevola Mariotti, 3–­54. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1989.

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Cesareo, Francesco C. “The Episcopacy in Sixteenth-­Century Italy.” In Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, edited by Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel, 67–­83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Chambers, D. S. “A Defence of Non-­Residence in the later Fifteenth Century: Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga and the Mantuan Clergy.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 605–­33. D’Amico, John F. Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. DeSilva, Jennifer Mara. “Appropriating Sacred Space: Private Chapel Patronage and Institutional Identity in Sixteenth-­century Rome—­The Case of the Office of Ceremonies.” Catholic Historical Review 97 (2011): 653–­78. ———. “Ritual Negotiations: Paris de’ Grassi and the Office of Ceremonies under Pope Julius II & Leo X (1504–­1521).” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2007. Douglas, Richard M. Jacopo Sadoleto, 1477–­1547: Humanist and Reformer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. Dykmans, Marc. L’oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, ou, Le Cérémonial papal de la première Renaissance. Vol. 2. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1980–­82. Esposito, Anna. “Men and Women in Roman Confraternities in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Roles, Functions, Expectations.” In The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy, edited by Nicholas Terpstra, 82–­97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000. Fanti, Mario. “La cattedrale di san Pietro dal IX al XV secolo e il suo Battistero: Lineamenti di una storia complessa.” In La cattedrale scolpita: Il romanico in San Pietro a Bologna, edited by Massimo Medica and Silvia Battistini, 19–­48. Bologna: Edisai, 2003. Gleason, Elisabeth G. Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Hay, Denys. The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century: The Birkbeck Lectures, 1971. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Lowe, K. J. P. Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy: The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini (1453–­1524). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Luchetti, Marcello. “Il ‘Sinodo’ di Leale Malatesta vescovo di Pesaro (1373).” Frammenti 2 (1997): 37–­44. Minnich, Nelson H. “Paride de Grassi’s Diary of the Fifth Lateran Council.” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 14 (1982): 370–­460. Muir, Edward. Ritual in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Murphy, Paul V. Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-­century Italy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. ———. “A Worldly Reform: Honor and Pastoral Practice in the Career of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505–­63).” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 399–­418.

The Absentee Bishop in Residence  109 Norman, Diana. “Cardinal of Naples and Cardinal in Rome: The Patronage of Oliviero Carafa.” In The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety and Art, 1450–­1700, edited by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson, 77–­91. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Partner, Peter. The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Pastor, Ludwig von. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, edited by Ralph Francis Kerr. Vol. 7. St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1923. Prosperi, Adriano. “La figura del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento: Persistenze, disagi e novità.” In La Chiesa e le potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, edited by Giorgio Chittolini and G. Miccoli, 219–­62. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1986. Reynolds, Christopher A. Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter’s, 1380–­1513. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Sabatini, Rafael. The Life of Cesare Borgia. Reprint, Middlesex: The Echo Library, 2006. Terpstra, Nicholas. Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Turchini, Angelo. “La chiesa di Pesaro in età roveresca.” In Pesaro nell’età dei Della Rovere, edited by Scevola Mariotti, 95–­131. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1998. Verstegen, Ian. “Francesco Maria and the Duchy of Urbino, between Rome and Venice.” In Patronage and Dynasty: The Rise of the della Rovere in Renaissance Italy, edited by Ian Verstegen, 89–­108. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2007.

Papal Authority, Episcopal Reservation, and Abortion in Sixteenth-Century Italy John Christopoulos In October 1588, Pope Sixtus V Peretti (r. 1585–­90) issued a papal bull making abortion, for the first time in the Catholic Church’s history, officially homicide. Sixtus decreed that anyone who sought to terminate pregnancy, by whatever means, was to be tried as a murderer and also was ipso facto excommunicated. In order to ensure that his decrees would be followed to the letter, Sixtus revoked the power of secular and ecclesiastical authorities to handle cases of abortion otherwise. Absolution from this “sin/crime” was now reserved to the papacy alone.1 Before the promulgation of this bull, cases of abortion were within the purview of bishops and largely resolved in the privacy of the confessional. Now, the pope held a monopoly over forgiveness for abortion and the rehabilitation of those who procured it. Sixtus’s bull against abortion was radical for several reasons. First, while most theologians and canonists agreed that abortion was mortal sin, beyond this, there was no consensus as to what type of sin it was. Neither clergy nor secular authorities unequivocally held the voluntary termination of pregnancy and the expulsion of an unborn to be homicide, that is, the murder of a human being. Second, Sixtus’s bull was an explicit challenge to episcopal authority over issues of moral discipline as established at the Council of Trent. Affirmed at the fourteenth session (November 1551), bishops had the authority and the obligation to personally handle cases 1.  Sixtus V, Contra procurantes . . . abortum, 1588.

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that arose in their diocese that were deemed “atrocious and grave.”2 In the last three decades of the sixteenth century, numerous Italian bishops, from north and south, attempted to control the practice of abortion within their diocese by prohibiting confessors from absolving this sin and forcing the penitent to go directly to the bishop. It was thought that the episcopal reservation of cases like procured abortion would make laity and clergy understand the gravity of this sin, and the practice of abortion would eventually be eradicated. And yet, the promulgation of Sixtus’s bull against abortion in 1588 suggests that episcopal management of this case of sin was, according to the pontiff, insufficient and ineffective. This paper seeks to investigate these issues. It will explore the complex mix of assertions of power and the negotiated practices that characterized the reforming church as reflected in episcopal and papal regulations of abortion. What did the late sixteenth-­century Italian bishop think about abortion? How did he try to regulate its practice within his diocese? How did the realities of parish life factor into the reforming church’s centralizing strategies? The post-­Tridentine bishop was expected to do a lot. Charged with the tasks of establishing orthodoxy in his diocese and keeping heresy at bay, the bishop was directly responsible for his flock’s and clergy’s behaviors, practices, and beliefs, and therefore had to be directly involved, through various channels, in their lives. The bishop had to reside in his diocese; had to visit all the diocesan institutions of his land; had to ensure that his priests were properly educated, that they were conducting themselves honorably and caring for souls adequately and competently; and had to celebrate diocesan synods and provincial councils regularly in order to make sure all curati in his diocese were on the same page and working toward the same goals of moral reform and discipline. The bishop’s direct and intimate involvement in the administration of religion would produce competent and dedicated priests who would then educate and take better care of the souls of parishioners: “The model bishop would see to it that his model pastors created model parishioners.” While some bishops were more determined to implement the reforms promulgated at the Council of Trent than others, all bishops were officially charged with these tasks.3 One aspect of morality that was deemed in need of reform and that apparently required direct episcopal attention was the practice of abortion. As part of campaigns against immoral, transgressive, and sinful behavior, in the 1570s and 2.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 96. 3.  The quotation is from Comerford, “‘The Care of Souls is a Very Grave Burden for [the Pastor],’” 353. Generally, see Borromeo, “I vescovi italiani”; Black, Church, Religion and Society, chap. 4.

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’80s, several Italian bishops took an interest in their flock’s practice of voluntarily terminating pregnancies. Along with such sexual transgressions as incest, defloration, sodomy, bestiality, and some types of love magic, bishops sought to regulate the practice of abortion within their diocese by personally dealing with these transgressors. Throughout the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical authorities believed that the confessor, due to his unique and intimate access to the laity, was best placed to discover cases of abortion and illicit sexuality in general, and also to communicate theological teachings regarding its practice to his community. However, by the time of the Council of Trent, more and more bishops had realized and accepted the limitations of their confessors in this task. It was commonplace that confessors were uninspired, poorly educated in Catholic doctrine, and inadequately caring for souls. Many confessors could not read Latin and therefore could not study cases of conscience or moral theology. How could they celebrate the sacrament of confession properly? Many sins, it was believed, were easily absolved because the confessor did not know how to handle them. This was to the detriment of the penitent’s soul.4 In terms of abortion, many confessors did not necessarily know that the voluntary termination of pregnancy was in fact a mortal sin or how to properly evaluate this case of sin. There was no shortage of theological literature this subject, much of which was written with the intent of instructing confessors. Indeed, bishops demanded that their confessors read the authoritative works on cases of conscience, the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), and manuals of confession in order to be able to question their penitents and competently assess their sins in the confessional.5 The famous work of the Dominican preacher and inquisitor of Piacenza Bartolomeo Fumi (Summa aurea armilla [1547])6 and the very popular Manuale de confessori et penitenti (1569) of the Spanish Augustinian Martin Azpilcueta were required readings for many confessors. These contained detailed and authoritative analyses of various cases of sexual sin, including abortion.7 On a more popular level, in the second half of the sixteenth century a multitude of vernacular works on 4.  The literature on this subject is vast. See especially Allegra, “Il parroco,” esp. 931–­41; de Boer, Conquest of the Soul; Greco, “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio”; Mancino, Licentia confitendi; Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza; Turchini, “La nascita del sacerdozio come professione.” 5.  See, for example, Paleotti, Episcopale Bononensis; c. 9; Prodi, Il Cardinale Gabriele Paleotti 2:155n69; Montanari, Disciplinamento in terra veneta, 123; Pinto, Riforma tridentina in Puglia, 2:92 and 3:37; Turchini, Clero e fedeli a Rimini, 91; Constitutiones, et decreta Dioecesanae Synodi Viterben (1584), 104. 6.  The work was original published in 1547; the 1572 edition is being cited here. 7. “De Aborsu,” in Fumi, Summa, aurea armilla, 6–­ 7; “Del Quinto Precetto” and “D’alcune Interrogationi—­De i Medici, & Chirugici,” in Azpilcueta, Manuale de’ Confessori et Penitenti, 166, 630.

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confession and the sacrament of penance appeared instructing both clerics and the laity on sin and the fundamentals of Catholic living; many of these works included discussions on the morality of abortion.8 Nevertheless, it appears that confessors were not doing their readings. As historians have increasingly argued, by the end of the sixteenth century, a large majority of priests received little if any of the seminary education that was required by Tridentine decree. A lack of interest on the part of the priest (and often on the part of the bishop) coupled with the financial difficulties of establishing seminaries and enforcing educational reforms, meant that few priests were better educated than their pre-­Trent predecessors. Given the socioeconomic realities of the late sixteenth-­century parish, there was little incentive to remedy this.9 According to reformers, this lacuna in clerical knowledge resulted in the laity’s own poor practices and behaviors. Many bishops would have agreed that “the ignorance of the faithful was a consequence of the inadequacies of the clergy in its pastoral mission,” a statement made by the Vicar General Guido Serguidi at the 1569 Synod of Florence.10 In the case of abortion, laymen and women did not necessarily know what “abortion” meant or that it was a mortal sin that harmed their soul. Or to put it in another way, laymen and women, and some clergy, did not conceive of the practice of abortion in the same way as the theologians and the official ecclesiastical culture did. This appears to have troubled some bishops and ecclesiastical authorities. In early modern Italy, the voluntary termination of pregnancy in order to conceal an illicit sexual relationship, or simply to avoid another mouth to feed, was officially a mortal sin as defined by theologians and canon law. However, it was not unequivocally held to be the sin of homicide. According to canon law, homicide was defined as the murder of a homo. Before the unborn received its rational soul from God, it was not considered to be a human being. Abortion before the unborn was animated with a rational soul was, therefore, not considered homicide. The presence of the God-­given immortal soul (believed to be infused in male fetuses around forty days from conception, eighty days for female fetuses) made all the difference. Aborting an animated fetus meant depriving the unborn of its place in heaven, for, in the words of the Dominican Girolamo Mercurio, stained with original sin and not having received the holy 8.  For a comprehensive list and discussion of this literature, see Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, “censimento.” 9.  See Borromeo, “I vescovi Italiani,” 65–­74; Black, Church, Religion and Society, 2004, chaps. 5 and 6; Comerford, Reforming Priests and Parishes; Mancino, Licentia confitendi. 10.  From the oration of the priest Serguidi, quoted in Comerford, “‘The Care of Souls is a Very Grave Burden for [the Pastor],’” 355 and D’Addario, Aspetti della controriforma a Firenze, 199.

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waters of baptism, it would be “deprived forever of the vision of God.”11 An inanimatus—­an unborn before animation—­however, did not have a soul and therefore was not yet included in the corpus christianum. It was a composite of seed, blood, and flesh in formation, moving towards the state where the soul might be infused—­but it was not yet human.12 While not as grave, the abortion of an inanimatus was still a mortal sin, an act for which the procurer, and anyone who participated in the practice, had to confess and do penance. Ignorance that this practice put one’s soul in jeopardy was a terrible danger, and the onus fell on the confessor not only to elicit a confession of such sins from his penitent, but also to teach him or her that abortion was a mortal sin that harmed the soul. In the secret space of the confessional, the confessor was supposed to instil in his penitent a confessional attitude, to turn “social transgressions” into “matters of conscience.”13 If the confessor did not know the definition of abortion or how to adjudicate it, what chance was there for the penitent to start seeing this method of avoiding another mouth to feed or hiding the consequences of illicit sexuality “as a matter of conscience”? Attempting to rectify this situation, more and more bishops tried to insert themselves into the confessional, the work of their clerics, and the lives of their flock by limiting the confessor’s powers of absolution. In the last three decades of the sixteenth century, several Italian bishops reserved the case of abortion to their offices and prohibited their confessors from absolving its procurers. “Atrocious and grave crimes,” as the fathers of the Council of Trent labelled them, sins that cause scandalo and notoriety in the public sphere, and that influence others to commit similar sins, were to be “reserved” for “the highest priests.”14 In the 1570s and 80s, abortion was increasingly deemed a sin that ought to be handled exclusively by bishops. The reservation of abortion to the episcopacy was intended to impress the laity with the gravity of this sin, but was also meant to ensure that abortion would not be easily dismissed or leniently handled by the confessor. For the parish priest, this was a demotion.15 In Milan, Archbishop Carlo Borromeo (1560–­84) forbade his 11. Mercurio, De gli errori popolari d’Italia, 1.26, 5.13, 5.375, 14.378–­79. 12.  On animation, formation, and abortion, see Noonan, Contraception; Noonan, “Almost Absolute Value in History”; Prosperi, Dare l’anima; Lavenia, “D’animal fante”; Terpstra, Lost Girls, 85–­112. 13. Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza; Brambilla, Alle origini del Sant’Uffizio; de Boer, Conquest of the Soul. 14.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, sess. 14, ch. VII, 96; , “De casi riservati” in Azpilcueta, Manuale de’ Confessori et Penitenti, 881; de Graffi, Practica quinque casuum, esp. 1.1–­3. See generally Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:312–­42; Brambilla, “Confessione, casi riservati e giustizia ‘spirituale.’” 15.  Reserving abortion was not unique to the Tridentine episcopate; several bishops in the fifteenth and

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confessors from absolving “procurers of abortion” from his first synod in 1565.16 Cardinal Paolo Burali d’Arezzo did the same while he was bishop of Piacenza in 1570 and archbishop of Naples in 1577,17 as did Christophoro Boncompagni, archbishop of Ravenna (1578–­1603), in 1580, publishing his proclamation in Italian lest anyone misunderstand.18 They were joined in 1584 by the bishop of Viterbo, Carlo Montigli (1576–­94),19 and in 1587 by the bishop of Camerino, Girolamo Bovio (1580–­96).20 All priests and confessors in these dioceses were required to know these proclamations and communicate them to their penitents. Confessors were supposed to inquire into reserved cases every year and ascertain what changes had been made, lest they absolve someone from a sin without having the authority to do so.21 Lists of reserved cases were printed and widely distributed, often on display in churches for parishioners to see, and were also included within the proceedings of synods, which priests were required to possess, sometimes on pain of a fine. In their proclamations, these bishops did not specify what abortion was; the understanding of its meaning was taken for granted, as was the case with other reserved sins such as incest and defloration, which certainly had varying definitions and numerous meanings. Nevertheless, in the 1570s and 80s penitents in Milan, Piacenza, Ravenna, Viterbo, and Camerino who admitted to procuring abortion within the secrecy of the confessional could not receive absolution within this same space. The confessor was instructed to get his penitent to confess this sin and then send the sinner to the bishop for the benefit of absolution.22 Making the penitent go to the bishop for reconciliation with the church and with God increased the sinner’s shame and made him or her realize the magnitude of their sin. Bishops saw the system of reservation as a weapon in establishing moral conduct, effectuating reform, and asserting their authority over the early sixteenth centuries reserved it to their offices. Nonetheless, it seems that after Trent many more bishops were inclined to do so. For reserved cases before Trent, see Lea, History of Auricular Confession and Brambilla, “Confessione, casi riservati e giustizia ‘spirituale.’” 16. Borromeo, De censuris, et casibus reseruatis; Borromeo, Acta ecclesiae mediolanensis, 11, 339, 992. 17.  Constitutiones editae, et promulgatae in synodo dioecesana Placentina (1570), 220; De Casibus reservatis Illustrissimo, et Reverendiss. Domino Paulo Aretio Card. Et Archiepiscopo Neapolitano in Antonucci, Catechesis, seu Instructio, 354. 18.  “Donne, o altri, che fossero cagione di far sperdere la creatura,” Constitutiones et Decreta condita in synodo dioecesana Ravennatensi (1580), fol. 55v. 19.  Constitutiones, et decreta Dioecesanae Synodi Viterben (1583), 110. 20.  Synodo Dioecesana camerinensi (1588), 58. 21. Sauli, Confessionale R. F. Hieronymi Savonarolae, 11; Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:319. 22.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, sess. 14, 25 November 1551, ch. VII, 96.

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laity and their priests. Every new case that bishops reserved expanded episcopal power. The reservation of abortion was meant to teach confessor, layman, and laywoman that the practice of abortion was a horrendous sin that could only be forgiven by a high priest and authority of the reforming church. Such a realization was meant to make the penitent think twice about their sexual activity and about trying to avoid the consequences of their sins. However, the enforcement of this reservation proved problematic. Abortion was hidden, difficult to uncover, and ambiguous. Wilfully terminating pregnancy was considered a sin, but the category or gravity of the sin depended on the state of the unborn at the time of abortion. It was unanimously agreed that the abortion of an animated or ensouled fetus was graver than that of an inanimate one. When Carlo Montigli reserved abortion in Viterbo, he explicitly distinguished the abortion of an ensouled and a pre-­ensouled fetus; in Viterbo, only the abortion of a fetus with a soul was a case reserved to the bishop.23 The Neapolitan penitentiary and renowned canonist Giacomo de Graffi argued that the abortion of an animatus was rightly included in the archbishop of Capua’s reservation of homicide; however the abortion of an inanimate unborn was not because this was not the murder of a human being.24 While the bishops of Milan, Piacenza, Ravenna, and Camerino did not explicitly make such a distinction, it is likely that they shared the belief. While canonists and theologians neatly defined an animatus as a fetus of forty-­days-­old or older, it was widely admitted by physicians and anatomists that it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine with certainty the state of the unborn at a specific moment. Authors of learned Latin works on the reservation of cases discussed this as a difficulty in reserving abortion. It was widely held that quickening, or “first motion,” was the defining sign of the transition from inanimatus to animatus, but quickening was extremely subjective; some women felt it sooner, others later. Physicians, by and large, concluded that the animation and motion of fetuses (male and female) were always relative. Bartolomeo Gittio, apostolic protonotary and archpriest of Benevento, listed the following signs to help confessors identify whether or not an unborn was animated: if the fetus was ensouled, the carrying woman would have headaches, vertigo, nausea, stomach pains, and other bodily disturbances. But, of course, these signs 23.  “Abortum procurantium secuto effectu post foetum vivificatum”; Constitutiones, et decreta Dioecesanae Synodi Viterben (1584), 110. 24.  “Non tame comprehenditur illa, quae consulto fecerit abortum fetus inanimati, nam talis non dicitur vere homicida, cum ei non conueniat eius definitio, [ . . . ]”; de Graffi, Practica quinque casuum, 159.

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were not conclusive—­it was not only pregnant women who suffered headaches and nausea. Complicating matters further was the fact that women often read the signs of their bodies “incorrectly”; for example, they might interpret the cessation of menstruation during pregnancy as “menstrual suppression,” a dangerous disease that required therapy, or they might confuse the motions of an animated fetus with a bout of gas or indigestion. Moreover, nothing prevented a woman from outright lying about what was transpiring inside her body. No one could prove whether or not a woman truly carried a forty-­day-­old fetus or truly felt one move. Gittio offered another suggestion: inspecting the body of the aborted unborn. If the fetus was not perfectly formed in all its parts, it was not animated; formation was necessary for the infusion of the immortal soul.25 However, this too was problematic. In the early stages of pregnancy, no one could prove that a woman truly knew whether or not she was pregnant. No one could prove with certainty that a woman did not abort accidentally (i.e., miscarry) from labor (such as working the fields or household chores) or as a result of a stern beating from her husband, father, mother, or brother. Was the accidental abortion of a formed unborn a mortal sin reserved to the bishop? Could such a woman be forgiven in the confessional, or would she have to go to the diocesan center and plead her case before a Carlo Borromeo or a Cardinal Paolo Burali? There were other more pressing difficulties with the reservation of abortion. By reserving a case of sin to his office, the bishop could in fact make a secret sin public knowledge. Young women caught in reserved cases of carnal sin could not go to a bishop without attracting the attention of kin and community; such a trip, from the periphery to the diocesan center, could result in the loss of a woman’s honor, a scandal for her family, and strained political and financial relationships, and could even result in violence toward the woman or her impregnator. Could a woman go the bishop and expose her seducer, rapist, deflowerer, or incestor without any repercussions to her own or her family’s honor? What if the man responsible for the pregnancy was a priest or a married man, or someone else with whom marriage was an impossibility? What if he was a man of some fame or of high status? Admitting to abortion before one’s confessor in complete secrecy was one thing; travelling to the bishop and reporting the details of such elicit sexuality was quite another. Reserving such cases moved scandal-­causing sins from the secrecy of the confessional into a much more public forum. Bishops were well aware of the dangers inherent in bringing a procurer of abortion to light—­public knowledge of an illicit sexual relationship, be it 25. Gittio, Tractatus de casibus reseruatis, 141–­42.

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defloration, rape, adultery, or incest, would likely cause scandal and social disruption. Indeed, the threat of exposure was supposed to influence conduct: do not commit the sin if you cannot face the consequences. And yet while in some dioceses the official rhetoric and law demanded that procurers of abortion be brought before the bishop for rehabilitation and reconciliation with God and the church, it was widely accepted that, for the common good, such cases might be better absolved locally and in secret by a parish priest. Even under as strict a regime as Carlo Borromeo’s was in Milan, the very confessors who were officially prohibited from doing so, often absolved reserved cases locally in order to avoid scandal. Paolo Burali, who was an avid proponent of the reservation of cases, allowed his confessors in Naples to absolve women “from all carnal sins,” including those reserved.26 If the sin was deemed “secret,” known only to the sinners and the confessor (i.e., not public knowledge within the community), bishops generally allowed their confessors to absolve it. In most dioceses, bishops empowered their vicars, who then gave permission to confessors to absolve reserved cases. The danger of revelation was judged to be greater than the good done by forcing the penitent to go before the bishop.27 Bishops could not directly enforce their authority over sensitive and ambiguous cases such as abortion without causing scandal. To a certain extent, then, the reservation of abortion was largely held to be impractical. Some bishops, such as Antonio Altoviti of Florence (1548–­73), Filippo Sega of Ripatrasone (near Macerata) (1575–­78), and Fantino Petrignano (1577–­85) of Cosenza, appeared to have acknowledged the futility and did not reserve cases of abortion at their provincial and diocesan synods of 1574, 1576, and 1579, respectively.28 Abortion, therefore, was not unanimously held to be a “grave and atrocious” sin that required a bishop’s intrusion into the confessional. That abortion was not universally held to be a reserved case created other spiritual and jurisdictional problems. What if a priest moved from one diocese where abortion was reserved into another where it was not? Surely this would have been confusing for the priest charged with the care of souls. What if he, not knowing that their sin was reserved, absolved someone, or conversely, refused absolution in ignorance that, in his current location, abortion was not reserved for the bishop? What did this mean for the penitent? Theologians thought that 26. Mancino, Licentia confitendi, 37, 71. 27.  de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 228–­31; Deutscher “Bishop’s Tribunal and the Laity,” 198. 28.  Decreta prouinciales synodi Florentinae (1574); Constitutiones et decreta condita in provinciali Synodo Consentina (1580), 112. Sega reserved cases of infant suffocation, incest in the second degree or higher, and sex with beasts, but not abortion; Sinodo Diocesana di Mons. Rever. Philippo Sega vescovo della Ripatransona (1576), fol. 34v.

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a penitent who experienced faulty or incomplete absolution was not fully rehabilitated; an improper confession was invalid. The confessor was obliged to make this right. Upon learning of his error, the confessor would have to admit to the penitent that his or her confession was invalid and either send him or her to the bishop or request the bishop’s permission to properly absolve the penitent from the reserved sin. However, the spectre of scandal loomed large over such situations: the penitent would have to undergo another confession, which might alert the community to his or her secrets, especially if he or she was accustomed to only confessing once a year during Lent, as most people did. Moreover, the confessor himself would appear ignorant in front of his bishop and might also lose the respect of his parish. Tommaso Zerola, bishop of Minori (near Salerno), concluded that if there was danger of such scandal, the absolution of a reserved case should be given in absentia without troubling the penitent. Martin Azpilcueta, the authority on all things related to confession, agreed.29 But this also meant that the penitent would not grasp the alleged gravity of their sin. A thornier circumstance, and one which did not have an easy answer or practical solution, was the fate of a penitent who committed a sin in one diocese where it was reserved and then travelled to another where it was not. Could he or she confess it in the place where the least amount of punishment would have been meted out? Would the absolution stand? All these questions and uncertainties regarding reserved cases suggest that cases of illicit sexuality and of ambiguous classification—­such as abortion—­ would continue to be handled primarily by confessors and would most likely be dealt with practically and leniently so as to avoid scandal and social disruption. Not content with this situation, in October 1588 Pope Sixtus V took an unprecedented stand on abortion. Believing that bishops were impotent in curbing this practice, Sixtus issued a papal bull Against those Who Procure Abortion, which made its practice unequivocally homicide and the procurer of abortion and any accomplice murderers as defined by criminal law, and also excommunicate ipso facto and laetae sententiae (that is, automatically imposed by God from the very moment the sin was committed).30 The bull was particularly harsh on procurers of abortion, but it was also a direct challenge to episcopal authority. Sixtus revoked the bishop’s jurisdiction over this sin by reserving its absolution to the Holy See alone. As of 29 October 1588, a procurer of abortion could no longer 29. Zerola, Praxis sacramenti poenitentiae, ch. 24, q. 16, fols. 114r–­115v; Azpilcueta, Manuale de confessori, ch. 26, no. 14, p. 688; Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 339. 30.  Sixtus V, Contra Procurantes . . . abortum.

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seek absolution from their confessor or from their bishop; these ecclesiastical authorities could no longer offer absolution and would have to convince the sinner to go Rome to plead his case in front of the pope himself. By making the procurer of abortion go to Rome for forgiveness, Sixtus asserted emphatically that the practice of abortion was no longer to be taken lightly. Aside from imposing his spiritual and pastoral priorities onto laymen and clerics, Sixtus was consciously amplifying Roman centralization by limiting the authority of the episcopate.31 Sixtus’s legislation was not well received. Bishops resented their demotion in these matters. Being unable to absolve a penitent who confessed their sin was not only an affront to episcopal authority and a challenge to the decrees of the Council of Trent, but the bull could also cause social and spiritual problems within their diocese. Travelling to Rome to have the pope deliberate over the matter was a dangerous and expensive trip that most penitents could not and would not take. If going to a diocesan center to be absolved by the bishop was not a viable option in most cases, going to Rome to plead the pope was, most likely, an impossibility. The soul of the remorseful sinner who could not or would not take the trip to Rome would linger in limbo, excommunicated from the faith, excluded from the “sacral community,” and apparently, regarded as a murderer. While bishops appeared to have obeyed the pope’s ruling,32 many bishops were not prepared to close their doors, relinquish their authority over their flock’s spiritual life, and send their penitents to Rome. Letters from bishops, archbishops, and suffragans from all over Italy were sent to the cardinals of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars seeking permission to absolve their penitents who confessed to procuring abortion. Bishops, from north to south, informed Sixtus and his curia that they had many and various sinners (mostly women) who confessed to procuring abortion in order to “avoid dishonor and infamy.” In 1590, the apostolic vicar of Aversa had twenty such sinners. The archbishop of Milan and bishops and suffragans of Isernia, Lodi, Potenza, Trani, and Siena all wrote claiming that they had penitents who confessed to procuring abortion, but refused to travel to Rome. It is impossible, the bishop of Lodi stressed, to convince these sinners to go to Rome. Because of “honor, shame and poverty, they cannot and will not travel to Rome and thus have no way to regain grace and re-­enter the church.” In order to save their souls 31.  On this theme, see Prodi, Papal Prince; Nubola, “Supplications between Politics and Justice,” 40–­42. 32.  In his synodal decretals of 1589 the bishop of Piacenza, Filippo Sega (1578–­91), previously bishop of Ripatrasone (see note 27 above), stated that abortion was now reserved to the pope alone; Synodus dioecesana sub admodum ill. et reverendiss.mo Domino Philippo Sega episcopo Placentiae (1589), 133.

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and avoid scandal and social unrest in their diocese, these bishops requested from the pope, via the cardinals, the authority—­from which they had recently been divested—­to absolve these penitents locally.33 Sixtus gave in to these requests. Replying to these bishops and suffragans through the cardinals of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, Sixtus allowed all these procurers of abortion to be absolved locally. He did not, as he forcefully stated in his bull, demand that their bishops and confessors send them to Rome in order that he may personally hear their stories and deliberate on their punishment. Sixtus, it seems, recognized the dangers involved with such a policy. He allowed for their absolution locally, but stipulated that the absolution was to be granted not by the requesting bishops but from the very confessors who heard the confession. “Proceed with prudence” and “with appropriate confidentiality,” the pope warned, in order to avoid any “inconveniences.”34 Bishops realized that sending procurers of abortion to Rome was not an option and so appealed to the pope on the sinners’ behalf. While it appears that Sixtus accepted this reality, he was not prepared to give up the authority that his bull set out to acquire. These confessors were allowed to absolve procurers of abortion because the pope, and not their bishops, said so. This was a special permission granted on a case-­by-­case basis by the pope. The curia of Pope Gregory XIV Sfondrati (r. 1590–­91), Sixtus’s second successor, therefore, dealt with similar requests from bishops. One specific letter sent to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars from the archpriest of Altamura (Giangiacomo de Mansi) seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. De Mansi requested permission to absolve a physician who had administered an abortion to a pregnant woman who was suffering from complications, which he believed could prove fatal. Inducing abortion was, in this case, a method of therapy; delivering the unborn prematurely in order to avoid any complications that may otherwise arise. Because of Sixtus’s bull, confessors would not absolve this physician. Altamura judged this situation unfair and sought permission from the new pope to absolve the physician himself.35 33.  ASV, Cong. Vescovi e Regolari, “Positiones” 1590: A–­B, Stefano Campanari al Cardinale di Sens, 14 April 1590; D–­M, Il Vescovo di Lodi Franciscus Isella alla S. d. N. S. Papa Sisto Quinto, April 1590; M–­P, Archiv. di Milano alla Sacra Cogr; R–­V, Siena alla Sacra Congr. 34.  ASV, Cong. Vescovi e Regolari, “Registra Episcoporum” 17 (1589), to Isernia, 4 August 1589, fol. 245r; “Registra Episcoporum” 19 (1590), 4 May 1590, to Lodi, Siena, Aversa, Potenza and Trani, fol. 149r–v. It is unclear whether these responses (as recorded in the Registra episcoporum) are verbatim copies or summaries of the actual letters sent. 35.  ASV, Cong. Vescovi e Regolari, “Positiones” 1591, A–­C: L’archiprete di Altamura, Giangiacomo de Mansi al Cardinale di Sens, 22 May 1591.

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Gregory XIV responded to this request by revoking Sixtus’s bull.36 As the letters of bishops and suffragans began to pile up, it became increasingly clear that Sixtus’s bull was an ineffective strategy against the practice of abortion—­it was not implementable and was too radical and severe. In everyday life, the voluntary termination of pregnancy was not unequivocally held to be the mortal sin that Sixtus’s bull pretended. Abortion was much more complicated. Gregory found it necessary, then, to modify Sixtus’s bull because he believed that it “block[ed] the way of salvation.” With the advice of the cardinals of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, Gregory XIV retracted the bull and reaffirmed the previous canonical consensus on abortion. Gregory thought it “more useful” to return to the less harsh penalties of the holy canons and profane laws: those who abort an inanimatus will not be guilty of true homicide because they have not killed a homo in actuality. Gregory reinstated bishops’ authority over this domain, but he also gave confessors permission to freely absolve procurers of such abortion. However, regarding the abortion of an animated unborn, Gregory believed that Sixtus’s bull ought to “endure entirely in its own strength.” He did not state how the nature and state of the unborn was to be assessed. Gregory concluded that, confronted with cases of abortion, clerics were to act “as if [Sixtus’s] constitution had never been published.”37 The papal incursion into the handling of cases of abortion was in force for less than three years. By the summer of 1591, abortion was again no longer unequivocally homicide and confessors could freely give absolution. But this, again, was a challenge to episcopal prerogatives. Almost immediately after Gregory’s moderation of Sixtus’s bull, Italian bishops began to re-­reserve cases of abortion to their office. The bishop of Lodi, Luigi Taverna (1579–­1616), reserved abortion at his 1591 synod,38 as did Gabriele Paleotti, archbishop of Bologna (1566–­97) in 1594, Giulio Cesare Riccardi of Bari (1592–­1602) in 1594, Giovanni Fontana in Ferrara (1590–­1611) in 1599, and Napoleone Comitoli in Perugia (1591–­ 1624) in 1600.39 While bishops returned it to their list of reserved cases, it is 36.  ASV, Cong. Vescovi e Regolari, “Registra Episcoporum” 19 (1591), Congregazione all’Archip. di Altamura, 18 June 1591, fol. 331v. 37.  Gregory XIV, Constitutio moderatoria. 38.  Decreta edita et promulgata in synodo dioecesana laudensi, 33. Taberna appended the whole text of Gregory’s modifying bull at the end of his synodal decretals for all the priests of Lodi to see that Church legislation on this matter had changed, and that he himself had made an amendment by prohibiting the confessors of Lodi from absolving aborters without his permission; ibid., 77–­80. 39. Paleotti, Archiepiscopale Bononiense, pt. 3, “De sacramento poenitentiae, Casus Archiepiscopales, [ . . . ] reseruauit,” no. 8, p. 112; Constitutiones editae in diocesana synodo barensi (1594), Tit. VIII, “De casibus reservatis;” Decreta edita et promulgata in Synodo Dioecesana Ferrariensi (1599), 130; Decreta et monita Synodalia

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highly likely that confessors continued to absolve procurers of abortion, perhaps with the permission of their superiors, most likely during Lent and with secret penance so as to avoid scandal. Young and unmarried women probably received absolution with relative ease to avoid harming their honor and exposing the men who impregnated them—­their lovers, deflowers, seducers, or rapists; men of high standing would likely have enjoyed the same privilege. Even if reforming bishops resisted such accommodations, by 1601, their hands were once again officially tied; the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, under Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini (r. 1592–­1605), directed bishops to empower their confessors to absolve penitents caught in secret carnal sins in order to avoid scandal rather than force them to the diocesan center.40 Once again, Rome undermined Tridentine decrees and challenged episcopal authority. Bishops seeking to reform the sexual morality of their dioceses were limited by the spectre of scandal and the long arm of Rome. The “counter-­reformation” bishop was perpetually caught between a rock and a hard place. The episcopal and papal reservations of abortion in the last three decades of the sixteenth century appear to have been easily circumvented. In fact, the system of reservation as applied to the practice of abortion appears to have been more a rhetorical claim than an actual practice; that is, ecclesiastical authorities propagated the threat of exposure without really wanting to expose. Since abortion was so closely tied to notions of honor and shame, and because it was ambiguous, contentious, difficult to classify as a sin, and largely impossible to prove, ecclesiastical authorities likely allowed procurers of abortion to be absolved in secrecy by their confessors. Bishops and popes did not want to face the social consequences of bringing certain procurers of abortion to light. The risk of notoriety appears to have led to discreet and practical solutions, and left bishops to rely on the confessional to reform this aspect of morality. The attempted policing of the practice of abortion provides an opportunity to observe post-­Tridentine ecclesiastical politics. The bishops discussed in this study sought to control the practice of abortion by inserting themselves into the confessional and by demanding that transgressors be brought to the diocesan center. The presence of the bishop in the confessional through lists of reserved cases was, in theory, an attempt at reform through discipline and centralization. Sixtus V’s incursion into this matter should be understood in similar terms. While the post-­Tridentine “church” was certainly not unified as a single body or in its Ecclesia Perusinae (1600), 29–­30. 40.  De Graffi, Practica quinque casuum, 1.3, 1.8–­9; Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:335.

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commitment to reform, its definition of reform, or its methods for achieving said reform; in the case of abortion, some bishops and popes did combine spiritual and pastoral priorities with centralizing schemes in order to influence behavior. The intrusion into the confessional by bishops and popes by means of the reservation of cases appears to have been another attempt of ecclesiastical “penetration into society.” The reservation of abortion to the episcopacy, to the papacy, and again to the episcopacy was certainly an attempt to turn this transgression, stemming from illicit sexuality, into a matter of conscience. The harsh penalties that, in theory, were to be imposed on those who procured abortion were meant to deter men and women from its practice by realizing its gravity. Yet it was almost immediately clear that these penalties were impossible to enforce. It is questionable whether they were in fact intended to be. Indeed, the episcopal strategies for handling the case of abortion appear to affirm what historians have increasingly come to believe regarding the Counter-­Reformation Catholic Church: that ecclesiastical authorities considered rhetoric, persuasion, and instruction to be more effective reforming strategies than force and punishment.41

Works Cited Archives

ASV = Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano Cong. Vescovi e Regolari, “Positiones” (1590), A–­B, D–­M, M–­P, R–­V; (1591), A–­C Cong. Vescovi e Regolari, “Registra Episcoporum” 17 (1589), 19 (1590), 19 (1591)

Printed Primary Sources

Antonucci, Gian Battista. Catechesis, seu Instructio civitatis ac dioecesis Neapolitanae. Naples, 1577. Azpilcueta, Martin. Manuale de’ Confessori et Penitenti. Venice, 1569. Borromeo, Carlo. Acta ecclesiae mediolanensis. Milan, 1582, 1599. ———. De censuris, et casibus reseruatis liber: De canonibus item poenitentialibus . . . . Milan, 1584. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Translated by H. J. Schroeder. Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1971. Constitutiones editae, et promulgatae in synodo dioecesana Placentina quam illustrissimus et reuerendissimus D. D. Paulus De Aretio, S. Re. Presbyter Cardinalis, Dei et Apostolicae sedis gratia Episcopus Placentiae, et comes habuit anno MDLXX die XXVI Augusti. Piacenza, 1570.

41.  See for example, Prosperi, Tribunali della conscienza, 1996; Black, Church, Religion and Society; Black, Italian Inquisition.

Papal Authority, Episcopal Reservation, and Abortion in Sixteenth-Century Italy  125 Constitutiones editae in diocesana synodo barensi quam ill. mus et r.mus dominus d.nus Julius Caesar Riccardus, Dei et Apostolicae Sedis gratia Archiepiscopus Barensis et canusinae sedis habuit. Aprilis XIII 1594. In Riforma tridentina in Puglia, edited by Giovanni Pinto, 2:49–­103. Bari: Editoriale Universitaria, 1968. Constitutiones et decreta condita in provinciali Synodo Consentina sub. Reuerendiss. Domino D. Fantino Petrignano Dei & Apostolicae Sedis gratia Archiepiscopo Consentiae. Rome, 1580. Constitutiones et decreta condita in synodo dioecesana Ravennatensi, quam illustrissimus, & reuerendissimus dominus D. Christophorus Boncompagnus Dei, & Apostolicae sedis gratia Archiepiscopus Ravennae Habuit anno domini MDLXXX die quinta Maij. Ravenna, 1580. Constitutiones, et decreta Dioecesanae Synodi Viterben. per admodu Illustrem, et Reuerendiss D. D. Carolum Archiepiscopu Motiliu(m) Episcopum Viterben. in Cathedrali Ecclesia S. Laurentij Ciuitatis Viterbi iiij Martij, 1584. Viterbo, 1584. Decreta edita et promulgata in Synodo Dioecesana Ferrariensi habita anno a Christi Natiuit MDXCIX a Reuerendissimo D. Domino Ioanne Fontana. Ferrara, 1599. Decreta edita et promulgata in synodo dioecesana laudensi, Quam per Illustris, & Reuerendiss D. Ludovicus Taberna Dei, . . . . Milan, 1591. Decreta et monita Synodalia Ecclesia Perusinae iussu admodum illis. ac. R. mi. D. Neapolionis Comitoli Perusiae Episcopi, edita. Perugia, 1600. Decreta prouinciales synodi Florentinae . . . Antonio Altovita, Archiepiscopo. Florence, 1574. de Graffi, Giacomo. Practica quinque casuum summo pontifici reservatorum, . . . Archiepiscopis, & Episcopis. . . . Naples, 1609. Fumi, Bartolomeo. Summa, aurea armilla nuncupata, casus omnes ad animarum curam attinentes, breuiter complectens. Venice, 1572. Gittio, Bartolomeo, Tractatus de casibus reseruatis. Naples, 1621. Gregory XIV. Constitutio moderatoria bullae fel. rec. Sixti pp. 5, contra abortum quouis modo procurantes. Rome, 1591. Mercurio, Girolamo. De gli errori popolari d’Italia. Venice, 1603; Verona, 1645. Paleotti, Gabrielle. Archiepiscopale Bononiense siue de Bononiensis Ecclesiae administratione. Rome, 1594. ———. Episcopale Bononensis civitatis et diocesis: Raccolte di varie cose, che in diversi tempi sono state ordinate. Bologna, 1582. Sauli, Alessandro. Confessionale R. F. Hieronymi Savonarolae. Turin, 1578. Sinodo Diocesana di Mons. Rever. Philoppo Sega vescovo della Ripatransona [ . . . ] publicati i tre primi giorni di maggio. 1576. Macerata, 1577. Sixtus V. Contra Procurantes, consulentes, & consentientes, quocumque modo Abortum, CONSTITUTIO. Rome, 1588. Synodo dioecesana camerinensi quam illvstris, et reverensissimvs Dominus Hieronymvs de Bobus . . . MDLXXXVII. die XXIIII. Mensis Septembris. Camerino, 1588. Synodus dioecesana sub admodum ill. et reverendiss.mo Domino Philippo Sega episco Placentiae . . . anno do. MDLXXXIX. V. No. Maii. Piacenza, 1589. Zerola, Tommaso. Praxis sacramenti poenitentiae. Venice, 1599.

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Allegra, Luciano. “Il parroco: In mediatore fra alta e bassa cultura.” In Intelletuali e potere, edited by Corrado Vivanti, 895–­947. Turin: Einaudi, 1981. Black, Christopher F. Church, Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ———. The Italian Inquisition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Borromeo, Agostino. “I vescovi italiani e l’applicazione del concilio di Trento.” In I tempi del concilio: Religione, cultura e societa nell’Europa tridentina, edited by Cesare Mozzarelli and Danilo Zardin, 27–­106. Rome: Bulzoni, 1997. Brambilla, Elena. Alle origini del Sant’Uffizio: Penitenza, confessione e giustizia spirituale dal medioevo al XVI secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000. ———. “Confessione, casi riservati e giustizia ‘spirituale” dal XV secolo al concilio di Trento: I reati di fede e di morale.” In Fonti ecclesiastiche per la storia sociale e religiosa d’Europa: XV–­XVIII secolo, edited by Cecilia Nubola and Angelo Turchini, 491–­ 540. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999. Comerford, Kathleen M. “‘The Care of Souls is a Very Grave Burden for [the Pastor]:’ Professionalization of Clergy in Early Modern Florence, Lucca, and Arezzo.” In The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe, edited by Wim Janse and Barbara Pitkin, 349–­68. Leiden: Brill, 2005. ———. Reforming Priests and Parishes: Tuscan Dioceses in the First Century of Seminary Education. Leiden: Brill, 2006. D’Addario, Arnaldo. Aspetti della controriforma a Firenze. Rome: Pubblicazioni degli archivi di Stato, 1972. de Boer, Wietse. The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-­Reformation Milan. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Deutscher, Thomas. “The Bishop’s Tribunal and the Laity: The Diocese of Novara, 1563 to1614.” In The Renaissance in the Streets, Schools, and Studies, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler and Nicholas Terpstra, 183–­209. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008. Greco, Gaetano. “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio: Il clero secolare nella societa italiana dal cinquecento al settecento.” In Clero e societa nell’Italia moderna, edited by Mario Rosa, 45–­113. Bari: Editore Laterza, 1992. Lavenia, Vincenzo. “D’animal fante. Teologia, medicina legale e identità umana. Secoli XVI XVII.” In Salvezza delle anime e disciplina dei corpi: Un seminario sulla storia del battesimo, edited by Adriano Prosperi, 483–­526. Pisa: Edizione della Normale, 2006. Lea, Henry Charles. A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church. 3 vols. Philadelphia: Lea Brothers and Co., 1896. Mancino, Michele, Licentia confitendi: Selezione e controllo dei confessori a Napoli in eta moderna. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2000. Montanari, D. Disciplinamento in terra veneta: La diocesi di Brescia nella seconda meta del XVI secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987.

Papal Authority, Episcopal Reservation, and Abortion in Sixteenth-Century Italy  127 Noonan, John T. “An Almost Absolute Value in History.” In The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives, edited by John Noonan, 1–­59. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. ———. Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Nubola, Cecilia. “Supplications between Politics and Justice: The Northern and Central Italian States in the Early Modern Age.” International Review of Social History 46 (2001): 35–­56. Pinto, Giovanni. Riforma tridentina in Puglia. 4 vols. Bari: Editoriale universitaria, 1968–­ 75. Prodi, Paolo. Il Cardinale Gabriele Paleotti (1522–­1597). Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1967. ———. The Papal Prince, One Body, Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Susan Haskins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Prosperi, Adriano. Dare l’anima: Storia di un infanticidio. Turin: Einaudi, 2005. ———. Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari. Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Terpstra, Nicholas. Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Turchini, Angelo. Clero e fedeli a Rimini in eta post-­tridentina. Rome: Herder, 1978. ———. “La nascita del sacerdozio come professione.” In Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed eta moderna, edited by Paolo Prodi, 225–­56. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994. Turrini, Miriam. La coscienza e le leggi: Morale e diritto nei testi per la confessione della prima eta moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino 1991.

Ministering to Catholics and Protestants Alike The Preaching, Polemics, and Pastoral Care of François de Sales Jill Fehleison François de Sales, the Savoyard bishop and saint, is perhaps best known for his guide to daily living, Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), and his establishment of the Order of the Visitation (1610) with fellow saint Jeanne de Chantal. He was also deeply involved in pastoral care and conversion of Protestants during his service to the diocese of Geneva (1592–­1622), which included twenty years as bishop (1602–­22).1 Being both an avid reformer within Catholicism and an active missionary among the region’s Protestants, de Sales crafted messages in his sermons and in religious tracts to fit particular audiences; however, much of his correspondence, his sermons, and his most famous published writings, can all be broadly characterized as pastoral guides.2 Even his cofounding of the Visitandines originated from his spiritual direction of Jeanne de Chantal after the death of her husband.3 As leader of a diocese, de Sales worked tirelessly to create a body of clergy that offered the laity Catholic orthodoxy through religious 1.  Despite being the diocese of Geneva, the bishop ultimately resided in the Savoy town of Annecy after Catholic clergy had been expelled from the city of Geneva in the mid 1530s. For English biographies of de Sales, see Ravier, Francis de Sales, Sage and Saint; LaJeunie, Saint Francis de Sales. 2.  Introduction to the Devout Life and Treatise on the Love of God (1616) are de Sales’s best known books of devotion. 3.  For further exploration of the relationship between Jeanne de Chantal and François de Sales see Wright, Bond of Perfection; and Wright and Power, Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal.

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instruction and by example.4 De Sales always viewed himself first and foremost as a priest invested with a flock, and he continued delivering sermons and leading catechism instruction throughout his tenure as bishop despite the great demands on his time and talent. By placing high importance on preaching, de Sales was following the directives from Rome after the Council of Trent. The framers of Trent certainly acknowledged that there were too many members of the clergy who failed in their duties to instruct their parishioners in Christian doctrine. Trent ordained that preaching the gospel was the “chief duty of the bishops.” If a bishop was unable to preach because of other obligations related to his episcopal duties, he was to appoint someone who was “competent” to preach in his place. Clergy who failed to deliver sermons “at least on Sundays and solemn festivals” were to face serious punishment. The reformers at Trent also expected priests to improve the quality of their sermons, reminding members of the clergy, regardless of their rank, that they should craft sermons that matched the educational and intellectual level of the audience. In addition to his own preaching, a bishop was expected to ensure that all of the clergy residing within his diocese—­ both secular and regular—­preached orthodoxy, preached when required to, and did not preach without a license.5 Published sermons and preaching manuals proliferated in the sixteenth century with the spread of the printing press. Many priests did not have the natural skill or education to compose and deliver effective sermons without help, but as Larissa Taylor observes, preachers had numerous options when seeking out printed sermons to serve as models.6 Peter Bayley notes that French oratory shifted dramatically to a less aggressive and partisan approach after the Edict of Nantes (1598), but the five decades before 1650 have been neglected by scholars who have preferred to focus on the latter half of the seventeenth century. The period after 1650 is associated most often with the style of Jacques-­Bénigne Bossuet, court preacher of Louis XIV and considered one of the great orators of the early modern period.7 De Sales is an important preacher for this transitional period from the end of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century when the Francophone regions of Europe witnessed diminishing religious violence. 4.  While the diocese of Geneva did not have a seminary until 1663, de Sales’s predecessor as bishop, Claude de Granier, established the practice of annual synods to train and oversee the clergy and de Sales continued and expanded this practice during his tenure as bishop. According to Ravier, while bishop, de Sales ordained almost nine hundred priests; Francis de Sales, 129–­31, 239. 5.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 5th sess. chap. 2 (pp. 26–­27), 24th sess. chap. 4 (pp. 195–­96). 6. Taylor, Soldiers of Christ, 227. 7. Bayley, French Pulpit Oratory, 1598–­1650, 4.

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De Sales’s early sermons preached among the Reformed populations of the diocese offer foundational evidence for his later devotional literature that was so important and influential to seventeenth-­century Catholicism and to the larger Salesian spirituality movement. His earliest publications were polemics sparked by his experiences during the Catholic mission in the duchy of Chablais, a region that included Protestant villages located on the outskirts of Geneva and along Lake Geneva. De Sales proved to be a polemicist of some dexterity, a fact reflected in both his sermons and pamphlets of the 1590s. These early sermons, delivered to hostile or indifferent audiences of Reformed followers, proved to be great training for de Sales’s future endeavors as bishop of Geneva that included administering a fractured diocese under the two often warring secular rulers of France and Savoy and with the continued presence of Protestants. After de Sales completed his education at the College of Clermont in Paris under the Jesuits and then in Padua, where the Jesuit diplomat Antonio Possevino served as his mentor, he returned to his native Savoy to begin his career in the Catholic Church.8 His predecessor as bishop, Claude de Granier, was one of the first to recognize the young priest’s talents when he made de Sales provost of the cathedral canons in 1592. De Sales developed a reputation as an outstanding preacher and became a model for reform-­minded bishops of the seventeenth century.9 Themes of redemption and spiritual growth through the practice of Catholicism can be found in these early sermons and carry through into his later sermons and published works. As a post-­Tridentine bishop, de Sales always strived to convert Protestants inhabiting his diocese and to revitalize existing Catholic parishes, with the ultimate goal of restoring the pre-­Reformation boundaries of his diocese. While this essay highlights the intersection between religious polemic and sermons in the early works of de Sales, these sermons are part of a larger body of pastoral and religious polemical literature produced by Catholics and Protestants living in and around Geneva during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These works offer an important window into understanding how both Catholics and Protestants maintained religious identities in biconfessional regions during the later Reformation. While scholars are often interested in the epistemology of 8. Ravier, Francis de Sales, 64–­65 9.  De Sales wrote an often-­quoted letter to the newly elected archbishop of Bourges that offered advice on how to prepare a sermon; F. de Sales to Monseigneur André Frémyot, archbishop of Bourges, 5 October 1604, in de Sales, Œuvres, 12:311–­12. Frémyot was the brother of Jeanne de Chantal. De Sales was also a mentor to Jean-­Pierre Camus, who he consecrated as bishop of Belley in 1609. In an effort to support de Sales’s canonization, Camus wrote a six-­volume biography of his mentor. For more on Camus and de Sales’s influence on him, see Worcester, Seventeenth-­Century Cultural Discourse.

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religious doctrine, too often we fail to acknowledge the continued influence of rival systems of belief on the development and maintenance of doctrine. Whatever the initial intent, many of the polemical materials from both confessions were distributed much more widely than the region in which they were produced. And this raises larger questions about religious polemics of the age. Were they meant to rally the faithful, attack opponents, convert religious rivals, or offer something for multiple audiences? Were they intended to produce change in the opposition or simply bolster one’s own allies? To address these questions, it is important that we pay close attention to the rhetorical form, either as a kind of teaching tool or as a window into how each side perceived its vulnerabilities (i.e., the challenged arguments it took the pains to rebut). De Sales’s sermons from the mission in the Chablais offer an important source for understanding the Catholic perspective and position at the end of the sixteenth century. Exiled from the city of Geneva in 1535, the bishops of Geneva were constantly reminded of how the entrée of Reformed ideas into the region had disrupted the diocese. With the advent of the mission among Protestants in 1594, de Sales was able to articulate in sermons and pamphlets the Catholic side to this long-­standing rivalry. His experience as a missionary shaped how de Sales approached his episcopal duties and how he understood religious differences throughout the rest of his life.

The Mission in the Chablais In September 1594, Bishop de Granier sent de Sales to the duchy of Chablais to begin his mission work. For the first several years, de Sales worked in relative isolation and gained only a handful of converts from the Protestant villages. His correspondence from this time reveals a great deal of discouragement, with the future bishop even threatening to quit the mission.10 Over the course of his missionary work in the Chablais, de Sales preached to and disputed with Protestants. He engaged in a battle of words with the Reformed minister of Thonon (a town located on Lake Geneva and the center of the Catholic mission), Louis Viret, over the real presence of the Eucharist that resulted in de Sales’s first publication.11 The dispute between de Sales and Viret began during the late fall or early winter of 1596. According to de Sales, in the preface to his Treatise on the Love of God published in 1616, he was compelled to respond to “the minister, and 10.  F. de Sales to Senator Antoine Favre, beginning of October 1594, and F. de Sales to Senator Antoine Favre, end of May 1595, in de Sales, Œuvres, 11:91, 139. 11.  See de Sales, Œuvres, 23, Letter from F. de Sales to Louis Viret, 20–­23, 71n66. The pamphlet written in response to Viret’s challenges was Briefe Meditation sur le Symbole.

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adversary of the Church,” who publically challenged the Catholic belief in the real presence of the Eucharist.12 Not surprisingly, de Sales preached a great deal on the real presence during the mission in Chablais, especially during the years of 1596 and 1597. Many of the religious leaders from both sides of the confessional divide simultaneously produced both sermons and more overtly polemical texts, and the intersection between the two forms of communication offers scholars a fruitful area of inquiry. The years of 1596 to 1597 proved to be a crucial turning point in the interactions between Catholics and Protestants in the Chablais. In addition to de Sales’s dispute with Pastor Viret over the Eucharist and his sermons on the same subject, the mission received long-­awaited help with the arrival of several reinforcements in 1597 that included two Capuchins, Père Chérubin de Maurienne and Esprit de Beaume, and a Jesuit, Jean Saunier.13 The arrival of the Capuchins, particularly Père Chérubin, revitalized the mission, which began using more confrontational methods to evangelize among the Reformed populations. Besides the Eucharist, the other focal point of the Catholic mission was the veneration of the cross, which led to more conflict with the region’s Protestants. The mission often used these two symbols in tandem in its efforts to sway the Reformed villages. The most significant activity the group initiated was the staging of the Eucharistic celebration known as the Forty Hours Devotions on three separate occasions between September 1597 and October 1598.14 Preparation for these celebrations drew the attention of the Reformed leadership in Geneva. The Company of Pastors in Geneva feared that people would be distracted by Catholic festivities after it was alerted to planned processions, including one in Annemasse, a Catholic parish on the outskirts of Geneva, where a large gathering would erect a cross.15 On 2 September 1597, five days prior to the first Forty Hours Devotions celebration in Annemasse, the ministers received copies of two placards advertising the adoration of the cross, with the first placard offering support from the Bible and church fathers on the virtue of making the sign of the cross and the second providing evidence for why the cross should be honored.16 The company chose 12.  de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, 11. 13.  de Sales, Charles-­Auguste, Histoire du Bien-­Heureux François de Sales. 1:187. 14.  The “forty hours” refers to the time Christ was in his tomb. These celebrations included processions, continual preaching, and veneration of the host. The devotion grew in popularity over the course of the sixteenth century and tended to spread with the Capuchin preachers. For a fuller exploration of the Forty Hours Devotions in the duchy of Chablais, see Fehleison “Appealing to the Senses”; Fehleison Boundaries of Faith, chap. 3. 15.  Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Geneve, 7:72–­73. 16.  de Sales, Œuvres, 2:189–­92, While it is not clear that de Sales composed these two placards, he

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Antoine de la Faye to counter with his own propaganda to denounce the forthcoming Catholic festivities.17 La Faye responded directly but anonymously to the content of the placards in a Brief Traitté de la vertu de la Croix et de la manière de l’honorer (1597). There was enough interest in la Faye’s pamphlet for the work to be translated into English and published in London in 1599. The quick publication of la Faye’s treatise was answered by de Sales in an expansive response published in 1600 in Lyons, Defense de l’Estendart de la saincte Croix de nostre Sauveur Jesus-­Christ that went on to have numerous reprintings over the course of the seventeenth century as de Sales’s reputation grew.18 This debate between Catholics and Protestants, and many of de Sales’s sermons, focused on the same core issue, namely the Catholic interpretation of physical symbols of the Christian faith. La Faye argued in various ways, including the use of sarcasm, that Catholics were idolaters in their adoration of the cross. In response, de Sales claimed that adoration of the cross was part of the true church as evidenced by the writings of a church father, John Chrysostom, who had compared honoring the cross to giving honor to a prince’s scepter or robe; furthermore, the cross was celebrated everywhere once Christians ceased to be persecuted in the Roman Empire, and it remained a consoling and beloved symbol.19 The broad messages offered by Catholic and Reformed leaders offered starkly different interpretations of Christian practices. The entire Catholic mission in the Chablais centered on the material elements of faith that episcopal officials hoped would resonate with a rural population.

Sermons of François de Sales A funeral oration for Prince Philippe Emmanuel, the duke of Mercœur, delivered in Paris in 1602 was the only sermon of de Sales to be published during his lifetime, but the notes and sermons recorded in his own hand and those recorded by the nuns of the Order of the Visitation provide a representative look at what he accomplished from the pulpit. The first sermon collection of de Sales was published did compose similar short pieces during his missionary work. According to de Sales’s introduction of The Catholic Controversy (trans. Mackey, ix), he would post them in the villages of the Chablais. See de Sales, Œuvres,1:cvii–­389, for a text of many of de Sales’s placards; for an English version, see de Sales, Catholic Controversy, trans. Mackey, 1–­413. 17.  Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs, 7:74. 18.  The full title for de Sales’s work is Defense de l’Estendart de la saincte Croix de Nostre Sauveur Jesus-­ Christ. Divisee en quatre Livres. Par François de Sales, Prevost de l’Eglise Cathedrale de Sainct Pierre de Geneve. Antoine de la Faye published another response to de Sales entitled Replique chrestienne a la response de M. F. de Sales, se disant Evesque de Geneve, sur le Traicté de la vertu et adoration de la croix. 19.  de Sales, Œuvres, 2:162–­64.

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Figure 1. St. François de Sales Preaching in the Chablais. Engraving by Pitau after François Chauveau (France), from [Henry de Maups du Tour], La vie du vénérable serviteur de Dieu François de Sales . . . (Paris: Chez la Veuve de Nicolas Belley, 1707). Courtesy Salesian Library, Wilmington-Philadelphia Province of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales.

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in 1641 under the guidance of Jeanne de Chantal, offering twenty-­seven sermons and outlines written by de Sales and another thirty-­three recorded by the nuns of the Visitation of Annecy. While the originals in de Sales’s own hand have been lost, there was a letter of Jeanne de Chantal that attested to the sermons.20 Peter Bayley has questioned the accuracy of the sermons not in de Sales’s own hand, asserting that they “have no manuscript relationship with the preacher at all,” and were based solely on notes taken by a member of the congregation. Conversely, Salesian scholar Joseph Chorpenning argues that the sermons transcribed by the nuns of the Visitation may be the most accurate of de Sales’s sermons since the women were skilled at recording what de Sales actually said without any of their own additions.21 In comparison, some of the best transcripts that exist for sermons of John Calvin are those recorded by a gifted scribe, Denis Raguenier.22 While we cannot recreate the experience of being present at the sermons, the surviving documents do offer a rich source for understanding the often-­polemical nature of post-­Tridentine sermons. There is a clear intersection between the sermons of de Sales from the 1590s and the polemical debates the missionaries entered into with the Reformed ministers of the region. The sermons and pamphlets presented similar subject matter, but de Sales’s tone and his approach to the materials clearly differed between these two forms of communication. His sermons of this period were meant to highlight the validity of Catholic orthodoxy and offer an option for Protestants to reach across the confessional divide and be welcomed into the Roman Catholic Church. The audiences for his pamphlet publications on the Eucharist and on the veneration of the cross included devout Catholics who wanted their faith reaffirmed as well as the Reformed preachers he battled against from the villages of Chablais and from Geneva. His later sermons as bishop, which he preached primarily to the nuns of the Visitation, were much less overtly challenging to the Protestants, though he still used his religious rivals as the “other” in the sermons. This approach of attacking Protestants when the region had been “infected” by heresy but not dwelling on them when the area was already loyal to Catholicism was in accordance with the preaching manuals produced after the Council of Trent.23 Throughout his ministry, de Sales spoke to multiple audiences, sometimes within the same pamphlet,

20.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:vi–­vii, viii–­ix. 21. Bayley, French Pulpit Oratory, 1598–­1650, 15; de Sales, Sermon Texts on Saint Joseph, 44–­47. 22.  For a discussion of Raguenier’s method and abilities, see Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, 65–­68. 23. McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory, 38–­41.

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devotional tract, or sermon, and demonstrated the multifaceted duties faced by episcopal officials in biconfessional regions. Construction and format of sermons varied depending on the intended audience. De Sales’s sermons in the Chablais to a Protestant audience during the period from 1594 through 1597 tended to focus on one or two major tenets of Catholicism and explained why the Catholic view was correct and the Protestant view—­in this case the Reformed view—­was wrong. He included fewer of the standard Latin elements present in sermons directed at a Catholic audience. His methods for his mission sermons included raising doubts about Protestant interpretations and teachings, demonstrating why the Catholic views were legitimate, and reminding the audience of Catholic orthodoxy. In the case of his later sermons, preached to the Visitandines, the nuns would have held an education in general Catholic doctrine, so de Sales did not have to explain basic Catholic practices, such as why Catholics sing the Latin “Gloria Patri” and “Deum de Deo” as he would explain in a mission sermon.24 De Sales dubbed the Calvinists from Geneva “our adversaries” and described them as men who caused disorder, deceived people, and introduced innovation into Christianity. This image of conflict can be seen throughout the message of the mission in the duchy of Chablais. De Sales reminded his listeners of the iconoclasm committed by the Reformed populations, and in the Chablais, there were many examples of destruction from years of religious and military conflict.25 The cross was a powerful and ancient image of Christianity, and its connection to late antiquity and the first Christians was always a difficult hurdle for the Reformed leaders to overcome. When la Faye attacked the veneration of the cross as idolatry in his Brief Traitté (1597) as a response to Catholic placards and processions, de Sales responded in his pamphlet Defense de l’Estendart de la saincte Croix with the example of early Christians who made the sign of the cross and displayed the emblem. Furthermore de Sales wondered how Catholics could be reproached for speaking ritual responses in the language of their parents when it was the heretics that “produce some new words and find strange the language of domestics.”26 De Sales’s message often settled around the theme that taking away beloved emblems and audience responses from the people was 24.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:258–­59. 25.  The region was a crossroads for competing political and religious ambitions, including those of the house of Savoy, France, the Protestant cities of Geneva and Berne, and even Spain, whose soldiers travelled through the region to reach Habsburg territories in the Netherlands and served as a mercenary army for the dukes of Savoy. 26.  de Sales, Œuvres, 2:164.

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the innovation of the Reformed tradition since these symbols and practices had been part of Christianity from its origins. To reinforce this image of Protestant as innovator, de Sales attempted to demonstrate the inconsistency of Calvin’s ideas of the visible and invisible church. He wondered where was the true church a hundred years ago? How could “these adversaries” be the true church when they were not around fifty or sixty years ago? De Sales claimed it was the design of the devil to make the church invisible. He concluded that the Christian church, which had continued without interruption, thus making the true church, was the Roman Catholic one.27 In this way, he made a point that Catholic missionaries consistently argued—­their faith remained more accessible than the Reformed faith, had historical continuity, and possessed more established ties to community traditions. De Sales’s later published works, including Introduction to the Devout Life and Treatise on the Love of God, expanded on this theme of Catholicism offering a place of comfort and stability. One of the frequent attacks by Protestant reformers against Catholicism was that it contained too many practices that were not based on scripture. Two of the most frequent Catholic practices to be challenged were good works and devotions to saints. To combat this view, de Sales preached to his audience in the Chablais about how best to know Jesus Christ; he said there were “two doors” to knowing God, scripture and tradition.28 He portrayed Protestant interpretations of scripture as dangerous. De Sales equated ambiguities in questions of faith to demons, and claimed his adversaries used sophisms to mislead.29 Both confessions embraced ideas about the use of rhetoric in their sermons, but they equally accused each other of using such techniques in order to manipulate their audiences.30 According to de Sales, it was Protestants who offered interpretations of scripture that caused controversies and disputes. In an effort to demonstrate that questioning established interpretations of scripture was a disruptive practice, de Sales claimed that men like John Oecolampadius, Andreas Karlstadt, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin were following in the footsteps of John Hus and John Wycliffe, who were mistaken and whose ideas were without foundation.31 Tying leaders of the Reformation to earlier 27.  Ibid., 7:213, 22. Susan Rosa concisely explored the effectiveness of using Rome’s continuity to antiquity with potential Protestant converts in her article, “Il était possible aussi que cette conversion fût sincère,” see esp. 638–­41. 28.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:245–­46. 29.  Ibid., 7:289–­90. 30. McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory, 54–­56; Ford, “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition,” 73–­74. 31.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:344–­46.

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disorder and instability would have resonated with the Chablais population, who had seen so much warfare and disruption since the Bernese had introduced Protestant ideas into the villages in 1535 and 1536.32 Gifted preachers like de Sales tied local realities to more global religious concerns. Much of de Sales’s energy in his missionary work was put into challenging the Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper and convincing his audience of the Catholic view. De Sales described the experience of the Catholic interpretation using vivid imagery that he asserted was confirmed in the teachings of the gospels and by Paul’s epistles. In contrast, he claimed the Calvinists’ Last Supper resembled the fruit of the Dead Sea.33 As a result of continued challenges to the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist from the Reformed ministers and in conjunction with the forthcoming Forty Hours Devotions, de Sales gave a series of sermons on the Eucharist in July 1597. These sermons were composed and preached in the Chablais during the same period that de Sales continued his dispute with Reformed minister Louis Viret. These sermon accounts are very straightforward, presenting a rather legalistic de Sales attempting to prove the case of the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist. He addressed those in his audience as “my dear brothers” presumably to increase a sense of familiarity.34 In an effort to portray the Reformed followers as outsiders, de Sales equated their actions to those committed by the persecutors of the first Christians. De Sales claimed his adversaries accused Catholics of cannibalism just as enemies of the early Christians had done. He argued that the current accusers were people who were “baptized, nourished, and instructed in the Church of God, who have seen the Eucharist a thousand times and participated in it a hundred times.” And after this connection with the Catholic Church, they separated themselves into sects. He asked, “[was] there an affront of heresy more arrogant than this one?”35 De Sales portrayed the Protestant leaders in both his sermons and pamphlets as haughty individuals who abandoned their faith for something new and unstable. Catholic polemists associated with the diocese of Geneva frequently used the image of a lofty intellectual who offers his own interpretations of scripture and discounts long-­standing Christian practices.36 For example, in his response to la 32. Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground, 137–­41. 33.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:294–­95. 34.  De Sales had studied law at the University of Padua, see LaJeunie, Saint Francis de Sales, 1:75–­76; de Sales, Œuvres, 7:322–­23. 35.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:324–­26. 36. Avully, Copie de la lettre du seigneur d’Avully: Touchant la dispute des ministres avec le R. P. Cherubin, prescheur de l’Ordre des Capucins, 7–­8. In this account of a dispute between a Protestant theology professor from

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Faye’s Brief Traitté, de Sales addressed Calvin and Beza directly, reminding the Protestant leaders that they were baptized in the Catholic Church surrounded by what they now called idols, yet still held those baptisms to be valid.37 While de Sales compared the Reformed faith to previous heresies, he rarely called the Reformed followers heretics directly, since he did not want to offend anyone in his audience. Sermons designed to bring about religious conversion were a tricky balance between condemning the other system of belief while not alienating an audience comprised of its members. The second sermon in the series on the Eucharist focused on the dispute over how Jesus could be physically present in the Eucharist. De Sales used the story of Jesus returning to his disciples on the day of his resurrection and challenged the interpretations of specific reformers, including Oecolampadius, Calvin, and Peter Martyr, whom he said all claimed Jesus came through an open window or door. De Sales tried to demonstrate how the Reformers reduced the power of Jesus by limiting how and where his physical presence could exist.38 Again mentioning the teachings of Peter Martyr and Calvin, de Sales asserted that they discounted the word of God as shown in Matthew 19:26, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” De Sales concluded that he had proven his point that “our savior is in the Eucharist without occupying place there.”39 De Sales reviewed the main Protestant positions on the Lord’s Supper, citing Luther, Calvin, and Peter Martyr, and then offered his demonstration of inconsistencies in their interpretations.40 Using biblical examples that would be well known to his audience, de Sales wondered why it was so hard for his adversaries to believe that substances could change when Jesus changed water into wine and Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt. In citing Matthew 4:3, he claimed that even the devil acknowledged the possibility of transubstantiation when he challenged Jesus to change stones into bread.41 In these three sermons, de Sales was the lawyer convincing his jury of his version of the truth, asserting that when “all measures are considered you will judge in favor of the Catholics.” He consistently raised names and summarized the positions of those who had challenged Catholicism before Geneva, Herman Lignaridus, and the Capuchin missionary, Chérubin de Maurienne, Avully, a recent Catholic convert, portrayed Lignaridus as an arrogant professor who carried around his books and kept himself apart from the villagers. 37.  de Sales, Œuvres, 2:66. 38.  Ibid., 7:328–­32. 39.  Ibid., 7:333–­34. 40.  Ibid., 7:335. 41.  Ibid., 7:335–­36.

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dismissing them as being mistaken and their ideas without foundation.42 De Sales offered his Reformed listeners a straightforward tutorial with the goal of persuading them to join the Catholic side. Despite differences, both Catholics and Protestants relied on the preaching of sermons to convey their messages. De Sales’s Protestant audience in the Chablais would have been accustomed to listening to sermons that addressed biblical stories and points of religious doctrine. Despite this mutual reliance on sermons, by the end of the sixteenth century, sermons could serve very different purposes for Reformed and Catholic preachers, at least for those living in and around Geneva. There was little angry or hostile language in the sermons de Sales preached during the mission in the Chablais, since he was trying to convince his listeners to join him; rather, his tone was that of a patient teacher explaining to a student his or her error. In contrast, Theodore Beza’s Sermons sur l’histoire de la passion, composed for presentation during Lent in Geneva and first published in French in 1592, took a decidedly different tone, especially when speaking about his confessional rivals.43 Presumably, if people were not part of the Reformed church by the 1590s, they were reprobate in the eyes of Geneva.44 Beza stated in his opening letter that the purpose of his sermons was for the edification of fellow Reformed brethren. There is nothing evangelical about Beza’s sermons, and while he defended his faith throughout, he offered no openings for those loyal to Rome to embrace the Reformed faith. He vilified the papacy, Rome, the episcopal hierarchy (especially bishops), and religious houses; however Beza, like de Sales, rarely targeted lay people, preferring to call them duped victims or members of an ignorant flock. Beza attacked the apostolic succession of the bishop of Rome, canons, rituals, sacraments etc. and of course referred to Rome as Babylon.45 Beza did not travel down any new paths in his criticism of the Catholic institutions, rather he reminded his readers of the oft-­cited reasons why the Protestant Reformation began. When offering the Reformed view of Christ’s passion, Beza repeatedly attacked the episcopal system of church organization. John Calvin had established a church leadership that included lay participation, with the minister as overseer 42.  Ibid., 7:342–­47. 43. Beze, Sermons sur l’histoire de la passion. 44.  By the last decades of the sixteenth century, Geneva was isolated politically, geographically, and religiously. The city of Berne had made its own peace with the duke of Savoy with the Treaty of Noyon (1589), and the duke was again threatening to retake the city of Geneva by military means. See Martin, Trois Cas de Pluralisme Confessionnel, 57–­72; and Dufour, La guerre de 1589–­1593, 94–­96. 45. Beze, Sermons sur l’histoire de la passion.

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along with a group of elders known as presbyters governing the congregation and maintaining morality. Calvin believed that this structure was a truer representation of the early church than the bishop as sole leader over church membership.46 In retelling the story of Christ’s passion through the accounts of the gospels, Beza repeatedly returned to the theme that the papacy was not unlike the Jewish high priest Caiaphas and his council. He linked Caiaphas and his council with the pope and his hierarchy, equating the rigid ritualism of Catholics with Jewish rites. When discussing the massacres committed against the Reformed populations, Beza referred to Catholics as “you who overtake the malice and cruelty of Caiaphas.”47 Beza was not the only reformer to use the example of Caiaphas to attack the pope. Luther had used the story of Caiaphas in a sermon on the Gospel of John, but Beza’s repeated use of the story placed the image in both a historical/ biblical and contemporary context.48 By linking Jewish and Catholic hierarchy, Beza connected together all the groups that denied what he viewed as the true formation of the primitive church, reestablished in Geneva. In contrast to Beza’s attack on rigid religious hierarchy, de Sales made efforts in his sermons to justify the episcopal structure of the Catholic Church. In a sermon given on the Festival of St. Peter in June 1593, probably at the request of Bishop Claude de Granier, de Sales said that the Catholic Church was a monarchy that needed a lieutenant general and that that particular officer on earth was Saint Peter and his successors. Heretics did not want a head of the church, and in leaving Catholicism, they had divided themselves into sects; Catholics recognized the pope as the common father while schismatics did not.49 With this characterization, de Sales countered the Protestants’ attacks on the apostolic succession of the pope and portrayed his opponents as disorderly. In linking the Catholic hierarchy with the organization of monarchy, de Sales connected the episcopal system with established orderly practices of society and again pushed reformers into categories of innovation, instability, and even sedition. De Sales also raised the possibility that reformers like Luther and Calvin acted in imitation of the devil as false prophets who only claimed to speak the true word of God and scripture. According to de Sales, all Christians claimed some sort of legitimacy of succession or mediation, but only Catholics demonstrated “legitimate succession” through Peter.50 The themes 46. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 86–­87. 47. Beze, Sermons sur l’histoire de la passion, sermon 18. 48. Luther, Luther’s Works, 69:178–­85. 49.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:48–­9. 50.  Ibid., 7:121–­22.

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of legitimacy and historical continuity were central to de Sales’s affirmation of the Catholic confession, while illegitimacy and discontinuity were key charges he leveled against his Reformed rivals in Geneva. Even when de Sales was preaching to a Catholic audience during the period of the mission, his Protestant project was never far from his mind. In a sermon for the feast day of the Trinity, given on 21 May 1595 in Annecy, he preached on the centrality of the Holy Trinity, saying that Catholics must celebrate the feast day of the Trinity “in these miserable times.”51 He drew the Reformed Church into his sermon, linking them with the disorder and disruption of the time, not just in his community but also elsewhere in Christendom. De Sales told his audience to “think of our adversaries being content to knock over the church,” and asked whether the Trinitarians from the Calvinist school were still in Transylvania. Transylvania was in the unusual situation of allowing four faiths—­Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, and anti-­Trinitarian—­to hold services in the region.52 De Sales said the Protestant debate over the Trinity had “infected the holy doctrine,” and blamed leaders of Geneva for stirring up the debate over the doctrine, even mentioning Michael Servetus and Valentine Gentile in the same breath as Guillaume Farel, Pierre Viret, John Calvin, and Theodore Beza.53 While both Catholic and Reformed leaders condemned anti-­Trinitarians, with Servetus being executed in Geneva and Gentile in Berne, de Sales linked Reformed theology with the “radical” ideas about the Trinity because it was the reformers’ innovations that had stirred up dangerous exploration of religious doctrine in the first place. The introduction of Reformed ideas had brought increased disruption to the lives of those living around Geneva, and de Sales hoped to remind his audience of this fact and associate Catholicism with communal stability. In the end, the mission, coupled with the economic and political policies of the duke of Savoy, Charles-­Emmanuel I, pushed the Reformed churches out of the duchy of Chablais. The combination of baroque celebrations like the Forty Hours Devotion and powerful preaching from de Sales and his Capuchin companions focusing on the tangible symbols of Catholicism brought about the conversion of many villagers. Those who resisted the Catholic call faced political and economic policies that threatened their positions in their communities and their financial livelihood.54 Confronted with the dual pressure of church and state, the 51.  Ibid., 7:257. 52. Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 110. 53.  de Sales, Œuvres, 7:256–­58. 54.  After the success of the Forty Hours Devotions, Charles-­Emmanuel I revoked the liberty of conscience

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majority of the population chose to embrace the Catholic faith, at least in the duchy of Chablais. By the first decade of the seventeenth century, most open Protestant worship had disappeared in the territory.55 After he became bishop in 1602, de Sales continued to preach and engaged his rivals from the pulpit long after he had left the mission in the Chablais. When his audience was composed of Catholics who lived near Protestants, as was the case in his sermon in Thonon for the Feast of the Ascension in 1607, de Sales reminded the audience why “the heretics” were extreme in their views and inconsistent in their biblical interpretations. In reference to contemporary heretics, de Sales said that they could find two truths in the scripture but “they cannot understand the existence of two substances,” bread and body/wine and blood.56 In a sermon preached in Turin, capital of Savoy and home to Duke Charles-­Emmanuel I, in February 1613 on the feast of the purification of Mary, de Sales reminded his audience that they should avoid speaking “with enemies of the state, with heretics, or with men of corrupt morals,” or they were at risk of being corrupted like Eve was by the serpent.57 Obviously, preventing interactions in biconfessional communities was nearly impossible, but both Catholics and Protestants in the Alpine region surrounding Geneva wanted their followers to be mindful of the dangers that casual interaction with their confessional rivals could cause. In efforts to highlight these differences, Calvin and the Reformed faith remained de Sales’s “other” in his sermons. While he incorporated additional leaders of the Reformation into his polemics, de Sales referred to Calvin most often. This continued reminder is not surprising considering that de Sales administered and cultivated the diocese of Geneva while it was in exile from its historic center. In a sermon preached in Grenoble during Lent of 1617, after he had been bishop for fifteen years, de Sales warned his listeners, “The tempter conducts himself in the fashion of the heretics. He cites scripture. All the fathers observe that it is common for the heretics to cite good words in a bad way.”58 De Sales noted that in his Institutes of the Christian Religions (1559), Calvin ridiculed Catholics for wanting that the Protestants of the region had enjoyed since the Treaty of Lausanne (1564). 55.  Protestant worship continued in other portions of the diocese that were not subject to this mission project, notably the Pays de Gex, a region on the eastern outskirts of Geneva. The Pays de Gex became part of France in 1601 with the signing of the Treaty of Lyons between Duke Charles-­Emmanuel I and King Henri IV of France, making the parishes subject to the provisions of the Edict of Nantes that recognized both Catholic and Protestant rights to worship. For more on de Sales’s efforts in the Pays de Gex, see Fehleison, Boundaries of Faith, chap. 4, esp. 100–­116. 56.  de Sales, Œuvres, 8:21–­22. 57.  Ibid., 8:114. 58.  Ibid., 8:250.

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to imitate Christ, but de Sales noted that if children did not imitate their parents, they would never learn to walk or talk.59 The Reformed tradition saw imitation as potential idolatry, but for de Sales, the positive models of Christ and the saints remained a core example for emulation, while bad models (such as Protestant neighbors) should be avoided. Messages of pastoral care remained at the core of de Sales’s episcopate. He was very much a product of his environment, of the Savoy, of his Jesuit training, and of the post-­Tridentine Catholic Church. The life and career of de Sales are an important context for his spiritual and theological beliefs. De Sales’s polemical language portrayed the Protestants as outsiders who disrupted Christendom and brought dangerous innovation to religion and society. Despite his reputation for gentleness, his early works remind us that de Sales was an ardent Counter-­Reformation leader. While the audience of de Sales’s sermons may have changed after he became bishop, his experiences as a missionary in the duchy of Chablais fundamentally shaped his views of and interactions with members of the Reformed faith and influenced the course of his diocesan administration. As pamphleteers and preachers like de Sales recounted various encounters and different points of belief, they reaffirmed their faith and built upon an established body of confessional literature. The polemical nature of de Sales’s early writings and sermons, in conjunction with works produced contemporaneously by supporters and rivals, demonstrates an important dialogue that crossed back and forth across the confessional divide and reveals how post-­Tridentine Catholic leaders of biconfessional dioceses saw highlighting religious difference as a key episcopal duty.

Works Cited Printed Primary Sources

Avully, Antoine de Saint-­Michel, seignuer d’. Copie de la lettre du seigneur d’Avully: Touchant la dispute des ministres avec le R. P. Cherubin, prescheur de l’Ordre des Capucins. Lyon, 1598. Beze, Theodore. Sermons sur l’histoire de la passion. [Geneva], Le Preux, 1592. Meeter Center-­IDC: KPFA-­117 Microfiche. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, translated by Henry Joseph Schroeder. St. Louis: B. Herder Books Co., 1941. Reprint, Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1978. de Sales, Charles-­Auguste. Histoire du Bien-­Heureux François de Sales. 6th ed. 2 vols. Paris: Libraire de Louis Vives, 1879.

59.  Ibid., 8:250–­51.

Ministering to Catholics and Protestants Alike  145 de Sales, Francis. Œuvres de Saint François de Sales. 26 vols. Annecy: J. Nierat, 1892–­1932. ———. The Catholic Controversy: St. Francis de Sales’ Defense of the Faith. Translated by Henry Benedict Mackey, OSB. Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1989. ———. Sermon Texts on Saint Joseph by Francis de Sales. Edited by Joseph F. Chorpenning, OSFS. Toronto: Peregrina Publishing Co., 1999. ———. Treatise on the Love of God. Translated by Henry Benedict Mackey, OSB. N.p.: Burns and Oates, 1884. Reprint, Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1997. La Faye, Antoine de. Replique chrestienne a la response de M. F. de Sales, se disant Evesque de Geneve, sur le Traicté de la vertu et adoration de la croix. [Geneva]: De l’imprimerie de Jacob Stoer, 1604. ———. Brief Traitté de la Vertu de la Croix et de la maniere de l’honorer. [Geneva]: [Antoine Blanc], 1597. ———. A breefe treatise of the vertue of the crosse: and the true manner hovv to honour it. Translated out of French into English. London: Printed [by E. Allde] for Edward White, and are to be sold at the little North doore of S. Paules Church, at the signe of the Gun, 1599. Electronic version available through Early English Books Online (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home). Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works. Vol. 69, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, Chapters 17–­20. Edited by Christopher Boyd Brown. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2009. Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Geneve, edited by Gabriella Cahier and Michael Grandjean. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1984.

Secondary Sources

Bayley, Peter. French Pulpit Oratory, 1598–­1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Bruening, Michael W. Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528–­1559. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005. Dufour, Alain. La guerre de 1589–­1593. Geneva: A. Jullien, 1958. Fehleison, Jill. “Appealing to the Senses: The Forty Hours Celebrations in the Duchy of Chablais, 1597–­98.” Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005): 375–­96. ———. Boundaries of Faith: Catholics and Protestants in the Diocese of Geneva. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2010. Ford, James Thomas. “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition.” In Preachers and People in the Reformation and Early Modern Period, edited by Larissa Taylor, 65–­88. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc., 2003. LaJeunie, OP, E. J. Saint Francis de Sales: The Man, The Thinker, His Influence. 2 vols. Bangalore: S. F. S. Publications, 1986. Martin, Paul. Trois Cas de Pluralisme Confessionnel aux XVI et XVII Siècles. Geneva: A. Jullien, 1961. McGinness, Frederick J. Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-­Reformation Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

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Murdock, Graeme. Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600–­1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Parker, T. H. L. Calvin’s Preaching. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. Ravier, Andrè. Francis de Sales, Sage and Saint. Translated by Joseph Bowler. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988. Rosa, Susan. “Il était possible aussi que cette conversion fût sincère: Turenne’s Conversion in Context.” French Historical Studies 18 (1994): 632–­66. Taylor, Larissa. Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Tracy, James D. Europe’s Reformations, 1450–­1650: Doctrine, Politics, and Community. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. Worcester, SJ, Thomas. “The Catholic Sermon.” In Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, edited by Larissa Taylor, 3–­33. Boston: Brill, 2003. ———. Seventeenth-­Century Cultural Discourse: France and The Preaching of Bishop Camus. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. Wright, Wendy M. Bond of Perfection: Jeanne de Chantal and François de Sales. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. ———, and Joseph F. Power, eds. Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction. Translated by Péronne Marie Thibert, VHM. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.

Gender, Resistance, and the Limits of Episcopal Authority Sébastien Zamet’s Relationships with Nuns, 1615–­55 Linda Lierheimer On 10 May 1623, Sébastien Zamet, the bishop of Langres, appeared before the Parlement of Dijon, the highest court in the region. Zamet, along with many of the magistrates, was concerned about the “disorder” and “scandal” caused by the refusal of Ursuline nuns in Dijon to obey their bishop and submit to his authority regarding their choice of a new mother superior. The magistrates ordered an investigation into the matter and sent Zamet with two officers of the court to force the nuns to comply. A heated dispute broke out when some of the judges, who were relatives of the nuns, opposed the intervention of the court and argued in favor of the Ursulines.1 The nuns, for their part, claimed that they had the right to self-­governance and that their bishop had “violated the canons, councils, bulls, rules, and constitutions of the convent that they had observed up to this time, which he himself had approved.” Although they wished to be obedient, “their consciences were obliged by the taking of their original vows to observe exactly what was contained in [their statutes].”2

1.  ADCO, B 12069/TER, fols. 24–­25: minutes of the Parlement de Bourgogne, May 1621. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s own. 2.  Recit veritable, 14–­15. Zamet’s attempt to impose his will on the nuns, which included sending off the mother superior in question to another convent against her will, proved ultimately unsuccessful, thanks to pressure from the nuns’ relatives and support for their case from Rome.

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Like other reforming bishops of his day, Zamet believed that the episcopacy should be at the forefront of the church’s efforts to restore clerical discipline, and he saw the assertion of episcopal power as essential to the spiritual revitalization of his diocese. However, as the above example (which will be discussed at length later in this paper) indicates, his attempts to do so often met with resistance from nuns and monks who claimed traditional rights and exemptions from episcopal control, and from local elites who resented what they saw as incursions on their own authority. Zamet’s complicated relationships with nuns, which one biographer has called the greatest “stumbling-­block of his life,”3 must be understood in the context of these larger struggles over authority and over the process of Catholic reform in early seventeenth-­century France. Nuns had a fundamentally different relationship to authority and the church than did male religious. In France, nuns enjoyed most of the same protections, privileges, and status, or qualité, as monks due to their membership in the First Estate. Nuns had the right of ecclesiastical justice and were represented at the Estates-­General, however infrequently it met. However, the Catholic Church distinguished clearly between male and female religious on matters such as whether they were permitted to have the Eucharist kept in their cloister and whether they were allowed to create self-­governing national or international institutions (monks were, nuns were not).4 And in theory, nuns were supposed to be subject to the authority of a male superior, either a bishop or a male monastic. Zamet embarked on an ambitious program of monastic reform that focused primarily on women’s religious orders, where he clearly hoped to leave his most lasting legacy, and he collaborated closely with devout women and nuns to develop and realize his vision. However, he also became embroiled in numerous conflicts with nuns over issues of authority and convent autonomy. This essay examines three of these conflicts: Zamet’s efforts to reform the Benedictine abbey of Puits d’Orbe, and the resistance of the abbess, Rose Bourgeois; his ongoing conflict with the Ursuline nuns in his diocese; and the reform of the Cistercian abbey of Tart and Zamet’s plan to unify the abbeys of Tart and Port-­ Royal. Although each of these cases deserves a far more extensive treatment than can be addressed within the limits of this article, the focus here will be on what these cases can contribute to our understanding of the expansion of and limits on episcopal power in early seventeenth-­century France. The collaboration of 3.  Prunel refers to Zamet’s dealings with nuns as “l’écueil de sa vie”; Sébastien Zamet, 125. 4.  Hayden, “States, Estates and Orders,” 70–­71.

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religious women was essential to the success of a reforming bishop, and conflicts between nuns and bishops allowed the former to claim a certain degree of autonomy that in turn restricted the de facto ability of the bishop to assert his will. It is important, though, to keep in mind that these conflicts were not just over who should have authority, but involved issues of spiritual autonomy and differing ideals of religious life. This fact would become abundantly clear during the Jansenist controversy, the beginnings of which contributed to Zamet’s greatest defeat, his failed attempt to create a new religious order for women, the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement.

Bishops and Nuns in Counter-­Reformation France In his classic study of the Catholic Reformation, H. Outram Evenett stated that “the strengthening of the episcopacy may be regarded as the corner-­stone of the counter-­reformation Church.”5 The Council of Trent (1545–­63) ordered bishops to reside in their dioceses, oversee the churches and monastic houses in their dioceses, reform the morals of the clergy, convoke yearly diocesan synods, and visit their dioceses regularly.6 The century that followed saw an expansion of episcopal power and the development of a new model of the ideal bishop.7 In France, the implementation of the program of episcopal reform was delayed by the refusal of the Parlement of Paris, the highest law court in the land, to register the Tridentine decrees and thus give them the force of law. In addition, unlike in other Catholic countries, the French Crown had the right to appoint bishops. The traditional independence of the French church from Rome, known as Gallicanism, shaped the philosophy and self-­perception of French bishops. As Alison Forrestal has pointed out, the Council of Trent failed to resolve the fundamental question of whether bishops received their power from the pope or directly from God by “divine right.” Most French bishops adhered to the latter view, in which a bishop’s relationship to his diocese mirrored that of an absolute monarch with his state. This meant that the French episcopacy tended to regard itself as having jurisdiction independent of Rome and resisted any attempts of the papacy to interfere with its activities, which helps to explain the otherwise

5. Evenett, Spirit of the Counter-­Reformation, 97. 6.  Canons and Decrees, ed. Schroeder, 46–­47, 49, 105, 192–­95. 7.  For example, Bergin, Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–­1661; and Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings. On the new ideal of the bishop in France, see Forrestal, “Fathers, Leaders, Kings,” 24–­25 and “A Catholic Model of Martyrdom,” 254–­80.

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surprising alliances between monastic orders and Rome in disputes over episcopal jurisdiction in seventeenth-­century France.8 Recent studies have greatly enriched our understanding of the French episcopacy, but have largely ignored bishops’ relationships with women and nuns. This is significant because the reform and creation of women’s religious orders was central to the success of Catholic reform in France, as Barbara Diefendorf has shown.9 The support and patronage of bishops was likewise vital to what one historian has called the “conventual invasion”10 of the first half of the seventeenth century in France, in which women experimented with new forms of religious life and joined convents in unprecedented numbers. The Council of Trent passed two important pieces of legislation regarding nuns: it mandated that all communities of religious women be enclosed, and that convents, except those already dependent on male religious orders, must submit to the authority of their local bishop.11 The insistence on cloister led to the reform of older abbeys where the nuns no longer observed their monastic rule, and to the gradual enclosure of new active women’s congregations, such as the Ursulines. The enforcement of enclosure has contributed to a view of the Counter-­Reformation church as being inherently repressive of women. In practice, however, the immediate need to battle Protestantism trumped efforts to impose cloister on women’s congregations and convents in France during the decades that followed Trent. In these years, the church often made use of the grassroots spiritual revival, which was also an important characteristic of Catholic reform, and in which devout women played a central role. And while it was often bishops who initiated the move toward enclosure, many women embraced cloister as a means of pursuing a more perfect life and of preserving their spiritual autonomy.12 This rethinking of enclosure has given us a more complex understanding of women’s religious life during the Catholic Reformation; however, the Council of Trent’s other major decision regarding religious women—­the control of bishops over women’s orders—­has not received the same scholarly attention. The decrees concerning nuns must be understood both as part of a larger program of episcopal 8. Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings, 26, 28, 92. 9. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity. 10. Rapley, Social History of the Cloister, 16. Rapley cites J.-­P. Bardet’s Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles as the source of the phrase. 11.  Canons and Decrees, ed. Schroeder, 220–­28. 12. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 128, 144–­145; Lux-­Sterritt, Redefining Female Religious Life, 66–­73; Du Saint Esprit, Life of Antoinette Micolon, ed. Lierheimer, 13. See also Bilinkoff, The Avila of St. Teresa, 132–­33.

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reform and as part of a long history of attempts to assert episcopal authority over religious women.13 The fact that this issue was on the agenda at Trent is evidence of the failure of these earlier attempts, which were often vigorously resisted. In view of that history, it would be surprising if the efforts of seventeenth-­century bishops had gone uncontested, especially as the council provided nuns with a powerful tool for resisting episcopal authority when it affirmed the traditional rights of nuns to self-­government by enjoining them to obey their Rule and granting them the right to elect their own superiors.14 Religious women appropriated and reinterpreted cloister as a guarantee of their autonomy, and used this as a basis for resisting male incursions on their traditional rights. In this context, the enclosed space of the convent became an important site of resistance to episcopal authority.

Sébastien Zamet and the Assembly of the Clergy (1625) Sébastien Zamet was born in 1588 to a prominent French financier family. His father, one of the wealthiest men in France, was a close confidante of Henri IV, to whom he often lent money. From a young age, Sébastien, the younger of two brothers, was destined for the church. He was raised at court and studied classics at the Jesuit Collège de la Flèche, where Descartes would later study. In 1609, he began his theological studies at the Sorbonne, where he was a brilliant student. In preparation for taking orders, Zamet placed himself under the spiritual direction of Pierre Bérulle, one of the central figures of the French Counter-­Reformation and founder of the Congregation of the Oratory.15 During the early years of his career, he developed a close relationship with Richelieu, who referred to Zamet as his “intimate and perfect friend.”16 In 1614, Zamet was named bishop of Langres, one of the largest dioceses in France, comprising much of the Burgundy and Champagne regions. This position, one of the highest in the French church, came with its own title of nobility; upon his appointment Zamet was named évêque-­duc de Langres, pair de France.17 13.  These attempts go back at least to the Carolingian period; McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 151; Johnson, Equal in the Monastic Profession, chap. 3. 14.  Canons and Decrees, ed. Schroeder, 220–­28. 15. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 1–­3, 31–­42. 16.  Richelieu to M. Zamet, 1616, in Richelieu, Lettres, ed. Avenal, 237. Avenal makes a convincing case that this letter was to Sébastien, rather than to his brother Jean, with whom Richelieu also had close ties. In 1617, Zamet purchased the office of Grand Almoner to the Queen from Richelieu, an office he held until 1624. During these years, Zamet split his time between Paris and Langres; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 56–­57. 17. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 57.

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Unlike his predecessors, Zamet took seriously the Council of Trent’s injunction that bishops reside in their dioceses, hold regular synods and visitations, and ensure clerical discipline. He developed a four-­pronged plan for reform that included inviting preachers and missionaries to visit the diocese, improving the quality and reputation of the clergy, establishing new religious orders, and introducing reforms in the older abbeys.18 As soon as he arrived in Langres, he immediately set to work revitalizing spiritual life in his diocese and cracking down on clerical abuses.19 In 1616, he approved the establishment of an Oratorian seminary in Langres for the purpose of “reestablishing ecclesiastical discipline in his diocese.”20 That same year, he held the first of many synods and issued statutes that, among other things, set rules of behavior for priests and required them to live in their parishes.21 Non-­residency had been an ongoing problem in the diocese since at least the middle of the sixteenth century, exacerbated by a special tax that allowed priests dispensation from residence.22 Zamet ordered all priests to reside in their parishes under penalty of losing their benefices: Considering that in our diocese there are some parish priests who are so obstinate that neither natural nor divine law, nor the decrees of the holy councils, nor the synodal statutes of previous bishops could induce them to reside in their parishes: We order and command for the sake of holy obedience all priests holding benefices and having charge of souls in our diocese that within two months each must return to his benefice, and afterwards reside permanently there.23

Zamet went on to forbid priests to “keep in their houses or visit any scandalous or suspicious women or girls, or any who had a bad reputation” and ordered them to avoid “drunkenness, loose dancing, and other debauchery and abuses.”24 Zamet’s attempts to impose discipline on the clergy in his diocese met with strong resistance, especially from monastic orders.25 Such conflicts had a long history in the Catholic Church, but “quarrels” between secular and regular clergy 18. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 58–­59. 19. Farr, Authority and Sexuality, 53, 56. 20. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 79. 21.  Ibid., 61, 100, 106. He held synods in 1616, 1622, and 1628. 22.  Ibid., 97. 23.  ADHM, G 18: “Statuts et Ordonnances,” fol. 3. 24.  Ibid., fols. 4 and 9. 25.  In addition to his conflicts with nuns, Zamet was also involved in conflicts with the Jesuits over their right to hold services in Chaumont (1623), and with the canons of the cathedral in Langres over his right to name the Lenten preacher (1647); Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 112, 329–­34.

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intensified during this period. Alison Forrestal notes that in the seventeenth century, “so many quarrels erupted between the episcopate and the regular clergy that it would be tedious as well as repetitive to undertake detailed narratives and analyses of all of them.”26 The reform of religious orders was complicated by overlapping jurisdictions that allowed regulars to challenge the authority of bishops, often with the support of Rome. French bishops reasoned that as God’s chosen representatives on earth, their law trumped the particular “rights” of religious orders,27 even when those rights were recognized by Rome. The matter came to a head at the Assembly of the Clergy in 1625, where the central issues on the table were the power of bishops over the French church, recent challenges to their authority by the pope, and the problem of the regular clergy.28 The assembly, which met every five years to decide upon the clergy’s financial contribution to the state, was the primary mouthpiece of the clergy in France. The assembly was an elective body with representatives from ecclesiastical provinces throughout France, but only bishops and priests could serve as deputies, and the president of the assembly was always a bishop.29 Thus, the assembly tended to represent the interests of bishops and usually defended episcopal power.30 Zamet, who was at the time embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute with the Jesuits in his diocese, raised the issue of the privileges of the regular clergy.31 The parish priests of the town of Chaumont had complained to Zamet that their parishioners were abandoning the town church to attend services at the Jesuit chapel. After Zamet ordered the parishioners to attend services at the town church, the Jesuits appealed to Rome and, in September 1624, won their case against Zamet. The bishops at the assembly supported Zamet in this matter and took the position that this decision had “clearly violated their rights.”32 The resulting discussion led to the production and eventual publication in 1645 of the Déclaration sur les réguliers that clarified the issue of episcopal jurisdiction over regular clergy 26. Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings, 8. See also Blet, Clergé de France, vol. 1; and Dinet, Religion et société, 2:500. 27. Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings, 12, 26, 28, 92. 28.  On the Assembly of the Clergy in 1625, see Becker, “Episcopal Unrest,” and Blet, Clergé de France, 1:267–­334. Zamet played a significant role, as he was in charge of negotiating the amount of the clergy’s “gift” to the King; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 109. 29.  Sicard, “Assemblies of the French Clergy”; Greenbaum, “General Assembly of the Clergy of France,” 160–­61. 30. Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings, 12. 31. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 112–­18. 32.  Ibid., 113.

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in their dioceses.33 The Déclaration condemned the behavior of some monastic houses that used claims of exemption to deny the bishop the right to enter their monasteries and churches: Over time, a certain abuse has slipped into some religious houses . . . that is highly contemptuous of the office of the bishop, whom in some towns they refuse entry, claiming to be exempt, which is nothing less than to establish a new diocese within a diocese. To stop this abuse, it is ordered that all monastics and others who claim exemption receive the diocesan bishop in their towns, monasteries, and churches with the honor and reverence to which he is due, whatever exemptions may be claimed to the contrary.34 [emphasis added]

The Déclaration affirmed the jurisdiction of bishops over all new religious communities in their dioceses as well as their right to visit religious communities in their dioceses at any time (in contrast to Trent, which had specified that visits were to take place annually), to examine monastic accounts, and to oversee the election of superiors.35 While the Déclaration by no means resolved the “quarrel” between bishops and regular clergy, it was adopted as a rule for episcopal conduct in France throughout the remainder of the century.36

Rose Bourgeois and the Reform of the Benedictine Abbey of Puits d’Orbe (1621–­45) Although the Déclaration did not refer specifically to nuns, Zamet must certainly have had in mind two recent incidents in which he had been denied entrance by nuns who refused to open the convent doors. The first of these occurred in 1621, when the abbess Rose Bourgeois refused to allow him to enter the Benedictine abbey of Puits d’Orbe. Two years later during his dispute with the Ursulines of Dijon, Zamet had to resort to the secular authorities to force the nuns to let him enter. Both of these examples show how nuns used Trent’s insistence on enclosure and their family connections to local elites as the basis for resistance to episcopal authority, as well as the ways that this resistance was complicated by their dual status as both monastics and women. 33. The Déclaration was part of a larger effort on the part of the bishops at the Assembly to limit papal authority over the French clergy; publication was delayed due to opposition from Rome; Becker, “Episcopal Unrest,” 75. 34.  Cited in Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 118. 35. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 117–­18. 36. Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors and Kings, 83–­84.

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The reform of the ancient abbeys in his diocese was a central component of Zamet’s program of episcopal reform. In this, Zamet was participating in a larger project of the Counter-­Reformation church. To restore monastic discipline, the Council of Trent ordered that “all regulars, men as well as women, adjust and regulate their life in accordance with the requirements of the rule which they have professed,” and “all kings, princes, governments and magistrates to deign to lend . . . their help and influence in support of . . . bishops, generals, and other superiors in the execution of the reform.”37 By the time of the Reformation, many French convents had fallen into disorder and disrepair, and the nuns no longer followed their monastic rule or observed cloister. Attempts at reform often met with resistance from powerful abbesses determined to preserve their traditional privileges, as well as from nuns, many of whom had no religious vocation and were reluctant to adopt a more austere, ascetic lifestyle.38 Reform also met with opposition from nuns’ families, who expected to maintain close ties with their daughters and sisters after they entered the convent. Attempts at monastic reform often caused division within convents, especially between older and younger nuns, with the latter more likely to be receptive to change. Emotions could run high—­at the Benedictine abbey of Montmartre, the nuns tried to poison their reforming abbess!39 Zamet faced an uphill battle, not only because many nuns did not embrace reform, but also because these abbeys had traditionally been exempt from episcopal authority. The male leaders of the Benedictines and Cistercians had jurisdiction over the female houses of their orders, and these rights had been recognized at Trent. In the case of royal abbeys, the ultimate authority resided with the French king, who had the right to appoint the abbess. In some cases, the abuses were so serious that the Crown itself took the lead in initiating reform, as was the case with the Benedictine abbey of Rougemont and its notorious abbess, Lucrèce de Rochefort, who was charged with criminal offenses.40 The abbess was deposed in January 1621; however she ignored the order and continued to exercise her charge until 1645 when she was arrested by lettre de cachet and removed to the Madelonnettes convent in Paris, where she remained for two years. (Surprisingly, she was then allowed to return to Rougemont, where she attempted to resume her abbatial duties). Zamet worked with the Benedictine prior who had jurisdiction over 37.  Canons and Decrees, ed. Schroeder, 218; translation in Schroeder. 38. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 54–­55. 39. McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 503–­4. 40.  Unfortunately, the exact nature of these offenses is not specified in the documents regarding this case.

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Rougemont to resolve the situation, but he seems not to have taken an active role, deferring to the prior and involving himself only at the request of the queen mother in the 1650s.41 Zamet did become actively involved in the reform of the Benedictine abbey of Puits d’Orbe.42 The abbey had been founded in the twelfth century but, like many monastic houses, had fallen into decline in the late medieval period. However, Zamet’s ability to institute reform was limited by the fact that the abbey was under the jurisdiction of the prior of Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, a male Benedictine house, and by the French king’s right to appoint the abbess.43 Thus, Zamet’s strategy had to involve not only the nuns, but also their male Benedictine superiors and ultimately the Crown itself. The abbess of Puits d’Orbe, Rose Bourgeois, had been appointed in 1601. As the daughter of a prominent magistrate in the Parlement of Dijon, Rose owed her position to political connections rather than to a religious vocation.44 Rose showed little inclination for the religious life, and as in many convents of the time, there was little to distinguish the relaxed lifestyle in the convent from that of the outside world. The nuns did not follow a monastic rule, had their own possessions and apartments, and were free to leave the convent to visit friends and relatives. In 1604, while undergoing painful treatment for a diseased leg that would leave her crippled for life, Rose was inspired to reform her life and her abbey after hearing François de Sales preach the Lenten sermons. The two entered into a correspondence, and de Sales made an attempt to initiate reform at Puits d’Orbe, but the abbess found excuses to put him off. 45 In 1618, Rose Bourgeois requested the transfer of her abbey from the country to the town (such transfers were common during these years as a first step

41. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 315–­24; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:395–­412; ADCO, H 1026: “Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Etat” (1654). 42.  The following is based primarily on a printed account (“Extraict des Registres du Conseil destat du Roy”) in the ADCO, H 1026 dated 27 June 1644. This document includes a number of shorter documents, each with separate pagination. The references below are to specific documents within the larger “Extrait.” Other primary sources are from Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxv–­clxiii. Also useful are the secondary accounts in Chaussy, Bénédictines, 261–­63; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:413–­29; and Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 144–­54. 43. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 144; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:413. On the reform of the Benedictine order in France, see Chaussy, Bénédictines. 44.  Her father, Claude Bourgeois, was a président at the Parlement of Dijon, and her sister, Madame Brûlart, had married into another prominent judicial family and was a close friend of Jeanne de Chantal, the foundress of the Visitation order and collaborator with François de Sales; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 144. 45.  Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal, 116–­22; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 146; Dinet, Religion et société, 1:125.

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toward monastic reform).46 Hoping that the move would facilitate the reform of the abbey, Zamet gave his permission, and in December 1619, the abbey was moved to Châtillon-­sur-­Seine.47 Unfortunately, the move did not have the desired effect and “the monastery remained a place of licence, having neither Rule, nor walls, nor grills.”48 The nuns who favored reform complained about the scandalous behavior of the abbess who, they claimed: under pretext of piety, lived most licentiously, along with some of the nuns, and allowed all kinds of people into the abbey, entertaining them and holding dances, and she gave these people the keys to the convent so that they could enter at night . . . , and there was a trap door in her room through which they could enter without being seen . . . ; and when these men did not come to visit her, she went to them, and took her supper to their houses.49

The abbess, they continued, racked up huge debts, while the nuns themselves often went hungry.50 In 1621, the bishop was forced to intervene, but when he arrived at the convent to exercise his right of visitation, the abbess insulted him and refused him entrance. Zamet placed the convent under interdict, declaring that this would last as long as the abbess refused to recognize the authority of her male superior (the prior of the Benedictine monastery of Moutier-­Saint-­Jean) and follow the rules he had given them. Zamet was true to his word. The interdict remained in force for seventeen years, during which time the nuns who wished to receive the sacraments were forced to “attend daily mass in the churches of the city.” At the insistence of her relatives, the abbess made a show of changing her life and even put in convent grills to show that she was ready to accept cloister. However, she, along with some of the older nuns, continued to “ride around the countryside in 46.  Plancher mentions an ordonnance passed by Louis XIII requesting bishops to transfer convents from the countryside into towns and cities. It was thought that abbeys and convents in the countryside would be more difficult to reform because they lacked the support and surveillance enjoyed by convents in towns; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:431. 47.  Prunel and Plancher state the year as 1619, however an account from the time dates the transfer to 1616; ADCO, H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat,” 1. This was not merely a typographical error, because this account later refers to Zamet’s interdict lasting for twenty years, rather than the seventeen indicated by Prunel and Plancher. However, a letter from François de Sales to Rose Bourgeois dated January 1618 regarding the site to which the abbey should be transferred is evidence that the correct date is 1619. Rose Bourgeois’s first choice was Lyons, but this was not acceptable because it was in another diocese; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 147. 48.  ADCO, H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat,” 2. 49.  The nuns gave testimony in 1644 about the behavior of the abbess during this period; “Procès verbal des Prieurs d’Auxerre et de Moutier-­Saint-­Jean commis par Arrêt du Privé Conseil pour écouter les Abbesse et Religieuses du Puits-­d’Orbe,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxxix. 50.  “Procès verbal,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxxix.

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her carriage,” and the grills were taken down after six or seven months.51 Finally, in 1638, the families of those nuns who opposed the abbess, including two prominent magistrates in the Parlement of Dijon, asked Zamet to step in and restore discipline in the abbey once and for all. Zamet and the prior of Moutier-­Saint-­ Jean decided to pursue a legal case against the abbess. Faced with the threat of legal action and fearing that she would be deposed, Rose Bourgeois finally agreed to recognize the authority of her male superiors and accept the reform of the abbey, and the interdict was lifted.52 However, the abbess’s submission was short-­lived, and she continued to resist reform. The house was split into two factions: the nuns who accepted reform, and the older nuns who joined the abbess in resisting it. In 1641, after the abbess tried to appoint her own confessor and gave him permission to give the habit to a novice, the reformed nuns rebelled and appealed to the French Crown. The king’s Conseil d’Etat issued an arrêt ordering the abbess to comply with the reforms to which she had previously agreed. The abbess, after consulting a legal counselor in Châtillon, refused to submit, and instead removed the newly elected convent officers from their charges, took away their keys, chased away the confessor appointed by the bishop, and placed the furnishings and revenues of the convent under the control of her chosen superior.53 The abbess appealed the council’s sentence, arguing that the abbey was independent and not under the jurisdiction of Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, and that she would only recognize the authority of God and the pope. When it was proved that the abbey was dependent on Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, she claimed that the prior did not have jurisdiction over her and that she would only obey his superior, the cardinal de La Rochefoucauld.54 The cardinal promptly handed over jurisdiction in this case to the prior.55 Finally, in July 1642, the prior of Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, supported by Zamet, drew up articles that stripped the abbess of all authority 51.  “Procès verbal,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxxix. 52.  ADCO, H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat,” 2; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:413–­15; see also Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 150. 53.  ADCO, H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat,” 6–­8. 54.  The Cardinal was nominally the abbot of Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, though he played no role in the day-­to-­ day life of the monastery; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:418, 420. 55.  “Commission de M. le Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, au Pere Prieur de Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, pour la Jurisdiction sur les Religieuses de l’Abbaye du Puits d’Orbe,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxvi; see also ADCO, H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat,” 8–­9. The Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld (1558–­1645) was an important figure in the Counter-­Reformation Church. In 1622 he was appointed papal commissioner for the reform of abbeys in France, including the Benedictines. Although he was the nominal head of a number of abbeys, the running and practical governance of Moutier-­Saint-­Jean and the abbeys dependent on it would have been left to the prior or vicar general; Bergin, Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld.

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and ordered her virtual imprisonment. She was commanded to give the keys to the abbey to the reformed nuns and to relinquish her apartment and personal belongings. A wall was to be constructed to segregate her and the others who did not wish to accept reform from the other nuns.56 Zamet arranged with the queen mother, Anne of Austria, to bring three nuns from the Val-­de-­Grâce convent in Paris to establish reform at Puits d’Orbe.57 The king granted Rose Bourgeois an annual pension of eight-­hundred livres and gave the community the right to elect their own abbess after her death.58 Bourgeois died in 1657, without ever accepting reform herself. The nature of the evidence makes it difficult to ascertain the abbess’s own perspective on the events that unfolded. The legal documents describe her as duplicitous and manipulative, characteristics typically associated with powerful women in this time period, and as presenting “an ostentatious performance of piety” that contrasted with her profane lifestyle.59 But we can infer a few things about her motives. Her initial desire to transfer and reform the convent was most likely sincere and can be attributed to the influence of François de Sales and perhaps her more devout sister, Madame Brûlart, which, together with the physical pain she was suffering at the time (she was undergoing treatment for a diseased leg that would leave her crippled) must have had a powerful impact. However, her eventual preference for a more comfortable and familiar way of life is not surprising. Perhaps more surprising is that she was in the minority among the nuns at Puits d’Orbe in resisting reform. Five older nuns supported the abbess, while eight nuns embraced reform. It is also possible that her claims that the abbey was reformed were genuine, but that her understanding of what that meant differed from that of the church authorities and some of the other nuns in her abbey.60 In any case, her actions and behaviors indicate that she viewed herself as the equal of her male superiors and that she had the authority, and perhaps even legitimacy, to 56.  “Articles ausquels la Mere Abbesse de l’Abbaïe de Notre-­Dame de Puits-­d’Orbe, établie à Chatillon, Diocèse de Langres, se doit obliger avant que d’entrer en la Communauté des Religieuses réformées de ladite Abbaïe, suivant l’Arrêt du Grand Conseil du 23 Juin présente année 1642,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxxvi–­cxxxxvii; ADCO, H 1026: “Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Estat du Roy.” 57.  The Benedictine abbey of Val-­de-­Grâce in Paris had itself recently undergone reform; Chaussy, Bénédictines, 1:57–­67. 58.  “Arrêt du Conseil Privé du Roi, contre l’Abbesse et les Religieuses anciennes du Puits-­d’Orbe” (1645), in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:clxi–­clxiii. 59.  ADCO, H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat,” 4. 60.  “Procès verbal,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxxxiv. Susan Broomhall argues that the different parties involved often had different visions of monastic reform and that “interpretation between various groups about whether the reforms had been implemented seemed to differ markedly”; “Familial and Social Networks,” 62.

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retain her position as abbess, even in the face of secular and ecclesiastical authorities’ rulings to the contrary. In an earlier era, her authority would most likely have been uncontested. Either way, her alternating strategy of refusal and feigned submission proved remarkably successful for years. Zamet was willing to step back and let the state and the prior of Moutier-­ Saint-­Jean do their work, yet the case demonstrates the difficulties he faced in achieving one of the central components of his diocesan reform plan: the reform of the ancient abbeys. The jurisdictional claims of the Crown and regular clergy over these abbeys meant that Zamet’s efforts required their collaboration and support, which were not always forthcoming, as will be seen in the case of the abbey of Tart. Abbesses such as Rose Bourgeois and Lucrèce de Rochefort proved adept at using numerous legal appeals and at exploiting the tensions between the various secular and religious powers to postpone the consequences of their disobedience, sometimes indefinitely. De Rochefort showed particular political savvy in appealing her case to the Parlement of Paris, which ruled in her favor in 1644, although its decision was overruled by the Queen Mother.61 Four years later, the judges would rise up in revolt to protect their own ancient privileges against royal encroachment, setting off the first phase of the civil war known as the Fronde. Zamet also had to gain the support of local elites, many of whom were family members of the nuns. Rose Bourgeois appealed her case to the Parlement of Dijon, where she and the nuns who resisted reform counted “more than twenty relatives,” including her nephew, who acted as her powerful advocate at the court.62 In this case and in his dispute with the Ursulines of Dijon, Zamet had to negotiate divisions within the Parlement, which mirrored the divisions between the nuns themselves, in order to obtain the support he needed to force the nuns to comply with his orders.

The Ursulines of Dijon (1621–­24) The creation of new religious orders was another important component of Zamet’s reform plan, and it was here that he had his greatest successes. While Zamet was a supporter of new male orders such as the Oratorians and Jesuits, it was the new women’s congregations of the Catholic Reformation that saw the greatest expansion during his episcopacy, with twenty new convents established in his diocese

61.  “Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat, où il est parlé de l’Abbaye de Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, sur celle de Rougemont,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:clxx. 62.  “Procès verbal,” in Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:clii.

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under his watch.63 Nonetheless, Zamet’s ongoing conflict with the Ursulines in his diocese, which began around 1621, shows that his relationship with the newly established convents was no less complicated than with the older abbeys.64 Theoretically, his authority over the Ursulines should not have been problematic, since they had no traditional claim of exemption from episcopal jurisdiction and were not dependent on any male religious order. However, the Ursulines were able to effectively use claims of traditional rights and appeals to Rome and the Parlement of Dijon to circumvent Zamet’s efforts to intervene in matters of convent governance and organization. The Ursulines, one of the many new women’s religious orders of the Catholic Reformation, expanded rapidly throughout France during the first decades of the seventeenth century.65 Early Ursulines took simple vows and served God in the world through charity work. However in 1612, the Paris house adopted clausura and took on a fourth vow of teaching. By the 1630s, almost all Ursuline congregations had accepted monastic enclosure. The expansion of the order was facilitated by the support of powerful bishops, but this support often came with strings attached. There was a fine line between protection and control; bishops sometimes imposed their own rules on Ursuline congregations and often initiated monastic enclosure.66 The Ursulines of Dijon were established in 1605 as an uncloistered congregation by Françoise de Xainctonge, the daughter of a prominent magistrate at the Parlement of Dijon. In 1615, Catherine de Montholon, a rich Parisian widow from an illustrious noble family in Burgundy, offered to provide the congregation with a solid financial base on the condition that the Dijon Ursulines accept monastic transformation. Although Françoise opposed the change, the 16,000 livres offered by Madame Montholon proved impossible to turn down, and the sisters took formal vows of religion in 1619.67 By the end of that year, there 63.  Most of these were from new religious orders such as the Ursulines, which was first established in France in 1592, the Visitation of Mary, founded in 1610, and the Discalced Carmelites, founded by St. Teresa of Avila in 1593; Dinet, Religion et société, 1:233–­37. 64.  The following is based on a detailed account of the affair that was published in defense of the nuns (Recit veritable), and the minutes of the Parlement de Bourgogne from May 1621 (ADCO, B12069/TER). See also descriptions of the conflict in Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 128–­32; Rapley, Social History of the Cloister, 56–­57; and Gueudré, Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines, 1:121–­23. 65.  By 1630 there were eighty houses and by the end of the seventeenth century there were over three hundred Ursuline convents in France; Rapley, Dévotes, 52; Lierheimer, “Female Eloquence and Maternal Ministry,” 43. 66. Gueudré, Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines, 1:46, 162, 233. 67.  BMD, fonds Milsant, 10.962: “Fondation des Ursulines à Dijon,” fols. 7–­9; Senault, Vie de Madame Catherine de Montholon, 41, 43–­44, 48. See also Gueudré, Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines, 1:46, 240.

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were four Ursuline convents in the diocese: at Dijon, Langres, Chaumont, and Châtillon-­sur-­Seine.68 These convents, like most Ursuline houses throughout France, were only loosely affiliated. Each house had its own papal bull, letters patent from the king, and set of rules and constitutions.69 As part as his wider effort to centralize diocesan control, Zamet developed a plan to unite these convents under the authority of a single head, or provinciale. In 1620, he convened a “chapter general” composed of the prioresses of these convents. However, the nuns rejected Zamet’s plan, arguing that this innovation was contrary to their rules and constitutions, and violated the independence of each convent guaranteed in the papal bulls that had established their communities.70 In spite of their opposition, Zamet continued to pursue his plan. In 1622, after obtaining approval from several prominent theologians at the Sorbonne, he tried to force the Ursulines of Langres into submission by depriving them of the sacraments. The nuns complained that when they asked for a priest to administer last rites to a dying nun, Zamet replied sarcastically that “if they [the nuns] were so good, they would still be in a state of grace even if they died without the sacraments.” They also claimed that a young novice had become gravely ill because of her disappointment about being unable to take her final vows. When a doctor judged that the novice was in danger of dying, they again asked for a priest, but were denied permission. Not wanting to disobey the bishop, they decided to send the novice home, where she died after receiving the sacraments.71 Despite Zamet’s heavy-­handed tactics, the nuns did not give in. Instead, they took their case to Rome and won. In September 1622, a papal bull arrived affirming the independence of each convent in the diocese.72 That same month, the nuns in Dijon reelected their prioress, Mère Jeanne Mazoyer, to a second term against Zamet’s wishes. Some months later, in February 1623, Zamet recalled two nuns from the Ursuline convent in Châtillon, in an attempt to establish the Dijon convent as the “mother house” of the Ursulines of 68. Dinet, Religion et société, 1:69–­71. 69.  On the lack of institutional unity among Ursuline houses in France, see Lux-­Sterritt, Redefining Female Religious Life, 4. 70. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 128. 71.  “Humble remonstrance que font les Supérieure et religieuses du couvent de Saint Ursule de Langres capitulairement assemblées le 28 juin 1622, après avoir invoqué le saint nom de Dieu à la manière accoutumée, à Monseigneur le Révérend Evesque dudict Langres, et pair de France, ou à Monsieur son Grand Vicaire, sur le subject des deffences à elles faictes et signifiées le 5 de mars dernier de la part de mondict seigneur, et considérant la peyne qu’elles ont depuis peu d’obtenir la permission de faire entrer en leur monastère les personnes nécessaires pour les urgentes nécessités y arrivées,” in Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 451–­54. 72. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 132.

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his diocese. The two nuns were Françoise de Xainctonge, who had left Dijon to found the Châtillon convent three years earlier, and Marguerite Le Jeune, who was then prioress of the Châtillon convent. Zamet tried to persuade the Dijon Ursulines to accept one of these nuns as their prioress; however, Mère Mazoyer, following the advice of the priest who served as director of the convent, refused to step down. Zamet responded by removing the director, and also the confessor of the convent, in effect depriving them of the sacraments.73 In May 1623, Zamet tried to enter the convent to impose his will, but was turned away. He returned armed with a mandate from the Parlement of Dijon ordering the nuns to obey their bishop.74 Once inside, Zamet took possession of the keys to the convent and, over the objections of Catherine de Montholon, who threatened to leave the convent and take her property with her, sent the prioress, Mère Mazoyer, off to Châtillon in the episcopal carriage. Zamet placed one of the nuns from Châtillon in charge and ordered the nuns to obey her until a new election could be held. When Zamet asked to examine the convent’s accounts, the nuns claimed that they had placed their records outside the convent for safekeeping and that these would be returned after they were allowed to choose a superior in a valid election.75 The nuns then appealed to the Parlement of Dijon to uphold their right of election. Under pressure from the families of the nuns, including leading magistrates at the court,76 the Parlement assembled the superiors of the male religious orders in the region to advise them on the matter. The clerics determined that since there had been no election, the nuns were not bound to obey Zamet’s appointee, but that as proof of their humility and submission to the bishop, they might obey her as a trustee of the office until such time as they could hold a new election. On July 22, the Ursulines of Dijon elected Sister Claude Coutier de Sainte-­Agnès, who had been second in command to Mère Mazoyer. Zamet admitted defeat, and the Châtillon nuns returned to their convent, along with three other nuns who had supported them.77 In 1637, Zamet did get the Ursuline prioresses in his diocese to agree to adopt a common set of rules that he had drawn up; however, in practice, most convents continued to observe their individual statutes that had 73.  Recit veritable, 12, 20. 74.  “Arrêt de Parlement de Dijon pour Monsieur l’Evesque de Langres contre les Ursulines de Dijon (1623),” in Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 450–­51; ADCO, B12069/TER. 75.  Recit veritable, 37–­38, 82. 76.  ADCO, B12069/TER, fols. 24–­25. 77.  Recit veritable, 97–­107.

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been confirmed by Rome.78 In the end, Zamet’s plan to create a single centralized congregation of Ursulines to facilitate the effective exercise of episcopal power was unsuccessful, and each convent retained its autonomy.79 In his efforts to assert his episcopal authority over the Ursulines in his diocese, Zamet had to contend with their powerful advocates in the Parlement of Dijon, many of whom were their family members. This was a difficult feat for an outsider who had only recently arrived in the province, had few local connections, and, because of his close ties to Richelieu and the French state, was likely viewed with suspicion. However, the fact that the Ursulines in Zamet’s diocese were divided about his plan suggests deeper divisions about religious ideals and questions of spiritual autonomy. The tensions between Françoise de Xaintonge, who had a close personal relationship with Zamet and seems to have collaborated with him on the plan for convent union, and Catherine de Montholon, who led the nuns’ resistance to Zamet, dated back to their disagreement years earlier about whether the Dijon Ursulines should take religious vows. Catherine’s conflict with Zamet involved a fundamentally different understanding of enclosure: for Zamet and other bishops, clausura was inseparable from submission to episcopal authority, while for Catherine, it meant protecting the independence and autonomy of religious women. In defending their rights, the Dijon Ursulines represented themselves primarily as members of the regular clergy, rather than as female monastics. The male monastic leaders who supported the nuns’ right of election likewise saw the issue as pertaining to all religious, not just nuns. However, the reality was that the stakes were different for nuns than they were for monks, because autonomy and independence were not normally accorded to women. Monks who quarreled with their bishops did not risk being accused of acting unnaturally or against their sex. The requirement that nuns obey their bishop demanded a dual submission—­as monastics and as women. The traditional comparison of the 78.  Such rules and statutes organized the daily life of a convent and specified the duties of the convent officers, etc. At issue was not so much the substance of the rules, but the right of the nuns to self-­government. 79. Gueudré, Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines, 1:122–­23; Rapley, Social History of the Cloister, 56. Zamet’s attempt to unify the Ursuline congregations in his diocese was part of a larger effort to create a unified identity and organizational structure for the diverse Ursuline congregations that sprung up throughout France during the first half of the century. Sometimes it was the nuns themselves who initiated union; however individual houses were often unwilling to give up their own unique traditions. These efforts had some success at the regional level, but the Ursulines never became a unified order along the lines of the Jesuits, largely due to opposition from Rome and from the episcopacy, who believed that such a larger union would undermine their authority over the congregations in their dioceses. For a more detailed discussion of these efforts, see Lierheimer, “Female Eloquence and Maternal Ministry,” 46–­61.

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relationship of the bishop to his diocese with the marriage between a husband and wife had very different implications for male and female monastics.80 Nuns were much more dependent on bishops for protection and support, and bishops had the right to oversee, and in some cases even to administer, a convent’s financial affairs (though this sometimes met resistance, as when the nuns in Dijon hid their convent records from Zamet!).81 But by claiming the rights of regular clergy, nuns like the Ursulines of Dijon were able to use disputes over episcopal jurisdiction to carve out a space for themselves in which to exercise authority as female religious.

Notre-­Dame de Tart and the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement (1622–­38) The reform of the Cistercian abbey of Notre-­Dame de Tart brought together Zamet’s dual visions of convent union and restoration of monastic discipline in the older religious orders for women in his diocese. From 1622 to 1638, Zamet worked closely with the acting abbess of Tart, Jeanne de la Tournelle, to reform the abbey, and pursued an ambitious plan to unify the abbeys of Tart and Port-­Royal and create a new religious order for women, the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement. In contrast to the reform of the Benedictine abbeys of Puits d’Orbe and Rougemont, Zamet collaborated with nuns who, at least initially, shared his vision, but he ran into trouble with the male leaders of the Cistercian order, who resisted his efforts to remove two abbeys (Tart and Port-­Royal) from their jurisdiction. The reform of Tart must be understood as part of a larger conflict between Zamet and the Cistercians.82 The mother house of the order, Cîteaux, was located in Burgundy, within the boundaries of the diocese of Langres. Cîteaux was destroyed and abandoned during the sixteenth-­century religious wars; however, under the leadership of Nicolas Boucherat, who served as abbot general from 1605 to 1625, the monastery was rebuilt and regular monastic observance restored. After the death of Boucherat, the monks elected Pierre Nivelle as his successor; however the king annulled the election under pressure from the powerful Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld who supported another candidate. Zamet, a close ally of the cardinal, sided with him against the monks. The confirmation of Nivelle as abbot in January 1626 marked a setback for the advocates of reform 80.  Forrestal, “Catholic Model of Martyrdom,” 269, 274–­75. 81. Gueudré, Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines, 1:89. 82. Dinet, Religion et société, 1:130.

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within the order and set the stage for a tense relationship between the male Cistercians and Zamet.83 Jeanne de Courcelles de Pourlan, who was named abbess of Tart in 1617 at the age of twenty-­six, was the niece of the Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld.84 Jeanne had taken her original vows in a Franciscan convent and undertook a second novitiate in preparation for taking on her new position. Like many young abbesses of the time, Jeanne de Courcelles favored reform and she worked closely with Zamet to establish it.85 However, her initial attempts to impose a stricter lifestyle on the nuns met with resistance, and reform was delayed when she fell ill from smallpox. During her illness, governance of the abbey fell to her coadjutrix, Jeanne de la Tournelle. In 1622, Zamet visited the abbey and became Madame de la Tournelle’s spiritual director. Together, they planned to reform the abbey, beginning with the transfer of the abbey to the city of Dijon.86 Opposition came from the families of the nuns and from the Cistercian order on which Tart was dependent. One of the biggest obstacles was Madame de la Tournelle’s own father, who was hostile to reform and may have been behind a failed plan to assassinate Zamet.87 Zamet urged Madame de la Tournelle to be strong and to resist her father’s attempts to dissuade her: “If your father finds you firm and courageous, and resolved to follow the path of greater perfection, he will bend.”88 “Do not be frightened by your father’s speeches . . . it is passion, not reason that speaks, so you must not listen to him.”89 In giving this advice, Zamet almost certainly had in mind the celebrated case of Angélique Arnauld, abbess of Port-­Royal, over which he would soon become spiritual director. In 1609, Angélique had locked her family out of the abbey in order to reestablish cloister and follow the abbey’s original rule. Her father, angry at what she had done, pounded on the door and threatened to disown her; her brother “accused her of parricide, saying her disobedience would cause the death of their father.”90 83.  Lekai, “Abbatial Election,” 30–­35. 84. Bourrée, Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, 3, 44. 85.  The appointment of a new, usually young, abbess was often the precursor to reform; McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 503. 86. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 185–­87. Zamet began a correspondance with Jeanne de la Tournelle that details the reform of Tart; Lettres spirituelles, ed. Prunel. 87. Bourrée, Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, 122; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 187–­89. 88.  Sébastien Zamet to Mme de la Tournelle, Coadjutrice de Tart, 13 July 1622, in Lettres spirituelles, ed. Prunel, 63. 89.  Sébastien Zamet to Mme de la Tournelle, Coadjutrice de Tart, 2 August 1622, in Lettres spirituelles, ed. Prunel, 67. 90.  The incident was known as the “journée de guichet”; Kostroun, “Angélique Arnauld,” 325–­36. See

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Some months later, Madame de la Tournelle’s father finally offered his consent to the reform and transfer of the monastery in return for a payment of 8,000 livres.91 In May 1623, the reformed nuns moved into their new convent in Dijon. Those nuns who did not wish to accept reform were allowed to retire to another convent and granted an annual pension for the remainder of their lives.92 The removal of Tart from Cistercian jurisdiction was central to Zamet’s ambitious plan to unify the abbeys of Tart and Port-­Royal under his superiority and to create a new religious order. Zamet had met the abbess of Port-­Royal, Angélique Arnauld, in 1624, and soon after became the spiritual director of the abbey. Zamet and Angélique collaborated on plans for the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement. Both believed that a single male superior was necessary to maintain the unity and piety of the order. In addition to removing the abbeys of Port-­Royal and Tart from the Cistercian order and placing them under Zamet’s direct jurisdiction, the project also involved establishing the principle of election in place of the royal nomination of the abbess, an exchange of nuns between the two abbeys, and the founding of a new religious house in Paris by nuns from both Tart and Port-­Royal.93 Not surprisingly, the plan met with opposition from the Cistercian order, which fought to retain authority over both Tart and Port-­Royal. In 1626, the pope granted Zamet jurisdiction over Tart. Incensed by the decision, the head of the Cistercian order, Pierre Nivelle, threatened the abbess with excommunication. The abbess responded that while the Cistercian order had originally been granted authority over the abbey because of its sanctity, “as that sanctity no longer exists, she had the right to place herself under the jurisdiction of bishops, her natural superiors according to the Rule of St. Benedict.”94 Nivelle appealed to both Rome and the Parlement of Dijon, but lost his case.95 also Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 24. 91.  Sébastien Zamet to Mme de la Tournelle, Coadjutrice de Tart, 16 February 1623, in Lettres spirituelles, ed. Prunel, 97. Zamet advised Madame de la Tournelle to pay her father if she could do so without ruining the convent. She seems to have come up with the money, because Zamet informed her a few days later that the matter had been resolved. Sébastien Zamet to Mme de la Tournelle, Coadjutrice de Tart, 20 February 1623, in Lettres spirituelles, ed. Prunel, 100. 92. Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:432, cxxvi; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 195; Dinet, Religion et société, 1:128. 93. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 200, 203, 208–­11, 228; Arnauld, Relation, 120–­24; Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 28; Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 167–­68. The negotiations over the establishment of the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement lasted from 1626 to 1633. Tart gained the right of election in 1626, but the King retained the right to reclaim his right of nomination if the abbey did not remain in a state of reform. However, the first election did not take place until 1629; Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:434–­36, cxxxii–­cxxxiii. Port-­Royal gained the right of election in 1629; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 229. 94. Bourrée, Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, 184. 95. Plancher, Histoire générale, 1:cxxix–­cxxxii; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 197–­99.

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Zamet’s claim of jurisdiction over Port-­Royal, and over the new convent to be established in Paris, was more tenuous. This claim in effect challenged canon law regarding the authority of bishops over female religious houses, since neither Port-­Royal nor the proposed new convent was in his diocese. Zamet justified himself in a letter to one of the clerics in charge of negotiating the affair in Rome: “It is true that it is against church law for a bishop to have permanent authority in the diocese of another, but this law would seem to be weakened by a million privileges given to diverse persons and communities.” It is strange, he continued, “that a monk, a simple priest . . . governs whole families [members of a religious order] in a diocese, to the exclusion of the bishop.” Zamet claimed that he would have no problem ceding jurisdiction over the nuns in his own diocese to another bishop; his problem was with the jurisdictional claims of regular clergy that exempted monastic institutions from episcopal authority and undermined the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.96 A compromise was reached in 1627. Pope Urban VIII (r. 1623–­44) placed Port-­Royal under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Paris and authorized the founding of the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement under the joint authority of three superiors: Zamet, Jean-­François de Gondi, the archbishop of Paris, and Octave de Bellegarde, the archbishop of Sens.97 In 1629, the union of Tart and Port-­ Royal was accomplished. Angélique stepped down as abbess of Port-­Royal to become superior of the new convent; her sister Agnès was sent to Dijon and elected abbess of Tart; and Jeanne de Saint Joseph, the former abbess of Tart, went to Port-­Royal, where she served first as mistress of novices and then as prioress.98 In 1633, the new convent of the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement opened on the rue Coquillière in Paris.99 Nonetheless, problems soon arose due to the lack of unified leadership, and Zamet’s and Angélique’s different styles and visions for the new convent. Angélique complained that Zamet seemed to care more about wealthy and noble patronage than he did for religious discipline.100 The growing influence at Port-­Royal of the abbé de Saint-­Cyran, who was to become a major 96.  Sébastien Zamet to Monsieur Féron, 12 April 1627, in Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 487. 97. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 225. Rivalries between the three bishops generated religious controversy and contributed to the failure of the Institute; Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 30–­33. On the Paris-­Sens dispute see Bergin, Making of the French Episcopate, 41. 98. Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 28; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 229; Bourrée, Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, 221, 223. 99. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 227; Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 30. The establishment of a new convent was delayed until 1633 when it received letters patent from the King; Arnauld, Relation, 128; Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 168. 100. Arnauld, Relation, 129–­30; Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 32.

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figure in the Jansenist controversy, led to a final split between the two. Angélique requested that the Institute be placed in the hands of the archbishop of Paris, and Zamet was eventually banned from the convent.101 Their falling out marked the end of the union of Tart and Port-­Royal, and in 1635, the nuns from Tart returned to Dijon from Port-­Royal.102 After the arrest of Saint-­Cyran in 1638, the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement was suppressed, and the nuns from the new convent were removed to Port-­Royal.103 Zamet’s connection to Port-­Royal meant he would primarily be remembered as a footnote in the history of the Jansenist controversy, a religious conflict that would extend through the remainder of the century and result in the dispersion of the nuns and the complete destruction of the abbey in 1709. The suppression of the Institut du Saint-­Sacrement marked the defeat of Zamet’s most ambitious project, one through which he had hoped to leave a lasting legacy. Zamet returned to Langres, where he spent the remaining seventeen years of his life focusing on his pastoral duties and continuing to encourage the expansion of women’s monastic life. Seven religious houses for women, including four more Ursuline convents, were founded in his diocese during this period of his life.104 Zamet maintained close ties with the nuns of Tart throughout the remainder of his life, as evidenced in his many letters of spiritual direction. In 1653, he fell ill and retired to the bishop’s palace in the town of Mussy-­l’Evesque, where he died in 1655. In his will, he left 100 livres to the newly founded Ursuline convent in Mussy.105 His heart was given to the Ursulines of Châtillon, who “kept it as a precious treasure.”106 Zamet’s complex relationships with nuns demonstrate that despite the Tridentine injunction that nuns be subject to their local bishop, the reality was much more complex. Bishops’ authority was tempered by monastic exemptions, overlapping jurisdictions, local politics, and the nuns’ own claims to self-­governance. Some nuns employed their enclosed status to resist their bishop, using the walls of the convent as at least a temporary brake on episcopal power; others used delaying tactics, non-­compliance, and legal challenges to thwart his will. As Zamet’s conflicts with Rose Bourgeois and the Ursulines of Dijon and the demise of the 101. Arnauld, Relation, 157–­61; Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 33; Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 255–­60; Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 168–­69. 102. Bourrée, Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, 235. 103. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 276. 104. Dinet, Religion et société, 1:233–­37. 105. Prunel, Sébastien Zamet, 410, 412, 414. 106. Bourrée, Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, 489.

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Institut du Saint-­Sacrement show, bishops had to negotiate and exercise power on a case-­by-­case basis. Zamet’s successes and failures at reforming and reorganizing women’s religious life in his diocese depended on his ability to collaborate closely with women who were as determined as he was to establish a higher form of spiritual life. In such collaborations, which were sometimes surprisingly egalitarian, Zamet’s authority was balanced by respect and even affection. In the end, however, Zamet’s commitment to the expansion of and subjection of nuns to episcopal authority, rooted in the Tridentine decrees, and the notion that his authority came directly from God as a “divine right” made it difficult for him to brook resistance in any form. His heavy-­handed style with those who did not share his vision engendered difficult relationships, which, in the end, foiled some of his most ambitious projects.

Works Cited Archives

ADCO = Archives Départementales de la Côte d’Or B 12069/TER, fols. 24–­26: Minutes of the Parlement de Bourgogne, May 1621. H 1026: “Brief et veritable estat du Monastere du Puyts-­d’Orbe, de ce qu’il estoit auant la translation en la Ville de Chastillon sur Seyne, depuis icelle, et de ce qu’il est apres la reforme et establissement de la Communauté Reguliere fait audit Monastere, du 23. Feurier 1641. par le sieur de Boucher Grand Prieur et Grand Vicaire de l’Abbaye Royale de Monstier S. Iean, et en ladite qualité Superieur dudit Puits-­d’Orbe.” H 1026: “Extraict des Registres du Conseil destat du Roy,” 27 June 1644. H 1026: “Extrait des registres du Conseil d’Etat,” 1654. ADHM = Archives Départementales de la Haute Marne G18: “Statuts et Ordonnances faites en diverses Assemblées Synodales tenues par Reverendissime Pere en Dieu Messire Sebastien Zamet Evêque Duc de Langres, Pair de France.” BMD = Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon Fonds Milsant, 10.962, fols. 7–­9: “Fondation des Ursulines à Dijon.”

Printed Primary Sources

Arnauld, Jacqueline Marie Angélique. Relation écrite par la Mère Angélique Arnauld sur Port-­Royal. Edited by Louis Cognet. Paris: Grasset, 1949. Bourrée, Edme Bernard. La Vie de Madame de Courcelle de Pourlan, dernière abbesse titulaire et Reformatrice de l’Abaïe de Nôtre-­Dame de Tart, premiere Maison de Cisteaux au Diocese de Langres, à present transferée à Dijon: Dite en Religion, la Mere Jeanne de saint Joseph, decedée le 16. Mai 1651, âgée de 60. ans. Avec un Abregé de la vie de Messire Sebastien Zamet, Conseiller du Roi en ses Conseils d’Etat & Privé, Evêque Duc

Gender, Resistance, and the Limits of Episcopal Authority 171 de Langres, & Pair de France, Reformateur des Religieuses de l’Abaïe de Nôtre-­Dame de Tart, decedée le 2. Fèvrier 1655, âgé de 72. ans. Lyon, 1699. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Edited by H. J. Schroeder. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1941. Du Saint Esprit, Colombe. The Life of Antoinette Micolon. Translated and edited by Linda Lierheimer. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2004. Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction. Translated by Péronne Marie Thébert. New York: Paulist Press, 1988. Recit veritable de ce qui s’est fait et passé en la demission de la Superieure du Monastere de Saincte Vrsulle de la ville de Dijon, en l’année 1624. Paris, 1624. Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis. Lettres, instructions diplomatiques et papiers d’État. Vol. 1. Edited by Georges Avenal. Paris, 1853. Senault, François. La vie de Madame Catherine de Montholon veuve de Monsieur de Sanzelles maistre de requestes, et fondatrice des Ursulines de Dijon. Paris, 1653. Zamet, Sébastien. Lettres spirituelles de Sébastien Zamet, évêque-­duc de Langres, pair de France. Edited by Louis Prunel. Paris: Alphonse Picard et fils, 1911.

Secondary Sources

Becker, Michael K. “Episcopal Unrest: Gallicanism in the 1625 Assembly of the Clergy.” Church History 43 (1974): 65–­77. Bergin, Joseph. Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld: Leadership and Reform in the French Church. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. ———. The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–­1661. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Bilinkoff, Jodi. The Avila of St. Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-­Century City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Blet, Pierre. Le Clergé de France et la monarchie: Étude sur les assemblées generales du clergé, de 1615 à 1661. Analecta Gregoriana 106–­7. Rome: Université Grégorienne, 1959. Broomhall, Susan. “Familial and Social Networks in the Later Sixteenth-­Century French Convent: The Benedictines of Beaumont-­Lès-­Tours.” Early Modern France 11 (2007): 59–­74. Chaussy, Dom Yves. Les Bénédictines et la réforme catholique en France au XVIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: Editions de la Source, 1975. Diefendorf, Barbara. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Dinet, Dominique. Religion et société: Les Réguliers et la vie régionale dans les diocèses d’Auxerre, Langres et Dijon (fin XVIe–­fin XVIIIe siècles). 2 vols. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999. Evenett, H. Outram. The Spirit of the Counter-­Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Farr, James R. Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (1550–­1730). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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Forrestal, Alison. “A Catholic Model of Martyrdom in the Post-­Reformation Era: The Bishop in Seventeenth-­Century France.” Seventeenth Century 20 (2005): 254–­280. ———. “‘Fathers, Leaders, Kings’: Episcopacy and Episcopal Reform in the Seventeenth-­ Century French School.” Seventeenth Century 17 (2002): 24–­47. ———. Fathers, Pastors and Kings: Visions of Episcopacy in Seventeenth-­Century France. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Greenbaum, Louis S. “The General Assembly of the Clergy of France and Its Situation at the End of the Ancien Régime.” Catholic Historical Review 53 (1967): 153–­93. Gueudré, Marie de Chantal. Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines en France. Vol. 1. Paris: Editions St-­Paul, 1957. Hayden, J. Michael. “States, Estates and Orders: The Qualité of Female Clergy in Early Modern France.” French History 8 (1994): 51–­76. Johnson, Penelope D. Equal in the Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Kostroun, Daniella. “Angélique Arnauld and the Political Significance of Filial Disobedience.” Biblio 17 (2002): 325–­36. ———. Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-­Royal Nuns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Lekai, Louis J. “The Abbatial Election at Citeaux in 1625.” Church History 39 (1970): 30–­35. Lierheimer, Linda. “Female Eloquence and Maternal Ministry: The Apostolate of Ursuline Nuns in Seventeenth-­Century France.” PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1994. Lux-­Sterritt, Laurence. Redefining Female Religious Life: French Ursulines and English Ladies in Seventeenth-­Century Catholicism. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. McNamara, Jo Ann. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millenia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Plancher, Urbain. Histoire générale et particulière de la Bourgogne, avec des notes, des dissertations et les preuves justificatives. Vol. 1. Dijon, 1739. Prunel, Louis. Sébastien Zamet, Évèque-­duc de Langres, Pair de France (1588–­1655): Sa vie et ses oeuvres; Les origines du Jansénisme. Paris: Alphonse Picard et fils, 1912. Rapley, Elizabeth. A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime. Montreal: McGill-­Queen’s University Press, 2001. ———. The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-­Century France. Montreal: McGill-­Queen’s University Press, 1990. Sicard, Jean Auguste. “Assemblies of the French Clergy.” In Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. Online at http://www.newadvent. org/cathen/01795a.htm (accessed 22 March 2011).

Challenges to Episcopal Authority in Seventeenth-­Century Padua Celeste McNamara As the reformers at the Council of Trent (1545–­63) contemplated the future of the Catholic Church, they knew that bishops would be on the front lines during the reform process and ensured that their authority was strengthened and clearly stated in the decrees. Ideally, the bishop’s flock would be willing participants who would follow his program once they received the Tridentine Decrees and the necessary resources, but the reformers were not naïve enough to believe this would be the only reaction to reform. They realized that bishops were likely to face significant resistance from both lower clergy and laity. If the opponents to reform were in the minority, their neighbors might overrule them: parish clergy had some authority over laity, and laypeople were, at minimum, capable of protesting clerical transgressions. However, when the acts of defiance or disobedience grew into serious disturbances or the majority of a parish wanted to resist the bishop’s efforts to reform, only he had the authority to levy more serious disciplinary penalties such as excommunication, suspension, and deprivation of benefice. In its most troubled moments, the fate of Tridentine reform in a particular diocese rested in the hands of an individual bishop. Although many dioceses covered small territories and contained few parishes outside the urban center, some bishops had jurisdiction over several hundred parishes, which complicated their task. Many historians have explored the challenges presented by disinterested bishops, poverty, secular political obstruction, or other obstacles that effectively prevented reforms from commencing. This 173

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work, in contrast, will explore an issue faced by those reform-­minded bishops fortunate enough to have wealthy, but large, dioceses in which a reform plan could be implemented. The challenge these bishops faced was to devise a method of reform that allowed them to make their authority felt across the diocese and to supervise quotidian religious life in all their parishes, even when their physical presence was not feasible. Without this sort of governance, clergy and laity uninterested in the reform process would find it relatively facile to defy the bishop’s mandates, creating disturbances in parishes across the diocese. When the volume of these disruptions grew, the bishop would find himself hard pressed to regain control, and his reform plans would suffer. This scenario is what Gregorio Barbarigo, cardinal-­bishop of Padua from 1664 to 1697, faced as he devoted the last three decades of his life to an attempt to revitalize the Catholic Church in his diocese. Constant challenges from many of his 327 parishes tested the limits of his authority and forced him to spend much of his time correcting blatant abuses, rather than developing and nurturing the religious culture of Padua. His inability to maintain control consistently over the entire diocese helps to explain why reform made little progress under his tenure, in spite of his extraordinary efforts and Padua’s privileged position as one of the wealthiest dioceses in Italy.1 This paper will examine some of the ways in which clergy and laity challenged episcopal authority through analysis of events in two of Barbarigo’s more troublesome parishes. In each, members of his flock attempted to subvert Tridentine reforms and obtain personal gains that conflicted with Barbarigo’s image of the post-­Tridentine church. By all accounts, Gregorio Barbarigo was an ideal Tridentine bishop. As the eldest son of Gianfrancesco Barbarigo, a prominent Venetian patrician who served on the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia for much of his son’s episcopal career, Gregorio had powerful political allies in Venice.2 In addition to the connections provided by his father and his family name, he had started his own career in politics, attending the treaty talks at Westphalia at the age of eighteen. There he met and befriended Fabio Chigi, who would later become Pope Alexander VII (r. 1655–67). Chigi’s friendship and guidance inspired Barbarigo to alter his path, and when he returned from Westphalia he enrolled at the University of Padua to study law in utroque and took clerical orders. His devotion, intelligence, and connections in both Rome and Venice led to a rapid rise in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He held a papal appoint1.  Stella, “L’età postridentina,” 237. 2.  The Esecutori contro la bestemmia were responsible for punishing blasphemers and other moral offenders in Venice, often working alongside the Inquisition.

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ment in Rome for a few years and then was named bishop of Bergamo in 1657, cardinal in 1660, and bishop of Padua in 1664.3 Venice and Padua were strong supporters of both his promotion to the cardinalate and his move to Padua. His political power was undeniable, and while in Bergamo he had gained a reputation as a model bishop and dedicated reformer. Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, who would later become Pope Alexander VIII, remarked in the early 1660s that Padua “need[ed] an apostle more than a bishop,” and evidently the papacy and the secular government in the Veneto considered Barbarigo to have the ideal combination of political and spiritual authority to be successful in Padua.4 Although many bishops were unable to enact some of the Tridentine decrees because of financial difficulties, Barbarigo was fortunate in Padua. The extensive financial resources at his disposal allowed him to reinvigorate the then-­failing seminary and turn it into one of the premier centers for clerical education in Europe.5 Once the seminary was well established, he installed a printing press there, allowing him to publish everything from textbooks for seminarians to catechism books and decrees that he sent to his parishes. He believed firmly that the greatest obstacle to reform was ignorance, and education was an important segment of his reform plan, so it was crucial that his flock have access to the appropriate didactic materials.6 Padua’s assets also helped him to develop his supervisory plans. In 1572, Bishop Nicolò Ormaneto had instituted a network of vicari foranei, parish clergy who were charged with monitoring ecclesiastics in surrounding parishes, but the system had fallen into disuse.7 Barbarigo revitalized the program, expanding it to forty-­six vicarages of between one and thirteen parishes each.8 Most bishops who utilized the vicari foranei system chose vicars in one of two ways. They either appointed trusted priests, as Carlo Borromeo had done, or had the position automatically go to the parish priest of chiese matrice of the area.9 Barbarigo chose a middle ground: he appointed his vicars, but only chose priests already within the vicarage. When he had no specific information to help him choose, he 3.  On Barbarigo’s career before his entrance into Padua, see Montanari, Gregorio Barbarigo a Bergamo. 4. Ippolito, Politica e carriere ecclesiastiche, 83–­84. 5. Serena, S. Gregorio Barbarigo e la vita spirituale e culturale, 1–­2. 6.  Billanovich, “Le ‘Relationes ad limina’ di Gregorio Barbarigo,” 221. 7. Billanovich, Fra centro e periferia, 1–­4. 8.  Vicarages that only included one parish were fairly large cities with cathedral chapters, which meant the city might have upwards of twenty priests. The average number of priests per vicarage was about seventeen at the time of Barbarigo’s death. This data is taken from BSP, Bertazzi, Stato della diocesi. 9.  Prodi, “Tra centro e periferia,” 220.

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appointed the parish priests of the chiese matrice, but reserved the right to transfer the seat of the vicarage if the chosen priests proved irresponsible or incapable. In many cases, it seems that Barbarigo’s selection method led to vicars who were ill-­ prepared for their new supervisory role.10 In order to make his authority felt even in his absence, the vicars were required to make biannual visitations of each church in their jurisdiction and hold monthly meetings with all the clergy in the vicarage. During these congregations, the clerics would discuss casi di coscienza, providing them with a form of continuing education as they contemplated the bishop’s hypothetical spiritual quandaries. To ensure that Barbarigo was kept informed of the state of his diocese, vicars were required to write quarterly reports and attend annual meetings in Padua, and were instructed to contact the bishop more frequently if necessary.11 When they encountered minor offenses or examples of ignorance, such as occasional drunkenness and other indecorous behaviors or an inability to properly explain church doctrine, vicars were supposed to “fraternally admonish” the clergy under their jurisdiction to change their ways.12 More serious offenses, such as obstinate concubinage, refusal to attend to the cura animarum, or consistent absence without excuse from monthly congregations, were to be reported to the bishop. On rare occasions, Barbarigo granted a vicar judiciary powers to prosecute an errant cleric, but normally vicars were restricted to delivering warnings and alerting the bishop.13 The Tridentine decrees required that visitations be conducted at least once every two years (preferably annually), and Barbarigo, like many other bishops in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, envisioned the vicars as a way to 10.  For example, the vicar of Torre seems to have had a particularly difficult time establishing his authority. It came to Barbarigo’s attention in 1676 that the priests from two of his ten parishes refused to attend monthly congregations. A short while later, Barbarigo wrote to the same vicar admonishing him for his own failure to remain in his parish, telling him he was not to go “to Padua without a license from one of your fellow parish priests, otherwise we will yell very loudly” (“Non venite a Padova senza licenza in scritto di uno de v[ost]ri Comparochi vicini, altrimenti grideremo forte assai”). Finally, in 1679, the vicar was having problems with the priest of a third parish, and Barbarigo learned from a layman that this priest refused to attend the monthly congregations because he felt “the vicar of Torre is too young with respect to the others, and he is very imperious, and ambitious” (“Il vicario di Torre é troppo giovene respetive a gl’altri, et habbia molto imperio, et ambitione”). The letters are found in BSP, Miscellanea Barbarigo II, n.p. The layman’s testimony is found in ACVP, Inquisitiones 87, n.p. 11. Billanovich, Fra centro e periferia, 25. 12.  Ibid., 27. 13.  At one point, Barbarigo granted the vicar of Piove di Sacco the right to preside over a case against one of his parish priests because Barbarigo was unable to personally appear within a reasonable period of time; ibid., 27–­45.

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make this feasible.14 Visiting 327 parishes was an exhausting project: in thirty-­ three years, Barbarigo completed three full visitations, visiting any given parish roughly once a decade. Ideally, the vicars would serve as Barbarigo’s bureaucrats, acting in his name and under his authority on the periphery of the diocese while transmitting information back to the center, allowing him to make the most of his periodic visits and fulfill his Tridentine duty of annual visitations in each parish.15 In spite of Barbarigo’s tireless efforts (which led to his beatification in 1761 and his eventual canonization in 1960), it is difficult to discern any significant progress in the copious reports from his diocesan visitations. The records comprise over twenty thousand folios in forty-­two buste recording the bishop’s actions, conversations, and inquisitorial proceedings, and they are rife with incidences of clerical and lay disobedience, ignorance, and defiance.16 Though the offenders and their locations sometimes change, Barbarigo was constantly bombarded with situations that tested his authority and hindered his reform efforts. The size and geographic distribution of the diocese certainly contributed to his challenge: Padua’s 327 parishes were split into two distinct areas. About half of the diocese was around Padua, while the other half was up in the Dolomite Mountains, with a section of the diocese of Vicenza running between them. While weather made traveling to the mountainous parishes perilous in winter, heat kept the bishop from traveling much in summer, and the requirements of the cardinalate forced him to spend more time in Rome than he wished.17 His bureaucratic network of vicars helped, but for it to function as intended, every vicar had to be trustworthy, diligent, and competent, which was not always the case. Barbarigo found some of his vicars to be negligent and others willfully defiant, which often meant that he arrived on a visitation with no advance notice of the disorder he would soon discover. Some of his vicars may have been competent officials, but those who were not contributed to a situation throughout Barbarigo’s tenure in which roughly 14.  For example, the dioceses of Bologna, Vicenza, Milan, Aquileia, Rimini, and Bergamo all had vicari foranei; Prodi, “Lineamenti dell’organizzazione”; Mantese, “L’origine dei vicariati foranei”; Maselli, “L’organizzazione della diocesi”; Gervaso, “L’istituzione dei vicariati foranei”; Turchini, Clero e fedeli a Rimini; Montanari, Gregorio Barbarigo a Bergamo. 15.  The Tridentine decrees required at least a complete visitation every two years, which could be delegated to another official if necessary; Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 193. 16.  In comparison to Barbarigo’s forty-­two buste, there are four buste from the episcopate of Federico Cornaro (bp. 1577–­90), six from Marco Corner (bp. 1594–­1625), eight from Giorgio Corner (bp. 1643–­63), and six from another Giorgio Corner (bp. 1697–­1722). All are part of the series ACVP, Visitationes. 17.  Barbarigo participated in five papal conclaves during his tenure in Padua. Evidence of his consistent desire to return home to Padua whenever he was called to Rome can be found throughout his correspondence. For some examples, see Pampaloni, Gregorio Barbarigo alla corte di Roma, 223, 249, 269, 296.

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a quarter to a third of parish clergy in the extraurban regions of the diocese of Padua were deficient in some way.18 In the end, episcopal authority was inconsistently applied, creating conditions under which the clergy and laity were able to ignore or challenge the reforms they disliked. Disobedient priests caused Barbarigo a great deal of distress. He lived his own life as a model cleric as was his responsibility, greatly valuing his own frugality, asceticism, and chastity, and he expected the same of his clergy.19 Unfortunately, many of them lacked his discipline and commitment to their vows; for some, the priesthood was not a calling, but an occupation. Barbarigo worked ceaselessly both to reform errant clerics and to ensure that the new priests ordained under him were devoted to their choice, but he was not always successful in either endeavor. One of his most vexatious priests was Don Pietro Zanone, who became parish priest of the village of Alano in 1670. During Barbarigo’s first visit to Alano in 1666, he had found no significant troubles, but by his second visit there in 1674, Zanone had taken over the parish and problems manifested themselves.20 Alano was in the vicarage of Quero, near the northern edge of the diocese at the foot of a mountain, about eighty kilometers from Padua. The weather in this area made visitations difficult, but Barbarigo still managed five visits in total, four of them during the last two decades of his episcopate. To keep an eye on Zanone, he went to Alano roughly twice as often as he visited most parishes. During their first encounter in 1674, Barbarigo was not yet aware of the grief Zanone would cause him. He found it difficult to decide if Zanone was simply a naïve country cleric who lacked the proper diligence or if he was defiant and manipulative.21 When he arrived in Alano, he found that the church, like the others in the vicarage, needed a number of minor improvements and new furnishings.22 This was often the case in poorer parishes, which had insufficient funds to keep up with the building’s needs, but it could also indicate a careless cleric. More importantly, 18.  It is difficult to judge how many of his vicars were diligent, as most of the vicarial reports are now lost. Barbarigo should have received 92 visitation reports, 552 casuistry reports, and 46 status animarum reports per year in addition to ad hoc correspondence sent as issues arose. However, only two visitation reports, one from the vicarage of Teolo in 1672 and another from the vicarage of Monselice in 1693 were preserved among the bishop’s visitation records. The visitation of Teolo is bound into ACVP, Visitationes 41, fols. 383r–­386v. The visitation of Monselice is tucked into the back of Inquisitiones 86 and is not paginated. 19.  Not content with merely maintaining his vow of celibacy, he even refused to allow any women access to the episcopal palace and refused to lodge with noblewomen while on visitation if their husbands were away or they were widowed; Schutte, “Gregorio Barbarigo e le donne,” 851. 20.  Billanovich, “Esperienze religiose negate,” 44. 21.  Ibid., 56. 22. ACVP, Visitationes 43, fols. 345r–­347v.

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Barbarigo discovered that the people of Alano and some surrounding villages considered one of their roadside shrines to be miraculous. After the Council of Trent, bishops were instructed to be cautious about supposedly miraculous occurrences in their dioceses. Although the church’s official position remained that religious images could be the vehicle for saintly intercession, the decrees urged prudence about them. In the twenty-­fifth session, the canons stated that “no new miracles [will] be accepted and no relics recognized unless they have been investigated and approved by the . . . bishop.”23 Barbarigo was very serious about following the Tridentine decrees and was also a thoroughly practical theologian who was often drawn to scientific explanations for supposed miracles.24 He was thus predisposed to doubt the image of Alano from both a Tridentine and a personal standpoint. When Barbarigo began to investigate the image, Zanone presented him with a description of the painting and recorded testimonies of various witnesses to the supposed miracles. The image was an oil painting of the Madonna and Child on a country road. According to Zanone’s notes, certain laypeople said the image sweated in summer, changed colors, emitted odors and “rays of splendor,” and opened and closed its eyes.25 Some also heard the litany sung by a choir of angels as they gazed at the painting. The image was reported to have cured many cripples and sick people, though most of them were from other towns and many of their names were unknown; often the only evidence of a cure was an abandoned pair of crutches or a rumor. Finally, Zanone asserted that the image had resurrected a stillborn baby long enough for him to baptize it.26 Some of the witnesses and beneficiaries of the miracles reported were from Quero, the seat of the vicario foraneo, so it is probable that he was aware of the events in Alano. Yet he obviously had not reported the miracles out of either excitement or suspicion to Barbarigo, who arrived in Alano unaware of what lay ahead. The vicar’s negligence can perhaps be explained by the problems Barbarigo found in all five parishes in this vicarage, including Quero. In his own church, the vicar was admonished for the condition in which his parish was found: his parishioners were “poorly instructed in the matters of the Holy Feast, the laws of God, and Christian doctrine” because the priest “so little applied himself to 23.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 216–­17. 24.  Billanovich, “Esperienze religiose negate,” 54. 25.  “Raggi di splendori visti da Zuan Toppo”; ACVP, Visitationes 43, fols. 365r–­367r. 26.  As a man with scientific leanings and skepticism about miracles, Barbarigo was particularly suspicious of the story of the baby. The seventeenth century saw a surge of these miracles, which were officially condemned and fought by the church only in the eighteenth century; Cavazza, “Double Death,” 1–­31.

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the spiritual governance of their souls.”27 In the other parishes, the priests were found to be similarly remiss in their duties, demonstrating that the vicar was not neglecting his own parish in favor of his responsibilities as vicar. As he was clearly not a model cleric, it is not surprising that he did not want to draw Barbarigo’s attention to his vicarage. Without the potential advantage of foreknowledge, Barbarigo and his auditor spent the following day interviewing laypeople about the shrine. They found that the witnesses were generally unsure of the image’s powers: while they believed it was miraculous, much of what they knew was rumor. Their uncertainty contrasts with the priest’s recorded testimonies, suggesting that he may have coached his witnesses or revised their statements for them in his register. According to the bishop’s records, he interviewed many men (the exact number is not stated) but he only recorded the testimonies of three. Two of these three were not among those named as witnesses by the priest, while the third was present at the resurrection miracle. The first witness told the bishop that he had seen little himself—­he had observed some humidity on the image, which some called sweat, and he had seen a bird circle the image, which he was told was a dove, though he was not sure what a dove looked like. He said that the priest told them the image was miraculous and that Zanone was collecting alms in a locked box at the shrine, to which he had the only key.28 In the end, the witness admitted that what he had seen personally was not necessarily miraculous, but he remained convinced by the stories he had heard. The second witness had some information about the baby. He had seen the infant in a box on the altar after the miraculous baptism, and the body had seemed to sweat. He had not witnessed the baptism but he testified that “the priest said he had resuscitated and baptized him, and then he returned to dead.”29 Like many others, he had also seen the image sweat. The bishop had obviously considered the more logical reason for this circumstance, because he asked the man about the weather, day, and year. The witness could only remember that it was summer, 27.  “Ritrovato il suo popolo così mal’istrutto nelle cose della Santa festa, della legge del Sig. Dio, e della Dottrina Christiana, e che egli sia si poco applicato al governo spirituale dell’anime”; ACVP, Visitationes 43, fol. 322r. 28. ACVP, Visitationes 43, fol. 369. Usually any box containing money for the church was to have at least two different keys, one held by the priest and one held by the custodian of a local confraternity, to prevent fraud and theft. 29.  “Io viddi quell putto in una scatola che sudava; essendo stato prima due giorni il capitello come era nato, e disse il Prete che era suscitato e lo haveva battezato, e poi era tornessi a morire”; ibid., fol. 369v.

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presumably confirming the bishop’s suspicions that humidity caused the image to sweat. The third man called before the bishop was Matteo Caberlon, who often helped Zanone and was present for the baptism. Before he was privy to this amazing event, he had seen the image sweat in August and had also seen the Madonna’s skin change from pink to white.30 Some time later he was summoned at midnight to join two midwives, one of their husbands, and the priest at the shrine. They had brought a premature stillborn baby and hoped the Madonna would act to save his soul. Matteo reported that he saw the infant’s right eyelid open and bleed a bit and his index finger extend to point at the Madonna while a midwife held him. The priest baptized the boy, at which point his eye closed, his finger dropped, and he appeared dead again. The bishop evidently found these signs of life insufficient, because he interrogated Matteo about whether the baby had actually moved his eye, if he whimpered or made any noises, if his mouth moved when the priest put the salt in it, and if the infant moved after the baptism or was seen to die. The answer to all of these questions was no, though Matteo added that the body sweated for two or three days before burial.31 Matteo also confirmed that a significant sum of money was being collected from the alms box in both coins and trinkets, many made of precious metals. Zanone removed these items and recorded them in a book that was entrusted to Matteo. Unfortunately, as Matteo was unable to sign his name to his testimony, he was probably incapable of reading the priest’s ledger, so he could not tell the bishop how the money was being spent. He thought perhaps it was going towards church maintenance, but since Barbarigo had found the church to be insufficiently supplied, this answer was unsatisfactory.32 Apparently the statements of the other witnesses shed no more light on the situation, as Matteo’s testimony is followed by this note: The eminent and reverend lord cardinal interrogated many other selected men of this community about the contents above in the explanation of the parish priest, and found nothing relevant, nothing to conclude certainty of miracles, but only rumors, and he judged the tumult to be rather on account of the simplicity of the people and the credulity of the same priest, who seems to be of a good life.33 30.  Ibid., fol. 370. 31.  Ibid., fols. 370v–­371r. 32.  Ibid., fol. 371v. 33.  “Em[inentissi]mus et R[everendissi]mus D. Cardinalis plures alios homines huius communis oretenus

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Although Barbarigo denied the legitimacy of the miracles, he was willing to attribute this episode to the naïveté of both Zanone and his parishioners. He was interested, however, in where the money was going. Though Zanone had not asked for the bishop’s or the Venetian government’s permission as required, he had improved the structure around the image and had started purchasing supplies to build the image a more permanent home attached to the parish church.34 This would have increased the image’s reputation and brought many pilgrims to Alano. It also would have made overseeing the shrine easier for Zanone, as his house was attached to the other side of the church. Thus far, he claimed to have spent more on the construction projects than the alms boxes had yielded in coins, suggesting that he sold some of the trinkets or was using money from the church fabric fund or his benefice. Barbarigo issued a decree ordering the priest to halt construction and dismantle what he had built at the shrine, returning it to its original condition. Zanone was also to hand over the key to the alms box to the custodians of Alano’s confraternities, who were instructed to use the money for charitable purposes. Finally, Zanone was forbidden to exhort the people to gather at the shrine under penalty of suspension if he disobeyed. As for the laity, Barbarigo “paternally exhort[ed] them to give profitable devotion to the omnipotent God, the mother of God always a Virgin, and the other saints in the parish church and make their alms there, and beware of the errors and frauds that are always in new things.”35 Believing the situation resolved, he continued on his way. As Barbarigo would later discover, he had not witnessed the errors of a simple country cleric, but rather the work of a very cunning one. By 1678 Zanone had shown his true colors and the bishop was frustrated and appalled by his behavior. Although the particular incident is not explained, Barbarigo wrote to his vicar general about Zanone and the priest of a nearby town, “I would never

diligent interrogavit super contentis in expositione di Parochi, et nihil relevans invenit, nihil concludens ad certitudine miraculorum, sed rumorem, et concursum iudicavit esse potius ad deferendum populi simplicitati, et eiusdem Parochi credulitati, qui cum sit bone vite”; ibid. 34.  He did ask permission to build the new choir (though made no mention of its intended purpose), but there is no evidence that he received it. Barbarigo asked the vicar of Pove to go to Alano and send back advice to the bishop about the intended project. His choice of the vicar of Pove rather than the vicar of Quero, under whose jurisdiction Alano fell, suggests that Barbarigo was aware of the negligence of the vicar of Quero before his visit in 1674; ACVP, Diversorum 9, fol. 310. 35.  “Emin[enz]a sua antequam discederet a Visitatione Ecclesie Alani protulit sequens decretum, ed deliberatione circa imagine Deipare pictam in Capitello del Masil vulgari sermone, ut intelligeret a populo ibi presente in magno numero, quem fuit paterne hortatus profitens devotionem omnipotenti Dei, Deipare Sempre Virgini, et aliis Sanctis in ecclesia Parochali, et in ea eleemosynas facere, et ab erronibus, et fraudibus que in novitatibus sempre esse solent, cavere”; ACVP, Visitationes 43, fols. 399r–­400r.

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have believed [they could be] so impertinent and malicious.”36 Barbarigo did not make it back to Alano until 1686, and upon his return, found the situation so overwhelming that he was unable to address it in the time he had allotted for Alano in his visitation schedule. Rather than complying with the bishop’s orders, Zanone had continued to build an addition to the church, paying for it with alms, the church fabric fund, and part of his benefice.37 As the image of the Madonna was no longer an attraction, Zanone had decided to create a convent instead. The visitation records describe an “unconsecrated structure” in which “women without order, rule, or permission spend their time, making loud noises in the church and disturbing the parish functions.”38 As these women had not taken orders and their living space was completely unsuitable for a convent, reforming it was not an option. To further aggravate the situation, Zanone had written to the Venetian government to declare his “convent” as a lay space that, under Venetian law, the bishop had no right to enter uninvited. Barbarigo was forced to suspend his visit to Alano and return a year later, once he had the opportunity to sort out the jurisdictional confusion and gain permission to enter the structure.39 Obviously the vicar, who was a different priest by now, was no more diligent than his predecessor.40 He had not reported the false convent, and Barbarigo found that the vicarage had not improved since his last visit. The priest was admonished for his negligence in his parish and his mismanagement of the vicarage, while the other priests were castigated for their obvious (and perhaps justified) lack of respect for the vicar and for their own shortcomings. They often refused to attend monthly congregations and other obligations that required them to travel to Quero, while also neglecting important parochial functions. Though Zanone was the worst offender in the area, he was clearly not alone.41 The vicar’s negligence had, among other things, allowed the corruption in Alano to go unchecked for years, though Barbarigo was able to end it once he became aware of it. He contacted the Venetian authorities after his 1687 visit, and Zanone 36. Pampaloni, Gregorio Barbarigo alla corte di Roma, 215. 37.  Laity testified that Zanone destroyed a grove of chestnut trees that provided one quarter of his benefice’s yearly income; ACVP, Inquisitiones 87, n.p. 38.  “In quibus laicalibus fabricis degunt quedam mulieribus nullo ordine, et regula, nulla permissione, obstrepentes in Ecclesia, paroles funtiones perturbantes.” To make this situation even more scandalous, with the exception of a widow whose age is not stated and two women in their mid-­thirties, the women were in their teens and twenties; ACVP, Visitationes 54, fol. 465v. 39. ACVP, Processo Barbarigo 9, fol. 1058r. 40.  The records contain no indication that the former archpriest/vicar of Quero was deprived of his benefice, so it is likely that he simply retired or died and a new priest was chosen for Quero. 41.  Ibid., fol. 165.

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received a government order to disband the convent.42 Zanone was threatened with suspension should he have any private contact with the women, and once more Barbarigo considered the matter settled. Unfortunately for Barbarigo, Zanone was not as contrite as he claimed, and the spiritual direction of the town had not improved when Barbarigo visited for the last time in 1694. Although the convent, now referred to by locals as “the priest’s harem,” had been disbanded, Barbarigo discovered that four of the women, now in their thirties, had not adopted the appropriate secular female role of wife.43 One spent every night at the priest’s house, while another slept there occasionally and all four gathered there frequently in the afternoons. Zanone was suspended for disobeying the bishop’s previous order and was suspected of improper relationships with women and possibly heresy.44 Just like his predecessors, the new archpriest and vicar of Quero had not alerted Barbarigo to the highly unusual circumstances in Alano, effectively allowing abuses to go unchecked. Nor did the suspension end Barbarigo’s struggles with Zanone; after begging the local Augustinian hermit to plead with Barbarigo on his behalf, Zanone considered traveling to Padua to ask for forgiveness, but instead chose to appeal his suspension in the Venetian courts, again unnecessarily involving the secular government. He finally went to Padua and spent several months there before Barbarigo ultimately lifted his suspension and sent him back to Alano.45 Though in 1674 Barbarigo had no way to predict that Zanone would be such an unfit cleric, in hindsight it is clear that Zanone was not a naïve, well-­meaning priest. He had little to no interest in the spiritual guidance of his parish and was willing to take risks in order to achieve his temporal goals, which seem to have been the company of women and the accumulation of wealth. Perhaps the convent had been his plan all along and the chapel for the image was a way to fund that project, or perhaps he would have been content to live the relatively luxurious life the chapel’s fame and proceeds would have brought if Barbarigo had not invalidated the image. Either way, it is probable that Zanone was the source of the rumors about the image’s miraculous powers or, at the very least, that he capitalized on stories initially spread by others, as many of the stories seem to trace back 42. ACVP, Visitationes 55, fol. 386r. 43.  “Al giorno vi hanno pratticato e prattica publicamente una tal Giulia una Cattarina che gia erano state per Avanti nel seraglio di detto Parocho.” ACVP, Visitationes 60, fols. 283r, 287v–­294r. 44.  In addition to the problematic sleeping arrangements, Barbarigo was interested in the daytime activities of this group, which included reading, meditation, and prayer. Liliana Billanovich believes that he suspected them of quietism in addition to their other sins; Billanovich, “Esperienze religiose negate,” 110. 45. ACVP, Processo Barbarigo 9, fol. 1075r.

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to him. Based on the seeming sincerity of lay testimony during Barbarigo’s visitations, he was probably right about the “simplicity” of the laity, but Zanone was neither credulous nor benign. Barbarigo eventually saw through each of Zanone’s machinations, but only after decades of abuse had occurred in Alano. Though Zanone was unable to convince the bishop that the image was truly miraculous, he was able to hide his role and intentions in the rise of the shrine’s reputation. Under lax supervision, as he was fortunate enough to find himself in a vicarage plagued by delinquent vicars and far enough away from Padua to keep the bishop at a distance, Zanone was then able to create a false convent that he maintained for years. It is hard to imagine that any attempts at Tridentine reform could be successful under a priest with constant access to a group of nubile women living away from parental supervision. Conveniently for Zanone, and to the detriment of Barbarigo’s reform plans, the laity in Alano were relatively unconcerned with the extracurricular activities of their parish priest; they made no demands upon their vicar (or if they did he ignored them) or bishop to correct the problem until 1694, and even then only some of them were scandalized by the events they described. Many historians have noted that the laity was generally untroubled by concubinage, but certainly this was no ordinary case!46 The villagers of Alano, like many of their contemporaries, had not internalized the concept that the clergy should be held as a class apart from the laity, subject to a different moral code. In the absence of any strong reforming desires on the part of either clergy or laity or an effective local administrator, the bishop’s programs and occasional personal presence were insufficient to ensure change in Alano or any other parish with a similar attitude toward reform.47 For several reasons, the visitation records show many more conflicts between the bishop and his priests than with the laity. Barbarigo’s strategy of reform, as befitted a post-­Tridentine bishop, was a straightforward, top-­down progression. If he and his vicars could create a well-­educated, devoted, and honest priesthood, then the clergy would be able to reform the laity under their spiritual guidance. Not only does this make sense from a structural perspective, it was also made necessary by Venetian law. Barbarigo, like every other bishop in the Veneto at this time, was forbidden to interrogate laypeople without the written permission of the local podestà and was limited to questions about clerical comportment. 46.  For example, see Greco, “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio,” 57. 47.  Alano is certainly an extreme example; no other priest in the diocese proved as troublesome as Zanone. But Barbarigo faced a similar sort of disinterest in reform in many of his parishes and was often equally unable to overcome less sensational problems if the laity and clergy were unwilling to cooperate.

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This law was part of a series of policies designed to limit the Catholic Church’s influence in the Veneto, which had resulted in the Interdict of 1606 to 1607 and had remained in place after the papacy acknowledged defeat.48 In some cases, this hampered Barbarigo’s abilities to correct problems as they arose. When he uncovered flagrant abuses by laypeople, he had three options: he could advise the parish clergy, who could intervene from a position of spiritual authority; he could alert Venice if the offense involved a legal issue; or he could notify the Holy Office of Padua.49 In order to interact more with the laity, Barbarigo tried to set aside time for an open audience during each visitation, allowing anyone to bring forward his or her concerns personally. Though he could not intervene directly when information came to him through inquisitions, it seems that he found a loophole in the law and could involve himself when the issue was presented to him voluntarily. In an early visit to the town of Marostica, a parish with about 3,500 residents, Barbarigo’s open audience with the laity led to a four-­day investigation of a marriage. As a woman and her father petitioned for an annulment and her husband fought to reclaim his wife, it became obvious that the supplicants in this case were attempting to manipulate the bishop by using their knowledge of the Tridentine reform of matrimony. As they interfered directly with an important part of secular life, new doctrines regarding the sacrament of marriage were particularly prone to manipulation by the laity. Although the bishops at the Council of Trent had attempted to create stricter regulations for Catholic marriage, they could not agree on certain issues and in the end produced a confusing decree. The definition of a proper marriage was stated clearly: banns must be announced three times on three successive feast days before the wedding in order to find any impediments, and the marriage must take place in public, be conducted by the couple’s or bride’s parish priest, and be witnessed by at least two people. The names of the bride and groom were then to be inscribed in the marriage register.50 Discrepancies arose when couples chose not to follow this format in its entirety. The decrees were unclear about clandestine marriage, which had been a matter of great debate at the council. Reformers at Trent wanted to stop clandestine marriages meant to 48.  This particular law was justified by Venice as a way to prevent jurisdictional overlap between bishops and the Roman Inquisition; Billanovich, “Esperienze religiose negate,” 105. For more information on limitations to ecclesiastical powers in the Veneto during this period, see Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. 49.  Unfortunately, the records of the Holy Office of Padua are no longer extant, so it is impossible to know how often Barbarigo may have used this strategy to bolster his reform efforts. 50.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 183–­84.

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conceal impediments, but could not fully ban the practice because of their insistence that the couple freely consent to the union. While some bishops were influenced by powerful nobles who wanted to maintain absolute paternal authority in the arrangement of marriages, others felt it was imperative that couples not be forced to marry to serve family politics. In the end, free will triumphed over political marriage strategies, and clandestine marriages were grudgingly accepted if the justification was an overbearing parent’s objection to the match. As long as the marriage was still performed by a priest with two witnesses and recorded in the register, it was valid, though certainly seen as less desirable by the church.51 Evidently clandestine marriages had not been sufficiently discouraged in the Veneto by the Tridentine decrees, as the Venetian Senate had issued a proclamation against them in 1662 and would issue another in 1676, which Barbarigo would complement with an episcopal edict and instructions to his parish clergy to read both aloud to their parishioners.52 When Barbarigo visited Marostica for the second time in September 1668, he was forced to confront this issue directly. He set aside the afternoon of his arrival to meet with laypeople and was visited by Augustin Righetto and his daughter Angela, who wished to petition for the annulment of her marriage to Antonio Frigho. Augustin began by explaining the circumstances of his daughter’s wedding, hoping to convince the bishop that it had been performed improperly and was therefore eligible for annulment. According to Augustin, his daughter had been abducted (rapita) from his house in the middle of the night. Antonio took her without parental consent to the house of the archpriest (who was also the vicario foraneo), where he told her to agree with him that they were already married and wanted the marriage to be legitimized and recorded in the parish register.53 Although unlikely, this story describes a potentially annullable union. While the Tridentine decrees on matrimony were ambiguous in places, neither marriage-­ by-­kidnapping nor an earlier secular marriage to be legitimized by the priest was acceptable.54 The lack of banns and parental consent, on the other hand, made the marriage less sacramentally sound but not invalid. Augustin continued his tale, explaining to the bishop that although he had not approved of the match, he eventually agreed to give a dowry “conforming to [his] status,” which might suggest that his disapproval was not severe enough 51. Ferraro, Marriage Wars, 39. 52.  The documents of 1676 are printed in Barbarigo, Lettere pastorali, editti, e decreti. 53. ACVP, Visitationes 36, fol. 177r. 54.  Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 187–­88.

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to justify a clandestine marriage.55 Finally, he arrived at the real reason Angela wanted an annulment: she had recently fled Antonio’s house and taken refuge in her sister and brother-­in-­law’s home to escape Antonio’s habit of savagely beating her and threatening to kill her. Augustin asserted that this was a pattern in Antonio’s life: he had been married once before, had also taken that wife without her parents’ consent, and had similarly mistreated her. Some in town even blamed her early death on his domestic violence. The level of spousal abuse described by Augustin and later by Angela, particularly by a man with Antonio’s history, was unequivocally cause for a separation of bed and board, but not annulment—­an abusive marriage was still a marriage, as long as the nuptials had been legitimate.56 The bishop next summoned Antonio, and not surprisingly, his account of the wedding night was a bit different. He told the bishop that the witnesses called before him would attest that “Angela his daughter is my legitimate consort conforming to the disposition of the Holy Doctors and the Holy Council of Trent,” appealing to the bishop’s commitment to Tridentine reform.57 According to him, he and Angela had wanted to marry, but could not because of her father’s opposition. So with the help of the Righetto family maidservant, Angela escaped from “paternal power” and they went immediately to the archpriest’s house, where they were married in the presence of two witnesses and the union was recorded in the parish register.58 His comment that Angela was escaping her father’s overbearing will provided justification for the manner in which the marriage was carried out; he was suggesting that Augustin had attempted to restrict his daughter’s freedom to choose her spouse. Beyond his account of the wedding night, Antonio’s testimony is a thin denial of the abuse of which he was accused. Never denying outright that he beat his wife, he repudiated Angela’s accusation that he withheld food from her and also asserted that she had not fled for the reasons she gave, but rather because she had been led astray by her brother-­in-­law.59 He finished his testimony asking the

55.  “Conforme al mio stato”; ACVP, Visitationes 36, fol. 177r. 56.  Only an invalid marriage could be annulled, but a separation of bed and board could be granted under circumstances of female infidelity or male violence or failure to provide. A separated couple was still married until one spouse’s death, and when the case was found in favor of the wife, her husband had to provide for her for life; Ferraro, Marriage Wars, 29–­30. 57.  “Angela sua figliola é mia legitima consorte conforme [al]la dispositione de[i] sacri Dottori et Sacro Concilio di Trento”; ACVP, Visitationes 36, fol. 179r. 58.  “Mia consorte . . . stava sotto la potestà paterna”; ibid. 59.  Ibid., fol. 179r.

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bishop to return his wife to him, as she had no grounds to request an annulment. Although technically true, the bishop continued the investigation. Angela was called next and gave an account of her wedding night that aligned mostly with Antonio’s, though she left open the question of her true consent to the marriage. She claimed Antonio coached her to tell the priest that Antonio was her chosen spouse, but it appears that she never attempted to defy him that night, nor did she tell the bishop that she was forced to speak those words. She then described the abuse she suffered at Antonio’s hand. He beat her frequently and left her without food, taking his own meals at the local tavern.60 He also viciously threatened her, saying that “he wanted to wash his hands in [her] blood.”61 The bishop and his assistants questioned why she had not left earlier. She told them she had been afraid her father would not take her back, a response that only seems logical if she had run away and contracted a parentally disapproved match. But if she lacked the resolve to leave Antonio earlier, she had certainly found sufficient strength to declare defiantly that she would not return to her husband again, regardless of the bishop’s legal decision.62 In the course of this testimony, another crucial fact emerged: the marriage had taken place in 1662, six years earlier. Had Angela truly been abducted, it would have been possible for Augustin and Angela to go to Padua immediately. Marostica is about fifty kilometers from Padua—­no insignificant distance in the seventeenth century, but certainly not insurmountable under dire circumstances. Perhaps they had not felt they could approach the vicar, as he had officiated at the wedding ceremony, but they also had another option: the bishop had visited Marostica in 1666, and they could have advanced their request then. Furthermore, the notarial register that contained the record of Angela’s dowry, paid in 1665, suggests that Augustin was opposed to the marriage and in no hurry to pay his unwanted son-­in-­law, but also that he had plenty of time to contest the marriage had it been illicit. Most likely, Antonio’s story of the marriage was closest to the truth: he and Angela had eloped under justifiable circumstances and the archpriest had been within regulations in performing the marriage. After interviewing ten neighbors, all of whom supported Augustin and Angela’s claims of abuse, the bishop made his decision. In the end, Augustin’s attempt to have the marriage annulled was unsuccessful. It seemed clear to Barbarigo that the marriage had been clandestine but legitimate, and therefore was still 60.  Ibid., fol. 184r. 61.  “Si voleva lavar le mani nel mio sangue”; ibid., fol. 183v. 62.  Ibid., fol. 184r.

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sacramental and inviolable. However, the evidence of abuse was strong enough for him to grant Angela a separation of bed and board, which would keep her safe from Antonio’s violence and require him to support her financially. Neither would be allowed to remarry, however, until the other died. For a young woman with no children, this was a definite improvement, but by no means ideal. Under canon law and Tridentine regulations, however, this was all Angela was entitled to as an abused wife. Augustin must have known this, so he chose to make the case more about the nature of the marriage ceremony than the abuse she suffered. Nor was this outcome favorable to Antonio, as he had to support Angela but had no control over her. His strategy had been to confine his case to demonstrating that the marriage had been legitimate because he hoped the bishop would summarily dismiss the annulment request rather than investigating the allegations of abuse. Antonio’s knowledge of the reforms, which had served him well to this point, worked against him in the end. Although the outcome in this case was not what either party had desired, Augustin’s and Antonio’s strategies demonstrate how savvy laypeople could attempt to use knowledge of church reform to undermine, rather than adhere to new rules. In this case, laity chose to ignore the church’s regulations, the vicar-­archpriest was complicit by performing a suspect marriage in the middle of the night and failing to report the separation to the bishop, and Barbarigo could only appear personally on occasion and certainly could not examine the conditions of every marriage in town.63 Because of this series of failures, Barbarigo spent four days on what should have been a simple request for a separation that could have been granted at least two years earlier during his first visit. While Barbarigo was certainly not directly responsible for this situation, his program for supervising the diocese was structurally weak and left gaps in which these sorts of issues could arise. In the end, Barbarigo’s system of vicari foranei and pastoral visitation was insufficient to extend his authority across his diocese. In these cases and many others, the vicarages were of little use; major problems required the personal presence of the bishop even when the vicar was diligent, and a negligent vicar could make matters worse.64 Many of the vicars did not perform their duties well; 63.  In the course of his visitations, Barbarigo discovered a series of problems with the vicar and the rest of the parish clergy of Marostica, so his agreement to perform a slightly suspect marriage and failure to report any of the occurrences in Marostica to the bishop might have stemmed from a combination of his own lack of devotion and a fear of having the bishop investigating his parish. In 1666 he was involved in a conflict with a chaplain who refused to respect his authority and was attempting to usurp some of his jurisdictional power, and in 1668 he and other clergy were accused of dishonest practices with women, gambling, and drunkenness by some laypeople; ACVP, Visitationes 33, fol. 461r, and Inquisitiones 85, fols. 316r–­321v. 64.  Due to the jurisdictional complexity of the Veneto, Barbarigo seems to have only interfered in lay prob-

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at the 1687 congregation of vicars in Padua, Barbarigo lamented the “malum regimen vicarium” which he perceived across the diocese.65 Even in cases where vicars were diligent, their correspondence with Barbarigo and clerical visitations demonstrate that many people in the parishes under their jurisdiction, particularly other parish clergy, had little respect for their supposed authority.66 Though Barbarigo had invested the vicars with some of his power, ultimately his flock considered episcopal authority to be embodied solely in the bishop himself, regardless of the assiduity of their vicar. Barbarigo was generally capable of correcting abuses when he confronted them personally, but once he moved on to the next parish, he left in his wake a high rate of recidivism. For a bureaucratic structure like his vicari foranei to stand in for him when he could not appear personally, the cooperation of those under its jurisdiction and a nearly unbroken line of discipline emanating from the bishop through every branch of the system were required. If their authority was respected and they performed their duties diligently, vicars could handle the smaller problems in their regions and refer more complicated issues to the bishop.67 With this information, the bishop could adjust his travel schedule or offer advice to vicars and write admonitions to the offending parties if he could not appear personally. But when the vicars either were not diligent or were not uniformly respected and resistance spread like a contagion, the system broke down. Even if the diligence and loyalty of the vicars could be ensured, the simple fact that so many lower clergy and laity only lems revolving around marriage disputes and enmity between families; Billanovich, Fra centro e periferia, 150. 65.  Ibid., 104–­5. In addition to this complaint, at least twelve of the forty-­six vicarages had their vicarial seat transferred between 1664 and 1697. The changing names of vicarages in Barbarigo’s visitation records provide evidence for ten transfers, while his correspondence discusses two more. There is no indication that Barbarigo considered this a failure of the vicarial system in general or of his methods of choosing vicars. On the contrary, he continued to believe in the reliability of this system and did not always choose to remove vicars who proved unreliable. Specific documentation is available for the transfer of the vicarage of Fossò to Paluello and of the vicarage of Abano to S. Pietro Montagnon; ACVP, Visitationes 53, fol. 29v, and Diversorum 9, fol. 284v. 66.  Not much of his correspondence with vicars survived, but most of what remains is preserved in BSP, Miscellanea Barbarigo I–­II. In particular, vicars had problems with priests who refused to attend monthly congregations. In one visitation, Barbarigo discovered that personal enmity was at the root of one parish priest’s refusal to make the journey, while all the priests in the vicarage of Quero (though Don Zanone of Alano and the parish priest of Vas were the worst offenders) consistently refused to appear on Holy Saturday or at congregations. Barbarigo had to order these obstinate clerics, who made little effort to veil their contempt, to obey their vicars; ACVP, Inquisitiones 87, n.p., and Visitationes 54, fols. 175r–­177v. 67.  In the BSP, Miscellanea Barbarigo I–­II, there are four letters from Barbarigo to vicars instructing them to address specific small problems in their territories, ranging from priests wearing short vestments to priests refusing to visit the sick. During the next visitations (which were sometimes years later), Barbarigo found no evidence of the former problem in one of the vicarages, while the problems in the other three had not been eradicated, but were not particularly widespread or flagrant. The visitations in question are of the vicarages of Torre, Calvene, Paluello, and Abano, found in ACVP, Visitationes 46, 56, 63, and 65.

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responded to episcopal authority when the bishop was physically present made it nearly impossible for post-­Tridentine bishops to maintain control over large dioceses, significantly hindering the rate of change within the Catholic Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Works Cited Archives

BSP = Biblioteca del Seminario di Padova Bertazzi, Giovanni. Stato della diocesi, 1698, ms. 832 Miscellanea Barbarigo I–­II, ms. 733b–­d ACVP = Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Padova Diversorum, busta 9 Inquisitiones, buste 84–­88 Processo Barbarigo, busta 9 Visitationes, buste 30–­66

Printed Primary Sources

Barbarigo, Gregorio. Lettere pastorali, editti, e decreti publicati in diversi tempi dall’Eminentissimo e Reverendissimo Sig. Gregorio Barbarigo Vescovo di Padova. Padua: Seminario di Padova, 1690. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Translated by Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O.P. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1941. Pampaloni, Pio. Gregorio Barbarigo alla corte di Roma (1676–­1680). Padua: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 2009.

Secondary Sources

Billanovich, Liliana. “Le ‘relationes ad limina’ di Gregorio Barbarigo.” In Studi di storia religiosa padovana dal medioevo ai nostri giorni, edited by F. G. B. Trolese, 205–­40. Padua: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 1997. ———. “Esperienze religiose negate nel tardo seicento: Il parroco e le devote di Alano fra vescovo e communità rurale.” In Studi in onore di Angelo Gambasin, edited by Liliana Billanovich, 43–­142. Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1992. ———. Fra centro e periferia. Padua: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 1993. Bouwsma, William. Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Cavazza, Silvano. “Double Death: Resurrection and Baptism in a Seventeenth-­Century Rite.” In History From Crime, edited by Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, 1–­31. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Ferraro, Joanne. Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Challenges to Episcopal Authority in Seventeenth-­Century Padua  193 Gervaso, Luigi. “L’istituzione dei vicariati foranei nelle diocesi di Concordia e Aquileia: Un aspetto della modernizzazione dei costumi della chiesa nel Friuli storico tra cinque e seicento.” Studi Veneziani 55 (2008): 283–­347. Greco, Gaetano. “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio: il clero secolare nella società italiana del cinquecento al settecento.” In Clero e società nell’Italia moderna, edited by Mario Rosa, 45–­114. Rome: Editori Laterza, 1992. Ippolito, Antonio Menniti. Politica e carriere ecclesiastiche nel secolo XVII. Naples: Società Editrice il Mulino, 1993. Mantese, Giovanni. “L’origine dei vicariati foranei e gli inizi della riforma tridentina a Vicenza.” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 15 (1961): 482–­91. Maselli, Domenico. “L’organizzazione della diocesi e il clero secolare.” In San Carlo e il suo tempo, edited by Accademia di San Carlo, 413–­26. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1986. Montanari, Daniele. Gregorio Barbarigo a Bergamo (1657–­1664). Milan: Glossa, 1997. Prodi, Paolo. “Lineamenti dell’organizzazione diocesana in Bologna durante L’episcopato del Card. G. Paleotti (1566–­1597).” In Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel cinquecento, edited by Hubert Jedin, 323–­94. Padua: Antenore, 1960. ———. “Tra centro e periferia: Le istituzioni diocesane post-­tridentine.” In Cultura, religione e politica nell’età di Angelo Maria Querini, edited by Gino Benzoni and Maurizio Pegrari, 209–­23. Bologna: Morcelliana, 1982. Schutte, Anne Jacobson. “Gregorio Barbarigo e le donne: ‘Buone cristiane’ e ‘false sante.’” In Gregorio Barbarigo: Patrizio veneto, vescovo e cardinale nella tarda controriforma, edited by Liliana Billanovich, 845–­66. Padua: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 1996. Serena, Sebastiano. S. Gregorio Barbarigo e la vita spirituale e culturale nel suo seminario di Padova. Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1963. Stella, Aldo. “L’età postridentina.” In Diocesi di Padova, edited by Pierantonio Gios, 215–­ 44. Padua: Gregoriana libreria editrice, 1996. Turchini, Angelo. Clero e fedeli a Rimini in età post-­tridentina. Rome: Herder Editrice e Libreria, 1978.

Trials That Should Have Been The Question of Judicial Jurisdiction over French Bishops in the Seventeenth Century and the Self-­Narration of the Roman Inquisition Jean-Pascal Gay As recent events have recalled, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, heir to the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, remains a tribunal, and particularly a tribunal for bishops.1 Yet, since the nineteenth century, observers have regarded the Congregation primarily as a doctrinal censor and a participant in the production of the Catholic magisterium. The story of this transformation is long and conflicted, involving a complex set of relations among episcopal, pontifical, inquisitorial, and political powers. In this history, both France and the seventeenth century play significant roles. Despite the breadth of its theoretical authority, codified in its bull of foundation, the Roman and Universal Inquisition could not exercise jurisdiction over France. Because the Inquisition had been created after the Concordat of Bologna (1516), the French Parlements recognized no legal authority whatsoever emanating from it. By constantly challenging the Inquisition decrees, the Parlements manufested that they regarded themselves as the defenders of the so-­called Gallican liberties.2 Therefore, the Inquisition had to favor an essentially doctrinal, rather than judicial, approach to French matters. This fostered its role within the Roman Curia as the doctrinal specialist, at a time

1.  For an introduction to the early modern Roman Inquisition, see Black, Italian Inquisition, 1–­55. 2.  Tallon “Gallicanesimo.” On the religious and political culture of the parlementaires, see Parsons, Church in the Republic.

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when the intensification of theological controversies among French Catholics drew the Inquisition’s attention.3 As Elena Bonora has convincingly shown,4 the dispute over whether the council, the pope, and the Inquisition had the authority to try bishops played a major part in defining the boundaries and nature of their respective powers. In the seventeenth century, particularly in relation to France, the question remained significant, as those powers had not yet stabilized because of the institutional, political, and religious specificities of French Catholicism. On the question of bringing French bishops to trial, the state of documentation preserved in the Inquisitorial collection at the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (ACDF) is striking. Aside from decrees issued by the Inquisition, almost all documents regarding sixteenth-­century France comes from episcopal trials, and particularly from the trial of Calvinist bishops in 1563. Studied extensively by Elena Bonora, this trial was led by Pope Pius IV Medici (r. 1559–­65) and the Inquisition around the time the Council of Trent was discussing the question of pontifical reservation of episcopal cases.5 The bull Licet ab initio (21 July 1542), by which Pope Paul III Farnese (r. 1534–­49) had created the Roman Inquisition, granted the Inquisitors very wide authority to proceed against any heretic. Yet following the trials against bishops and cardinals under Pope Paul IV Carafa (r. 1555–­59), both Pius IV and the council showed some resolve to protect the episcopate from the grasp of the still-­young Inquisition.6 In 1563, the council finally decided that the pope should handle cases of episcopal heresy, but that if, for some reason, cases were to be treated outside the Roman Curia, they should proceed by papal commission.7 Such commissions should not go beyond instruction of the cause, whose sentence should be handled directly by the pope. Lesser offences could be handled by provincial councils. Almost at the same time, the Council of Trent granted powers to the episcopate to dispense and absolve in foro conscientiae in cases reserved to the Holy See,8 a concession later suppressed by the bull In 3.  There is no study on the relationship between seventeenth-­century France and the early modern Inquisition. This essay is part of ongoing research initiated by the École Française de Rome and the Archivio della Congregazione per la dottrina delle Fede that will result in the publication of a guide and inventory of inquisitorial documents regarding Grand Siècle France, and a study of the relationship between the Congregation and France. For an introduction, see Alain Tallon’s article “Francia, età moderna” in the Dizionionario storico dell’Inquisizione. 4. Bonora, Giudicare i Vescovi. 5.  Ibid., 165–­95. 6.  Ibid., 150–­64. 7.  Session 24, chapter 5. 8.  Session 24, chapter 6.

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Cœna Domini (1568), which restored many prerogatives the Inquisition had lost in the previous years. Indeed the 1563 trial was essential to the institutional memory of the Inquisition. It was headed at the time by the Inquisitor maior Antonio Ghislieri, who, as Pope Pius V (r. 1566–­72), restored the very power the Inquisition had lost under his predecessor. In contrast with earlier material, the seventeenth-­century documents regarding France are much more abundant and varied, particularly after 1650 when the rise of Jansenism in France became a major focus of the Roman Inquisition.9 Yet there are also significant documents that center on discussions within the Inquisition as to how suspect French bishops could and ought to be tried. Such discussions never actually came to much, and no French bishop was tried for Jansenism in the seventeenth century. The only actual trial of French bishops by papal commission occurred in 1632 under unusual circumstances. Yet, during the last two-­thirds of the century, the Roman Inquisition never ceased to discuss the possibility and the possible forms of such trials. Indeed, these discussions occurred within the latent but always more prevalent and defining conflict between Roman and French styles of Catholicism as both grew more coherent and increasingly opposed. Yet the issue of episcopal trials interfered with other institutional tensions, namely periodic tensions between the episcopate and the monarchy in France, and within the Roman Curia between the Inquisition and other agencies and institutions. This essay will explore the significance of such discussions for the Catholic understanding of episcopal power and for the relationship of the French episcopate to both the pope and the Roman Curia. Following a brief discussion of the trials that actually took place in the seventeenth century, it will examine how the question of judicial trials of French bishops was handled at the time Innocent X Pamphili (r. 1644–­55) published his constitution against Jansenism in 1653 and around the time Alexander VII Chigi (r. 1655–­67) issued a bull imposing a formulary of faith. An important focus will be the part played by the Inquisition in the confrontation with French episcopalism. As this essay shows, the Inquisition’s self-­narration regarding its role in these trials played a significant part in the reactive evolution of the Roman understanding of episcopacy in the second third of the seventeenth century.

9.  For reference to the Jansenist context, see Doyle, Jansenism.

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Trials That Were and Trials That Might Have Been After the 1563 trial, and particularly in the seventeenth century, trials of French bishops were scarce, and in France both the Assemblies of the Clergy and the monarchy tried to avoid them. Trials occurred only when particular bishops, or a group of bishops, entered into a conflict with the monarchy. As far as the position of the Roman Curia, the fact that France did not accept the decrees of the Council of Trent10 and the 1516 concordat’s ambiguity on the question of jurisdiction created both some wiggle room and some potential for conflict between the king, the episcopate, and Rome. The bishop’s experience and the perception of episcopal jurisdiction could change dramatically according to the relative strength of those institutions at any given time. The few trials that took place in the seventeenth century share some resemblance in their sociopolitical conditions with the 1563 trial of Calvinist bishops. Periodically, the involvement of one or several bishops in the clientèle of aristocrats who were in conflict with the king could result in a trial taking place. In those few cases, papal power appears as an ally of royal power confronted with one aspect of the aristocracy’s autonomous local power. A prime example of this is the trial initiated, but never completed, against the archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal François d’Escoubleau de Sourdis (1599–­1628), in 1615.11 A few weeks before Sourdis celebrated the royal wedding between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, he participated in and certainly sponsored an attack on the prison in his episcopal town in order to free a former rebel12 who was tied to his own clientèle. The Parlement of Bordeaux started to act against him, apparently without disapproval from the regent, Marie de Medici. Perhaps to reassert her own authority, she solicited the pope, in the name of her son Louis XIII, for an ecclesiastical trial on the grounds that since the escape had resulted in the murder of one of the jailers, the cardinal also merited severe ecclesiastical penalties. The royal request coincided with the Parlement’s own attack on Sourdis.13 10.  See Weber, “L’accetazione in Francia del concilio di Trento.” 11.  ACDF, St. St. E 6b, 1–­46. 12.  The Parlement had sentenced the rebel to death, but the king had granted grace on Sourdis’ request and later withdrawn it at the request of the Parlement; letter of Sourdis to the pope, 4 December 1615, ACDF St. St. E 6b, 4. 13.  Letter from Louis XIII to the pope, 4 December 1615, ACDF St. St. E 6b, 1. The first Arrêt of the Parlement initiating the proceedings is dated 18 November 1615. Yet, the terms of the letter was particularly harsh detailing “an offense committed against us,” “in the face of the Parlement [ . . . ] and of our person,” and assured the pope that once he had heard the circumstances from the ambassador he would regard the cardinal’s actions as “utterly odious and disagreeable.” The delay is probably the result of the need to have Sourdis perform the royal wedding on 21 November 1615.

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This episode shows the possibility of rapid escalation. The Roman Curia acted to simultaneously defend both ecclesiastical immunity and the papal right to act as the natural judge of the episcopate. Rome pressured the French court to overturn the Parlement’s acts passed against Sourdis condemning him for lèse-­ majesté while also trying to preserve the Roman Curia’s authority over a possible ecclesiastical trial. The pope even threatened to not create any more French cardinals if the judgment of the Parlement stood.14 Cardinal Ubaldini, the nuncio in France, preempted any commission by declaring Sourdis suspended a divinis (i.e., he could no longer celebrate mass or other sacraments). He could have avoided doing so by using the detailed casuistical and canonical consultations Sourdis had sent to Rome to argue that neither the suspension nor the trial was necessary.15 Indeed Rome was keen on not missing the opportunity to try the bishop and thereby to argue their right to jurisdiction in the case. In the end, the trial did not happen; Sourdis was finally reconciled with the king, who petitioned the pope for his absolution, which was readily granted.16 The question of the judicial trial of bishops resurfaced when the duke de Montmorency’s rebellion (1632) was crushed, an important episode in advancing the absolutist agenda of Richelieu and Louis XIII. Here the exceptional quality of bringing French bishops to trial echoes the extraordinary quality of the death sentence carried out against Henry II de Montmorency.17 In 1632, in the aftermath of the rebellion, the king and the cardinal asked Rome for commissions to try the rebellious bishops of Lodève, Albi, Uzès, and Saint-­Pons, all of whom were involved in the rebellion because of their ties to the Montmorency family.18 The pope granted commissions to the archbishop of Arles and to the bishops of Boulogne, Saint-­Flour, and Aire. Those commissions were remarkably broad, granting these bishops the right to try “any abbot, bishop, or archbishop” and issue “definitive sentence.” However, the king was not satisfied with the commissions and provided the bishops with patents for execution of the commissions. The bishop of Albi, Alphonse Delbene (1608–­34), was finally deposed in 1634, while Jean Plantavit, bishop of Lodève (1625–­48), who was less involved in the rebellion, remained in place. 14.  Cipher from Cardinal Ubaldini, 12 January 1616, ACDF, St. St. E 6b, 24. 15.  Consultations in ACDF, St. St. E 6b, 27–­28, 29, 35, 36–­37, 38–­39. 16.  Letter from Ubaldini to Rome, 26 March 1616, ACDF, St. St. E 6b, 41. 17.  On this execution, see Fernandez-­Lacôté, Les procès du Cardinal de Richelieu, 123–­39. 18.  On those commissions, see Bergin, Making of the French Episcopate, 463–­65. Bergin points to the exceptionality of the 1632 depositions: “Neither the participation of bishops in the wars of religion, nor the rebellion and flight of the Cardinal de Retz after the Fronde gave rise to the kind of response which was to follow.”

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The same commissions were used later against René de Rieux de Sourdéac, bishop of Saint-­Pol-­de-­Léon (1619–­35, 1648–­51). Rieux was a member of Marie de Medici’s clientèle, as was the rest of his family.19 He had been suspected of being instrumental in the Queen Mother’s flight in 1631 and was deposed in 1635. He tried to appeal to the pope, but the French ambassador successfully pleaded that the text of the commission enacted by the pope’s authority did not allow for appeal.20 The pope had to choose between asserting his royal power to protect the bishop and asserting the validity of his own commission; he chose the latter. In this case, the French royal power’s interest in stifling any political will on the part of the bishops coincided with the papal power’s interest in affirming the pope’s authority over France, possibly because at that time, papal jurisdiction over France was threatened by a revolution in the theological understanding of politics that had occurred in France between 1615 and 1625.21 As far as the documents allow historians to draw a conclusion on this particular question, the Inquisition did not take part in the discussion of those commissions or in their elaboration and wording. If the Holy Office ever examined the commissions, no evidence remains of such examination. Indeed, this is surprising; even if the bishops’ offenses did not fall immediately under the Inquisition’s jurisdiction—­as they were not crimes of heresy—­one would have expected the Inquisition to at least provide guidance. Trials from 1632 to 1635 are particularly important in the history of the relations between the French bishops and Rome, as well as in the history of French episcopalism. The brutal and unexpected deposition of René de Rieux occasioned a strong reaction at the General Assembly of the French Clergy of 1645, which was the first held after the deaths of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. The regency of Queen Anne of Austria (1643–­51) was, as regencies always were, uncertain politically. Building upon the first developments of Gallican erudition, the assembly proclaimed the right of the French bishops, according to the decrees of the Second Council of Carthage (419), to be judged in the first instance by their provincial peers assembled in synod. Appeal to the Holy See, they claimed, was a privilege of the accused, granted to protect him from potentially ill-­minded judges.22

19. Ibid. 20. Blet, Le Clergé de France et la Monarchie, 2:21–­22. 21.  De Franceschi, La crise théologico-­politique du premier âge baroque, 592–­695. 22. Blet, Le Clergé de France, 2:24–­25.

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In 1645 and 1646, Rome managed to keep the upper hand by relaxing de Rieux’s sentence while defending its jurisdictional authority. The pope granted new commissions to the archbishop of Sens and the bishops of Laon, Angoulême, Maillezais, and Le Mans to examine de Rieux’s cause. In September 1646 de Rieux was reinstated as bishop of Saint-­Pol-­de-­Léon very easily.23 This was done without any sort of acknowledgement of Gallican claims, as none of the newly commissioned bishops came from the Breton episcopal bench, in direct and certainly very voluntary contradiction to the demands of the French Assembly of the Clergy, who had asked that bishops be tried by their provincial peers. The papal commissions in practice rejected the idea that bishops had any natural judge other than the pope, and their successes were a victory for both Rome and the episcopate, implicitly asserting their freedom from royal power through their reinstatement of de Rieux. Nonetheless, the French bishops continued their attack on the 1632 collusion between the Holy See and the French throne. At the assembly of 1650, when conflict between king and aristocracy raged, the French episcopate tried to reassert its prerogatives and its independence from both Rome and the court. Firstly, the internuncio in Turin attempted to summon for trial the bishop of Grasse, who had resorted to French civil tribunals, and then Delbene contested his 1632 deposition by bishops commissioned by the pope.24 During the assembly, the bishop of Viviers lashed out against “the readiness by which the pope, by means of a brief, had established four bishops as sovereign judges to depose one of their own.” He insisted that “this well deserved that one should think of finding some means of defense if it happened again.”25 The assembly wrote to the pope on this matter, sending an encyclical letter to all bishops in France and even issuing a formal protest against the brief of commission. The protest was particularly harsh, arguing that the 1632 commissions, even though they had been accepted, were contrary to canonical due process and therefore could not serve to establish precedent. The protest stated that the bishops could not have judges other than their provincial peers unless the accused, on his own initiative, appealed to the pope.26 Their argument was perfectly in line with the argument advanced in 1645, presenting the same historicist trend and 23.  Ibid., 2:32–­34. 24.  Ibid., 2:50–­56. 25.  “[ . . . ] que la facilité que le Pape avait eue d’établir par bref quatre évêques juges souverains pour déposer un évêque, méritait bien qu’on pensât aussi à trouver les moyens de s’en défendre une autre fois”; ibid., 2:58. 26.  Ibid., 2:59–­61.

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playing on the same ambiguities in the wording of the papal reservation of major causes in the Concordat. All this amounted to the production of a fictitious right that contradicted contemporary practice and negated any validity in the Council of Trent’s dispositions. This was a most difficult issue, as many people considered that the decrees of the council, although not legal in France, could still be regarded as binding in foro conscientiae, particularly for members of the clergy. This protest was the occasion of some sort of diplomatic vaudeville. As soon as the papal nuncio learned that the protest was to be made, and with no time to consult Rome on the matter, he announced that he would never receive it.27 He threatened that if ever the French clergy wanted to bypass his opposition by posting the protest on the doors of his residence, he would publish a placard establishing his refusal to receive a protest he regarded as null and void. Even so, envoys of the assembly came the morning after and handed the protest to a servant who, later realizing what he had accepted, ran after them to return the document. The procès-­verbal of the assembly nonetheless recorded delivery of the protest. Once the events were known in Rome, the papal court discussed whether to react, for example by censuring the procès-­verbal through the Inquisition or the Index; the Inquisition, at that particular time, recommended avoiding escalation and acting as if nothing had happened.

The Return of the Heretic Bishops: Bringing the Jansenists to Trial With the rise of Jansenism, the issue of episcopal trials changed as heresy returned as a cause for trying some French bishops, but institutional relations between France and Rome in the matter of episcopal trials had been set by the commissions and trials of the early seventeenth century. The first bishop that Rome considered bringing to trial as a Jansenist was Louis-­Henri de Pardailhan de Gondrin, the sturdy archbishop of Sens (1645–­74) who held one of the primatial sees in early modern France. In 1653, following Innocent X’s bull Cum Occasione censuring the five propositions that summed up Jansenism, Gondrin published a lettre pastorale for the promulgation of the censure that contested the bull’s doctrinal meaning. The nuncio perceived the publication as a trick to derail the censure and believed that Gondrin hoped Rome would condemn his lettre pastorale so that Parlement could act against the condemnation by an appel

27. Ibid.

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comme d’abus.28 Therefore, the nuncio proposed a commission to a small group of French bishops favorable to Rome who could promote the censure and try those who resisted its promulgation. The Inquisition reacted swiftly, and by early December the qualificators (theologians who deterimine for the Inquisitors the degree to which some assertion is estranged from Catholic doctrine) had already decided that Gondrin’s letter was technically “suspect of heresy” and encouraged the cardinal-­inquisitors and the pope to follow the nuncio’s recommendations, i.e., to commission French bishops to try Godrin.29 As Rome learned of similar promulgations of the bull in Beauvais and Comminges, discussion turned rapidly to the possibility of a collective trial. Indeed, the memory of the endeavors of the General Assembly of the French Clergy must have been very fresh, and the support some bishops showed to the Jansenists may have proved a perfect opportunity to play on divisions in the French episcopate that had previously collectively asked Innocent X to provide them with a censure of Jansenius’s Augustinus. However, this attempt at dividing the French episcopate proved somewhat ineffective. Gondrin’s attempt to link his defense of Jansenists with the Gallican interpretation of episcopacy was a far more efficient tactical move, and in 1656 the Assembly of the Clergy renewed its proclamation of the rights of French bishops to be tried in the first instance by their provincial peers.30 The issue lingered for almost ten years, and Alexander VII’s bull Regiminis Apostolici (February 1665) sparked a recreation of the events of 1653/54. The bull imposed a formulary of faith on the entire French clergy and instructed the bishops to supervise the clergy’s subscription to the formulary. The bishops of Alet, Beauvais, Angers, and Pamiers, and for a short time that of Noyon, published mandements for clergy to sign the formulary, endorsing what had become the Jansenists’ main defense against the censure, namely the celebrated distinction of right and fact (le fait et le droit). These bishops asked only that regarding fact (whether the heretical doctrine could be found in Jansenius’s Augustinus), the clergy should show a submission of discipline and respect.31 As the bull had previously been registered in the Parlement by royal command, Louis XIV, whose political position was much more favorable than it had been in 1656, decided to act against the bishops. He asked Rome to appoint commissioners to proceed 28.  ACDF, St. St. F 1d, 941. 29.  Decree of 9 December 1653, ACDF, St. St. F 1d, 955. 30.  Relation des délibérations du Clergé de France sur la Constitution de Notre Saint Père le Pape, 4–­5. 31. See Mandement de Monseigneur l’Evesque et Comte d’Alet, touchant la signature du Formulaire du 1er juin 1665, 1665.

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against the mandements and their authors. He did so with some attention to Gallican claims, asking Rome for a commission of twelve bishops. The Inquisition however, after examining the royal demands, decided to proceed against the bishops directly by establishing their contumacy through a judicial monitory.32 The accused bishops reacted by returning to Gondrin’s tactic of tying their cause to the lot of the episcopate and asked that the 1650 Assembly of the Clergy’s dispositions be implemented.33 With the guidance of the Holy Office, the nuncio tried to obtain the most direct form of trial possible by arguing at the French court that disobedience to pope and king were essentially the same.34 He tried to confront royal power with its own contradiction and recalled the time when Louis tried to obtain from Rome a condemnation of Cardinal de Retz, noting the choices Richelieu made as to how bishops should be tried.35 In November 1665, the Inquisition decided to open the possibility of judicial proceedings against the French bishops by censuring the episcopal mandements and ordering the archbishop of Paris to declare the bishops under interdict and suspension if they did not comply. This would have provided a canonical basis for a full-­fledged trial on the grounds of heresy. Yet the monarchy remained hesitant and stuck with its contradictory claims, trying to obtain a trial that could condemn the Jansenists and respect Gallican claims while not endorsing episcopal demands, and that would have placed the king, as the solicitor of the commissions, in the position of “exterior bishop.”36 Through 1666, the negotiations made little progress because Rome wanted only to commission French bishops to enforce the decision of a trial led from Rome, while the king continued to press for the bishops to be made true judges with authority 32.  “Contumacy” is an obstinate disobedience of the lawful orders of a court, in this case, disobedience to the decree of censure against Jansenius that the mandements were trying to byass. An “ecclesiastical monitory” is a written call to all possible witnesses of a misdemeanor or crime to come forward under penalty of ecclesiastical censure. From the summary of the cause up to June 1666 that can be found in ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 58. 33.  They did so by both writing to the entire clergy and publishing texts proclaiming their right to be tried according to the Canons of the Council of Carthage. See Lettre circulaire écrite par Messeigneurs les Évesques d’Alet, de Pamiez, de Beauvais, et d’Angers à Messeigneurs les archevesques et évesques de France, sur le sujet du Bref obtenu contre leurs mandemens, 1668 and in a series of ten the Cinquième Mémoire sur le droit qu’ont les Evesques de n’estre jugez que par douze Evesques de leurs province. On the Lettre circulaire, its impact and the political and ecclesiastical reaction thereto, see Dieudonné, La Paix Clémentine, 144–­49. 34.  Letter from the nuncio to Rome, 15 January 1666, ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 64. 35.  Letter from the nuncio to Rome, 8 October 1666, ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 96. 36.  The claim that the king is “évêque du dehors” is part of the great legal heritage from the empire that made the French monarchs “emperors in their own kingdom.” On this, see de Pange, Le roi très chrétien. For some indications on Louis XIV’s endorsement of this title, see Maral, La Chapelle royale de Versailles, 286–­88.

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to rule either way on the issue.37 In early 1667, Rome censured the mandements by means of the Congregation of the Index (a lesser form of condemnation than censure by the Inquisition),38 a decision taken within the Inquisition. At this stage, the Holy Office showed a considerable degree of involvement in the diplomatic negotiations. The assessor of the Holy Office even met with the French ambassador in Rome, a very rare event, to discuss the matter.39 It was finally settled when Cardinal Albizzi, one of the cardinals most favorable to France in the Roman Curia at the time,40 met with the French ambassador as a delegate of the Inquisition.41 First Albizzi argued that, because the Holy See had already evoked the cause, and, more importantly, because it regarded faith, the pope could not commission bishops as judges. The ambassador objected by reducing the issue to one of discipline (bishops refusing to subscribe to the required formulary). The two men finally agreed on a commission that would establish a group of French bishops as judges on the contumacy of the French bishops, which thus avoided appointing them as judges in charge of determining whether the actions of the authors of the mandements were heretical. Yet this solution was never carried out, as the bishops considered for the commission showed obvious signs of reluctance and even resisted separating themselves from the episcopate’s collective stance. This reluctance continued as other negotiations with the Jansenists brought the accommodation that resulted in the so-­called Peace of the Church at the beginning of Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi’s pontificate (r. 1667–­69).42 For more than ten years, Rome had discussed trying some French bishops, but effectively it never did. French episcopal resistance to Roman claims of judicial jurisdiction had indeed been widespread, even among bishops otherwise favorable to Rome. In 1654, for example, after the nuncio had recommended to Rome which bishops to commission to try Gondrin, the first papal briefs were rendered useless when two of those bishops—­those of Le Puy and Macon—­departed from court,43 a move that was certainly not independent from their being recommended for 37.  Throughout 1666, the French negotiators tried to obtain a commission of twelve bishops taken from the whole episcopal bench; see ACDF, St. St. F 2d. 38.  Index Librorum prohibitorum, 690. 39.  See the instructions given to him and his account of the interview in ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 271, 285. 40.  On Albizzi’s allegiance to France, see Loskoutoff, “Hercule et Atlas à Rome puis à Modène” 41.  Albizzi’s delegation was decided on 26 March 1667, see ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 300, and his account of his interview, ibid., 319. 42. Dieudonné, La Paix Clémentine. 43.  Cipher from the nuncio to Rome, 15 February 1654, ACDF, St. St. F 1d, 1058.

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commissions. Passive opposition to the commissions was clear during the ten years of discussions before the Clementine peace. In September 1658, the nuncio wrote to Rome lamenting that he could not find ways to have the commissioned bishops obey and proceed to trial. He claimed that the entire episcopal body was perfectly united in its will “not to see introduced the use of being tried by commission from Rome.”44 Even French advisers to the Inquisition, such as François Hallier, asked not to take an extreme stance and to consider how the Jansenists could raise canonical difficulties and use them to their advantage.45 He argued that there was no detriment to the authority of the Holy See if the commissions against Gondrin and the other Jansenist bishops were given to bishops from neighboring provinces, as long as a few suspect bishops (whose names he provided) were avoided. Indeed, Hallier promoted a sort of compromise with the Gallican claims of the Assembly of 1650. The solution he favored was the commission of twelve judges (the number required by the Council of Carthage), presided over by the archbishop of Lyons as primate of the Gauls. He insisted that to allow the trials to go forward, the text of the commissions ought to avoid any reference to possible derogations to canon law (which would have therefore contested French claims as to how bishops ought to be tried), or to the Concordat of 1516, or to French customs. Indeed, the introduction of formal proceedings against the Jansenist bishops caused some radicalization of French episcopalist discourse and development of its arguments, which prompted the 1663 declaration of the Sorbonne and encouraged the French Assembly of the Clergy to commission Jean Gerbais to write a complete canonical treatise about “major [legal] causes.”46 His Dissertatio de causis majoribus was not published until 1679, during another moment of tension between Rome and the Gallican church, but it proves that the French episcopate had elaborated strong canonical and historical arguments to defend its rights. These arguments also aimed at providing the Parlements with the means of defending bishops against Roman encroachments on Gallican liberties. In the triangle that emerged between the French episcopate, the papacy, and the French Crown, the most embarrassed party, surprisingly, seems to have been the latter. Indeed, Louis XIV was confronted with a major contradiction, in which French episcopal ideology and royal absolutist ideology could very well conflict. All the more so because Rome, mirroring the evolution of the French 44.  Letter from the nuncio to Rome, 20 September 1658, ACDF. St. St. F 1f, 311. 45.  Letter From Hallier to Cardinal Chigi, 6 February 1654, ACDF, St. St. F 1d, 1065. 46.  Jean Gerbais, Dissertatio de causis majoribus, ad lectorem.

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episcopate’s position and using precedents from the first half of the century, presented its own arguments on how the trials should proceed. A key question in this debate concerned the number of commissioned bishops. While Louis XIV relentlessly asked for twelve commissioned judges, and thereby for some sort of acknowledgement of Gallican claims, Rome consistently refused. In their negotiations, both parties argued on primarily practical grounds, but the question was anything but practical, and at one point in his negotiations with the king’s ministers, the nuncio said that accepting this number would mean the pope accepted being dictated to by a “particular assembly of a few bishops,” such as the French Assembly of the Clergy.47 When Rome finally issued commissions in 1667, their text avoided not only the dreaded number of twelve bishops, but also avoided choosing too many bishops from neighboring provinces. Such refusal to compromise explains why the trials were never carried out, and raises the question of why the Holy See would prefer a strong but utterly ineffective claim of their authority to a negotiated but actual exercise of that authority.

The Roman Inquisition and the Demise of Compromise The Roman Inquisition was the key decision-­making body on the issue of judicial trials of French bishops. Most decisions were discussed in the particular congregations on Jansenism, which were satellites, if not subcommittees, of the Inquisition. Most of the time the pope validated those decisions, and some of his objections could be bypassed by the cardinals-­inquisitor in the course of the decision-­making process. For instance, during the affair of the episcopal mandements, the pope at one point insisted that the Holy Office needed to give complete and detailed answers to the objections presented by the French ambassador, but the congregation, while they had produced such responses, argued successfully that the pope should not risk having them published, exposing them to public debate and questioning.48 The liberty of Roman diplomacy appears limited by the institutional structure of the Roman government. In the Roman Curia, personal and family ties may have led to a greater amount of interpenetration between different sections of government than was common in other early modern courts.49 Despite this, 47.  ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 96. 48.  The ambassador had presented his own formal argument around 21 November 1666. The pope commanded he be answered on 22 December 1666 (ACDF, St. St. F 2, 115, 125). The Holy Office decided not to include a detailed argument in its answer on 3 January 1666 (ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 210). 49.  As to the importance of factional and friendly ties in the Roman Curia, see Viscelglia, “Fazioni e lotta

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the papal secretary of state appears to have had little influence when it came to this particular matter of how to try French bishops. Indeed, the Inquisition seems to have gone as far as providing direct arguments for the nuncio to use in diplomatic negotiations.50 When, in November 1666, the French ambassador in Rome passed a memorandum to the pope asking again for the commission of twelve bishops, which used part of the argument repeated by the Gallican clergy since 1650, it was the Holy Office that elaborated the Roman answer,51 maintaining that the question was primarily doctrinal. Moreover, the timing imposed on the negotiations remained that of doctrinal elaboration, which went through the slow inquisitorial process of qualifications and consultations. On several occasions the Inquisition advanced stronger alternatives to the propositions of the nuncios. In 1658 for instance, the Inquisition asked the nuncio in France to explicitly threaten the king with a trial held in Rome, a threat the nuncio was understandably uneasy about presenting to Louis XIV.52 One of the reasons for the Inquisition prevailing over the diplomats was that, under pontifical law, the Inquisition remained the body that constructed judicial cause. If the commissions against Gondrin were granted by motu proprio—­the only way for them to have any chance at being legally received in France where decrees of the Congregation of the Inquisition were not accepted—­there would still be a properly Roman and inquisitorial side to the process. Not only did the motu proprio explicitly quote the Inquisition’s qualifications53 of the lettre pastorale of the archbishop of Sens as grounds for judicial action against a suspect of heresy, but in Rome the Inquisition tried to formally establish Gondrin’s guilt. Mostly through Jesuits and locals present in Rome, the Inquisition gathered testimonies of Gondrin’s firsthand responsibility for publication of the lettre pastorale, and even had his autograph signature on a document sent from Sens examined by a witness who could testify to its authenticity.54 Yet, even with a strong sense of what it considered its traditional role with regard to heretic bishops, the Holy Office was not necessarily bound to a radical politica nel Sacro Collegio nella prima metà del Seicento.” 50.  There is a direct correspondence between the nuncio and the Congregation, explaining the will and decisions of the Inquisition and how they are to be presented to the king’s minister. See for example ACDF, St. St. F 2c, 860. 51.  See a preparatory stage of the answer in ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 127. 52.  See the letter to the nuncio composed after the Congregation of 15 November 1658, ACDF, St. St. F 1f, 330. 53.  A “qualification” is the degree to which a document is theologically erroneous. 54.  See the text of the commissions in a series of documents sent to the nuncio, ACDF, St. St. F 1d, 979.

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interpretation of how French bishops ought to be tried. Nonetheless, the Inquisition appears as the key source of the hard line prevalent in Rome’s diplomatic negotiations with France. It is from within the Inquisition that an essentially doctrinal approach to this issue led to Rome’s endorsement of such a staunch approach to this primarily judicial problem. Many qualificators and consultors (theological advisors to the Inquisitors) did not satisfy themselves with a canonical treatment of the matter, which was all the more problematic because France did not accept the decrees of the Council of Trent, but they also justified their decisions through a theological interpretation of what the episcopacy and the episcopate were. The most common argument was that a bishop’s jurisdiction over his diocese was not derived directly from the Holy Spirit, but from the appointment by the Holy See.55 Thereby, for example, Rubeis stated in a 1656 votum, that the episcopate was subjected to the pope “as the members were to the head,” and that the entire church was ruled by papal power by the right of a monarchical regime.56 As the Inquisition’s discussions continued, such arguments became more radical. In 1666 Cardinal Pallavicini, who was in charge of producing an argument for the nuncio that would fend off royal demands, also wrote a dissertation “for [his] own satisfaction” and “for the truth.”57 That text, which apparently retained its original private character and differed a great deal from more political arguments, is a strong rebuttal of the French requests regarding the right to try bishops, which Pallavicini deemed opposed to both ancient and modern ecclesiastical customs everywhere, not even required by the “so-­called privileges” of the French church, and offensive to both royal and papal authority. Pallavicini argued that the French clergy was bound in conscience by the decrees of Trent and that any derogation of the universal laws regarding the episcopate would be detrimental to the Catholic Church at large. Clearly, the essentially doctrinal approach of a more and more doctrine-­focused congregation contributed to the effective radicalization of the Roman position on the matter of the French bishops. At several key moments, it was the Inquisition’s intervention that stalled the negotiations, either because it advocated some sort of voluntary delay to avoid concessions or because it produced a new argument that was resisted in France. On reception of the 1666 memorandum of the French ambassador, the first reaction 55.  Indeed, in the Assemblies the French defended their judicial exemption on the basis of the divine institution of the Episcopacy. See Pierre Blet “L’idée de l’épiscopat.” On the theological debates surrounding this issue at Trent see Joseph Bergin, “The Counter-­Reformation Church and Its Bishops,” 34–­37. 56.  See the votum of qualification of the 1656 Relation des délibérations du Clergé de France in St. St. F 1e, 651. 57.  ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 169 and 189.

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of the cardinal inquisitors, which the pope did not approve, was to do nothing.58 However, if something was to be done, the cardinal inquisitors advocated that the pope should promote the solution most remote from French claims, i.e., a commission of only two or three bishops with authority over all those to be tried. It was also the Inquisition that invented the explicit restriction that would have made the commissioners “mere executors” (mere executores).59 Regarding trials of French bishops, the Inquisition’s institutional memory played a fundamental part in their decision-­making process and had a key relationship to the development of inquisitorial ideology and self-­representation. Diplomatic standoffs activated archival and historical investigation into earlier dealings with France, although in a very selective way. In the early seventeenth-­century trials, which advanced satisfactorily for the Roman Curia, no such process of historical investigation seems to have been carried out. Yet in the 1650s and 1660s, the memory of earlier trials and exploration of those trials played a major part. There are many extant copies or summaries of documents from the 1563 trials, from the trials of Sourdis, or from the 1632 commissions, present among the documents regarding the hypothetical trials of Jansenist bishops. The events of those earlier trials also provided examples for the vota of the qualificators and consultors, as well as for arguments produced by the Inquisition for the nuncio. During the Inquisition’s discussions with French negotiators and during its own internal discussions, all earlier examples of trials were used. Yet, considering that the 1632 commissions offered the most recent precedent, and that they contained examples that had proved most efficient and on which the papacy and the monarchy had been most in agreement, one would expect them to be the essential examples promoted by the Roman Curia. Nonetheless, the Inquisition kept returning to the 1563 trial against Odet de Chatillon. It was clearly the model for the actions of the Inquisition in 1653 when it had to deal with Gondrin.60 The first judicial enquiry led in Sens and Rome clearly paved the way for a formal monitory resembling that of 1563. A letter from December 1653 to the nuncio relied heavily on the legal enquiry carried out by the papal legate Cardinal de Tournon against Chatillon. The possibility of such a monitory was discussed in the case of Sens, as well as in the cases of Beauvais and Comminges. One might think that this was because the cause of the Jansenist bishops focused on heresy, as did Chatillon’s cause. Yet there is little evidence for this 58.  See the Congregation of 4 December 1666, ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 123. 59.  The expression appears in the discussions of the same Congregation. 60.  It was sent to the nuncio along with other documents in December 1653, see ACDF, St. St. F 1d, 978.

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distinction where both the 1563 and 1632 precedents are mentioned. However, it is clear that the Inquisition turned to the 1563 precedent more often because the trial was led by Rome and presided over by the Holy Office. Among the historical memoranda about Chatillon produced in the 1660s, one text insisted particularly on the part played by the Holy Office and on the earlier motu proprio issued by Pius IV. This motu proprio gave power to the Inquisition to try heretic clergy regardless of their dignity.61 One might also think that using the 1563 trial as a pattern for later trials may have been an efficient historical argument, when used as a threat to force the French negotiators into accepting a milder solution. Indeed, when the nuncio mentioned it to Lionne, the French foreign minister in 1653, it was certainly supposed to play out in that manner. Yet, the invocation of this precedent was not merely instrumental, for it played its part in the internal discussions in the Inquisition. In November 1658, when the Inquisition decided to threaten the King with a Roman trial, while actually not considering it expedient due to the situation, certain cardinals had advocated it as more than a threat.62 For example, Cardinal Coraldi had argued that if the King could not carry out the trial, it ought to be held in Rome. Cardinal Albizzi advocated gathering witnesses and testimonies in Rome (as had been the case in the early stages of Chatillon’s trial) and argued that the Concordat bore no authority in such a case. Cardinal Chigi agreed. The most vocal opponent of such a course of action was Nicolò Guidi di Bagno, who was a diplomat and had been nuncio in Paris at the time of the 1650 Assembly and up to 1656. Also noteworthy is that, at least on this particular matter, the argument produced within the Inquisition was not as primarily theological as it was canonical and historical. Its highly doctrinal character is not incompatible with a type of discourse that mirrors the Gallican argument. For example, one of the first memoranda on the French demand for twelve bishops argued on this very basis. It conceded (something that Pallavicini did not) that the canons put forward by the French existed and at some point had been implemented.63 Yet it also argued that this was due to particular historical and political reasons, namely the barbarian invasions of the fifth century and the political weight of the Arian party in Italy that had rendered such canons necessary in the rest of the Western Church. 61.  See “Fogli sulla causa del Cardinal di Chiatiglione [sic] e di altri vescovi,” ACDF, St. St. I 5c, 85. 62.  See the 15 November 1658 Congregation, ACDF, St. St. F 1f, 316. 63.  ACDF, St. St. F 2d, 127, which speaks of the French request as a completely “antiquated” way of proceeding.

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Once those conditions had changed, the popes had rightly tried to restore their prerogatives as judges of other bishops. If ever, after the papacy had regained its freedom, such canons had still been used, it could only have been as a political concession to worldly princes in particular occurrences. Even Pallavicini’s memorandum, stringent as it may have been, also argued on a largely erudite basis, discussing the value of the authorities alleged by the French and countering them by an accumulation of counter example taken mostly from the medieval canonist Juan de Torquemada.64 To French erudition the memoranda opposed a decidedly Roman ecclesiastical science. On the occasion of those hypothetical trials,the Inquisition, as well as the French episcopate, told their own very different stories in a very similar, and yet performatively distinctive way.

aaa Confronted with the question of whether to try French bishops, the Roman Curia preferred to simply repeat claims to power rather than actually exercising some diluted version of their power. Concessions were made in only exceptional circumstances, and even those were limited. The Inquisition was at the heart of this process, and all the more so as it abided by a formal and doctrinal approach. The paradox here is that the more the Inquisition participated in the decision-­making process on this issue, the less likely it became that these trials would take place. For French bishops, this meant that they were largely free from the threat of an actual trial. Moreover, the progress of Gallicanism and its wider endorsement by the Crown also lessened the possibility of cooperation by the monarchy and the papacy against particular bishops and the episcopate as a whole, as had occurred in 1632. This meant that even the royal threat of a trial, which required support from Rome, could prove partially empty or at least could be fended off as long as one did not mind political disgrace. This provided some bishops with considerable pastoral freedom as the case of Gondrin largely proves. The fate of Gallican episcopalism, although not entirely endorsed by the king, was bound to the king’s defense of his own prerogatives. This situation practically nuanced the distinction that some historians have perceived—­if it was ever an actual one—­ between political and ecclesiastical Gallicanism.65

64.  On Torquemada, see Izbicki, Protector of the Faith. 65.  Alain Tallon’s insistence on Gallicanism as a religious sentiment points also to the necessity to nuance this old and classic academic distinction, see Tallon, Conscience nationale et sentiment religieux, 161, 281–­86.

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Finally, this state of impossibility to exercise jurisdiction favored the deepening of alternative and mirrored narratives of two distinct ecclesiologies, if not of two distinct Catholicisms. Both of those narratives also gained institutional strength through the seventeenth century. Thereby, the absence of actual jurisdiction and theological discrepancies seems to have worked together in the confessional dynamic that affected both French and Roman styles of Catholicism somewhat differently. In Rome, this fostered a more radical interpretation of papal authority over the entire Catholic episcopate.

Works Cited Archives

ACDF = Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Vatican City. St. St. E 6b: Gallia. Includes Cardinal de Sourdis’s trial. St. St. F 1e: Acta in Causa Jansenii tam in Belgio quam in Galliis anno 1657. St. St. F 1f: Acta in Galliis circa Formularium 1658. St. St. F 2c: Acta in Galliis in Causa Jansenii et circa Formularium 1663–­1665. St. St. F 2d: Acta in Galllis in Causa Jansenii et circa Formulario ab anno 1666 ad Medietate anni 1668. St. St. I 5c: Rerum notabilium, vol. 3.

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Cinquième Mémoire sur le droit qu’ont les Evesques de n’estre jugez que par douze Evesques de leurs province maintenu par l’Assemblée Générale du Clergé de France de l’année 1650 et confirmé par la Déclaration du Roy de 1663 sur les articles de Sorbonne vérifiée dans tous les Parlemens le 6 de septembre 1666. 1666. Gerbais, Jean, Dissertatio de causis majoribus ad caput concordatorum de causis: Authore Ioanne Gerbais Doctore Parisiensi, Socio Sorbonico, Regio Eloquentiae Professore. Lyon: Jacques Canier, 1685. Lettre circulaire écrite par Messeigneurs les Évesques d’Alet, de Pamiez, de Beauvais, et d’Angers à Messeigneurs les archevesques et évesques de France, sur le sujet du Bref obtenu contre leurs mandemens, 1668. In Antoine Arnauld, Œuvres, 14:549–­68. Mandement de Monseigneur l’Evesque et Comte d’Alet, touchant la signature du Formulaire du 1er juin 1665. 1665. Relation des délibérations du Clergé de France, sur la Constitution, et sur le bref de N.S.P. le Pape Innocent X. Par laquelle sont déclarées et définies cinq Propositions en matière de Foy. Avec les Brefs de sa Sainteté, au Roy et aux Archevesque et Evesque de ce Royaume. Ensemble les Déclarations du Roy, et les Lettres des Cardinaux, Archevesques, et Evesques au Pape, et aux Evesques du Royaume sur le sujet desdites Propositions. Paris, A. Vitré, 1656.

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Bergin, Joseph. Crown, Church and Episcopate under Louis XIV. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. ———. “The Counter-­Reformation Church and Its Bishops.” Past and Present 165 (1999): 30–­73. ———. The Making of the French Episcopate 1589–­1661. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Black, Christopher, F. The Italian Inquisition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Blet, Pierre. Le Clergé de France et la Monarchie: Etudes sur les Assemblées Générales du Clergé de 1615 à 1666. Rome: Università Gregoriana, 1959. ———. “L’idée de l’épiscopat chez les évêques français du XVIIe siècle.” In L’Institution et les pouvoirs dans les Églises de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by Bernard Vogler, 311–­ 23. Biblothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 32. Louvain: Nauwelaerts-­ RHE, 1987. ———. Les nonces du pape à la cour de Louix XIV. Paris: Perrin, 2002. Bonora, Elena. Giudicare i vescovi: La definizione dei poteri nella Chiesa postridentiana. Rome: Gius. Laterza e figli, 2007. De Bujanda, Jesús M. Index librorum prohibitorum 1600–­1900. Montréal: Médiaspaul-­ Droz, 2002. De Franceschi, Sylvio H. La crise théologico-­politique du premier âge baroque. Rome: École Française de Rome, 2009. Dieudonné, Philippe. La Paix Clémentine: Défaite et victoire du premier jansénisme français sous le pontificat de Clément IX (1667–­1669). Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2003. Doyle, William. Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Fernandez-­Lâcote, Hélène. Les procès du Cardinal de Richelieu: Droit, grâce et politique sous Louis le Juste. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2010. Izbicki, Thomas M. Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981. Loskoutoff, Yvan. “Hercule et Atlas à Rome puis à Modène: Un présent diplomatique du cardinal Francesco degli Albizzi à Mazarin.” XVIIe Siècle 241 (2008): 677–­708. Maral, Alexandre, La Chapelle royale de Versailles sous Louis XIV: Cérémonial, liturgie et musique. Paris: École Nationale des Chartes; Sprimont: Mardaga–­Éditions du centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2002. Pange, Jean de, Le roi très chrétien: Essai sur la nature du pouvoir royal en France. Paris: Arthème-­Fayard, 1949. Parsons, Jotham, The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in France. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004. Tallon, Alain. “Francia, età moderna.” In Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, edited by Adriano Prosperi, 621–­22. Pisa: Edizione della Scuola Normale Superiore, 2011.

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———. “Gallicanesimo.” In Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, edited by Adriano Prosperi, 640–­42. Pisa: Edizione della Scuola Normale Superiore, 2011. ———. Conscience nationale et sentiment religieux en France au XVIe siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta. “Fazioni e lotta politica nel Sacro Collegio nella prima metà del Seicento.” In La Corte di Roma tra Cinque e Seicento: “Teatro” della politica europea, edited by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, 37–­91. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1998. Weber, Hermann. “L’accetazione in Francia del concilio di Trento.” In Il concilio di Trento come crocevia della politica europea, edited by Hubert Jedin and Paolo Prodi, 85–­ 107. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979.

Contributors John Alexander is an architectural historian (PhD, University of Virginia) who has published articles and a book on Carlo Borromeo and his architectural commissions. He is expanding his research to the patronage of bishops in Tridentine Italy. He teaches in the department of architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he is associate professor. John Christopoulos is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, where he is completing a thesis on conceptions of and attitudes toward abortion and pregnancy termination in late Renaissance Italy. From 2012 to 2014, he will be a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellow at York University. Hans Cools obtained his PhD in 2000 from the University of Amsterdam. Currently he lectures on early modern history at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He has published on a variety of subjects, including nobilities, warfare, state formation, and political and cultural brokerage in the Low Countries, France, and Italy between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Jennifer Mara DeSilva completed a PhD in history at the University of Toronto, where she examined the role of papal ritual and the Office of Ceremonies in early modern Italy. Her published research includes articles that focus on the intersection of public display, diplomacy, social mobility, and ecclesiastical authority. Currently she is assistant professor of history at Ball State University. Jill Fehleison received her PhD from Ohio State University. Her scholarship on biconfessional relations includes the book Boundaries of Faith: Catholics and Protestants in the Diocese of Geneva (Truman State University Press, 2010). Her current research examines the dialogue created by Catholic and Protestant polemics and sermons produced in and around Geneva during the late sixteenth century 215

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and the first decades of the seventeenth century. She is associate professor of history at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT. Jean-Pascal Gay was educated at the École Normale Supérieure and is a former fellow of the École Française de Rome. He is the author of Morales en conflit, théologie et polémique au Grand Siècle (Cerf, 2011) and of Jesuit Civil Wars: Theology, Politics and Government in the Society of Jesus under Tirso González (Ashgate, 2012). His research deals primarily with the history of theology, Catholic confessionalization, and the relationship of the Roman Inquisition to early modern France. He is currently assistant professor at the University of Strasbourg. William V. Hudon completed a PhD in history at the University of Chicago in 1987, where he was a student of the late Eric Cochrane, Bernard McGinn, and Julius Kirshner. His books and essays have focused on the history of Catholicism in early modern Italy. He is currently professor of history at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1989. Linda Lierheimer completed a PhD in history at Princeton University where she wrote a dissertation on the spiritual ideals of Ursuline nuns in seventeenthcentury France. She edited and translated The Life of Antoinette Micolon (2004). Her research focuses on women’s religious life during the Catholic Reformation, and she is working on a book on conflicts between nuns and bishops. Currently she is associate professor of history and humanities at Hawaii Pacific University. Celeste McNamara is a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University. Her dissertation examines the implementation of Catholic reform in post-Tridentine Padua. Her research focuses on the social and cultural aspects of Catholicism in early modern Italy. Antonella Perin received a doctorate in “Storia e Critica dei Beni Architettonici e Ambientali” from the Università La Sapienza di Roma. She has published on architecture and urbanism from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, focusing on Lombardy and the Piedmont. She has taught for the Politecnico di Torino and the Centro Conservazione e Restauro “La Venaria Reale” (Turin). Raymond A. Powell is a research faculty member in history at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania. He has a PhD in European and American religious history from the University of Virginia, as well as graduate degrees from University College London and Union Presbyterian Seminary.

Index Bold numbers indicate an image

A

abortion, 18–­19, 110–­24 animatus, 116–­17 homocide, 110, 113, 119, 122 inanimatus,114, 116–­17, 122 procurers of, 119–­20 synodal legislation, 113, 114–­15, 118, 122 absolution, 19, 110, 118–­22, 198 reservation of authority to absolve, 110–­11, 114–­ 24, 195–­96 Accolti, Pietro (cardinal, bp. of Arras), 58 adultery, 118 Agli, Antonio degli (bp. of Volterra), 5 Albergati, Niccolò (bp. of Bologna), 101, 102–­3 Alberigo, Giuseppe, xii–­xiii, 91 Alberti, Leon Battista, De re aedificatoria (1443–­52), 82–­83 Albizzi, Francesco (cardinal), 204, 210 Aldrich, Robert (bp. of Carlisle), 27 Alexandria, 6 Altoviti, Antonio (archbp. of Florence), 118 Alvarez de Toledo, Ferdinand, duke of Alba, 54 Anne of Austria, queen of France, 159, 160, 197, 199 Antioch, 6 aristocracy, 52, 55 Arnauld, Agnès (abbess), 168 Arnauld, Angélique (abbess), 166–­69 Arras. See under Low Countries Azpilcueta, Martín de, 112, 119 Manuale de confessori et penitenti (1569), 112

B

Baden, Friedrich von (bp. of Utrecht), 51 Barbarigo, Gianfrancesco, 174 Barbarigo, Gregorio (cardinal, bp. of Bergamo, later Padua), 18, 174–­92 as ideal bishop, 175 vicari foranei, 175–­76, 177, 185, 190–­91 visitations, 176–­78, 191–­92 wealth, 174–­75

Barlow, Frank, 14 Barozzi, Pietro (bp. of Padua), 1, 103 Bartoli, Cosimo, 83 Baume, Esprit de (Capuchin), 132, 142 Bayley, Peter, 129, 135 Baynes, Ralph (bp. of Coventry and Lichfield), 33, 35 in exile, 39 Bellegarde, Octave de (archbp. of Sens), 168 Bellinzoni, Giovanni Antonio, 98n48 Bembo, Pietro (cardinal), 97 Benedetti, Giovanni (bp. of Pesaro), 98n48 Benvenuti, Sara, 98–­99 Berlaymont, Louis de (archbp. of Cambrai), 54 Berne, Swiss Confederacy, 136n25, 140n44, 142 Bérulle, Pierre de, 151 bestiality, 112, 118n28 Betti, Teofilo, 95n29, 98n47 Beza, Theodore, 139, 142 Sermons sur l’histoire de la passion (1592), 140–­41 Bible, 132, 137 biblical stories, 140 Epistles of Paul, 138; Paul, Letter to the Philippians 1:1, 5n17 Gospels, 15 New Testament, 105; Acts of the Apostles 2:14–­ 47, 3; John, 141; Luke 20:17, 5n17; Matthew 4:3, 139; Matthew 19:26, 139 Bird, John (bp. of Chester), 32 bishops absentee bishop-­bureaucrat, 9, 37, 89, 105 administration, 4 ambition, 4, 10, 105 as attentive observer (l’attento osservatore), 88, 91, 105 autonomy, 84 biographies, 4–­5, 11–­12 bishop saints, 11, 15–­16 bulwark against Protestantism, 2, 88–­89, 111 Calvinist beliefs, 195 charity, 3, 4, 5, 6, 105 classical virtues, 7 conflict with cathedral chapters, 56, 80–­81, 83, 153

217

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Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe

bishops, continued conformity to Protestantism, 27, 30n11, 32, 34, 37, 39, 40, 42 confraternities, involvement with, 56, 91, 101, 105, 180n28, 182 corrupt, 2, 3–­4, 9 Counter-­Reformation bishops, 48, 123, 144 courtier bishop model, 7 cure of souls, 3, 111, 118 curiales (Roman imperial administrators), 5 custodian of local institutions, 92, 101–­2 deprivation of office, 31–­32, 39, 40, 42, 173, 198 disinterest, 2, 173 divinely appointed, xii, 18, 149, 170, 208 episkopoi, 5 évêque-­duc, 8 exile, 33, 39 Frankish bishops, 7 Fürstbischof, 8 Gesta episcoporum, 11 ideal bishop, 1–­2, 3–­5, 7, 10, 15, 79–­80, 111, 149, 175 imprisonment of, 27, 33, 35, 39, 40 in Italy, xii, 5, 14 juridical jurisdiction over, 18, 195–­211 as living example (vivum exemplum), 1, 88 as local spiritual authority, 17, 63, 81, 173, 191–­92 mediator, 6, 7–­8, 11n41, 88 mirror of bishops literature, 4n11 modeling virtue, 88n2, 91, 92, 103, 105, 144 national episcopates, 13–­15 nepotism, 38 noble backgrounds, 6, 17, 47, 51–­52, 54–­57 number of, 13n49 nuns. See nuns pastoral care, 3, 8, 9, 11, 68, 88, 174 patron of architecture, 63, 69, 71–­75, 78–­84, 95–­96, 99–­100, 104 political loyalty, 32, 51 preaching, 5, 19, 35, 129, 152 provision of, 8–­9, 29, 149 reformed, 2, 3, 106n75 requirements for holding a bishopric, 56 residence, 1–­2, 3, 5, 10, 17, 88, 89, 91, 103–­4, 149, 152 secular role, 3, 7–­8, 17, 35–­36 seminaries, 1, 68, 69, 79, 113, 129n4, 152, 175 spiritual vassals, 8 stereotypes, 9, 19 synods, 1, 103, 111, 118, 129n4, 149, 152, 191 Tridentine decrees, 63, 68, 79n33, 152 vacant episcopal sees, 39, 47, 57 venality of, 12 vicars, 89, 98, 102, 103, 118, 175–­78, 190–­91

visitations, 1, 10, 18, 68, 96, 101, 103, 149, 152, 176–­77 Bologna. See under Italy Bonamini, Domenico, 102 Boncompagni, Christoforo (archbp. of Ravenna), 115 Bonner, Edmund (bp. of London), 27n3, 31 imprisonment of, 39 Bonora, Elena, 195 Borgia, Cesare, 92, 98 Borromeo, Carlo (archbp. of Milan), 1, 12, 64, 175 on abortion, 114–­15, 117, 118 assassination attempt, 69n8, 81 attendance at Council of Trent, 69 Instructionum Fabbricae et Suppellectilis Ecclesiasticae (1577), 69, 72 jurisdictional disputes, 69, 71 in Milan, 69, 71 relations with Cesare Gambara, 69–­71, 72, 81 relations with Gianpaolo della Chiesa, 71–­72 relations with Pope Pius IV, 69 relations with Pope Pius V, 69 Tridentine decrees, 69 Bossuet, Jacques-­Bénigne, 129 Bossy, John, 10n40 Boucherat, Nicolas (abbot general of the Cistercian Order), 165 Bourbon, Louis de (bp. of Liège), 49, 54 Bourchier, John, 30n11, 37 conformity, 40 Bourchier, Thomas (archbp. of Canterbury), 104 Bourgeois, Rose (abbess), 148, 154, 156–­60, 169 Bourgogne, Philippe de (bp. of Utrecht), 58 Bourne, Gilbert (bp. of Bath and Wells), 28, 36 avoids imprisonment, 39 nepotism, 38 Bourne, Sir John, 28 Bovio, Girolamo (bp. of Camerino), 115 Brancati, Adele, 101n62 British Academy, 14 Broeucq, Jacques du, 52 Brooks, James (bp. of Gloucester), 35, 37 Brown, Peter, 6 Burali d’Arezzo, Paolo (cardinal, bp. of Piacenza, later archbp. of Naples), 115, 117, 118 Burckhardt, Jacob, x Burgundy, House of, 46, 54 Charles the Bold, duke, 48 David of (bp. of Utrecht), 51 Philip the Good, duke, 51 Philip of (bp. of Utrecht), 51 Bush, Paul (bp. of Bristol), 32

C

Caberlon, Matteo, 181 Caiaphas, 141

Index 219 Calvin, John, 135, 137–­39, 140–­41, 142 Calvinism, 57n69 Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), 143–­44 Cambrai. See under Low Countries Cambridge, Massachusetts, ix Cambridge, University of, 33 Camus, Jean-­Pierre (bp. of Belley), 130n9 cannibalism, 138 Canterbury, 3 Capon, John (bp. of Salisbury), 27 imprisonment of, 40 Carafa, Oliviero (cardinal, archbp. of Naples), 104 cardinals as bishops, 15 criticism of worldliness, 15 Carile, Antonio, 94 Castro, Nicolaus de (bp. of Middelburg), 47n6 cathedral, as symbol, 81 Catholic Church Council of Constance (1414–­18), 9–­10 Council of Nicaea (325), 5–­6 Council of Trent (1545–­63), x–­xiii, 5, 10, 12, 42–­ 43, 75, 84, 114; Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), 112; combats Protestantism, xii, 88, 150; confraternities, 105n74; as Council of Bishops, 1; Decretum de residentia episcoporum . . . (1547), 88–­89; episcopal role, 2, 10, 110, 149, 173; France’s refusal to accept Tridentine decrees, 149, 197, 201, 208; nuns, 18, 150–­51; one-­size-­fits-­all legislation, x, 10; Tridentine decrees, xii–­xiii, 1, 17, 63, 111, 120, 129, 173–­76, 179; urbanism, 83 Feast of the Ascension, 143 Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, 95 Feast of Pentecost, 94, 100, 101 Feast of the Purification, 143 Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 97, 141 Feast of the Trinity, 142 Fifth Lateran Council (1512–­17), 90, 95, 98; Regimini universalis Ecclesiae (1515), 98 Index of Prohibited Books, 201 Lent, 119, 123, 140, 143 Second Council of Carthage (419), 199, 203n33, 205 Second Vatican Council (1962–­65), xii Catholic reform, 43 Catholic Reformation, 1, 161 Catholic renewal, 47, 51 Cecil, William, 42 Chablais, duchy of, 130, 131–­33, 134, 135–­44 Chambers, D. S., 90n7 Chambers, John (bp. of Peterborough), 27 Chantal, Jeanne de (saint), 128, 135, 156n44 Chorpenning, Joseph, 135

Christian II, king of Denmark, 77 christianization, 6 Christopherson, John (bp. of Chichester), 28, 33, 35, 38 Chrysostom, John, 133 church fathers, 15 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 55 civic cult, 81, 101, 105 Clenock, Maurice (also Clynog), 29n10 cloister (clausura). See under nuns Clugny, Ferry de (cardinal), 50 Cochrane, Eric, x Colet, John, 3, 4n11 Coligny, Odet de (cardinal de Chatillon), 209–­10 Collège de la Flèche, 151 College of Clermont, Paris, 130 Cologne, archbishopric of, 46 Comitoli, Napoleone (bp. of Perugia), 122 conciliarism, 47 Concordat of Bologna (1516), 194, 197, 201, 205 provision to benefices, 49, 56 concubinage, 32, 152, 176, 185 confession, 18–­19, 110–­12, 117–­120 confessionalization, x confraternities, 3, 56, 91–­92, 95n34, 100–­102, 104–­ 5, 180n28, 182 Fraternità of Volterra, 104 Fraternity of the Annunciation, Pesaro, 101–­3 Fraternity of St. Andrew the Apostle, Pesaro, 101n61 Society of S. Giuliano, Rome, 101 Contarini, Gasparo (cardinal, bp. of Belluno), 90, 91, 94, 106 episcopal residence, 89, 91, 103 The Office of a Bishop (1516), 89, 91, 103n69 Coraldi (cardinal), 210 Council of Trent. See under Catholic Church Counter-­Reformation, x, 1 Coutier de Sainte-­Agnès, Claude (abbess), 163 Créqui, house of Antoine de (bp. of Thérouanne), 58 François de (bp. of Thérouanne), 58 Cristierna of Denmark, 68n7, 77–­78 Croce, Benedetto, x Cromwell, Thomas, 30 cross, veneration of, 132–­33, 136 Croÿ, house of, 52–­53 Adrien de, count of Roeulx, 52, 53 Charles de (bp. of Tournai), 50, 58 Eustache de (bp. of Arras), 52, 53, 58 Guillaume de (bp. of Cambrai), 52, 58 Jacques de (bp. of Cambrai), 52, 58 Philippe de, 53 Robert de (bp. of Cambrai), 52, 53, 58 Curwen, Hugh (archbp. of Dublin), 36, 37

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D

Day, George (bp. of Chichester), 31 defloration, 112, 118 Delbene, Alphonse (bp. of Albi), 198, 200 Della Chiesa, Gian Paolo (cardinal), 71–­73, 74–­75, 76–­77, 78–­79, 82 relations with Carlo Borromeo, 71–­72 De Sanctis, Francesco, x Descartes, René, 151 Diefendorf, Barbara, 150 Dijon. See under France Ditchfield, Simon, 11 Duffy, Eamon, 26n2, 39n35, 40–­41

E

Edict of Nantes (1598), 129, 143n55 education, xii, 48, 111, 161, 175 humanistic, 9 law, 57, 174 post-­Tridentine prelate, 48, 112–­13 theology, 57 Edward VI, king of England, 27, 31, 33, 38n32, 39 episcopal promotion, 35, 36 imprisonment of bishops, 39 religious reform, 29, 34, 35 Elizabeth I, queen of England, 38 Catholic resistance, 26–­28, 37 Oath of Supremacy, 42 recusancy, recusants, 27, 40 religious settlement, 26–­28, 37, 39, 40–­42 removal of altars and crucifixes, 42 restitution, 32–­34 Enckenvoirt, William of (cardinal, bp. of Utrecht, later Tortosa), 54, 58 English Episcopal Acta, 13–14 English Hospital in Rome, 40 Episcopus, 13 Erasmus, Desiderius, 105–­6 Novum Testamentum (1516), 105 eucharist, 42, 69, 131–­32, 135, 138–­39, 148 evangelismo, x Eve, 143 Evennett, H. Outram, 3, 149 excommunication, 120, 173 exile, 28, 47, 51

F

Farel, Guillaume, 142 Farnese, Alessandro seniore (bp. of Parma, later Pope Paul III), 103 Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, 13 Faye, Antoine de la Brief Traitté de la vertu de la croix et de la manière de l’honorer (1597), 133, 136, 139 Feckenham, John (abbot of Westminster), 35

imprisonment of, 40 Firpo, Massimo, x Fontana, Giovanni (bp. of Ferrara), 122 Forrestal, Alison, 153 Forty Hours Devotion, 132, 138, 142 France, 17, 18, 48, 77 Assembly of Clergy, 153–­54, 197, 199–­201, 202–­ 3, 205, 210; Déclaration sur les réguliers (1645), 153–­54 background of bishops, 57 Burgundy, 151, 165 Champagne, 151 Châtillon-­sur-­Seine, 157, 162, 162, 163, 169 Chaumont, 152n25, 153, 162 Cîteaux, 165 Dijon, 161–­62, 166 Estates-­General, 148 First Estate, 148 French Revolution, 48 Fronde, 160, 198n18 Grenoble, 143 Langres, 162, 169 Lyons, 133, 157n47, 205 Mussy-­l’Evesque, 169 occupation of Utrecht, 56 Paris, 130, 133, 151n16, 161, 166, 167 Parlement of Bourdeaux, 197 Parlement of Dijon, 18, 147, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163–­64, 167 Parlement of Paris, 18, 149, 160 Reims, archbishopric of, 46, 58 Wars of Religion, 57, 165, 198n18 Francia bishops, 7–­8 Orléans, 7 Rheims (Reims), 7 Toulouse, 7 Tours, 7 Francis I, king of France, 49, 56 Fraternity of the Annunciation, Pesaro. See under confraternities Frazier, Alison Knowles, 11–­12 Frémyot, André (archbp. of Bourges), 130n9 Frigho, Antonio, 187–­90 Fumi, Bartolomeo (Dominican), 112 Summa aurea armilla (1547), 112

G

Gallicanism, 149, 194–­211 Gambara, Cesare (bp. of Tortona), 17, 64–­65, 68–­ 76, 78–­84 absenteeism, 70–­71 conflict with cathedral chapter, 80–­81 Council of Trent, 65 diocesan synod, 68

Index 221 diocesan visitations (1554), 68 family ties, 64, 70–­71 Jesuit college at Macerata, 65 legate to march of Ancona, 64–­65 poverty, 65, 79 relations with Carlo Borromeo, 69–­71, 72, 73–­75, 82 seminary, 68 Tridentine decrees, 68 Gambara, Maffeo (bp. of Tortona), 65n6, 71n12 Gambara, Uberto (bp. of Tortona), 64 Gammaro, Pietro Andrea, 103 Gardiner, Stephen (bp. of Winchester), 27, 29–­30, 31, 35 as chancellor of England, 36 Gatti, Evan, 13 Gaul, 6 Geneva, 128, 129n4, 130–­31, 136n25, 138n36, 140, 142–­43 Annemasse, 132 The Company of Pastors, 132 Pays de Gex, 143n55 Thonon, 131, 143 Gentile, Valentine, 142 George of Austria (bp. of Liège), 51, 53, 58 George of Egmond (bp. of Utrecht), 58 Gerbais, Jean, 205 Germanic tribes, 6 Giberti, Gian Matteo (bp. of Verona), 1, 92n14 Capitoli Ordinati (1540), 103 Gilsdorf, Sean, 6, 11, 13 Gittio, Bartolomeo, 116–­17 Giubé, Robert (cardinal, bp. of Nantes), 103 Giustiniani, Paolo (Camaldolese), 1, 88–­89, 90–­91, 94, 96, 105 Glymes, Jean de, marquis of Bergen op Zoom, 53 Glymes-­Berghes family, 52, 53 Corneille de (bp. of Liège), 53, 58 Henry of (bp. of Cambrai), 53 Maximilien de (archbp. of Cambrai), 53–­54, 58 Robert de (bp. of Liège), 53, 58 Glyn, William (bp. of Bangor), 33, 40 Goldwell, Thomas (bp. of St. Asaph’s, later Oxford), 28, 33, 35, 40 ambassador to papal court, 36, 37 in exile, 39 Gondi, Jean-­François de (cardinal de Retz, archbp. of Paris), 168–­69, 198n18, 203 Gondrin, Louis-­Henri de Pardailhan de (archbp. of Sens), 201–­3, 204, 207, 209, 211 Gonzaga, house of Ercole (cardinal, bp. of Mantova), 90, 92n14, 103 Francesco (cardinal, bp. of Mantova), 90n7 Goodrich, Thomas (bp. of Ely), 27, 32, 35, 38 Görres Gesellschaft, xi

Graffi, Giacomo de, 116 Granier, Claude de (bp. of Geneva), 129, 130, 141 Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de (cardinal, bp. of Arras, archbp. of Mechelen), 54–­55, 57, 58 Grassi, Achilles de’ (cardinal, bp. of Bologna), 101n59 Grassi, Paris de’ (bp. of Pesaro), 19, 90 absenteeism, 90–­91, 97, 100 bishop as custodian, 92, 94 building campaigns, 95, 99–­100 cathedral chapter constitutiones, 96 diary, 95n30, 97, 98, 101n59 diocesan visitations, 97, 103, 106 synod, 98, 103, 106 visitation of cathedral chapter, 90, 96 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, 12 Grey, Lady Jane, 32 Griffin, Maurice (bp. of Rochester), 27, 30 Guicciardini, Francesco History of Italy (1537–­40), 89 Guillard, Louis (bp. of Tournai, later Chartres), 50, 58

H

Habsburg, house of, 17, 46, 54 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 48–­50, 53, 55, 56, 77 Margaret of Austria, 55 Mary of Hungary, 52–­53, 55 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 49–­50, 51, 53 Philip II, king of Spain, 35, 55, 56, 77 Philip the Fair, 53 right to provision benefices, 47, 49, 50 Hallier, François, 205 Harpsfield, Nicholas, 38 Haumont, abbey of, 50 Heath, Nicholas (bp. of Worcester, later York), 31, 34, 35–­36, 42 absentee archbishop, 37 imprisonment of, 39 Henry IV, king of France, 57, 143n55, 151 Henry VIII, king of England, 30n11, 32, 39 episcopal promotion, 35, 36 divorce from Katherine of Aragon, 32 religious reform, 28–­29 Henry of Bavaria and the Palatinate (bp. of Utrecht), 58 Hollingsworth, Mary, 15 Holyman, John (bp. of Bristol), 28, 33 Holy Roman Empire, 48, 77 emperor’s authority over bishops, 8 Holy Spirit, xii homogeneity, xii Hopton, John (bp. of Norwich), 28, 33, 35 Hudon, William F., 10 Hughes, Philip, 26, 40 Huns, 6

222

Episcopal Reform and Politics in Early Modern Europe Index, 204; Congregation of the Oratory, 151; Datary, xiii; papal court, 19, 89, 90, 92; papal curia, xi, 89, 105, 194–­212; Penitentiary, xiii; Roman Inquisition, xiii, 194–­212; SS. Celso and Giuliano, church of, 101; S. Maria Maggiore, church of, 95n34; Society of S. Giuliano, 101 Siena, 120, 121n34 topography of cathedral towns, 82 Torre, 176n10 Tortona, 63–­84; cathedral canons, 72, 79; episcopal palace, 64, 71, 78, 82; fortress, 64, 78, 81; new episcopal palace, 67, 76; new cathedral, 66–­68, 72–­75, 76; old cathedral, 64, 71, 78, 81; poverty, 64, 65, 75, 78; S. Domenico, church of, 64n3; S. Eufemia, convent of, 78–­79; S. Francesco, friary of, 79; S. Maria Canale, church of, 64n3; S. Quirino, church of, 72, 76; S. Stefano, church of, 71, 72, 73–­75, 78, 81; Spanish rule in, 63–­64, 71, 81; topography, 64, 65; villa suburbana, 79 Trani, 120, 121n34 Venice, 174; Esecutori contro la bistemmia, 174 Vercelli, 80, 83–­84 Vicenza, 177 Viterbo, 115–­16 Volterra, 104

Hus, Jan, 137

I

iconoclasm, 136 image, miraculous, 80, 102, 179–­83, 184–­85 incest, 112, 118 interdict, 89, 97, 157–­58, 186, 203 intransigenti, x Investiture Controversy, Concordat of Worms (1122), 8–­9 Italy, 50, 174 Altamura, 121 Aquileia, 177n14 Aversa, 120, 121n34 Bergamo, 75, 89n6, 175, 177n14 Bologna, 80, 83–­84, 101, 102, 103, 177n14; S. Petronio, church of, 83 Camerino, 115–­16 Fano, 93 Florence, 82n40, 83 Genoa, 64 Isernia, 120 Italian Renaissance, 12 Italian Wars, 64 Lodi, 120, 121n34 Marostica, 186, 189 Milan, duchy of, 63–­64, 82, 83, 114–­15, 120, 177n14 Monferrato, 64 Naples, 104, 115, 118 Orvieto, 90n10 Padua, 130, 174–­75, 178, 184, 185; diocese of, 177–­78; Holy Office of, 186; University of, 130, 138n34, 174 Parma, 82n40 Pesaro, 90–­103; Annunciation, church of the, 102; Beata Michelina, 102; Beato Cecco, 102; bell tower, 95; cathedral, 93, 95, 99–­100, 102; cathedral chapter constitutiones, 96; devastation in war, 92–­94, 97; Fraternity of the Annunciation, 101–­3; Madonna delle Grazie, 102; Madonna del Popolo, 102; Palazzo del Podestà, 93; Rocca of, 93; S. Agostino, church of, 102; S. Francesco, church of, 93; S. Terenzio, patron saint, 95, 98, 99–­100; synod, 96, 98 Piacenza, 115–­16 Piove di Sacco, 176n13 Potenza, 120, 121n34 Ravenna, 115–­16 Rimini, 177n14 Rome, 3, 6, 17, 49, 54, 94, 105, 120, 129, 140, 147n2, 149, 153, 167, 174, 177; Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, 120–­21, 122, 123; Congregation of the

J

Jan of Horn (bp. of Liège), 50 Jansenism, 57, 149, 169, 196, 201, 205–­6, 209 Jansenius (Cornelius Jansen), Augustinus (1640), 202–­3 Janus, 2 Jedin, Hubert, x, xi–­xiii Jesus Christ, 3, 132n14, 137, 139, 140, 144 Jones, Anna Trumbore, 12–­13

K

Karlstadt, Andreas, 137 Katherine of Aragon, queen of England, 16, 28, 35 King, Robert (bp. of Oxford), 27 Kitchin, Anthony (bp. of Landaff), 27, 37 conformity, 39

L

laity, xi, 36, 69, 101, 115–­16, 140, 173–­74, 182, 185–­ 86, 190 la Marck, house of Érard de (cardinal, bp. of Liège, later Chartres, Valencia), 54–­55, 58 Guillaume de, 54 Jean de, 54 Le Jeune, Marguerite, 163 Liège. See under Low Countries

Index 223 Lindanus, Wilhelmus (bp. of Roermond), 47n6 Lippomano, Pietro (bp. of Bergamo), 89n6 localism ix, xii, 2 London, England, 31, 39, 104n71, 133 Lorraine, house of, 54 Francis I, duke of Lorraine, 77 Jean de (cardinal, bp. of Thérouanne), 49, 58 Louis XII, king of France, 51, 53, 54 Louis XIII, king of France, 157n46, 167n93, 197–­99 Louis XIV, king of France, 129, 202–­3, 205–­7 Low Countries, 17 apostolic vicars, 47 archbishoprics of (from 1559); Cambrai, 47, 48, 49, 56, 58; Mechelen, 47, 48, 56, 57; Utrecht, 47, 48, 49, 55, 57 Artois, 52, 53 background of bishops, 52–­54, 57 bishoprics of (to 1559), 46, 48; Arras, 46, 49, 55, 57, 58; Cambrai, 46, 58; Liège, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58; Thérouanne, 46, 49, 58; Tournai, 46, 49, 50, 58; Utrecht, 46, 51, 54, 58 Boulogne-­sur-­Mer, bishopric of, 49 Bruges, 50 Brussels, 47, 51, 53 Cologne, 47; archbishopric of, 58 Drenthe, 55 Dutch Revolt (1566), 47, 55 Flanders, 50, 52 Friesland, 55 Ghent, 50 Groningen, 55 Hainault, 50, 53 Holland, 50 introduction of Inquisition in, 47 Louvain, 49 Maastricht, 49 modern territories in, 46 Namur, 49 national church, 46 provision to benefices, 46–­47, 49–­55, 57 University of Douai, 54 University of Louvain, 54, 57 Walloon, 52 Ypres, bishopric of, 49 loyalty, 17, 32, 35, 47 Luther, Martin, 89, 141 Lutheranism, xii, 55

M

Mallet, Francis (bishop nominate to Salisbury), 27, 33 Mann, Henry (bp. of Soder and Man), 32 Mansi, Giangiacomo de, 121

marriage clerical, 32, 42 dowry, 95–­96, 104, 187–­88 Tridentine reforms to, 186–­89 Mary I, queen of England, 16–­17, 26–­43 Catholic restoration, 26, 31–­32, 40–­43 chancellors, 35–­36 chaplains, 28, 33, 39 episcopal absenteeism, 37 episcopal promotion, 27–­38, 41 Philip of Spain, 35 privy councilors, 36 purge of Protestants, 41 relationship with Reginald Pole, 27n4, 29 resistance to Protestantism, 27–­29, 39 Mary, the Virgin, 102, 182 mass, illegal to celebrate, 33, 40 Maurienne, Père Chérubin de (Capuchin), 132, 138n36, 142 Mazoyer, Mère Jeanne, 162, 163 Medici, house of Giulio de’ (archbp. of Florence, later Pope Clement VII), 103 Lorenzo di Piero de’, lord of Pesaro and duke of Urbino, 93, 94n24, 97, 98 Marie de’, dowager queen and regent of France, 197, 199 Melchior von Meckau (cardinal, bp. of Brixen), 103 Melun, François de (bp. of Arras, later Thérouanne), 58 Mercurio, Girolamo (Dominican), 113–­14 Milan. See under Italy Miranda, Salvador, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, 13n47 missionary activity, 128, 130–­33, 135–­40, 142–­44 monastic orders, 3, 140 Cistercian Order, 148, 155, 165–­67; Cîteaux, monastery of, 165 Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, 152, 160 reservation of episcopal authority, 17, 150, 152–­ 54, 168, 169 Society of Jesus, 54, 65, 68n7, 72n17, 130, 132, 144, 151, 152n25, 153, 160, 164n79, 207 Montholon, Catherine de (nun), 161, 163 Montigli, Carlo (bp. of Viterbo), 115–­16 Montmorency, Henri II de, duke, 198 Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Capitula Episcoporum, 14 More, Sir Thomas, 35 Morgan, Henry (bp. of St. David’s) chaplain to Mary I, 39 conformity, 39 Muir, Edward, 101 Murphy, Paul V., 90, 92n14

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N

Negri, Girolamo, 103n69 Nicholas of Cusa, 104 Nivelle, Pierre (abbot general of the Cistercian Order), 165, 167 nuns convent autonomy, 148–­49, 150, 158, 162–­65, 169 Council of Trent, 18, 150–­51, 155 desire for reform, 18 enclosure of (clausura), 78, 150, 154–­59, 161, 164 families of nuns, 147n2, 154–­56, 160, 163–­64, 166 First Estate, members of, 148 Madelonnettes, convent of the, 155 Montmartre, abbey of (Benedictine), 155 Moutier-­Saint-­Jean, monastery of (Benedictine), 157–­58, 160 Notre-­Dame de Tart, abbey of (Cistercian), 148, 160, 165–­69 Order of the Discalced Carmelites, 161n63 Order of St. Ursula, 147, 150, 154, 161, 164n79, 169; convents in France, 161n65 Order of the Visitation (of Mary or the Visitadines), 128, 133, 156n44, 161n63 Port-­Royal, abbey of (Cistercian), 148, 165, 166–­69 Puits d’Orbe, abbey of (Benedictine), 148, 154, 156–­60, 165 reform, 150, 155–­70 Rougemont, abbey of (Benedictine), 155–­56, 165 unconsecrated convent, 183–­85 under episcopal authority, 18, 147–­65 Val-­de-­Grâce, convent of (Benedictine), 159 vows, 147, 161, 162, 164, 166, 178

O

Observant Reform Movement, 9 Oecolampadius, John, 137, 139 The Office of a Bishop (1516). See under Contarini Oglethorpe, Owen (bp. of Carlisle), 33, 39 O’Malley, John W., x O’Neill, Thomas P. “Tip,” ix–­x Order of the Golden Fleece, 53, 55 Ormaneto, Niccolò (bp. of Padua), 175 Orsini, Renzo, 94 orthodoxy, 42, 94, 111, 128, 129, 135–­36 Ott, John S., 12–­13 Ottonian Empire, 7n26 Ovid, 55 Oxford University, 33

P

Padua. See under Italy Paget, Sir William, 35 Paleotti, Gabriele (archbp. of Bologna), 122 Pallavicini, Pietro Sforza (cardinal), 208, 210, 211

papacy, 140 in Avignon, 9 Great Schism (1378–­1417), 9 rituals, 13 papal court. See under Italy: Rome papal curia. See under Italy: Rome Parfew, Robert (also Warton, bp. of Hereford), 27, 30n11, 40 Paris. See under France Parisse, Michel, Groupe de recherches pour l’édition des actes des évêques de France des origins à 1200, 13 Parlement of Bourdeaux. See under France Parlement of Dijon. See under France Parlement of Paris. See under France Parliament, Houses of, England, 36 Pastor, Ludwig von, 12 Pate, Richard (bp. of Worcester), 29n10, 33 in exile, 39 patronage, 83 peace, 17 penance, 32 Pesaro. See under Italy Peter Martyr, 139 Peter (Saint), 3, 141 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 9 Petre, Sir William, 30 Petrignano, Fantino (bp. of Cosenza), 118 Pierozzi, Antonino (archbp. of Florence), 1 as ideal bishop, 4 Pizarro, Joaquín Martínez, 11 Plantavit, Jean (bp. of Lodève), 198 Pole, David (bp. of Peterborough), 34 conformity, 39 Pole, Reginald (cardinal, archbp. of Canterbury), 27, 28 chancellorship of England, 35 clerical absenteeism, 29 clerical avoidance of secular roles, 36–­37 Council of Trent, 16 episcopal residence, 37 household, 29 relationship with Henry VIII, 32 relationship with Mary I, 29 synod, 38 pope Alexander VI, 93, 94n25 Alexander VII, 174, 196; Regiminis Apostolici (1665), 202 Alexander VIII, 175 apostolic succession, 141 appeals to papal authority, 10 centralization of papal authority, 120, 123 Clement VIII, 123 Clement IX, 204 Gregory I (the Great), 8, 16

Index 225 Gregory XIII, 76 Gregory XIV, 121–­23 Hadrian VI, 54, 94n24 Innocent X, 196; Cum occasione (1653), 201 Julius II, 94n25 Leo X, 49, 89, 93, 94n25, 97, 105 Nicholas I, 8 papal supremacy, 41, 42 Paul III, 195 Paul IV, 46, 195; Super Universas (1559), 46–­47, 48, 52, 57 Pius IV, 64, 69, 195, 210 Pius V, 69, 78, 81, 196 provision of bishops, 8 Sixtus V, 110, 119–­21, 122–­23; Contra procurantes (1588), 110, 119–­22 Urban VIII, 168 Possevino, Antonio ( Jesuit), 130 Pourlan, Jeanne de Courcelles de (abbess), 166–­67 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), 9, 56 preaching manuals, 129, 135 pregnancy, 110, 113, 116–­18 Prosperi, Adriano, 90n7, 96 Protestantism, 2, 10, 19, 39, 41–­42, 138–­39

Q

quietism, 184n44 Quirini, Pietro (Camaldolese), 1, 88, 91, 94, 96

R

Ragazzoni, Gerolamo (bp. of Bergamo), 75–­76, 81–­82 visitation of Tortona, 75 Raguenier, Denis, 135 Ranke, Leopold von, 12 rape, 118 reform reformatio in capite et in membris, 9 religious, x rhetoric, 17 Italian historiography of, 9n34 The Reformation, ix Reims. See under France religious violence, 129 Répertoire prosopographique des évêques, dignitaires et chanoines des diocèses de France de 1200 à 1500, 13 Reynolds, Thomas, 34 Rhigetto, Angela, 187–­90 Rhigetto, Augustin, 187–­90 Riccardi, Giulio Cesare (bp. of Bari), 122 Rich, Sir Richard, 35 Richardson, Carol, 15 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis (cardinal), 151, 198, 199, 203

Rieux de Sourdéac, René de (bp. of Saint-­Pol-­de-­Léon), 199–­200 Rochefort, Lucrèce de (abbess), 155, 160 Rochefoucauld, François de la (cardinal), 158, 165 Roman Empire, 133 Rome. See under Italy Rovere, house of Albertino della (bp. of Pesaro), 95, 96 Francesco Maria della, duke of Urbino, 93–­94 Giuliano della (archbp. of Avignon, later Pope Julius II), 104

S

Sadoleto, Jacopo (bp. of Carpentras), 103 Saint-­Cyran, abbé de ( Jean du Vergier de Hauranne), 168–­69 Saint-­Ghislain, abbey of, 50 Saint-­Joseph, Jeanne de (abbess), 168 saints, patronage of, 82, 95, 98–­100, 101–­2 Sales, François de (bp. of Geneva), 19, 128–­44, 156, 157n47, 159 Briefe Meditation sur le Symbole (ca. 1596), 131n11 The Catholic Controversy (ca. 1594–­98), 133n16 Defense de l’Estendart de la saincte Croix de nostre Sauveur Jesus-­Christ (1600), 133, 136 Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), 128, 137 missionary work, 128, 130–­33, 135–­44 Order of the Visitation, 128, 133 pastoral vocation, 128–­29, 144 preaching, 130, 133, 134, 135–­144 Treatise on the Love of God (1616), 131–­32, 137 Sarpi, Paolo, x Saunier, Jean ( Jesuit), 132 Savoy, 130, 136n25, 140n44, 142, 143, 144 Annecy, 128n1, 135, 142 Charles-­Emmanuel I, duke of Savoy, 142, 143 Philippe Emmanuel, duke of Mercœur, 133 Turin, 64, 143 scandal, 19, 114, 117–­19, 121, 123, 147, 157, 183n38, 185 Schenk Toutenburg, Frederik van (archbp. of Utrecht), 55–­56, 57 Schenk Toutenburg, Joris van, 55 Scott, Cuthbert (bp. of Chester), 33, 41 abandoned his academic career, 39 Sega, Filippo (bp. of Ripatrasone, later Piacenza), 118, 120n32 seminaries, 1, 68, 69, 113, 129n4, 175 Serguidi, Guido, 113 sermons, 128, 133–­44 eucharistic imagery, 19, 138–­39 Servetus, Michael, 142 Sforza, house of Francesco Maria, duke of Milan, 77 Giovanni, lord of Pesaro, 92–­93

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Sigismund III, Holy Roman Emperor, 9 Simoncelli, Paolo, x Simonetta family Giacomo (bp. of Pesaro), 96 Giulio (bp. of Pesaro), 96 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, 16 social disciplining, x Soderini, Francesco (bp. of Volterra), 104 sodomy, 112 Solarino da Breno, Pietro, 75n25 Sonnius, Franciscus (bp. of ’s-­Hertogenbosch, later Antwerp), 47n6, 56 Soperchi, Giovanni Francesco (Filomuso), 97 Sorbonne, Collège de, 162, 205 Sourdis, François d’Escoubleau de (cardinal, bp. of Bourdeaux), 197, 209 Spain, 6, 136n25 spirituali, x Stanley, Thomas (bp. of Soder and Man), 37 suffragens, 32 synod. See under bishop

T

Tabbagh, Vincent, 13n51 Taverna, Luigi (bp. of Lodi), 122 Taylor, John (bp. of Lincoln), 38 Taylor, Larissa, 129 Thérouanne. See under Low Countries Thirlby, Thomas (bp. of Ely), 34, 35, 36 absentee bishop, 37 imprisonment of, 39 Thurber, T. Barton, 80 Tibaldi, Domenico cathedral of Bologna, 80, 84 Tibaldi, Pellegrino, 72, 84 cathedral of Tortona, 72–­73 cathedral of Vercelli, 80, 83 Collegio Borromeo in Pavia, 72 commentary on Alberti, 83 Tortona. See under Italy Tournai. See under Low Countries Tournelle, Jeanne de la (coadjutrix abbess), 165–­67 Tournon, François de (cardinal), 209 transubstantiation, 139 Transylvania, 142 Treaty of Lausanne (1564), 142n54 Treaty of Lyons (1601), 143n55 Treaty of Senlis (1493), 49 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 174 Tresham, Thomas (prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem), 33–­34 conformity, 40 secret attendance at mass, 40 Trinity, 142 Tunstall, Cuthbert (bp. of Durham), 31, 36

clerical marriage, 42 imprisonment of, 39 Oath of Supremacy, 42 papal primacy, 42 Turberville, James (bp. of Exeter), 30n11, 32, 33 conformity, 39 nepotism, 38 Turchini, Angelo, 96–­97

U

Ubaldini, Roberto (cardinal), nuncio to France, 198 United States House of Representatives, ix University of Chicago, 13 urbanism, 82, 83, 84 Utrecht. See under Low Countries

V

Valois, house of, 17 Vespasiano da Bisticci Lives of Illustrious Men of the Fifteenth Century (1480–98), 4–­5, 11 Veysey, John (bp. of Exeter), 31–­32 vicari foranei. See under Barbarigo, Gregorio Viret, Louis, 131–­32, 138 Viret, Pierre, 142 Visconti, house of, 83 Voragine, Jacobus de, Legenda Aurea (ca. 1260), 11

W

Watson, Thomas (bp. of Lincoln), 30, 35 imprisonment of, 39 White, John (bp. of Winchester), 41 imprisonment of, 39 Wolsey, Thomas (cardinal), 30, 35, 50, 58 Wood, Thomas, 28, 35n21 Wotton, Nicholas, 35 Wycliffe, John, 137

X

Xainctonge, Françoise (monastic founder), 161, 163

Y

Yorkshire, 33

Z

Zamet, Sébastien (bp. of Langres), 18, 147–­49, 151–­70 centralization of diocesan control, 162–­64 clerical abuses, 152 clerical residence, 152 deprivation of sacraments, 162, 163 Institut de Saint-­Sacrement, 165–­70 Tridentine reforms, 152, 170 Zanone, Pietro Don (priest of Alano), 178–­85 Zerola, Tommaso (bp. of Minori), 119 Zwingli, Ulrich, 137