Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation 9781472439772, 9781315590707

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Series Editors’s Preface
Juan de Valdés from Spain to Italy
Italy and the Reformation
Valdesianism and the “Spirituali”: An Italian Reformation?
The Radical Heritage
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation

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Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation MASSimO FirPO

Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy Translated by

RiCHarD BaTES

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Massimo Firpo 2015 Massimo Firpo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Firpo, Massimo, author. Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation / By Massimo Firpo. pages cm. – (Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Reformation – Italy. 2. Valdés, Juan de, -1541. 3. Italy – Church history – 16th century. 4. Catholic Church – Italy – History – 16th century. I. Title. BR390.F575 2015 270.6092–dc23 2014033420 ISBN 9781472439772 (hbk) ISBN 9781315590707 (ebk)

Contents Acknowledgements    Foreword   Series Editors’s Preface  

xiii vii xv

I Juan de Valdés from Spain to Italy   1 1. The “Benefit of Christ”   1 2. The Valdés brothers, Erasmian Spain and the “alumbrados”   5 3. The “Diálogo de doctrina christiana,” the Inquisition and the refuge in Italy   16 4. From Rome to Naples: “teacher and pastor of noble and famous people”   30 5. “Wisdom of the perfect”: spiritualism and Nicodemism   41 II Italy and the Reformation   1. Reformation and the vernacular   2. Venice, the “gateway” of the Reformation   3. The diffusion of heresy in Italian cities   4. Modena, “infected with heresy like Prague”   5. Circulation of men and ideas   6. From Erasmus to the “Beneficio di Cristo”  

59 59 67 78 94 103 114

III Valdesianism and the “Spirituali”: An Italian Reformation?   1. After the Sack of Rome   2. “Valdés has infected the whole of Italy”   3. The “Ecclesia viterbiensis” and the “spirituali”   4. A Valdesian Bishop   5. Heresy at the top of the Church and imperial politics  

123 123 131 142 156 165

IV The Radical Heritage   1. Valdesianism, Anabaptism, Anti-Trinitarianism   2. Valdesian connections   3. The European Reformation and Juan de Valdés  

177 177 189 197

Bibliography   Index  

209 249

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Foreword This volume contains the English translation of two essays, the Introduction to the Alfabeto cristiano and other published and unpublished works by Juan de Valdés (Torino: Einaudi, 1994) and a short book on Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Un profilo storico (RomaBari: Laterza, 1993). There has been so much new research on these topics in the last 20 years that it would be impossible to translate them simply as they were without eliminating some repetitions and giving them a more organized structure. So I have tried to bring them together into four distinct chapters, re-written some parts, brought up to date the notes as far as I could, though I have also tried to keep them to a minimum, and I have also summarized some of the results of my other studies on Riforma religiosa e lingua volgare nell’Italia del ‘500 of 2001 (Chap. II.1), Il “Beneficio di Christo” e il concilio di Trento (1542–1546) of 1995 (Chap. III.3), L’eresia del vescovo: il governo pastorale di Vittore Soranzo a Bergamo (1544– 1550) of 2007 (Chap. III.4), and Politica imperiale e vita religiosa in Italia nell’età di Carlo V of 2001 (Chap. III.5). It was not too difficult a task, which makes me hope that the two pieces make up a fairly coherent whole. Without seeking to be exhaustive, I have tried to give an overall picture of how the doctrines deriving from Luther’s rebellion spread and settled south of the Alps, and also how they were changed, taking on various connotations and blending with other religious movements and specific cultural legacies. For this reason it seemed to me best to look at the question in the perspective of an Italian Reformation – however much of a weak minority affair it was – rather than a Reformation in Italy, to use the definition coined by Protestant historians, such as the German Calvinist Daniel Gerdes in his Specimen Italiae reformatae (1765) and the Scottish Presbyterian Thomas McCrie in his History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy (1827), who followed the model of the Acta martyrum presenting the Italian heretics as heroes of a Reformation that failed or was defeated by the Inquisition. This interpretation continued to be rehashed by Italian Protestant historians: from the pastor Jules Bonnet, for example, in his study on Aonio Paleario ossia la Riforma in Italia (1862), or Emilio Comba in his Storia della Riforma in Italia (1881) and the unfinished I nostri protestanti (1895–1897), down to Salvatore Caponetto’s research on Aonio Paleario (1502–1570) e la Riforma protestante in Toscana (1979) and La Riforma protestante nell’Italia

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del Cinquecento (1992). In 1958 an American historian, Frederic Cross Church, published a book on I riformatori italiani, mostly dedicated to the exiles religionis causa.1 The ambitious project of a “Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum,” designed to collect the complete works of the protagonists of these studies, started in 1969, but petered out after a few volumes with the critical edition of the Beneficio di Cristo, some Dialogi by Antonio Brucioli and the works of Camillo Renato and Mino Celsi. Historical categories such as Italian Reformation or Reformation in Italy are far from being neutral, of course, as we cannot speak of the latter without evoking the long discussion during the process of national unification in the nineteenth century on the high price Catholic Italy paid for not having risen to the occasion of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century. In this perspective, that was the moment when the cradle of the Renaissance, the most rich and civilized country in Europe, lost the opportunity to provide itself with one of the fundamental conditions for the economic, political, social and cultural modernization whose leaders were then Victorian England, lord of half the world, and Bismarckian Germany. Whether it could have been avoided or not, the clerical and baroque establishment that took root in the sixteenth century followed the end of “the liberty of Italy” and in both lurked the causes of a historical lag that had begun when Italy became the battlefield of continuous wars between France and Spain, was subjected to foreign domination, exhausted its great Renaissance culture and its European primacy and gradually became more and more marginal, divided, provincial and lazily immobilized in its moral and civil apathy, unable to free itself from its perennial subjection to popes and priests in a sort of long and never exhausted Counter-Reformation. Hence arose the idea of the Reformation in Italy as a missed opportunity, one of the many bemoaned by historians unable to accept the Machiavellian “effective truth of the thing”. From the other side of a still controversial national identity, Catholic historians have always celebrated the Council of Trent and the Catholic Reformation as a positive response to the Protestant Reformation and as a fundamental milestone in the history of the Church and even of western modernity.2 That of course tends to water down the repressive and authoritarian aspects of the Counter-Reformation in the unifying mists of a “social disciplining” in both northern and southern Europe by states and churches of every kind. It is worth emphasizing that this neo-apologetic vision seems to be prevailing most of all in England and America, with the 1

  On the historiographical question, the reader is referred to my Introduction to Tedeschi (ed.), The Italian Reformation; see also Peyronel, Cinquant’anni di storiografia; Biagetti, Il mito della “Riforma italiana.” 2   Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino.

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explicit intention of laying aside the old historical categories of Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation to replace them with an anodyne and misleading “early modern Catholicism,”3 that neuters the role of the Holy Office, underlining its mildness in strictly juridical terms,4 and insists on the crucial role of the Council of Trent in Catholic reform, ignoring the growing evidence of the gaps, delays and failures of the so-called postTridentine renewal.5 Of course, something has remained of the political conflicts and civil passions of the history of the Risorgimento in the lay tradition that since then has been trying to help Italy free itself of its subordination to the Holy See. But the choice in favor of the Italian Reformation instead of the Reformation in Italy does not originate in ideological grounds, but from historical research, as scholarship has gradually revealed the specific Italian features of the “Lutheran Erasmus” that emerged from the trials of the Inquisition,6 the crucial role of the Spanish exile Juan de Valdés in Italian religious dissent of the first half of the sixteenth century7, the particular features of Italian Anabaptism,8 the anti-Calvinist polemics of some refugees in Switzerland, their battles in defense of tolerance after the death at the stake of Miguel Servet in Geneva in 1553 and the origins of Anti-Trinitarianism, which later flowed into the Socinian tradition. It was the Italian exiles who were the protagonists of the short summary of the Riforma italiana, published in 1985 by the Swiss scholar Manfred Welti,9 who followed Delio Cantimori and his Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, which traced an extraordinarily rich account of Italian radicalism in Reformation Europe,10 although its roots in the country’s religious culture remained somewhat obscure. Indeed, Cantimori only started to investigate this question in the last years of his life, though, unfortunately, he died before his work could be concluded.11 Obviously, I don’t mean by this to deny that in Italy too in the mid sixteenth century there were Protestant groups and movements, both Lutheran and Calvinist, sometimes organized as authentic Ecclesiae, but only to point out that they do not reflect 3

 O’Malley, Trent and all That.  See, for example, Godman, The Saint as Censor; or Black, The Italian Inquisition. 5   McClung Hallman, Italian Cardinals; Menniti Ippolito, 1664; Rosa, La Curia romana; Mancino, Romeo, Clero criminale. 6  Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia. 7   See below, pp. 30ff. 8   See below, pp. 177ff. 9  Welti, Breve storia. 10  Cantimori, Eretici. 11  Cantimori, Prospettive, and his essays Il circolo and Le idee religiose. See also Prosperi, Introduction to Cantimori, Eretici, and Firpo, Per una discussione. 4

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either the complexity or the most original elements of Italian religious dissent during the Council of Trent. If we try to place this dissent in the framework of confessional categories, we risk missing some essential elements of those troubled decades that cannot be reduced to an uneven clash between grim inquisitors and heroic martyrs of the faith, forgetting the tangle of curiosities, uncertainties, anxieties, proposals, hopes and fears that developed around the new religious doctrines and the individual or collective conflicts to which they gave rise. We also risk missing the specific nature of religious attitudes that, in Italy more than elsewhere, were interwoven with the crisis of the Church as such, with different and shortly conflicting ideas on what a Catholic reform had to be, and at the same time (however contradictory it may seem) with the theological radicalism of the Italian exiles. In short, there are underlying links between the religious experience of a great cardinal such as Reginald Pole, papal legate at the Council of Trent, last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury and execrated persecutor of the English Protestants under Bloody Mary, and that of the no less execrated heretics such as Bernardino Ochino and Valentino Gentile. I have tried to display these links in the following pages, bringing out how their origins and developments connected not just North and South, the Protestant countries and Catholic Italy, but also East and West, Spain and Italy, through the crucial role of the teaching of Juan de Valdés. During his sojourn in Naples from 1535 to 1541 he became a charismatic master of Christian life, a reference point for all who knew him and experienced his ability to provide a deeply religious response that was open to the most various (and subversive) doctrinal implications, but which was always hidden and protected by an elusive Nicodemitic mask. Drawing on Erasmian, Lutheran, and alumbrados influences, his spiritualism inspired his admirers in many different ways and led to surprising combinations of men and ideas, giving a new religious identity to ordinary people as well as to high-ranking prelates such as the Cardinal of England, whose house was the scene of the preparation for the press of the Italian Reformation’s best-seller, the Beneficio di Cristo, and also sparking off radical religious experiences such as Ochino’s and Gentile’s, one of whom died among the Moravian Anabaptists and the other on the scaffold in Berne for his blasphemous anti-Trinitarian heresies. These particular cases recall the role of Cantimori’s “heretics,” who rebelled not against any particular Christian denomination but against the very idea of orthodoxy, as Antonio Rotondò’s important studies have also shown.12 In any case, both Protestant and radical Italian exiles marked a further circulation of ideas 12  Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale and his critical editions Renato, Opere and Sozzini, Opere. See also Tedeschi, The Cultural Contributions.

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from South to North, from Italy to Switzerland and from there not only to Moravia, Poland and Transylvania but also to France, the Low Countries and England, while Valdés’ doctrines were severely condemned both by the Holy Office in Rome and by the pastors of Geneva. The image and myth of Valdés as a fearsome “hydra,” ready to generate new “heads of heresy,”13 went on disturbing the sleep of the inquisitors for decades, as the trials revealed how that “Lutheran driven out of Spain,” that “great heretic of various heresies,” that “inventor of new erroneous ideas,”14 had contaminated the whole land, staining even bishops, archbishops and cardinals such as Reginald Pole and Giovanni Morone who came within an ace of being seated on the papal throne itself in the troubled conclaves of 1549–50 and 1555.15 It was not only the inquisitors who saw it this way, prisoners as they were of a conspiratorial and devilish image of heresy, but even a devout disciple of Valdés such as Pietro Carnesecchi, who in the early 1550s did not hide from Endimio Calandra in Venice that his heterodox “opinions” had been and were still shared by “great and learned men” that included “the first … in Italy.”16 From the many sources available, starting with the Inquisition’s trials, Valdés’ role emerges so clearly that it can no longer be considered as symbolic of our ignorance, though this does not mean we need to turn him into a kind of demiurge, an “expert puppet-master” who was holding “all the strings of the reforming movement.”17 On the contrary, we need to distinguish between Juan de Valdés and Valdesianism, or rather the many shapes of Valdesianism that drew on his religious thinking, leading to individual developments of all kinds, some destined to remain inside the Church of Rome or turn toward Calvinism, and also toward the most extreme radicalism, taking Anti-Trinitarian, Anabaptist or prophetic forms, and sometimes even denying the very foundations of the Christian religion. Nor should we ignore the difference between the Valdesian faith of some secluded communities of learned literary men and sophisticated noblewomen and the Valdesian faith that could not avoid taking on a political dimension when it was professed by bishops, archbishops and cardinals with serious institutional and pastoral tasks, or that inspired the printing of books for a wider public such as the Beneficio di Cristo which, together with the Alfabeto cristiano, was the most effective means of

13

 Bobadilla, Gesta et scripta, p. 18.  Lopez, Il movimento valdesiano, pp. 170, 172. 15  Firpo, La presa di potere, pp. 3ff. 16   Pagano, Il processo, pp. 296, 344. 17   Ginzburg, Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza, p. 51. 14

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proselytism that his disciples produced.18 Many possible paths intersected in the maze of the Italian Reformation, which this book seeks to outline. MASSIMO FIRPO Turin-Pisa, January 2014

18

 So far as I know, it does not seem to me that further research has confirmed the judgment that this famous little book, “however we interpret it, cannot be described as Valdesian” (Ginzburg, Prosperi, Juan de Valdés, p. 192).

Acknowledgements I wish to express my deep gratitude to Giorgio Caravale, who first suggested this book, to Luca Addante and Stefania Pastore for their valuable help, to Richard Bates and to Chris Warner for the translation, to Barbara Spender for the editing and to the Italian publishers of the books here brought together for their permission of this new edition in English.

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Series Editors’s Preface Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700 counter-balances the traditional, still-influential understanding of medieval (or Catholic) and reformation (or Protestant) religious history that has long resulted in neglect of the middle ground, both chronological and ideological. Continuities between the middle ages and early modern Europe remain overlooked or underestimated, in contrast to the radical discontinuities, and in studies of the later period especially, the identification of ‘reformation’ with various kinds of Protestantism too often leaves evidence of the vitality and creativity of the Catholic church, whether in its Roman or local manifestations, out of account. The series therefore covers all varieties of religious behavior, broadly interpreted, not just (or even mainly) traditional institutional and doctrinal church history, and is to the maximum degree possible interdisciplinary, comparative and global, as well as non-confessional. The goal is to understand religion, primarily of the ‘Catholic’ variety, as a broadly human phenomenon, rather than as a privileged mode of access to superhuman realms, even implicitly. The period covered, 1300–1700, embraces the moment which saw an almost complete transformation of the place of religion in the life of Europeans, whether considered as a system of beliefs, as an institution, or as a set of social and cultural practices. In 1300, vast numbers of Europeans, from the pope down, fully expected Jesus’s return and the beginning of His reign on earth. By 1700, very few Europeans, of whatever level of education, would have subscribed to such chiliastic beliefs. Pierre Bayle’s notorious sarcasms about signs and portents are not idiosyncratic. Likewise, in 1300 the vast majority of Europeans probably regarded the pope as their spiritual head; the institution he headed was probably the most tightly integrated and effective bureaucracy in Europe. Most Europeans were at least nominally Christian, and the pope had at least nominal knowledge of that fact. The papacy, as an institution, played a central role in high politics, and the clergy in general formed an integral part of most governments, whether central or local. By 1700, Europe was divided into a myriad of different religious allegiances, and even those areas officially subordinate to the pope were both more nominally Catholic in belief (despite colossal efforts at imposing uniformity) and also in allegiance than they had been four hundred years earlier. The pope had become only one political factor, and not one of the first rank. The clergy,

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for its part, had virtually disappeared from secular governments as well as losing much of its local authority. The stage was set for the Enlightenment.

Thomas F. Mayer Founding Series Editor

CHAPTER I

Juan de Valdés from Spain to Italy 1. The “Benefit of Christ” In 1544, under the title of Compendio d’errori et inganni luterani contenuti in un libretto senza nome de l’autore, intitolato “Trattato utilissimo del benefitio di Christo crocifisso,” a pungent treatise appeared, first in Rome and then in Brescia, in which the Sienese Dominican Ambrogio Catarino Politi inaugurated a new season of anti-Protestant polemic. He was not attacking the writings of the North European reformers but a work written and published in Italian and so aimed at a wider public than professional theologians, whose monopoly of scriptural interpretation it called into question. The new possibilities of communication and proselytism offered by the press meant religious debate had overflowed into the streets and squares of every city, where it now seemed permissible for everyone, “even cobblers,” to discuss theology and challenge papal authority.1 As well as the Compendio, Catarino also published a Resolutione sommaria contra le conclusioni luterane estratte d’un simil libretto senza autore intitolato Il sommario de la sacra Scrittura – a response to the Italian translation of a heretical work from Flanders – and a Reprobatione de la dottrina di frate Bernardino Ochino, a confutation of a pamphlet of the previous year in which the famous Sienese Capuchin had clearly set out the reformed doctrine and explained the reasons for his flight to Geneva in 1542. In 1548, almost as if he wished to trace the origins of these heresies, he also fulminated against the “presumptuous, insolent and curious, erroneous, vain and mendacious … damned and shameless” doctrine of his fellow Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola.2 In short, there was an invasion of heterodox books and booklets, which forced Politi to abandon the Latin that he had used so far in his anti-Lutheran writings to attack those who deceived “with perversions of the Scriptures the wretched, illiterate rabble,” eager to embrace heresies hidden behind the mask of “diabolical freedom” and “things pleasant to the flesh.” Not surprisingly, as a zealous custodian of orthodoxy, he saw the message of Christian freedom, of trusting oneself to the “general pardon” offered by the sacrifice of the 1 2

 Negri, Della tragedia, p. [K6]r.  Politi, Discorso, p. [v]rv.

2

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cross, as the most devious aspect of the Beneficio di Cristo, the kernel of its “spirit … simulating a zeal for truth and a thirst for the health of one’s soul, composing honeyed and sugared words, but covering a poison so deadly that their life is lost for those who drink it.”3 That “sweet pamphlet” had appeared in Venice in 1543, on the occasion of the first, failed convocation of the Council of Trent, a time of great hopes and expectations for the regeneration of the Church, which had long been invoked and always blocked by the resistance of the Curia. However, for only a decade after the tragedy of the Sack of Rome in 1527 had there been some sign of change. High-profile personalities were called to the Sacred College to make the commitment to renewal credible, set out the project of the Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia of 1536, make some reforms of the discredited papal offices (particularly the Datary and the Penitentiary) and provide support to the diplomatic effort necessary to set in motion the Council that Paul III had at last called − figures such as Gasparo Contarini in 1535, Gian Pietro Carafa, Iacopo Sadoleto and Reginald Pole in 1536, Pietro Bembo, Federico Fregoso and Marcello Cervini in 1539, Giovanni Morone, Tommaso Badia and Gregorio Cortese in 1542. Differences soon emerged in this generally reforming group and its members began to argue not only over the content, priorities and methods of the hoped-for reforms but, above all, over the attitude to be assumed in the face of the spread of heresy south of the Alps. These differences were already clear in the late 1530s and they swiftly worsened, to the point of creating bitter conflicts in the Sacred College that merged with traditional political rivalries in the wider European political scene, partly in view of a probably imminent papal succession. On the one hand, the group led by Carafa (willing to come to terms with the curial party hostile to reform4) sought to strengthen the institutional Church with a view to a fierce attack on heretics (“heretics should be treated as heretics,” he had written in 15325). This would be handled mainly by the Roman Inquisition (formally founded in 1542), which would guarantee the success of this strategy in the future. On the other, there was the group led by Contarini, embracing various approaches and open to dialog and conciliation with the Protestant Reformation. The bilious polemics that accompanied Contarini’s political failure at Regensburg in 1541 (the last attempt to reach agreement between the moderates on both sides under the auspices of the Emperor) marked the decline of this group, which was now divided and partly involved in more radical religious choices under the guidance of Cardinal Reginald Pole. 3  Politi, Compendio, pp. 347–9; on Ambrogio Catarino Politi see Caravale, Sulle tracce dell’eresia. 4  Aubert, Alle origini, pp. 32ff. 5   CT, 12, pp. 647ff.

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On returning to Italy from Germany in late 1541, Contarini had to accept with regret this change of direction, which was evident in the failure of his attempts to make common cause with Pole and to escape the isolation in which he remained till his death in Bologna in August 1542, immediately after the setting up of the Holy Office, the first provisions against heresy in Naples, Lucca and Modena and the flight to Switzerland of famous preachers such as Bernardino Ochino and Pier Martire Vermigli.6 A few weeks later, Pole, together with the Milanese Cardinal Giovanni Morone (whose friendship with him dates from this period and was based on a common ground of religious doctrine), was sent by Paul III to preside over the first convocation of the Council of Trent, where he wasted the next few months in the vain hope that a peace between France and Spain would allow the episcopal assembly to begin its work. In publishing the Compendio, however, Politi was unaware (or feigned being so) that the Beneficio di Cristo had been prepared for the press by a famous humanist, Marcantonio Flaminio,7 in the summer of the previous year in Pole’s residence in Viterbo. Contarini had discovered this a few days before dying, when he received in Bologna a manuscript copy of the treatise and, as soon as he started reading it, realized that it “went beyond the limit.”8 He had noticed in the previous months that Pole was becoming more distant and the reasons for this must now have become clearer and more alarming. But what neither he nor Politi may have realized was the ideological and political significance of the printed edition of the text, which was now no longer circulating clandestinely but was available in thousands of copies throughout Italy as a kind of manifesto of the religious position of two Council legates and the group of men of letters, prelates and aristocrats that was gathered around them. It was a position that would both give Catholic legitimacy to doctrines that were the very core of the Reformation, thus offering a credible berth for the religious ferments and dissident groups that were springing up throughout the peninsula, and also influence the work of the episcopal assembly, indicating a way of reconciling the theological conflicts that were tearing Europe apart. This explains the absence in the Beneficio di Cristo of any polemical tone against the Church’s errors and abuses, against its hierarchy and its doctrines (mass, sacraments, purgatory, adoration of the saints, cult of images, vows, indulgences, papal authority), while offering a positive vision – with “honeyed and sugared” words, as Politi had denounced it – of the liberating significance of the doctrine of justification by faith and 6

  See below, pp. 146ff.  On him, see Pastore, Marcantonio Flaminio; Pastore, Toffoli (eds.), Marcantonio Flaminio; Flaminio, Lettere; Flaminio, Apologia. 8   Processi Carnesecchi, 1, p. 5. 7

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the “most sweet predestination” with which every Christian is called to become a “citizen of heaven:” “What consolation or joy in this life can be compared to what is experienced by the man who feels oppressed by the intolerable weight of his own sins, when he hears such gentle and sweet words from the Son of God, who so graciously promises to refresh him and to free him from that heavy weight?”9 It errs and deceives where it says that the justice of Christ and life eternal through Christ have come to us without our doing. It errs, I say, because, though the justice of Christ has come to us without our doing, nevertheless life eternal in paradise will not come to us without us or our righteous works.

This was Politi’s reply, following one by one the claims of the Beneficio and unhesitatingly placing them on the same level as the doctrines of “Luther and Melanchthon and others of the sect,” which were openly denounced in the very title of the Compendio d’errori e inganni luterani. An attack of this kind could not go unanswered on the eve of a new convocation of the Council, and not just for the harshness with which it condemned as “false, erroneous and heretical” that “sweet doctrine of freedom and predestination,”10 but also because some, at least, of its schematic attacks, such as the claim that the text was Lutheran, were wide of the mark. The Council opened in Trent on 13 December 1545, still presided over by Reginald Pole who was now flanked by Giovanni Maria Del Monte and Marcello Cervini. As soon as he read Politi’s book, Flaminio set about writing an Apologia of the Beneficio di Cristo but got no further than a general introduction,11 after which he realized that answering the Dominican’s confutation point by point, countering biblical quotation with biblical quotation, father of the Church with father of the Church, would have meant accepting its poor controversial logic. It would have meant renouncing the essential core of a religious position that accepted some doctrines of the Reformation, while shunning any condemnation of the theological teaching and institutional structure of the Catholic Church. And so the Apologia remained unfinished and unpublished, cautiously circulating only among Flaminio’s most trusted friends. Instead of offering a doctrinal reply, the so-called Ecclesia Viterbiensis, grouped around Pole, chose a different path to reproduce the message of the Beneficio di Cristo: this was, first and foremost, a new edition of the treatise, reprinted in 9

 The critical edition of the text is in Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo; I quote from the English translation by Prelowski, The “Beneficio di Cristo”, pp. 51, 84–5. On this book, see below, pp. 118ff. 10  Politi, Compendio, pp. 351, 357. 11  Flaminio, Apologia, pp. 7ff.

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Venice in 1546, along with other texts that the spirituali (as they were then known) had meditated on in the preceding years, finding in them a way to solve the profound crisis that had been created by acceptance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as well as by the desire to safeguard the unity of the Church. These were some of the works written in Italy by the Spanish exile Juan de Valdés and published anonymously for the first time in 1545–6 − the Alfabeto cristiano, the short catechism Qual maniera si devrebbe tenere a informare insino dalla fanciullezza i figliuoli de’ christiani delle cose della religione and the collection of writings by Valdés and Flaminio Modo che si dee tenere ne l’insegnare et predicare il principio della religione christiana. These works reproduced both the religious content and the language of the Beneficio, whose original text (later revised and corrected by Flaminio in Viterbo in the summer of 1542) had been written around 1540 in Naples by the Benedictine Benedetto Fontanini, a “friend” of both Valdés and Flaminio.12 But who was this Spanish exile? What was his religious thinking based on and where was it heading? What were the roots and the substance of his spirituality? How and when had his doctrines begun to circulate in Italy, offering a response to religious anxieties that were widespread in the cities at every level of society, among the heterodox communities of the whole country, from Modena to Palermo, from Siena to Calabria, from Bologna to Otranto, among the nobility and aristocratic ladies, among schoolmasters, devotees of Erasmus and poor illiterates, among wealthy merchants and humble craftsmen, among ecclesiastics and the laity, and among celebrated preachers, bishops and cardinals with the highest political and pastoral responsibilities? 2. The Valdés brothers, Erasmian Spain and the “alumbrados” Juan de Valdés came from a remarkably complex cultural, political and religious background. He was born in the late fifteenth century at Cuenca in La Mancha into a family of conversos, heirs to a Jewish tradition that was still alive, especially on his mother’s side, one of her brothers – the parish priest Fernando de la Barrera – having been burnt at the stake in 1491 for Judaizing practices. His father, Fernando, regidor of the city from 1482 to 1520 (ten years before his death) and its representative at the Castilian Cortes, whose family was part of the city’s hidalguia, also had to undergo the humiliation of being penitenciado as an “enemy of the Inquisition,” as did his son Andrés, who succeeded him in his position, which was later

12

  Processo Morone, 1, pp. 242–3; Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 170–71.

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passed on to Andrés’ descendants.13 Juan de Valdés grew up in the Spain of Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, former confessor of Queen Isabel, Archbishop of Toledo, Supreme Inquisitor and twice regent of the kingdom. Cisneros was not only the man behind the Franciscan reform and the founder of the University of Alcalá de Henares, where theological teaching was removed from the Thomist monopoly of Salamanca, but also the promoter of that monument of biblical knowledge and humanist philology that was the Poliglotta complutense. It was the Spain of the young Charles of Hapsburg’s succession to the throne in 1516, three years before being elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as well: it was the new center of European politics, looking out on Italy, the splendid autumn of whose Renaissance was accompanied by the “horrible wars” which marked the sunset of its political autonomy, on the Flanders of the rich mercantile cities, the great artists and the knightly tradition of Burgundy, on the Germany that was about to be shattered by the Reformation, on the Mediterranean, where Spain was called on to face its ancient Islamic foe and Ottoman power and on the Atlantic and the New World, not only sources of increasing financial resource but boundless spaces in which to exercise its messianic task of the defense and enlargement of Christianity. It was the great Erasmian Spain, not yet dominated by the Inquisition or the obsession with the limpieza de sangre, shaken by the revolt of the Castilian comuneros, but able to use its multiform identities in its response to the new, a crossroads of men, cultures, energies and projects. Juan de Valdés’ twin brother Alfonso had had a brilliant career in the Imperial Chancellery in the service of Mercurino da Gattinara, becoming Charles V’s Latin secretary and right-hand man,14 with the task of writing the letter of August 2 1527 to the Christian princes giving the official Hapsburg version of the Sack of Rome and denying any responsibility for the massacres, profanations and pillage that had been perpetrated by that horde of undisciplined troops.15 Nevertheless, the dramatic nature of those events and their symbolic value, which seemed like the fulfillment of a prophecy, required a more considered reflection that could seize its authentic meaning beyond any immediate political considerations, the contingencies of war and the excesses of a soldiery drunk on blood and plunder. It was this reflection that led in the following months to Alfonso 13

  For Valdés’ biography see Nieto, Juan de Valdés; Kinder, Juan de Valdés; Jiménez Monteserín, La familia Valdés, and Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance, though the latter is not without errors. 14   See the documents published by Caballero, Conquénses, 4, pp. 309–10, 319–21 and Headley, The Emperor and his Chancellor. 15  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 247ff, 395ff; Longhurst, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 7ff; Donald, Lázaro, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 198ff.

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de Valdés’ Diálogo de las cosas ocurridas en Roma, finished in the summer of 1527, in the weeks in which the clash between Erasmus’ supporters and enemies at the Conference of Valladolid ended with the uncertain success of the former, thanks to the favor of Charles V, Gattinara and the Supreme Inquisitor Alfonso Manrique, who would shortly become a cardinal. Although it remained unpublished, the piece was at once accused of heresy and sharply attacked by the papal nuncio Baldassarre Castiglione, who denounced its pages as “totally blasphemous” and their author as an “impudent renegade, sacrilegious, a fury from hell.”16 But Valdés was undaunted and, in 1528 and 1529, worked intermittently on the draft of another similar pamphlet, the Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón, conceived as part of a more general defense of imperial policy against the intrigue and bullying of the Franco-papal alliance. Their significance went well beyond the contingencies of politics, however. Both in their literary form and in their severe anti-Roman polemic drawing on reformist arguments, both texts explicitly recalled the teaching of Erasmus, with whom Alfonso de Valdés had been corresponding in the spring of 1527. His admiration for the great humanist was shared by many in the imperial chancellery in that period and it was later to become a warm friendship.17 On September 1 of the previous year, Juan Maldonado had informed Erasmus from Burgos of the great success his works were enjoying in Spain, where many were reading the as yet unpublished translation of the Colloquia18 and the Enchiridion militis christiani had been published with the approval of the Suprema, while in January 1527 there appeared a Castilian translation of it by the Archdeacon of Alcor, Alfonso Fernández. For his part, in a letter of November 13 1527, Fernández informed Erasmus of the enthusiasm that his pamphlet had aroused in the imperial court, in the cities, churches and monasteries, although its adversaries – starting with the friars – did not miss the opportunity angrily to denounce its “thousand heresies.”19 In the first and most closely argued of the two works, a dialog between Lactancio and an Archdeacon, Alfonso de Valdés chose a dual register to show both how Charles V could not take any of the blame for what had 16  Castiglione, Opere, 2, pp. 171ff; on the conference of Valladolid see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 253ff; Avilés Fernández, Erasmo. 17  Erasmi, Opus, 7, pp. 25–6, 52, 89–92, 250–52, 266, 430–32. On Valdés, described as “a devoted follower of Erasmus” by a correspondent from Anvers and “more Erasmian than Erasmus” by an inquisitor who later censored his Diálogos, see Caballero, Conquénses, 4, p. 326; Donald, Lázaro, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 275ff. 18  Erasmi, Opus, 6, p. 393. 19   Ibid., 7, p. 244–5; see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 205ff, 301ff. “Nothing sells better in Spain than Erasmus’ writings, despite the monks, who never stop making a fuss about them,” wrote Alfonso de Valdés on 12 March 1527 (Caballero, Conquénses, 4, pp. 324, 335ff; Donald, Lázaro, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 308ff.

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happened in the course of a war that he had tried to prevent at all costs, defending peace against the provocations of his enemies and also how the sack of the papal city had been allowed, indeed desired, by God for the good of Christendom: It was God’s judgment which brought about the punishment of that city. God realized that the Christian religion was being disgraced by the incredible wickedness practiced so widely there. He intended that Christendom should wake up and clean its house so that we could live again like the Christians we’re so proud to be.20

It was, in short, a fully-fledged invective that did not simply attack the abuses, corruption, simony and ignorance that reigned in the ecclesiastical hierarchy but drew on Erasmus’ lesson to condemn as superstitious the cult of relics and images of the saints. But in his passionate request of reforms in capite et in membris Alfonso de Valdés also mentioned Luther, together with Erasmus, as sent by God to recall humanity and the Church to their duty after remaining deaf to any admonishment: The numerous vices of that Roman court were corrupting God’s children, who not only were not learning Christian doctrine from their supposed teachers but were being taught a vastly different way of life. God saw that nothing availed to make them reform – neither prophets, evangelists nor the many saintly Church doctors who in their writings condemned vice and praised virtue so that the wicked might be converted to live like Christians. And so God sought new ways to bring them to their duties. Besides the many good teachers and preachers He had sent in the past, He now sent that excellent man Erasmus of Rotterdam. And Erasmus, writing with eloquence, prudence, and modesty exposed the vices and deceptions not only of the Roman court but of all ecclesiastics in general. One would think that Erasmus alone would have been enough to force the wicked to reform, if only through shame of what he said about them. But no; your vices and evil ways increase every day. So God decided to try to reform you by another method. He permitted Martin Luther to rise among you. This friar not only publicized all your vices in a most disrespectful way but he also turned many persons away from their prelates.21

20

  I quote from Longhurst, Alfonso de Valdés, p. 25.   Ibid., p. 51. Already in 1520 Valdés had written to Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, telling him of the great success Luther’s protest was having in the German world, and he witnessed his refusal to withdraw the following year at the Diet of Worms (Caballero, Conquénses, 4, pp. 292ff; see Donald, Lázaro, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 150, 249ff). 21

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It is no surprise, then, that an accusation of heresy should before long reach the author of such a piece, “six times Lutheran,”22 capable of polluting the whole of Spain. In 1531, when a copy was seized by the Inquisitor of Murcia in the home of Diego de Valdés, Alfonso’s brother and canon of Cartagena, the theologian who examined the text judged it to be offensive to the Pope, rash in attributing the tragedy of the Sack to a manifest divine judgment, and deeply suspicious in its comments on the relics and images of the saints: “That is how the Lutheran business began,” he concluded.23 At that time, in a rapidly changing climate, it was claimed that not even the Emperor would have been able to avert his secretary’s condemnation,24 and only his departure from Valladolid with the court in 1529 (at the same time as the condemnation of his brother, as we shall see) and his sudden death in Wien in 1532 saved him from the Inquisition.25 It was not just the peace treaties signed by Charles V with Clement VII and Francis I in 1529 that confined to manuscript circulation the two Diálogos, which had now been overtaken by the new political context. More important were the first suspicions of heresy brought against the works. They would be published much later (probably in Venice around 1543), in a period of new conflicts between Charles V and the Roman court following the failure of Regensburg and the convocation of the Council; four more reprints would soon appear, they too without any indication of the printer.26 Shortly after, in late 1545 or early 1546 (at the same time as the reprint of the Beneficio di Cristo and the editions of Valdés mentioned above) an Italian translation was published, which accentuated the anti-Roman polemic in doctrinal terms too27 (and six more editions appeared before 1555). The translator was Giovanni Antonio Clario from Eboli, who had been a follower of Juan de Valdés in Naples, where he was prosecuted for heresy and forced to recant in 1547,28 and it is likely that the initiative of printing

22

 Caballero, Conquénses, 4, pp. 432–4.   See the introduction to Valdés, Diálogo de las cosas, pp. 161–4. 24   Francisco de Enzinas, who had been imprisoned in Brussels since 1543, claimed in his Mémoires, 2, p. 154, that the Inquisition would have had Valdés killed if he returned to Spain and that not even the Emperor could stop it (Longhurst, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 13ff). 25  The change in the cultural climate can be seen in his correspondence with Erasmus to whom on March 15, before embarking for Barcelona, Alfonso mentioned the severe attacks on his dialog on the Sack of Rome, which was now circulating in Spain despite his refusal to publish it and, in particular, Castiglione’s accusation that he was a “heretic and Lutheran” (Erasmi, Opus, 8, pp. 169–74; see pp. 67–8, 89–96, 241–2). 26   See the introduction to Valdés, Due dialoghi, pp. XIff. 27   See, for instance, ibid., pp. 296–7, 332–3, 339–40, 344–5. 28  Ricciardi, Clario. 23

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the two Diálogos was encouraged by the Habsburg ambassador in Venice, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, a supporter of a vigorous anti-papal policy.29 This, then, was the background against which the young Juan de Valdés’ mind was formed, when Spain’s involvement in the imperial politics of Charles V was bound up with the central questions in Erasmus’ teaching: the renewal of the Church, the Reformation and peace. His brother was a leading figure in all this but a deep and lasting effect was left on him by his experience in 1523–34, when he was still a young man, in Escalona, where his father had sent him to the court of the old Marquis of Villena, Don Diego López Pacheco, perhaps hoping to introduce him to an influential social circuit that would allow him to follow in Alfonso’s footsteps. The nobleman’s palace had been the scene of prophecies of an imminent religious regeneration by the Franciscans Juan de Olmillos and Francisco de Ocaña, while in 1527 Francisco de Osuna, the mystic of recogimiento, dedicated his Tercera parte del libro llamado abecedario espiritual to the Marquis.30 But, more importantly, here were held the biblical readings of their successor among the santos whom the Marquis received at Escalona,31 the contador Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, a leading exponent of the most radical alumbradismo, a simple layman dismissed as “ignorant” but by no means religiously illiterate,32 married with children and the son of a baker from Guadalajara of a converso family. Alcaraz had reached Escalona in the spring of 1523 after serving for many years with the Count of Priego and after short stays at Pastrana, where he had met Gaspar de Bedoya and Francisco Ortiz and at Valladolid, where he had been in touch with the beata Francisca Hernández. Among his listeners in the Marquis of Villena’s palace, the young Juan de Valdés was so attentive that Alcaraz’s wife later suggested that the Inquisition hear his testimony.33 In late April, in fact, shortly after leaving Escalona, Alcaraz was arrested by order of the court of Toledo and five years later was finally condemned to life imprisonment. Isabel de la Cruz and Gaspar de Bedoya met with a similar fate. Soon after the arrest, in May, the general chapter of the Franciscans of Toledo, who were hostile to Alcaraz because of his sharp polemics against Francisca Hernández and the visionaries Olmillos and Ocaña, 29

  On him see González Palencia, Mele, Vida y obras; Spivakovski, Son of the Alhambra; Bunes Ibarra, Carlos V, Venecia; Pastore, Una Spagna anti-papale. 30  Andrés Martín, Los recogidos, pp. 107ff. 31   In a letter to Erasmus of June 20 1527 Alfonso de Valdés wrote that the Marquis of Villena, a “figure of great prestige among the Spanish aristocracy for his dignity, wisdom, wealth, seriousness and religious rigor, is extremely fond of you. … With protectors like him, Erasmus, you cannot fail to win” (Erasmi, Opus, 7, p. 92). 32   Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, p. 6; but see Kinder “Ydiota i sin letras.” 33   Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, pp. 129–30.

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called for the repression of the “scandalous fantasies of those who claim to be enlightened or abandoned,” the so-called dejados. In September of the following year, the Inquisitor General, Alfonso Manrique, published a severe edict of condemnation based on the court’s bulky documentation.34 Quite apart from the historical events and the main forms of alumbradismo (“the only original and constantly Spanish heresy”35) we cannot dwell here on the small group that had formed around Alcaraz and the spiritual teaching in which he had been initiated more than ten years earlier at Guadalajara by Isabel de la Cruz. This Franciscan tertiary “of great spirit”36 would be described in 1527 as the main guide of the alumbrados, who “had placed themselves under her authority and teaching.” As early as 1519–20, not only Alcaraz, but also María de Cazalla (who was in turn tried by the Inquisition in the early 1530s, charged with “preaching and teaching a doctrine in such a way as is permitted only to learned clerics”37) claimed to recognize “more authority in Isabel de la Cruz than in St Paul and all the saints.”38 Alumbradismo, then, was a religious movement that preceded Luther’s protest and the diffusion of his writings, which began to circulate in Spain only in the summer of 1524, after the arrest of Pedro and Isabel (under accusation since 1519), who would in any case have found them hard going, knowing neither Latin nor German. Nevertheless, mainly because of the common message 34   Homza (ed.), The Spanish Inquisition, pp. 80–92; Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 229–38; see González Novalín, La Inquisición española, pp. 146ff; Ortega Costa, Las proposiciones, pp. 23–36. 35   Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 61; Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 105ff; Pastore, Los alumbrados castellanos, pp. 61ff; see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 179ff; Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 102ff; Hamilton, Heresy. 36  Hamilton, El proceso, pp. 54, 61, 78. 37   See Longhurst, La beata Isabel de la Cruz, pp. 297, 300; Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost, pp. 91ff. Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 62, describes her as “the true mother and teacher of all the alumbrados of Toledo”; see also Nieto’s essays The Heretical Alumbrados, L’hérésie des alumbrados, El carácter no místico, and his monograph Juan de Valdés, pp. 565–84, where he insists on the non-mystical character of alumbradismo, against the opinion of Márquez, Juan de Valdés, pp. 220ff, shared also by Olivari, La spiritualità, p. 194. 38  Ortega Costa, Proceso, pp. 31–4, 60, 64, 66, 110, 129, 132, 137 (where it emerges that the accused denied ever granting “more authority to Isabel de la Cruz than to the saints”), 165–6, 442–56, 462, 498–500; see pp. 47, 87, 131, 138, 163: “María de Cazalla said she had never known a spirit closer to her own than that of Isabel de la Cruz and Alcaraz.” Her brother Juan de Cazalla, the Franciscan bishop and former chaplain of Cardinal Cisneros, had claimed that “his sister was the guide of the alumbrados of Pastrana and Guadalajara” (ibid., p. 74; see pp. 154–5, 168). Cazalla, whom only his death in 1530 saved from the charge of being yet another “close friend of the alumbrados” (Ortega Costa, Proceso, p. 73) was the author of a “short treatise on the benefices and favors enjoyed by a man who is welcomed by the generous hand of God” (Cazalla, Lunbre del alma, p. 55) published in Valladolid in 1528; on her see also Andrés Martín, Los recogidos, pp. 238ff.

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of Christian freedom, with its subversive implications against orthodoxy and ecclesiastical authority (“they said they were teaching Christian liberty and freeing ordinary people of many burdensome duties”39), the errors of the alumbrados soon appeared “very similar” to Luther’s,40 to the point of coinciding with them, as was claimed in 1533 in the charges formulated by the Holy Office against Juan de Vergara.41 “They most certainly smelt of Luther,” wrote Juan Maldonado in 1534,42 echoed shortly after by fray Luis de Maluenda, who denounced the ignorant “silly women” who dared to tackle those difficult texts under the teaching of dubious friars and artless lay-folk and were making themselves “masters and mistresses of secret groups.”43 The origins of this religious radicalism are still not wholly clear but for decades it would trouble the inquisitors, who were not always able to distinguish its spirit from those of Erasmus and Luther. As well as anti-Roman hostility, with a dash of prophetic and apocalyptic expectations (also present in the revolt of the comuneros), its roots include the influence of the great German and Flemish mystics, the Devotio moderna and the Imitatio Christi and, above all, the Franciscan tradition revitalized by Cisneros’ reform in a climate of renewed religious commitment that involved the lay world and was sometimes interpreted by charismatic female figures, by beatas and visionaries who enjoyed great prestige among the leaders of society and the Church.44 Add to all this 39

  Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 195. One of Isabel de la Cruz’s accusers claimed she “said she was not obliged to obey religious authority if that meant failing in charity,” and “her duty to obey God and love her neighbor counted more than religious authority” (ibid., pp. 275–6). Bataillon, Erasme, 1, p. 180, defines “l’illuminisme espagnol … au sens large,” as a “christianisme intériorisé, un sentiment vif de la grâce.” 40  Caballero, Conquénses, 2, Apéndice n. 58, p. 546; see also pp. 536–7, 541–3, 598–9, 605. 41  Longhurst, Alumbrados, p. (28) 152 and Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost, pp. 108ff, 135ff; Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 141. 42   Cit. by Selke, Algunos aspectos, p. 70, who suggests an early Lutheran influence on the first alumbrados (see pp. 64ff, 98–9, 176ff; and also Selke, Vida y muerte, pp. 155ff), unlike Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 140ff, who denies any influence of Reformation doctrines on the Spanish movement, which he interprets in terms of radical spiritualism. Márquez’s thesis, supported by unarguable chronological data, is shared by Longhurst, Alumbrados, pp. (27) 107ff; Nieto, Luther’s Ghost; Ortega Costa, Proceso, pp. 5–7; Andrés Martín, Nueva visión, pp. 33ff, La teología española, 2, pp. 227ff, and Los Alumbrados de Toledo, whose orthodox scruples are also repeated in Llorca, La Inquisición española. Hamilton, An Episode, p. 427, described alumbradismo as the “fifth column of Lutheranism in Spain” and, more recently, Heresy, p. 129, has claimed that “the alumbrados of Toledo came close to Lutheranism, but they did not go as far as Lutheranism.” On this, see Olivari, La spiritualità, pp. 187ff. 43  Andrés Martín, El misterio, pp. 24–8. 44  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 179ff; on which see the observations of Asensio, El erasmismo, pp. 70ff, and Pérez, “El erasmismo y las corrientes spirituales afines”, pp. 327ff;

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the conflicts and anxieties of the “first inquisitorial generation” since the expulsion of the Jews, which was stubbornly resistant to the ceremonies, devotional practices, rules and rituals imposed by the new faith (not only Alcaraz and Isabel de la Cruz, but also the Valdés brothers, María de Cazalla and her brother, Juan del Castillo, Francisco Ortiz, Bernardino de Tovar, Martín Cota, Luis de Beteta and Antonio de Medrano45 were from converso families).46 Some essential theological principles of the alumbrados reveal the core of their religious inspiration, above all, divine illumination (alumbramiento) as the only guarantee of a correct interpretation of Scripture, which one therefore needs to read trusting oneself to the revelation of the Spirit and the inner certainties that it alone can offer, mistrusting illusory “human knowledge” and the interpretations of the learned.47 It is necessary to be confident in abandoning oneself to the love of God (dejamiento) as the only source of a freedom, which removes any obligation for the Christian to participate in liturgical ceremonies, spoken prayers, rules and traditional precepts and undermines the theological teachings of ecclesiastical authority, as knowledge of the divine mysteries is entrusted only to the personal experience of the believer’s faith. Divine grace is central to this perspective and good works are rejected as a means of salvation (“after abandoning oneself to God, naught else is needed to save the soul, nor is there further need of fasting or good works”48), including sacraments (“the perfect … has no need either of confession or of communion,” claimed one alumbrado from Pastrana49) and it questioned the priestly or monastic state (“it is not good to become a monk”50), the sacred canons, excommunications, indulgences and papal bulls (“more like jokes [burlas] than bulls [bulas],” mocked María de Cazalla, Bernardino de Tovar and Abellán, El erasmismo; Revuelta Sanudo y Morón Arroyo (eds.), El erasmismo. 45   On him see Pérez Escohotado, Proceso inquisitorial; Selke’s essay, El caso and Fernández, Iñigo de Loyola, pp. 592ff. On Beteta, of “four quarters” Jewish origin, see Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, in particular pp. 30ff, 179–80. 46  Andrés Martín, Tradición conversa; Selke, El iluminismo; Hamilton, Heresy, pp. 65ff. 47   The accusations against Alcaraz also included the opinion “that the letter of the written word is useless for knowing God’s love, that the spirituals and the learned are very different” and that “preachers of the divine word should learn what they preach by the spirit, not the letter” (Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 244). 48   Ibid., p. 232; see p. 236 and the Sumarios of the trials of Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz (pp. 240ff), Isabel de la Cruz (pp. 261ff) and Gaspar de Bedoya (pp. 281ff). María de Cazalla, too, used to claim “that external works … were nothing” (Ortega Costa, Proceso, p. 74; Hamilton, El proceso, pp. 43ff, 59ff). 49   Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, p. 61. 50   Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 235.

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Miguel de Eguía51), alms-giving, masses and prayers (“without purpose or use”), the vain debocioncillas52 such as the rosary, holy water, genuflections, the sign of the cross, the veneration of the Virgin and saints (“good only for fools”53), sacred images, vows, pilgrimages, corporal penance and other useless constraints (ataduras), because “the servants of God need to be free,” “the soul should be free.” As Bernardino de Tovar used to say, “God wants love from us, and that we be less attached to these external things, useful only for the imperfect.” This led to the conviction that “being tied to such works is an impediment or a perturbation of freedom, which man needs to love God,” as Isabel de la Cruz claimed,54 echoed by Juan de Cazalla teaching his disciples to put off their silly fears (temorçillos) so as to take possession of complete “freedom” as this “was their duty: freeing Christians from servitude and giving them evangelical liberty.”55 Even more radical was the opinion “that hell doesn’t exist … that God doesn’t punish sins and that everyone will be saved.”56 All this suggested prudent discretion57 and esoteric gradualism58 in communicating those “great 51  Ortega Costa, Proceso, p. 130; see p. 499; Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, pp. 78–9, 83–4, 120ff, 171ff. 52   Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 235, 237, 252, 256, 271. 53   Pérez Escohotado, Proceso inquisitorial, p. 51; see pp. 68, 132. 54   Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 193, 235, 268–9; Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, p. 170. 55  Ortega Costa, Proceso, p. 85. 56   Ibid., p. 67; see pp. 450–51; Longhurst, La beata Isabel de la Cruz, pp. 289, 296; Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 258, 278; Hamilton, El proceso, pp. 26, 31, 55, 64, 80. 57   “This,” according to court records, “and other ignorant persons read the Bible intently, and often retired to secret places, where they might hide and read it, giving it new interpretations” (Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, p. 13). 58   Isabel de la Cruz claimed she taught her disciples to read Scripture without “desire to understand its hidden meanings or to taste them spiritually to the degree that others were able to, but was satisfied with what Our Lord allowed her to understand, because the letter kills the spirit: acting otherwise, forcing themselves to understand the deeper sense of what they read, they deprived themselves inwardly of the divine operations that God worked in them reading the Scripture with simplicity.” She therefore exhorted “beginners to do penance, fast, pray and meditate on the Passion and on the benefices they had received from it, and … so she gave them books to read and penances to perform; while those who were already learned she told not to care for those worthless things, but to act so as to be always suspended in the desire and love of God” (Longhurst, La beata Isabel de la Cruz, pp. 288–9; see pp. 292–3: “She spoke more explicitly to Bedoya than to Bivar”). The confesiones of Isabel de la Cruz are transcribed by Selke in an appendix to Algunos aspectos, pp. 297ff. The edict of Toledo of 1525 included among the heresies of the alumbrados the opinion “that they did not have to be curious to know the metaphors (figuras) of Holy Scripture; if they understood something, fine, and if not, they might proceed anyway. If God did not give that understanding to him, it was prideful to want to understand more of Scripture than what its language literally said” (Homza (ed.), The Spanish Inquisition, p. 91; Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 237).

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things,” “subtleties of the spirit and divine things hidden” that only a few “understand well,”59 in small groups of initiates “who separate themselves from other Christians”60 (“cabals and suspect groupings,” “disciples of a secret doctrine, hidden in dark corners,” in the view of the inquisitors61). The new followers had to be guided step by step and “in secret”62 along a shadowy path of perfection,63 protected by a deliberate Nicodemism (the term then used for the theory and practice of religious dissimulation),64 avoiding arousing useless “gossip”65 and shunning any call for reforms or denunciation of the abuses of the Church, Messianic prophecy, mystic raptures or visionary ecstasy.66 In 1559 Melchor Cano expressed a penetrating judgment on these religious attitudes, trying to trace the sources of the disturbing spread of Lutheran doctrines in Spain and to understand the particular inflections they seemed to have taken on in the writings of Bartolomé Carranza.67 In the Archbishop of Toledo’s Comentarios, in fact, Cano noticed the effects of the spirituality that had animated those dangerous “secret cabals,” whose roots were in the reading of the Bible by “common people,” “coarse people,” “ignorant, idle women and men of no account,” who inevitably 59

 Ortega Costa, Proceso, pp. 88, 188–9, 509.   Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 292–3; see p. 260: “The accused [Alcaraz] gathered together cabals of followers that he called ‘brothers’.” One witness against María de Cazalla shortly after claimed that the alumbrados of Pastrana “kept apart from all the rest … met among themselves, called each other ‘brothers’” (Ortega Costa, Proceso, pp. 45–6, 163). Rodrigo de Bivar, too, who was tried several times as a disciple of Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, had to defend himself from the charge of being one who “kept apart from the company of Christian believers” (Hamilton, El proceso, p. 26). 61   Márquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 106, 137, 214ff, 221; Caballero, Conquénses, 2, p. 541; Hamilton, El proceso, p. 61. 62  Ortega Costa, Proceso, p. 65; see p. 166. 63   Ibid., pp. 189, 510. “Isabel and Alcaraz said they had reached a greater perfection than any saint in the past … that all men are free and … God doesn’t punish sins, believing there is neither hell nor purgatory … that, if anyone in Rome had reached their perfection, they would go and kiss their feet” (Longhurst, La beata Isabel de la Cruz, pp. 295–6). 64   See below, pp. 46ff. 65   Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, p. 63; see pp. 122, 132. Alcaraz himself apparently said “that he confessed to a priest only to satisfy the world,” and to avoid scandal (Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 250). 66   On Alcaraz’s hostility to the many forms of mysticism current in the Franciscan order, which, significantly, was swarming with disciples of the beatas revelanderas (like Francisca Hernández, whom he met at Valladolid, confirming his aversion for such expressions of religious exaltation), see Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, pp. 3ff; Selke, Algunos aspectos, pp. 134ff, and by the same scholar, El Santo Oficio, pp. 40ff, 175–6, 193ff, 231ff. 67   For his part, although Carranza had argued against the “sect of alumbrados,” which had arisen in Spain in the 1520s, he was aware of the doctrinal confusions that had now taken hold between “alumbrado” and “Lutheran” (Tellechea Idígoras, Textos inéditos, p. 771). 60

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finished up denying the teaching and authority of the Church, preferring “clear and certain experiential knowledge.” “The alumbrados interpreted in their own way these experiences and demonstrations of the grace and light of the Holy Spirit, and as the Lutherans deduced the certainty of grace from faith, they deduced it from a feeling of experiencing the faith and the love of God, which they deluded themselves to be feeling.” Hence the false “certainty” that, just like the Lutherans, had led them to despise ceremonies and external works, in the conviction that they were useless and that “those who dedicate themselves to them are like those who stop along the way without ever arriving at the end,” unable to reach an authentic “inner peace free of all passion and perturbation,” which was reserved for “those spirituals who had freed themselves of this law of the external Sabbath and such things … except to avoid scandals.”68 No doubt Cano’s polemical judgment was very acute, even though he failed to perceive the unexpected turn these ideas had taken from the preaching of Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz to Carranza’s Comentarios: Without culture, or human erudition, or magisterial guide apart from that of the Holy Spirit, they deluded themselves to have a light that allowed them to understand, as if God had granted them, like the apostles, the capacity to comprehend Scripture … They address … women and the laity as masters able to explain Scripture to them, and as that cannot be done easily and publicly in Church, they hide in dark corners the light of the Gospel, which has always been dangerous, and particularly now, when Scripture is explained to simple women behind closed doors.69

3. The “Diálogo de doctrina christiana,” the Inquisition and the refuge in Italy The inquisitors were not long in taking steps against these groups of “ignorant and uneducated” people who “secretly and publicly met in private cabals,” in the words of the edict of the Suprema against the alumbrados e dexados o perfectos promulgated in Toledo in September 1525, a few months after the condemnation of Luther’s doctrines.70 The

68

 The Censura of Cano is published in Caballero, Conquénses, 2, pp. 536–615; see Márquez, Origen. 69  Andrés Martín, Nueva visión, p. 37; cfr. Márquez, Origen. 70   Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 230; the English translation of the edict is in Homza (ed.), The Spanish Inquisition, pp. 80–92.

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religious core of this “new doctrine”71 also emerges, however, from the pages of Juan de Valdés’ first work, the only one to be published in his lifetime, which appeared in January 1529 at Alcalá de Henares, entitled Diálogo de doctrina christiana. On leaving the palace of the Marquis of Villena in 1524 and after a period probably spent in his father’s house or with Alfonso in the entourage of the court in Andalusia,72 in 1526 the youth, “who had been excellently taught by his brother,” entered the Cisnerian University of Alcalá (lat. Complutum),73 concentrating mainly on the study of ancient languages in the Collegium trilingue, Scripture and Theology. Here the best Spanish philologists worked for over a decade to prepare the Complutense Polyglot Bible, containing the Latin Vulgata flanked by the original texts in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, a masterpiece of scholarship, which was published in six volumes between 1514 and 1517. Religious themes, however, were the center of his reading and discussions in that lively meeting-place of different experiences and ideas in a period in which Erasmus’ teaching blended with Luther’s protest and the commitment to a reform of the Church had to take account of the doctrinal questions raised by the German Reformation. Erasmianism, Lutheranism and alumbradismo seem at times inextricably entangled, leading to all sorts of different outcomes in individual cases and along still fluid theological frontiers. The accusations the inquisitors were shortly to formulate against Bernardino de Tovar and Juan de Vergara made no distinction between the “errors and things of Luther and his followers, the alumbrados … and Erasmus.”74 A witness against María de Cazalla claimed that those who had gathered around her “did not know Jesus Christ but Erasmus” and, in contesting scholastic theology, they used to claim that “Erasmus should be canonized,” that the world “should be reformed by Erasmus with his doctrine” but also that the alumbrados were “men of divine spirit” and that Luther “must be a good man.”75 71   Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz cit., p. 132; see p. 13 (“entendimientos nuevos”). 72   Here he would have been able to meet Pedro de Alba, the Archbishop of Granada and protagonist of the Diálogo de doctrina cristiana, according to the theory advanced in Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 45ff. 73   Enzinas, Mémoires, 2, p. 154; for the date of matriculation see Márquez, Juan de Valdés, p. 218. 74   See below, p. 26ff. 75  Ortega Costa, Proceso, pp. 78, 80–82, 171; see pp. 109–10 (where it emerges that Cazalla had read the Enchiridion and the Colloquia), 119, 170–71, 498–9. “I have never had a good opinion of the diabolical, wicked works of Luther, and nor do I now,” she defended herself (p. 137; see pp. 223–7), although her heresy may be summarized in adhering to the “Lutheran errors and of those known as alumbrados” (pp. 127ff). See Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 200–204, 222ff, who, in the essay L’Espagne religieuse dans son histoire (ibid., 3, pp.

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It was in the 1520s that the writings of the first German reformers began to circulate in Spain (where the imperial court returned in 1522, with all its retinue of secretaries and ecclesiastics after the conclusion of the Diet of Worms) and at first they were associated with Erasmus’ work as vehicles of a common message of renewal. During his trial Juan de Vergara claimed that “at first, when Luther spoke only of the need for a reform of the Church and its moral corruption, everyone approved of him.”76 It is not surprising that the works of Luther, Oecolampadius and Bugenhagen aroused particular interest among the students and lecturers of the Complutense University,77 where late-medieval spirituality, revived by Cisnerian reformism and Erasmian humanism were called upon to deal with the new proposals emerging from the European religious crisis. As early as April 1521, on the other hand, the Grand Inquisitor responded to a papal breve by emanating a decree against Luther’s works, both in Latin and German, prohibiting either the possession or the sale of them. Others were to follow in the next few years, with the aim of eliminating a flourishing clandestine trade. The ecclesiastical authorities feared Spain might be sucked into the maelstrom of Lutheran heresy, and this helps explain why the doctrines of the alumbrados were assimilated so quickly into those of the Protestants: Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz and Isabel de la Cruz were put on trial in 1524 after the uprising of the Castilian comunidades had been crushed. In Alcalá Juan de Valdés remained in touch with his brother at court and with another imperial secretary, Diego Gracián de Alderete, to whom he passed on scathing anecdotes about the monks.78 Here, too, he met, among others, Francisco de Vergara, a professor of Greek at the university who had edited St Paul’s letters and his brother Juan, who had previously followed the Emperor’s court in Flanders and Germany and had been a canon of the cathedral of Toledo, secretary of the primate of Spain and a learned philologist and Greek scholar who had taken part in the great 9–30) has remarked that “si les alumbrados d’Espagne adoptent Erasme comme nourriture favorite, cela s’explique dans une conjuncture européenne” (p. 11; see also pp. 394–412). 76  Also for what follows, see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 165ff (see also 3, pp. 47–59); Redondo, Luther, p. 115; Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost, pp. 143ff (but see also pp. 13ff, 297ff); Andrés Martín, Reforma española, pp. 10ff; Nieto, Luther’s Ghost, pp. 33–49; González Novalín, La Inquisición española, pp. 175ff, and Luteranismo; Hamilton, Heresy, pp. 71ff. 77  Longhurst, Alumbrados, pp. (27) 103, (29–30) 270–72, where it emerges that it was the Burgos merchant Diego del Castillo who got these books (from Flanders) for Vergara. Shortly after, he too was accused of belonging to the group of alumbrados at Alcalá gathered around Bernardino de Tovar, Juan López de Celaín, Juan del Castillo and Diego López de Husillos (Redondo, Luther, pp. 134, 151; Redondo, Les premiers “illuminés”). 78   Paz y Mélia, Otro erasmista español, pp. 129ff; Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 48ff; Longhurst, Erasmus, pp. 23ff.

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undertaking of the Biblia Complutense, a man of letters, historian, friend and correspondent of Erasmus and, significantly, judged by some as a “person with an intelligence freer than was necessary.” Together with his half-brother Bernardino de Tovar, who was generally regarded as a heretic (“he thought highly of Luther”) and a “most notable alumbrado,”79 and who was also a friend of the young Valdés, Juan de Vergara was denounced to the Inquisition in 1530 by the beata Francisca Hernández, of whom both in the past had been followers. The charge was that of professing the doctrines of the alumbrados, possessing heterodox books, adhering to the ideas of Luther, denying the mass, confession, purgatory, spoken prayers, the veneration of images of the saints, the authority of the Pope with his bulls and indulgences (“Luther was right to say they were ridiculous”), justification through “external works, fasting, penance and alms-giving,” and prayers (“superfluous things prescribed only for the ignorant”), as well as occasional jokes about the monastic life and the “two pointless holy figures, neither baptized nor canonized, that were little use to God, which were the holy Inquisition and the holy cruzada.” The documents of his trial show how Lutheranism, alumbradismo and Erasmianism now merged into one single heresy in the eyes of the inquisitors, who saw Vergara as a pernicious “apostate heretic.” Doctor Vergara much favored the said Luther, personally approving his errors and behavior and saying that the pope condemned him because he denounced his conduct and not because the things of the said Luther were not divine … He held and believed and affirmed the opinions and heresies of those known as alumbrados … And when it was pointed out to him that there were errors in the works of Erasmus … he said he was ready to swear before God that not one was to be found in them.

He was arrested in 1533 with the accusation of adhering to “all the opinions of the alumbrados,” of praising “Luther’s actions,” of being “too friendly … with Erasmus” and, in general, of sharing the doctrines of those “who defended freedom.” At his trial Vergara insisted on his admiration for the great humanist of Rotterdam but denied being influenced by any of the heresies of the Reformation (“nothing is more abominable than Luther and his opinions”), or of having anything in common with the alumbrados, indignantly denying the charge of professing the errors “of wholly ignorant people,” of wretched “women’s chatter.” “I have always been hostile to 79  Longhurst, Alumbrados, p. (27) 157 and passim. On him, who was a “vivant trait d’union entre les milieux érasmisants de la cour et ceux d’Alcalá” (Bataillon, Erasme, 1, p. 172), see Serrano y Sanz, Juan de Vergara; Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, pp. 76ff; López Muñoz, Juan de Vergara.

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these beatas and incredulous of their beaterías,” he said contemptuously of Francisca Hernández, proudly conscious of his intellectual and social rank.80 The cleric and cantor Rodrigo de Bivar, a former disciple of Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz and Isabel de la Cruz at Guadalajara, also studied at Alcalá and he too was shortly after put on trial for alumbradismo. At Alcalá he read Scripture, St Jerome, Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples and, above all, Erasmus, like his friends, who included Juan López de Celaín, a “man of excessive freedom,”81 and the university printer Miguel de Eguía, who also ended up in the Inquisition prison following Hernández’s accusations.82 One of the latter’s friends was Juan del Castillo, a former assistant of the Archbishop of Seville and Great Inquisitor Alfonso Manrique, and it was at Alcalá (where he had studied from 1525 on) that he had been drawn to the doctrines of the alumbrados.83 Along with Bernardino de Tovar, Miguel de Eguía, the priest Diego López de Husillos and the merchant Diego del Castillo, he was chosen by Juan López (who also admired Luther as a “great servant of God”) as one of the 12 apostles who, according to the pact made with the Admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enríquez, brotherin-law of the Marquis of Villena, were to evangelize his land of Medina de Rioseco and “preach to convert the world.”84 But when he moved there around 1526–7 after staying with Francisca Hernández at Valladolid, he found only Juan López and Luis de Beteta, the chaplain and cantor “of the holy church of Toledo” and former confessor of Isabel de la Cruz,85 and had to give up his unlikely mission, which even the Admiral seemed to have cooled over.86 In the late 1520s he went to Guadalajara, where for a week he could meet Isabel de la Cruz, Gaspar de Bedoya, Rodrigo de Bivar and María de Cazalla, discussing Luther’s scriptural interpretations and losing no opportunity to mock the Pope and the Emperor.87 At Alcalá Valdés was probably also able to meet Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, who was the same age and from the same town (and, like 80

  “To describe Doctor Vergara as an alumbrado is like calling a negro Juan Blanco,” he claimed (Longhurst, Alumbrados, (30-32) p. 335). 81   In the words of the priest Luis de Beteta (Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, p. 118); on him, see Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 119ff. 82   Goñi Gaztambide, El impresor, pp. 47ff. 83  On him, see Longhurst, Juan del Castillo; Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 105ff. 84   Serrano y Sanz, Juan de Vergara, p. 908; Hamilton, Heresy, pp. 80–83. 85   Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, p. 104; see pp. 96ff and above all pp. 110ff, containing the interrogation of Beteta. 86  On this, see Selke, Vida y muerte, pp. 143ff; Hamilton, An Episode, p. 422. 87  Longhurst, The Alumbrados of Toledo, pp. 242–3, 247–8; on the “Erasmianizing enlightened ones of Alcalá” see Selke, El Santo Oficio, pp. 52–3.

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him, born into a converso family). The latter was much admired as a court preacher in the retinue of the young Prince Philip in Italy, Germany and Flanders and as a canon in Seville and author of some successful works, all of which had been several times reprinted between 1543 and 1556, including a catechistic dialog, the Suma de doctrina christiana, a work in some respects similar to Valdés’ Diálogo, which had been much used there.88 Arrested in 1558 for supporting in his writings heterodox Lutheran and alumbrado doctrines such as “God’s trust, peace and concord with men” and the conviction that “in this life the righteous reach certainty and surety in grace,” Constantino died in prison a few months later and his effigy was burned in 1560 as an “apostate heretic, supporter and accomplice of heresies.”89 It is also worth recalling that, several times in 1526 and 1527, as part of the enquiry into the alumbrados at Alcalá, even Ignatius Loyola was subjected to a trial that concluded with him being banned from preaching for three years, on suspicion of gathering around him a group of people who “talked in secret,” not unlike the heterodox cabals of Guadalajara, Pastrana, Toledo, Escalona and Valladolid, which the Holy Office was prosecuting.90 Erasmian culture, Lutheran doctrines, converso sensibility and alumbradismo met and mingled in Alcalá, giving rise to different religious experiences against the background of the great European events and the epoch-making expectations connected with them: the Peasants’ War in Germany and the imprisonment of the King of France in 1525, the Battle of Mohács and the Fall of Buda in 1526, the Sack of Rome in 1527. Erasmianism, Lutheranism and alumbradismo also blended in Juan de Valdés’ Diálogo de doctrina christiana, written in Castilian and addressed to a broad public for catechetical instruction,91 which Marcel Bataillon described as “le premier essai d’un des plus authentiques génies religieux du siècle.”92 Its surface clarity, however, conceals complex stratifications and 88   See the detailed comments in the notes of Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 234, 237, 241, 260, 263, 265–6, 269. 89  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 561ff; Aspe Ansa, Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, pp. 50, 80, 96–7; Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 221ff; on him, see also Wagner, Constantino Ponce de la Fuente; García Pinilla, Más sobre Constantino Ponce de la Fuente; Boeglin, Irenismo y herejía. 90   Processus Complutenses, p. 334; see Fita, Los tres procesos; Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 229–31; Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost, pp. 103ff; Ortega Costa, San Ignacio de Loyola; Fernández, Iñigo de Loyola, who underlines the many ties, direct and indirect, linking St Ignatius and his first disciples to figures like Antonio de Medrano, Francisco Ortiz, Bernardino de Tovar, Miguel de Eguía; González Novalín, La Inquisición y la Compañía, pp. 13–16; Hamilton, Heresy, pp. 92–7. 91  Nieto, Juan de Valdés on Catechetical (now also in the volume by Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 603–23), pp. 261ff; later repeated in the introduction to Valdés, Two Catechisms. 92  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, p. 390.

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sometimes unexpected messages that link it to the mild, anti-inquisitorial, tolerant, pastoral tradition of the jerónimo monk Hernando de Talavera, who had been the master and predecessor as Bishop of Granada of Pedro de Alba, the main speaker in the Diálogo.93 The result is an inextricable play of light and shade, designed to divert suspicion and avoid censure, but also to win over and reassure readers, the aim being to guide their first steps toward Christian perfection with pedagogic prudence. In 1925, when he published a fully annotated edition of the only surviving copy of the Diálogo (which he had found in Portugal), in his long introduction Marcel Bataillon presented it as a “catéchisme modérément erasmien,” if not a “long colloque érasmien” conceived and written “parmi les théologiens érasmisants d’Alcalá.”94 This view was justified not only by the dialog form of the book and the names of the speakers, which were modeled on clear archetypes from the Colloquia, or by the many echoes of the great humanist, as, for example, in the quotations from the Gospels based on the Greek text of Erasmus’ work or in the exposition of the Credo (taken wholesale from the so-called Inquisitio de fide), but also from the explicit eulogy of that “excellent doctor, more precisely a theologian, now living named Erasmus of Rotterdam,” with the exhortation to read his writings.95 Published anonymously in January 1529 by Miguel de Eguía (who had printed many of Erasmus’ works),96 the Diálogo de doctrina christiana nuevamente compuesto por un religioso displayed the banner of that prestigious name, although it was now the target of many angry attacks, to conceal more dangerous presences. The “young scholar of St Paul”97 who was its author had no qualms in including whole pages of works by Luther, Melanchthon and Oecolampadius, promoting a

93

 Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 182ff; by whom see also Il vangelo e la spada.  Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 63ff, 93ff; though he underlines that Erasmus was central to its inspiration, Bataillon is clearly aware of how the Diálogo “témoigne dejà d’une expérience qui n’est pas toute entière réductible à la piété érasmienne” (ibid., p. 114); see also Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 373ff, which re-states the thesis of the continuity “du mouvement érasmien avec le mouvement illuministe”, and describes Valdés as “le plus séduisant de tous les érasmistes espagnols” (p. 659; see also pp. V–VI, 229, where Bataillon claims that the young “auditeur d’Alcaraz à Escalona” became “à Alcalá le plus typique représentant de l’érasmisme espagnol”). 95  Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 142ff, 151, 229; see pp. 214–15, where the text of the gospels is quoted in Erasmus’ version, and pp. 235ff, where the translation of Matth. V–VII is based on his edition of the Greek text (see Morreale, Juan de Valdés). 96  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 174–5, 205ff; Goñi Gaztambide, El impresor, pp. 45–7. 97   As he was described by Diego Gracián in a letter to him dated July 1 1529: Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), p. 59. 94

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heterodox propaganda which used the name of Erasmus to mask those of the now condemned German heresiarchs.98 This should not be surprising as, with the same intention of diverting the suspicions of the ecclesiastical authorities and attracting the attention of a large readership that was aware of Erasmus’ fame, some translations of Luther’s works were published under his name in Italy too.99 Despite the bitter polemic on free will of 1524–5, which had marked the final break between the two, in countries where the Reformation remained at its early stages, without any political or institutional roots (as in Italy and Spain), its doctrines mingled with a variety of religious messages that, while theologically different or even antithetical, could seem to be speaking with one voice in appealing to faith as an instrument of inner freedom, in rejecting a piety that was reduced to repetitive ceremonies and superstitious observances, in wanting to restore the original values of Christianity and cleanse it of the deposits of scholastic philosophy and in arguing against the intolerable corruption and ignorance of the clergy. In many respects, then, Erasmianism, Lutheranism and alumbradismo could coexist in Spain in this period, even competing in their commitment for a religious renewal that gave proper emphasis to the central theme of the Christian’s freedom.100 And so the Erasmian container of the Diálogo was not in contradiction with its Lutheran content, which, in turn, could be easily superimposed on alumbrado spiritualism, which was one of its deepest underlying seams. And it was in this perspective, I believe, that it blended and absorbed its various elements in a syncretism that, for example, suggested the translation of Erasmus’ “our trust and hope” in the sacrifice of Christ as “trust and hope of our justification”;101 or to follow the exposition of the Credo translated from the Colloquia with an exposition of the ten commandments, the seven deadly sins and the Lord’s Prayer, broadly based on Luther’s Decem praecepta wittenbergensi praedicata populo (centered on the doctrine of justifying grace) and the Explanatio dominicae praecationis;102 or to use both Erasmus and Luther in arguing against the degenerations of a religious life that was all too often reduced to empty formalism (“reciting prayers, fasting and the like, all of which are accessory … without any obligation”), against “a more 98   See the studies by Gilly, Juan de Valdés; and Spanien, pp. 318ff; but see also the manuscript note by Bataillon, now in Erasme, 2, pp. 125–8; Ossola, Lutero e Juan de Valdés, later reprinted in the introduction of Ossola’s edition of Valdés, Matteo, pp. 42ff; Aubert, Valdesianesimo. 99   Seidel Menchi, Le traduzioni, pp. 61ff, and his monograph Erasmo in Italia. 100  Bataillon, Erasme, 2, pp. 505–15. 101  Valdés, Two Catechisms, p. 145; see Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), p. 227. 102  Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 152ff, 208ff; see Gilly, Juan de Valdés, pp. 273ff.

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ceremonialistic than real Christianity,” against an ecclesiastical hierarchy that had become too worldly and was wholly inadequate to its pastoral duties.103 Dedicated to the Marquis of Villena, who admired both Erasmus and Alcaraz, the Diálogo also had some points that revealed Valdés’ early experience in the palace of Escalona, at the school of that lay preacher who had now been imprisoned by the Inquisition for three years: the insistence on “perfection” as the aim of Christian life and the definition of “spiritual man” was attributed not to the priest or friar, but to him who enjoys and experiences spiritual things, rejoicing and resting in them, and who takes no heed of corporal and external things, rather scorning them as being beneath his concern; and in short … who, whether single, married, cleric or monk, places all his love in God and vivifies it and maintains the grace of the Holy Spirit.104

The contrast between “spiritual” or “evangelical” Christians who know “evangelical freedom” and the “superstitious” or “ceremonialistic” ones and the antithesis between faith and reason in understanding the divine mysteries;105 the centrality of the “secret inspirations attributed to the Holy Spirit” as foundation and guarantee of a “wisdom sent from heaven … zestful science” that “impresses and fixes itself in our spirits so as to produce fervor and efficacy for preaching the goodness and mercy of God in a very different manner than if we didn’t possess it, even if we attained all the science of which human effort is capable”;106 the prudent discretion that counsels keeping certain doctrines “printed and stored in the soul” rather than “written in books” and the exhortation to obey princes, prelates and priests only to maintain “integrally Christian peace and concord”; the claim that “we are not obliged to serve God for the Church, but the Church for God,” with the consequence – full of Nicodemitic implications – that “it’s sufficient to outwardly keep the commandments

103

 Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 206ff, 219; on the reformation of the Church, see ibid., pp. 193ff, 201ff, 231. 104   Ibid., p. 166; see pp. 155ff. 105   Ibid., p. 181. 106   Ibid., pp. 148, 189; see p. 191: “Wisdom … is zestful science … for knowing, tasting, and feeling God … and so the more wisdom the soul has, the more it knows and feels and tastes. God often bestows this gift upon a little old woman and upon an ignorant man, but withholds it from a highly lettered person.”

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of the Church, and even though we keep them grudgingly, as long as we keep them, we satisfy the Church, because it only judges exterior acts.”107 Alfonso de Valdés may have been referring to this catechism and its heterodox inflections in the Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón, where Mercurio answers the question if “among all those Christians” he had ever met a single follower of the true Christian doctrine, mentioning the few “persecuted in various ways” who did not dare “appear among the others or make plain the truth that God had made known to them.”108 Shortly after, during her trial, María de Cazalla claimed she had judged “good that work on Christian doctrine,” which she knew had been written by “a certain Valdés who studied at Alcalá,” though she had thought some things “could have been better said and without scandal, as where he spoke of tithes … or of confession.” And so, though she was well aware that many “considered her alumbrada,” she had never approached the Eucharist without first confessing, although Valdés claimed it was permissible.109 She also told the inquisitors that Bernardino de Tovar criticized Valdés for publishing his book “in great haste, without correcting and emending it,” and we have already mentioned the misgivings of Juan de Vergara, although “he was a friend of Valdés and … regretted any insult he received.”110 Actually, before it was sent to the printer, the Diálogo had been examined by Hernán Vázquez, who had passed it for publication, perhaps deceived by Valdes’ skill in hiding the disquieting countenances of Luther and Alcaraz behind the mask of Erasmus. Nevertheless, as soon as it was published in January 1529, the book was censored by a commission of theologians largely made up of Valdes’ friends (including Vázquez, the rector Mateo Pascual and Pedro de Lerma, the university chancellor), who invited the Supreme Inquisitor, the Archbishop of Seville, Alfonso Manrique, to intervene.111 He and Pedro de Lerma had already expressed their support for Erasmus at the 107   Ibid., pp. 152, 162, 193 (where the text is translated as “we’re not obligated by the Church to serve God, but by God to serve the Church”), 205; see pp. 196–7, where Valdés states the need to confess oneself at least once a year and just “to comply with the Church,” revealing only “those things which our conscience condemn in us.” The presence of alumbrado themes in these pages is strongly underlined by Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 193ff, 215, 229, disputing the Erasmian interpretation of Bataillon and claiming that Valdés used Erasmus to conceal Alcaraz’s ideas, but without realizing the presence of elements deriving from Luther, later brought out by Gilly. 108  Valdés, Due dialoghi, pp. 31–2. 109  Ortega Costa, Proceso, pp. 88–9, 118, 137, 172. On the Eucharist, see Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 198–200. 110  Longhurst, Alumbrados, p. (28) 115. 111  Also for what follows, see the introduction to Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 63ff (and Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 390ff), based on the proceedings of the later trial of Juan de

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Conference of Valladolid, and they sent to Alcalá someone who had taken their side there, Sancho Carranza (uncle of the future Archbishop of Toledo), a former Professor of Theology at the University of Alcalá and now inquisitor of Navarra, who, before leaving, told them he had read and enjoyed the Diálogo and had actually bought some copies to distribute in the region whose orthodoxy he was supposed to be controlling. With the support of Manrique and in agreement with Juan de Vergara (secretary of the Primate of Spain, Alfonso de Fonseca), who intervened repeatedly in defense of the work and its author, he suggested that the book be reprinted with a few corrections. In those weeks Valdés may have taken refuge in his brother’s house in Toledo, and in any case his powerful protectors had some effect. The official opinion sent to the Supreme Inquisitor by the commission of theologians was in line with Carranza’s, though some of them refused to sign it. “Just as I was very sorry that my Valdés was subject to such bother and danger, so I was pleased to learn from your letters that he has managed to save himself from this disaster,” Erasmus wrote to him from Basle on March 21 1529, recalling his friendship with Alfonso: “I am absolutely delighted for you and all those like you who devote so much of your energy to link the purity of the Christian religion with literacy: once upon a time this was tried in Italy, but only by a few. What, indeed, is culture without religion?”112 In the spring–summer of that year Valdés was at Alcalá, once again writing his anti-monastic anecdotes to Diego Gracián,113 and, on 13 January 1530, receiving a friendly note from Erasmus.114 But it was only a short and fragile truce. The cultural and religious climate was now changing and the name of Erasmus could no longer protect anyone. In 1529, not only were Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz condemned but also the Erasmian Diego de Uceda, who had been arrested in Cordoba in February the year before, accused of Lutheranism and forced to abjure de vehementi under torture.115 Meanwhile, the pressure of the Inquisition was also felt by Alfonso de Valdés, who in June of that year had to leave Spain for good. In March Francisca Hernández had been arrested at Valladolid: her sharp accusations against her former disciples and admirers had Vergara; see Serrano y Sanz, Juan de Vergara, p. 450; and Longhurst’s studies, Alumbrados, pp. (28) 113ff, (31–32) 355; Erasmus, pp. 35ff; González Novalín, El inquisidor general, pp. 49ff. 112  Erasmi, Opus, 8, pp. 96–7. 113  Longhurst, Erasmus, p. 53. 114  Erasmi, Opus, 8, pp. 320: “My dear Valdés, there is nothing in which I am not your brother’s debtor; he loves me, defends me and does me favors without limit”; see p. 321 for the letter to Alfonso of the same day. 115  Longhurst, Luther and, by the same author, Luther’s Ghost, pp. 117ff; also for what follows, see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 467ff (also 3, pp. 31–45); González Novalín, La Inquisición española, pp. 160ff; Hamilton, Heresy, pp. 83ff.

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quickly implicated Francisco Ortiz, who was imprisoned in April, Juan López de Celaín, the priest Diego López de Husillos, the Vergara brothers and Bernardino de Tovar. In 1530, when Tovar, too, ended up in the prison of Toledo, accused of professing the doctrines of the alumbrados and Lutherans, the Holy Office turned on Mateo Pascual and Juan del Castillo, as well as his brothers Petronila and Gaspar de Lucena, while new accusations rained down on the head of Rodrigo de Bivar, a former follower of Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz at Guadalajara and later close to Erasmian circles at Alcalá.116 A year later it was the turn of the printer Miguel de Eguía, accused by Hernández of denying the existence of purgatory and the value of papal bulls, of praising Luther as a “great servant of God,” of sharing the opinions of those who are “called alumbrados because they are illuminated to serve God,” of believing “that those who persecuted them were not Christians,” of claiming after the arrest of Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz that “it has always happened that the servants of God are persecuted,” as well as of helping Juan López, Bernardino de Tovar and Juan del Castillo in the failed attempt to evangelize Medina de Rioseco with the aim of “converting the whole world to their faith.”117 The year 1532 saw the arrest of María de Cazalla, who was also named by Hernández: she had to suffer the shame and pains of torture before abjuring de levi in December 1534. In June 1533 Juan de Vergara was arrested after being investigated by the Inquisition for three years: he had carried on a secret correspondence with his stepbrother in prison and was required to prove himself innocent not only of his well-known Erasmian sympathies (the climate of the conference of Valladolid was now a distant memory), but also of Lutheranism and alumbradismo, as well as of his role in the affaire of Valdés’ Diálogo: in the end, he was condemned to abjure de vehementi in December 1535 and was jailed until 1537.118 In 1534 the Inquisition investigated Alfonso de Virués, a translator of Erasmus,119 in 1537 Pedro de Lerma, a member of the commission that had examined and approved Valdés’ work and in 1538 (the year of Alfonso Manrique’s death) Luis de Beteta and Rodrigo de Bivar, both of whom were accused of alumbradismo.

116

 Longhurst, Juan del Castillo; Hamilton, Proceso, pp. 12–13; Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 159ff. 117   Goñi Gaztambide, El impresor, pp. 47ff; see Longhurst, Alumbrados, pp. (27) 131– 3, 138–40, 149; Selke, Vida y muerte, p. 150; Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, pp. 82ff, 171ff; Hamilton, El proceso, pp. 35, 56. 118  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 473ff, 508ff; Longhurst, Alumbrados, and Luther’s Ghost, pp. 143ff; Ortega Costa, Proceso. 119   On him, see Giner, Alonso Ruiz de Virués, in particular, pp. 21ff, 47ff.

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It is not surprising, then, that in 1532–3 the name of Juan de Valdés, “condemned” and “most subtle Lutheran,” appeared in the confused “troop or faction of Lutherans” denounced on two occasions by Diego Hernández, a corrupt, half-mad priest who was ready to name even the Duke of Infantado, whose chaplain he had been, stating that he denied free will and that “on salvation he thought like Luther”: this “troop” included Juan López de Celaín, the Vergara brothers, Bernardino de Tovar, Hernán Vázquez, Alfonso de Valdés (another “subtle Lutheran”), Alfonso de Virués, Mateo Pascual, Gaspar and Petronila de Lucena, Miguel and Diego de Eguía, María and Juan de Cazalla, Francisco Ortiz, Gaspar de Bedoya, Rodrigo de Bivar, Antonio de Medrano, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, Isabel de la Cruz and another 50 figures more or less well known, whose names provide a sort of complete catalog of the alumbrado movement, the so-called complutenses and Erasmian culture in Spain in the 1520s. It is also probable that in 1530 (if not earlier) Alfonso de Valdés was put on trial:120 he was described as a “sincere friend” by Erasmus in March of that year,121 when he was on board ship from Barcelona to Italy in the retinue of Charles V, who on December 13 1529 had entered Bologna to be solemnly crowned there by Clement VII on February 24 of the following year. Clement published a breve on December 12 1529 absolving Alfonso and his brothers, including Juan, of a series of possible sins and commuting “any sentence, censure and penalty of excommunication, suspension a divinis, interdiction or other imposed by any ecclesiastical authority.”122 In the spring, still in the imperial court’s entourage, Alfonso de Valdés arrived in Germany where, in June, after the death of his patron Mercurino da Gattinara, he inaugurated the Diet of Augusta. Here he could meet and debate with Melanchthon, “a learned man … meek and disposed to all that was good” who, like him, was ready to do anything to avoid the worsening of religious differences and the onset of “fiercer flames.” “For my part I shall not cease to labor with all my strength, because I truly do not believe that there is anyone else who desired this concord as much as or more than I,” he wrote to Cardinal Benedetto Accolti on July 12,123 with a polemical note for the theologians who were “better at breaking than making agreements” and too often animated by an angry anti120

 Longhurst, Erasmus, pp. 47ff.  Erasmi, Opus, 8, p. 406; see also 9, pp. 236–7. 122  Fontana, Renata di Francia, 1, pp. 456–7; see pp. 461–2, the breve of 24 August 1530, where the Pope gave Alfonso de Valdés and his companions a safe-conduct and exemption from taxes anywhere he was sent by the Emperor. These documents are republished by Meseguer Fernández, Nuevos datos, pp. 381–5. 123  Bagnatori, Cartas inéditas, pp. 362–3; see also Briesemeister, La repercusión. On Accolti, see Costantini, Il cardinale di Ravenna. 121

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Lutheran hatred.124 When the Diet concluded at the end of the year, he followed Charles V to Flanders for the meeting of the States General but, in the spring of 1532, he was again in Germany at the Diet of Regensburg. From here he arrived in Wien at the end of September, to find it stricken with the plague. He fell ill at once and died on October 6, the day after making his will.125 In April 1533 Erasmus recalled with bitter regret the death of his friend, “already great, but destined to become very great if he had lived.”126 While we cannot be sure if the Inquisition ever investigated Alfonso, there is no doubt at all as to Juan de Valdés being prosecuted. There is no surviving evidence, though we should bear in mind the testimony of Antonio Llorente, who was able to consult documents that have now been lost, indicating that he was condemned in his absence for Lutheran heresy.127 In any case, he did not wait to be called by the Holy Office, and in late 1530 or early 1531 he took the advice of Juan de Vergara (probably following the arrest of his half-brother Bernardino de Tovar)128 and quit the country, taking refuge in Italy. The rector Mateo Pascual accompanied him in his flight while Juan del Castillo chose exile in Paris. The accusations of Lutheran heresy quickly reached him there, inducing him to move to Rome in 1532, where he was able to meet Valdés and Pascual. Arrested in February 1533 in Bologna, where he taught Greek at the university, he was transferred to Spain and tried in Toledo where, in 1534, he finally confessed his heresies, which went well beyond the long list of Lutheran doctrines on the denial of sacraments, the rejection of indulgences, the uselessness of good works for salvation and the superfluity of the Church’s precepts and included such radical positions as the certainty of universal salvation and the claim that the truth had also been revealed to Mohammed. In 1537 he was burnt at the stake as an impenitent heretic, while his brother and sister were tried as Lutherans.129 As for Mateo Pascual, shortly after his flight he returned to Spain and was imprisoned at Toledo, where the Inquisition had already begun his trial for publishing the Diálogo, accusing him, 124

 Bagnatori, Cartas inéditas, pp. 363, 374; see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 443ff.   Donald, Lázaro, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 313ff, 345ff. 126  Erasmi, Opus, 10, p. 210; see pp. 183, 206. 127  Llorente, Historia, 4, pp. 344–5. A marginal note in the proceedings against Juan de Vergara mentions that a statement had been extracted “from the trial of Juan de Valdés”: see the introduction to Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 78–9; Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 231ff. 128  Longhurst, Alumbrados, p. (29–30) 282. 129  Longhurst, The Alumbrados of Toledo, pp. 243ff. On Pascual and Castillo see Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 515ff; Carrete Parondo, Movimiento, pp. 98ff; Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, pp. 163ff. 125

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among other things, of holding suspect doctrines on purgatory.130 We can reasonably imagine that a similar fate would have awaited Juan de Valdés if he had decided to return home, as is also suggested by the inclusion of the book in the first Spanish Index of 1551 along with Erasmus’ Colloquia and the works of the German and Swiss reformers.131 4. From Rome to Naples: “teacher and pastor of noble and famous people” In August 1531 Valdés was in Rome, where he met Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who was struck by his extraordinary resemblance to his brother Alfonso, by whom he had been warmly recommended.132 Here – and this indicates the powerful protection he enjoyed – he took on the role of Clement VII’s gentleman of the chamber and in late 1532, provided with a papal breve that also gave him the title of imperial secretary,133 he spent a short time in Mantua (where the imperial court stayed between early November and mid-December) and then in Bologna for the new meeting between Charles V and Clement VII to define his role as a Hapsburg agent in Rome and at last see his brother again. It may be that, as soon as he learnt of the sudden death of Alfonso, he tried to take over his duties in the imperial chancellery, as is suggested by two letters sent by the Spanish ambassador, the Erasmian Miguel Mai, to Francisco de los Cobos on October 16 and 20, in which he presented Valdés as a “most learned and worthy man” and a “person of great qualities and many virtues, even more than his deceased brother.”134 Once Valdés had taken possession of his legacy, on December 20 he received Alfonso’s back-pay and the right to succeed him 130

 Longhurst, Erasmus, pp. 38–9.   Martínez de Bujanda (ed.), Index, 5, pp. 252–3, 472; the condemnation was almost certainly emanated in the first and now lost Index of 1547, and was repeated in that of 1559. 132   Sepúlveda, Opera, 3, pp. (X) 107–108, the letter to Alfonso of August 26 of that year; ibid., p. 119, is Valdés’ answer, dated from Brussels on October 15; see Caballero, Conquénses, 4, pp. 449ff; Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), p. 81; Longhurst, Erasmus, p. 54. Also for what follows, see Domingo de Santa Teresa, Juan de Valdés, pp. 91ff, and Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 237ff. 133  The breve in which the Pope granted him a safe-conduct and exemption from taxes bears the date of October 3 of that year. It exhorts everyone to receive with kindness “dilectum filium Joannem Valdesium praesentium exibitorem, camerarium nostrum et Caesareae Maiestatis secretarium, ad eandem Maiestatem proficiscientem, quem nos pro virtute ac doctrina eius singulariter diligimus, cum duobus vel tribus servitoribus et equis suis” (Fontana, Renata di Francia, 1, p. 476). The title of “secretary” given to Valdés also appears in a Mantua document of 1535 and may refer to his role at the court of the Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo (Cartas inéditas, p. IX, note 2). 134  Bataillon, Erasme, 1, p. 465, note 1. 131

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as archivist in the Kingdom of Naples.135 This was contested, however, by the Collateral Council, which offered to pay him off with 1,000 ducats but, in December, he obtained the Emperor’s assent.136 When he went to Bologna in February 1533 for the publication of the treaty between Clement VII and Charles V, he now enjoyed the title of imperial secretary, and this was sufficient to guarantee him immunity and privileges at the Roman court, given his delicate political duties. “I should tell you that I am at the pope’s court,” he wrote to Johannes Dantiscus on January 12 1534, claiming to be absolutely unfit to inherit his brother’s role, although he was certain he could still count on the Emperor’s favor,137 as indeed he could. Though his salary was 40 per cent less than Alfonso’s had been, Charles V continued to make use of him as a secret agent, even after the Pope’s death.138 As well as keeping the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, constantly informed as to what was happening in Rome, passing on news, thoughts and advice, which was then transmitted immediately to the Hapsburg court as deriving from an anonymous particular en Roma, Valdés had a significant role in the delicate crisis of Camerino in early 1535, which he also exploited to win over the ousted Duchess Caterina Cibo to his religious doctrines. He also kept up close relations with some pro-imperial cardinals, such as Ercole Gonzaga and Benedetto Accolti, and followed the early negotiations for the convocation of the Council in Mantua.139 Although his position at the papal court was merely honorific, it still required an ecclesiastical status, which suggests that, before leaving Spain, he had received minor orders. On January 16 1534 Clement VII addressed a breve to Cardinal Matthäus Lang, Bishop of Cartagena, pressing him to assign Valdés (“exceptionally dear to us” for his culture and his virtues) the benefice of a church that had become vacant after the death of his brother Diego; and in January 1536, in view of the moral rigor, probity and merits of this Spanish “cleric,” Paul III authorized him to continue to receive the fruits of another benefice in the diocese of Cuenca (which he passed on to a nephew).140 It seems that the first tonsure had merely had the aim of giving him access to ecclesiastical benefices without in any way conditioning his behavior and way of life. This is confirmed by a much later memory of 135

  Donald, Lázaro, Alfonso de Valdés, pp. 345–8; Caballero, Conquénses, 4, p. 469.  Croce, Una data importante, pp. 152–3. 137  Boehmer, Una lettera, pp. 95–6; see Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, pp. 94–5. 138  Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance, pp. 47ff. 139   Ibid., pp. 62ff. 140   Meseguer Fernández, Nuevos datos, pp. 385ff; on Valdés as a “cleric of Cuenca” see Nieto, Was Juan de Valdés an Ordained Priest? (now in the appendix of Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 537–42). 136

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Pietro Carnesecchi, who was the Pope’s secretary at the time: he recalled his first meeting with Valdés, claiming that he had only known him then as a “modest and well-mannered courtier,” a “gentleman of sword and cloak” and that it was only later, during a stay in Naples in the early 1540s, that he “suddenly” discovered that he was a “theologian.”141 Similar accounts are given by Vittore Soranzo and Endimio Calandra, secretary to Ercole Gonzaga, who recalled during his trial by the Inquisition that “in Rome Valdés was active in the house of my master, but we had no idea he was involved in matters of religion until he was in Naples, where he was then much talked of.”142 Nothing else is known of his Roman period, which is cloaked in obscurity, although some of the friendships he formed would be re-forged in the future on a different footing. For the moment, it seems, this sophisticated Spanish hidalgo with confidential political duties at the papal court managed to keep hidden his identity as the author of the Diálogo de doctrina christiana, which had created such a stir at Alcalá. Yet he was still under trial by the Spanish Inquisition, despite its being unable to break through the protective network that surrounded him. Evidence of the Inquisition’s ongoing interest in Valdés can be found in the interrogation of Juan de Vergara, who in 1533 confessed to writing to him and Pascual in Rome to inform him, among other things, that “here there is a poor opinion of his having gone away.”143 Valdés, then, was a man with a significant political role, who had inherited some of his brother’s functions and had personal prestige and a network of important relations in the years spent in Italy, able to behave wisely in both papal and imperial courts. All this indicates that there was much more to the man than the writer of those extraordinary religious reflections in his many works (left unpublished) during his Italian exile. Even after he had finally moved to Naples in 1535, after the election of Paul III Farnese, for whom he never missed a chance to show his sharp aversion, he was in contact with grand cardinals and powerful ministers such as Ercole Gonzaga and Francisco de los Cobos.144 The regular correspondence with the Cardinal of Mantua between September 1535 and January 1537 is full of references to the turbulent events of the time, from the victorious expedition of Charles V to Tunis to his triumphal journey through Italy, from the execution of Thomas More to the convocation of the Council; from the movements of the Ottoman galleys to the delicate problem of 141

  Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 14.  Pagano, Il processo, p. 250; see pp. 259, 298; Processi Soranzo, 1, p. 331. 143  Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon), pp. 85ff; Serrano y Sanz, Juan de Vergara, pp. 36–7; Longhurst, Alumbrados, p. (28) 150, see pp. 116, 148ff, (31–32) 352; Longhurst, Erasmus, p. 55. 144  Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance, pp. 113ff. 142

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the succession of Milan, from French political moves to the threat of the reformed Swiss cantons, from the Pope’s incorrigible nepotism to his planned alliance with Francis I and from the question of the investiture of the Duchy of Ferrara to the trial of the Cardinal of Ravenna Benedetto Accolti.145 It is clear from these letters that he met the Viceroy frequently and also high-placed members of the imperial court and that he was part of a closely-knit network of information, letters, personal relations and spies, all of them linked by loyalty to Charles V and his right and duty to “order the world and reform the Church.”146 He had the opportunity to meet him personally when he arrived in Naples: “Although I kissed his hand and began to tell him what I thought, I did not go into details, but His Majesty ordered me to come back and speak to him one of these days,” he wrote to the Cardinal of Mantua on December 6 1535.147 But we can also glimpse in his letters the beginning of Valdés’ relationship with Donna Giulia Gonzaga, whose cause he pleaded in the intricate legal proceedings concerning her controversial inheritance from her husband Vespasiano Colonna.148 This gave him the opportunity to form a spiritual bond with her, whose initial intensity only increased over the years. Most of all, these letters indicate his anti-curial bitterness: he commented on the Emperor’s commitment to the Council with a contemptuous “the baby cardinals will not be very happy,” referring to the young nephews whom Paul III had placed in the sacred college; he expressed his disapproval that the court should “believe what the Pope says on the Council as if he were one of the evangelists”; he snorted indignantly at Paul III’s effrontery in claiming the Duchy of Milan for his nephew; he denounced “the tyranny” that reigned in the curia as well as the excessive number of promotions of dubious cardinals149 by a pope who Gonzaga too regarded as “suspicious by nature and ill-disposed to the Emperor,” ready to do “anything he can to get hold of the Ferrara money,” unreliable despite his ability to dissimulate with “long long words.”150 He asked to be kept up to date on any lampoons 145   Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, and the documents published by Segre, Un registro, pp. 303–304, 310, 313–18, 320–25, 334, 354, 359–60, 365, 367–8, 387; see also pp. 302, 316, 433. As a leader of the Hapsburg party, Benedetto Accolti had been imprisoned by Paul III in the spring of 1535 and then freed on payment of a large sum of money, leaving him seriously in debt. Valdés was one of those who lent him a significant sum (Costantini, Il cardinal di Ravenna, pp. 341–2). 146   Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, p. 41. 147   Ibid., p. 66. 148   Ibid., p. 1; see pp. 8, 23, 92. 149   Ibid., pp. 1, 77, 63, 20, 90. 150  Segre, Un registro, pp. 302, 310, 360.

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circulating in Rome and he expressed his skepticism as to the capacity of “human prudence” to act as a guide in the affairs of life, as “it is God who guides and does everything.”151 It was in Lent 1536, however, while Charles V’s entry to Naples was being solemnly celebrated, that Ochino’s sermon (which the Emperor had particularly wanted to hear) offered the opportunity for drafting the Alfabeto cristiano in the form of a dialog with Donna Giulia. It was also then that Pietro Carnesecchi came to visit him in Naples.152 The correspondence with this powerful cardinal gradually petered out. Previously he had written to him very “familiarly,” displaying “trust” and “friendship,” calling himself “wholly yours,”153 but the letters seem to have come to an end early in 1537, probably in part due to some disagreements between Gonzaga and the imperial court,154 as well as to his withdrawal from the Roman curia. It was also in 1537 that Valdés was given the role in Naples of veedor de los castillos (superintendent of the castles) of the Kingdom, though it was just an office he bought as an investment for receiving its annual rent, with no functions attached, like many other revenues he managed to acquire in a campaign of “office hunting.”155 The 3,000 scudi lent to Cardinal Accolti and the 1,000 he received from the city of Naples as archivist indicate that his economic condition was more than comfortable.156 In later years, however, his political work and his relations with major figures in the world began to taper off, though they were never wholly snuffed out. We can see this from some of his letters (and others had certainly been sent before) to Francisco de los Cobos between November 1539 and December 1540, concerning in particular the legal problems of Giulia Gonzaga, but also Cobos’ request to keep him informed of what was happening in Naples.157 What emerges from them, above all, is an acute perception of how badly the Kingdom was being run, with the investigations promoted by the government of Valladolid at risk of simply worsening things, with deserving functionaries and magistrates not being paid while others were being sacked without reason and, often, those regarded as incompetent and corrupt were replaced by others who

151

  Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, pp. 87, 83.   Ibid., p. 84. 153  Segre, Un registro, pp. 314, 334; see p. 322: “I beg you to be discreet about what I write to you so as not to ruin me.” 154   Ibid., p. 354; Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, pp. XXXIV–XXXV. 155  Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance, pp. 133ff. 156   “Though I am a poor gentleman, I like living like a king,” he wrote to Cardinal Gonzaga on December 1 1535 (Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, p. 62. 157  Valdés, Alfabeto (ed. Croce), p. 159; see pp. 152–72, the seven letters in an appendix. 152

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were even worse.158 Valdés described frankly the many abuses committed in His Majesty’s name and offered himself to Charles V’s powerful minister as a man who could be trusted, writing on March 25 1540: When Your Lordship will order me to express in detail my opinion on whether persons are worthy or unworthy, although this conflicts with my intention not to harm anyone, I shall tell you that for the love of God, take care of this poor Kingdom, which is on the point of collapse, so much of it having been devoured and destroyed.

“Never before have the tribunals of this Kingdom had such need of reform,” he insisted a few months later. But his opinions had no effect at court, as we can see from a bitter thought in the letter dated June 11 of that year, where he simply spoke of the problems of Donna Giulia because “it seems I can be of service only for this, being useless for anything else.”159 It was in late 1535 and early 1536, when his correspondence with Cardinal Gonzaga was most frequent, that Valdés wrote in Naples the Diálogo de la lengua, an incunabulum on the codification of modern Castilian, a language now ready for its final emancipation from Latin as a means of educated, literary discourse and which Spanish political influence was spreading in Italy too,160 though it lacked a tradition comparable with that of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, as discussed by Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua. Valdés’ Diálogo dealt with the language’s origins and the historical influences on it, with writing conventions, grammatical rules, vocabulary, pronunciation, style and its relations with Latin and Italian, basing itself on the language normally used by an “educated man in the Kingdom of Toledo and the court of Spain” with which the author proudly identified himself.161 This book too, which cited Erasmus’ Adagia and the Enchiridion in the translation of the Archdeacon of Alcor, is not without anticlerical touches, such as the claim that “not all those who wear the habit and the hood are friars” or in calling a monk a “son of a whore” or in the words of a Spanish preacher who commented on the creation of no fewer than 31 cardinals by Leo X with the image of the Church lamenting “that her husband [the Pope] was ill-treating her.”162 In a sense, we could describe Valdés’ work as a kind of fine-tuning of the linguistic tool that he was preparing to use in the works that would take 158

  Ibid., pp. 160ff.   Ibid., pp. 164, 166–7. 160  Valdés, Diálogo de la lengua, p. 6: “Now in Italy both ladies and knights regard it as pleasant and refined to be able to speak in Castilian.” 161   Ibid., pp. 35–6. 162   Ibid., pp. 15, 65, 130, 133, 171. 159

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up the last five years of his life. It was an unflagging commitment that is reflected in the image of one of the speakers in the Diálogo: “I have never in my life seen a man on better terms with writing: he is always at home like St John the Evangelist, pen in hand, to the point that I believe he writes at night what he does during the day, and during the day what he dreams at night.” This book finally closed a period of his life that he himself would evoke in words touched with bitterness, such as his claim that he had wasted 10 years “in palaces and courts” without reading anything except books of chivalry, “which I enjoyed so much that I was eating my hands while reading.”163 Another period of his life began, one of passionate writing activity, teaching, and spiritual proselytism, which condensed 10 years of theological reflection, influenced by his alumbrados masters in the palace of Escalona and his studies, friendships and reading from the years at Alcalá and his political experiences at the papal court. It was a silent reflection, hardly interrupted by the publication of the Diálogo de doctrina christiana, whose dangerous consequences had forced him to go into exile and to prudently conceal under the appearance of a “modest, well-mannered courtier” the creative results of his independent religious thinking, whose winning charm at once met with extraordinary success. Valdés’ permanent transfer to Naples began the most intense and fertile period of his spiritual experience, as he had left only faint traces of himself in Spain, where the vigilance of the Inquisition had quickly expunged his first (and last during his life) published book. In the first known letter to the Cardinal of Mantua, dated September 18 1535, he referred to a meeting at Fondi with the beautiful Giulia Gonzaga, then little more than 20 and already a widow, a “lady who, unfortunately, is not lady of the whole world, though I believe God wanted her to be, so that we wretches too might enjoy her divine conversation and kindness.”164 In the same period Ortensio Lando met and saw her regularly in Naples. He later tried to present her as a woman who “has forgotten her beauty, and all her thoughts are on heaven and she is much more practiced in the reading of holy books than other women are in sewing or weaving.”165 Donna Giulia was perhaps the first, and certainly the favorite, of Valdés’ disciples and followers in Naples and then throughout Italy. Shortly after, 163

  Ibid., pp. 18, 174.   Montesinos (ed.), Cartas inéditas, p. 1. 165  [Lando], Paradossi, p. [LVI]v. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, p. 1801 (XLVI, 8) had celebrated her as “Iulia Gonzaga, che dovunque il piede / volge, e dovunque i sereni occhi gira, / non pur ogn’altra di beltà le cede, / ma, come scesa dal ciel dea, l’ammira” (“Julia Gonzaga is this lady’s name./Where’er she walks, where’er she turns her eyes, /to beauty other women yield their claim. /As if she were a goddess from the skies, / they look at her amazed”, tr. Barbara Reynolds) On Donna Giulia, see Amante, Giulia Gonzaga; Peyronel Rambaldi, Una gentildonna irrequieta; in English (but very poor) Russell, Giulia Gonzaga. 164

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there would be other ladies from aristocratic families − Isabella Breseño, Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini, Isabella Villamarino, Vittoria Colonna and Caterina Cibo. The same had happened in Spain, where noblewomen and aristocrats had had a major role in the alumbradismo of the 1520s and 1530s166 such as the Dukes of the Infantado at Guadalajara (native land of Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, some of whose brothers were dependents of the Duke), Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (who made Rodrigo de Bivar his chaplain and cantor while his daughter and daughter-in-law, Doña Brianda de Mendoza and Doña Isabel de Aragón, Countess of Saldaña, offered protection to María de Cazalla), the Duke of Nájera, Don Antonio Manrique de Lara and later his son Juan, who were protectors of Antonio de Medrano, the Marquis of Villena at Escalona, who took in Alcaraz (previously contador of the Count of Priego) and his brother-in-law, the Admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enríquez, in Medina de Rioseco, who was close to Juan López de Celaín, whom he charged with “evangelizing” the city and who was also a fervent admirer of Francisco Ortiz (whose brother Juan was his secretary) and of Francisca Hernández, whose devotees included counts, dukes and marquises of the great titled families of Spain (figures such as the future General of the Franciscans and cardinal Francisco de Quiñones, bishops and professors). These great families had their courts of secretaries, butlers and administrators, who were often from converso families, once again indicating the secular nature of the alumbrado movement. Juan de Valdés’ proselytism, then, seemed at first to be concentrated (though not exclusively) among the Neapolitan aristocracy, as we can see from the image presented in Basle in 1550 by Celio Secondo Curione in the preface to the first edition of his Cento e dieci divine considerationi: Giovanni Valdesso was of Spanish nationality, noble birth, highly placed and a magnificent knight of Christ. He did not follow the court much after Christ revealed himself to him, but remained in Italy and spent most of his life in Naples, where he gained many disciples for Christ by the sweetness of his doctrine and the sanctity of his life, and most of all among gentlemen and knights and some ladies who were of great family and most highly praised in all manner of praiseworthy accomplishments. He seemed to have been given by God as teacher and pastor of noble and famous people, although he was of such kindness and charity that his talent put every small, low and uneducated person in his debt and he would do anything for anybody so as to gain everyone for Christ. And not only that, he enlightened some of the most famous preachers in Italy, which I know as I have spoken to them.167 166

 Andrés Martín, Implicaciones señoriales.  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 527.

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This judgment was repeated in 1563 by Josias Simler in his Vita of Pier Martire Vermigli, the Florentine canon regular who became one of the masters of European Calvinism from his academic chair in Zurich: he recalled the many people, “nobles, above all,” whom Valdés had converted to the true religion by his teaching and the exemplary nature of his life, to the point that he had set up a “not inconsiderable church of pious men in Naples” and later, in 1587, by Niccolò Balbani in his biography of the Neapolitan exile Galeazzo Caracciolo, underlining Valdés’ decisive role in “drawing some gentlemen away from their ignorance and false opinions on righteousness and the merit of works, and consequently from many superstitions.”168 Alongside leading figures in Italian society, such as Caracciolo or the aristocratic ladies mentioned above, Valdes’ disciples – or members of the aristocracy who had been influenced by his teaching – included the Marquis d’Oria Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, the powerful Prince of Salerno Ferrante Sanseverino, husband of Isabella Villamarino, the Count of Montoro Giovanni Tommaso Minadois, royal counselor and distinguished jurist and his brother Germano, a Benedictine of the congregation of Montecassino who had long been resident in Venice; there were also various barons, such as Consalvo Bernaudo, Pompeo delli Monti, Mario Galeota and two of his sons, the brothers Alfonso and Mario Barracco, Pierantonio and Ottavio Abenante, Valerio and Bernardino Telesio, Placido de Sangro, Cesare Carduino and other members of the nobility, such as Leonardo de Cardenas (a relative of the Carafa family), Giovan Francesco Alois (known as il Caserta), Ferrante Brancaccio, the Prince of the Accademia pontaniana Scipione Capece, a jurist and statesman, Pietro Antonio Di Capua, Archbishop of Otranto, and many others, to be followed later by leading members of the Roman aristocracy such as Camillo Orsini, Ascanio Colonna and Vittoria Colonna. There is no doubt that Valdes’ prestige in Naples must have been due to his personal magnetism as a charismatic spiritual guide, whose spellbinding use of language, glance and gesture in teaching is only partly transmitted and preserved in his writings. “Not a speculative theologian, but a practical one, who carried out what he understood,” was the verdict of the Spanish exile Juan Pérez de Pineda, who published his commentary on the Letter to the Romans in Basle in 1556.169 The humanist Iacopo Bonfadio, who had been his disciple, recalled the man after his death with heartfelt words in a letter to Pietro Carnesecchi in the summer of 1541, remembering the brilliant colors of “the delights of Naples, that place, those banks, that eternal

168

 Simler, Oratio, p. 7r; Balbani, Historia, p. 14.  Valdés, Romanos, p. 59ff.

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spring,” “those joyful gardens” of Chiaia looking onto the “spacious breast of that smiling sea:” Where shall we go now that Signor Valdés is dead? It has certainly been a great loss to us and the world, as Signor Valdés was one of the rare men of Europe, and those writings he has left on St Paul’s letters and the Psalms of David will be the fullest evidence of it. He was undoubtedly a complete man in his actions, in his words and in all his advice. He controlled his weak, thin body with a particle of his soul; with most of it and with pure intellect, almost as if outside his body, he was always engaged in contemplating the truth and divine things.170

It is an image to bear in mind if we want to understand Valdés’ profound impact on Italy in those decisive years, when the longstanding problems of the reform of the Church and the renewal of Christian society, the prophetic tradition of Savonarola that had seemed to come true in the tragedy of the Sack of Rome, the political crisis of the states and the appalling devastation wrought by constant wars mingled with the message of Erasmus, the heresies from northern Europe and the humanist tradition. Here too reflection and discussion on new theological doctrines involved both learned and ordinary people, mobilized expectations and hopes and invaded the squares of every city in a climate of curiosity, research and open-mindedness that broke down cultural and social barriers and invited everyone – rich and poor, clergy and laity, men and women – to question the everyday religious life as well as dogmas and ceremonies, devotional practices and hierarchies, to read Holy Scripture for themselves and to acquire books, ask questions and demand answers.171 It is against this tumultuous background, which in Italy more than anywhere else involved the crucial religious and political decisions that the leaders of the Church had to make, that we need to take into account the specific meaning of that creative synthesis of Erasmianism, Lutheranism and alumbradismo that was at the heart of Valdés’ religious thinking. Valdés’ output as a writer when in Naples was prodigious, including in 1536 the Alfabeto cristiano and the Castilian translation of the Psalter the following year (also dedicated to Giulia Gonzaga), followed by the catechism for children and commentaries on the psalms (only the first 41 chapters survive), on the letters of the apostles (“he had written on all the epistles except that to the Hebrews,”172 but only that to the Romans 170

 Bonfadio, Le lettere, pp. 91–2.   See Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia; Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation; and below, pp. 59ff. 172   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 1032. 171

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and the first to the Corinthians survive) and on the Gospels (only that on Matthew survives).173 He drafted these works along with a myriad of short texts centered on a single problem or aspect or nuance of the intense religious sensibility that he sought to transmit to his disciples, in which he showed himself at his best in combining scriptural hermeneutics and personal introspection, scientia and experientia − the Cento e dieci divine considerationi, later published posthumously in Basle (and he wrote still other considerations, as we know from the manuscript tradition),174 the Dimande et risposte, as well as speeches, letters and short treatises, only some of which have come down to us. The very title of Valdés’ first Italian work introduces this pedagogic dimension, in the attempt to explain to Donna Giulia “that I am not leaving you these rules for you to be tied to them, because my intention is that you make no use of them if not as a Christian alphabet by means of which you may reach Christian perfection.”175 This mere alphabet, then, or at most an elementary dictionary, would be followed by further, more complex explanations: “For the transition from the alphabet to grammar and from grammar to rhetoric – it has been properly written – the master gave us a glimpse of a very different kind of lesson.”176 This is a crucial element in Valdés’ religious thinking, rooted in his deepest inspiration, which in the course of a few years proved to be wholly incompatible with Protestant theology,177 even though it took into account and absorbed some of its doctrinal premises (justification by faith alone) in an original synthesis containing many heterodox and sometimes radical implications. It is the principle by which knowledge of the truth of Christianity does not derive “from relation or scriptures” − whether from someone else’s testimony, however authoritative, or from the study of the biblical texts, which depends on the fallacious “judgment of human prudence” − but can come only from the inner illumination of the spirit, “by revelation and divine inspiration.”178 The alumbrado origin of this premise is clear, with its consequent distinction between the 173

  See what Valdés wrote to Gonzaga at the beginning of his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel: “Nor would I have translated and interpreted the gospels so well, if I had not first done the same for the epistles, nor the epistles without first doing the same for the psalms; nor would you have been such a good reader of the gospels, if you had not first been instructed in the reading of the epistles, nor in reading the epistles if you had first been exercised in reading the psalms” (Valdés, Matteo, p. 116). 174   See Valdés, Consideraciones, containing six texts missing from the Italian edition. 175  Valdés Alfabeto, p. 71. 176  Valdés, Alfabeto (ed. Prosperi), p. 13; see also p. 87, note 261. 177   See below, pp. 197ff. 178  Valdés, Salterio, pp. 133–4. In what follows, I draw on the themes of the more detailed analysis that I offered in Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 43ff.

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“literate,” guided by a sterile “human wisdom,” and the “spiritual,” able to understand Scripture “by grace of the Holy Spirit.”179 This premise leads naturally to a radical spiritualism that can affect the very principle of religious truth that an institutional Church can claim the right to define and protect, fragmenting its content in the many different and changing forms of individual experience. It is worth going over some of the crucial themes of Valdés’ thought, then, which he constantly takes up and develops in his works but which never coagulate in an organic synthesis,180 not only or principally for obvious prudential reasons, or to facilitate the clandestine circulation of his writings as well as some discreet proselytism, but because his thinking presented itself as deliberately open to further study and knowledge, averse to definitive results and so resistant to the very idea of orthodoxy. We need, then, to perceive the points with the most far-reaching implications in his religious works while knowing that any attempt to force them into an overall, coherent form would be arbitrary and strained, as it would risk attributing systematic characteristics to ideas that Valdés, who was always careful to avoid recklessly controversial attitudes and polemical flashes against the Church, wanted to transmit in an unsystematic form that was open to different readings and uses, adapted to various levels of doctrinal awareness, designed to guide rather than teach and to stimulate independent development rather than assert the truth. 5. “Wisdom of the perfect”: spiritualism and Nicodemism If, then, the fundamental premise is that human reason is an unreliable tool for knowing the divine mysteries, it follows that only faith guided by the “spirit of God” can provide the Christian with the means for gradually approaching them: “All that we attain of the truth of our Christian religion we know through revelation and inner inspiration.”181 Study of Scripture, then, risks being useless or even counterproductive in the absence of that “spiritual light”182 that alone makes it possible and fruitful, providing the 179

  Márquez, Los alumbrados, 244, 248, 264, 281.   For an overall theological analysis of Valdés’ doctrines, see Domingo de Santa Teresa, Juan de Valdés, pp. 154ff, 231ff, who tends to see them as substantially compatible with Catholic orthodoxy; and Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 299ff, who denies any spiritualist or mystic connotation in his thinking (p. 528; but see pp. 527ff) and underlines their substantial similarities with Protestantism (p. 382), though this is contradicted by the condemnations already pronounced in the 1560s by leading Calvinist theologians (see below, pp. 197ff; Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 18ff; Addante, Eretici e libertini). 181  Valdés, Matteo, p. 394; Valdés, Trataditos, p. 123. 182  Valdés, Dimande, p. 129. 180

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key for making out its meaning, so as to gain access to the truths that are both revealed and hidden there. Just as anyone who wanted to enter into those mysteries with “curiosity,” equipped only with his “human prudence,” would be no more than a blind man wandering in a forest by night, utterly unable to find a path to guide him, so those who presumed to do it by basing themselves on a study of the sacred texts would also be imprudently relying on a “flickering candle,” while only divine illumination can shine dazzlingly “like the sun.”183 The “light” that emanates from the Bible is able to “illuminate those that have inner inspirations and not … human prudence,” wrote Valdés, proudly conscious of the fact that his faith “does not depend on Scriptures, and is not founded on them, but … depends on inspirations and experiences and is founded on them” or, in other words, on the experience of faith in Christ, which alone allows us to recognize God in his creatures and understand his message in Scripture.184 The pagans had sought it uselessly in “contemplation” of the former and the Jews in the “lesson” of the latter, while Christians should rely on the inner “communication of the Holy Spirit,” guaranteed by the “spirit of God that dwells in us, that supports us and rules us” on the basis of “another law and another doctrine” than the letter of the Bible,185 as long as they trust in the saving message of Christ.186 Only by faith, abandoning “all his natural light and all his prudence and his reason,”187 can man accede to what Valdés had already called in the Diálogo the “special grace of God,” to that supernatural “light of faith inspired by the Holy Spirit”188 that can direct his path toward Christian perfection, dissuading him from the false certainties he had acquired “by relation, by human persuasion and by opinion” and trusting to “revelation” and inner “inspiration.”189 It is therefore absolutely useless to study Scripture “with curiosity, with human prudence and with human intelligence,” as it reveals its secrets only to those who approach it “through the grace of 183  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 179ff, 230ff, 257ff; see pp. 5–6: “I mean that the knowledge of God acquired by those who know Him through the Holy Scriptures is similar to the knowledge that an idiot acquires from a most famous writer, reading the things he has written”; Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 58ff; Valdés, Salmos, p. 100. On this topic, which was fundamental in all Valdés’ spirituality and theology, see Bozza, L’illuminazione. 184  Valdés, Matteo, p. 123; see Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 294–5. 185  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 7–10; Valdés, Trataditos, pp. 138–9; Valdés, Salmos, pp. 32, 71–2. 186  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 361ff; see also pp. 143ff, 168ff, 184–5; Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 46, 56, 58–60; Valdés, Trataditos, pp. 127ff; Valdés, Salmos, p. 70; Valdés, I Corintios, p. 294; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 262, 286. 187  Valdés, Matteo, p. 123. 188  Valdés, Two Catechisms, p. 169; Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 60. 189  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 35ff; see Valdés, Trataditos, pp. 123ff.

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God, with supernatural light.”190 To understand it, one therefore needs the “gift of the Holy Spirit,” “divine inspiration, … divine and spiritual knowledge,” “one’s own particular revelation of God, which throws away all the speeches of human prudence” and renews “divine knowledge” and the “spiritual light” that were lost with Adam’s sin and restored by the “benefit of Christ” and the “general pardon” announced in the Gospels.191 Of course, here Valdés’ thinking intercepted and shared the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith as the inescapable premise for the Christian life, which he did not hesitate to identify with the indispensable “guidance of the Holy Spirit,” conceded “by particular and special favor of God” to those whom he “has known and predestined” by virtue of the unfathomable decrees of his will.192 His writings therefore constantly argue with those who entrust their hope of salvation to good works and with “those whom the common people regard as devout and spiritual, while actually they are merely superstitious and devoted to outer forms,” Pharisees always ready to “castigate the vices and defects of men” but actually unable to understand that after the coming of Christ “men are not under the law, but under the Gospel, which is alien to severity and rigor.”193 “The law teaches us what we have to do, and the Gospel gives us the spirit with which we can fulfill it; the law deals us the wound, and the Gospel heals it; and finally the law kills and the Gospel gives life,” wrote Valdés, convinced, like Luther, that “the just live in the faith” and that “charity is the fruit of faith:” “It is as impossible for a man to justify himself before God with his works, however perfect they be, as it is impossible for him who is born blind to see with glasses, however perfect they be.”194 Significantly, in teaching Giulia Gonzaga the first steps in Christian perfection, he allowed himself a few anti-monastic barbs to denounce the false certainty of those who presumed to guarantee their salvation with sterile rites and devotions, hiding behind the “pretext of Christian charity what they do through weakness and infirmity of the flesh.”195 It was mere hypocrisy, which, “being covered with the mantle of religion, is the real plague of Christian regeneration, being clean contrary to Christian and spiritual living, which is quite alien to any appearance of sanctity.”196 Only those who “know Christ through the spirit” are able 190

 Valdés, I Corintios, p. 27; Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 43.  Valdés, Romanos, p. 182; Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 30, 189ff. 192  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 60, 65, 227. 193   Ibid., pp. 249–51; see Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 55–6, 61, 241ff; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 118ff. 194  Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 21, 43, 48; Valdés, Predestinazione, p. 175. 195  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 394; see Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 30. 196  Valdés, Matteo, p. 194; see p. 211. 191

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to “know the benefit of Christ … [and] participate in the spirit of Christ, without which we cannot know God or love God.” Only “faith inspired and revealed is what can give man the peace of conscience with judgment that is through the Holy Spirit, and certify him that he is in the grace of God, that he is a child of God and that he is heir to eternal life.”197 “Knowledge of God … through vision and revelation,” inner illumination, and the “inspired doctrine” of those who, being “inspired and not taught,” hear “the voice of Christ within” and, being predestined to the Kingdom of God, are able to act with justice,198 are then, the signs of grace, the proof that the they do not merely know the Gospel that is “written or printed by men with ink and paper, but that which God writes and prints in the hearts of those He calls and elects to his Kingdom.”199 This was a basic premise of the “unlettered” masters of Spanish alumbradismo, particularly Isabel de la Cruz, for whom “this type of intelligence is not achieved by theologians, but by those who taste the spirit of the Gospel.”200 There was a profound difference with the Protestant Reformation in this distinction between those “whose knowledge is acquired and those in whom it is infused,” as Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz had taught at Escalona, underlining the decisive value of inner certainty and personal experience opposed to any external authority, just as “he who has tasted honey … says it is sweet … while he who has not tasted it says he knows it is sweet.”201 This premise leads to the claim, constantly recurring in Valdés’ works, that the “business of the Christian is not knowledge but experience, … it is not acquired through knowledge but through experience,” and, to guide one’s steps along the path of Christian perfection and live in grace, “knowledge is useless, however much of it there is, but experience is useful, however little there is.”202 It is an “inner experience” one gains access to by listening to “the voice of Christ within,”203 as everyone “believes of spiritual and divine things what he feels,” so that they can nourish their faith with

197

 Valdés, Trattatelli, pp. 40ff, 78; see Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 110–11.  Valdés, Salmos, p. 151; Matteo, pp. 151, 161–2, 196, 418, 422; see Valdés, I Corintios, p. 65: “Divine knowledge … is inspired and not taught … it is through experience and not through knowledge and it is through evidence and not through opinion.” 199  Valdés, Salmos, p. 17; see also pp. 111–12; Valdés, Romanos, p. 103. 200  Hamilton, El proceso, p. 29. 201  Selke, Algunos aspectos, pp. 163–4. 202  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 237 (see pp. 457ff); Valdés, Romanos, pp. 89–90 (see pp. 82, 98–9, 110); and Valdés, Salterio, p. 136; Valdés, Salmos, pp. 58, 70; Valdés, I Corintios, p. 18; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 434–5. 203  Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 65; Valdés, Matteo, p. 161. 198

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emotional values, enriching it and letting it grow, gradually transforming it from “opinion” to “confirmation.”204 The spiritualist dimension of this conception is clear, for it entrusts “true knowledge of Holy Scripture” only to God’s “inspiration” and “man’s experience” and it introduces the neophyte not so much to an organic corpus of doctrinal truths as to a religious journey, indicated by the growth of “living, true faith” in each one of us205 and by patient meditation on the sacred text. The Bible is the “interpreter or commentator to better understand” our heart’s “own book” in that “secret presence of God” made up of “inner inspirations, … feeling of justification, … guidance of the Holy Spirit and … profound knowledge of God,”206 in which faith and revelation are identified, reinforced and become the criterion of truth, the instrument of action and the guide to behavior. Variously defined as a path, an exercise, or a business (negotium), the Christian life therefore develops as an uninterrupted process that “step by step,” “not in a moment but little by little,”207 leads men and women to the restoration of their original nature, which has been corrupted by Adam’s sin, through gradual “regeneration and renewal,” finally to reach knowledge of the divine mysteries, which are “incomprehensible to the sages of the world.”208 It is a process that depends on God’s unfathomable decrees and one can only pray that He will send us His spirit (though sometimes “He will delay”) as His “rule” is manifest as inner certainty of one’s own rightness by virtue of the “benefit of Christ” and one’s destination to eternal life. This process starts from the liberating acceptance of justification by faith, but it will thus, at times, pause, slow down or accelerate, going through various phases of “knowledge and feeling and … taste of spiritual and divine things” as “some feel more and others less” the voice of the Holy Spirit “depending on whether the Christian faith and the Christian spirit is more or less effective in them” and as “God gives this faith to some more than others, on the basis of how much more useful it seems to those to whom he gives it.”209 Valdés could give personal testimony of this gradual acquisition of ever “more clear and more evident” knowledge by thinking back over 204

 Valdés, I Corintios, p. 245; Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 272 (see pp. 279ff); Valdés, Romanos, p. 132; Valdés, Matteo, p. 490. 205  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 229 (see pp. 231ff); Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 66. 206  Valdés, Dimande, pp. 115ff; Valdés, Salmos, p. 172. 207  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 309 (see pp. 181–2, 342); Valdés, Dimande, pp. 118, 125; Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 16, 63, 77, 80. 208  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 480–81; Valdés, Dimande, p. 126–7; see Valdés, Lettera, p. 518; Valdés, Salmos, pp. 140–41, 149, 214. 209  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 181, 227, 342; Valdés, Matteo, p. 516; Valdés, Romanos, p. 244.

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his own path as a Christian,210 though he was aware of the persistence of “ignorance,” “imperfection” and “incapacity” in understanding the “most great … secrets of God” and reaching the supreme “knowledge of the perfect,” which “is obtained by revelation, when the Holy Spirit reveals it to those to whom it is communicated.”211 It was these premises, which he had developed through constant reflection on how his own faith had become clear, and this idea of the Christian experience as a deepening understanding that varied from person to person, that issued in the cautious gradualism with which Valdés – like the alumbrados masters of his youth – communicated to others his religious doctrines. He was conscious that his word could merely guide his disciples to the acceptance of grace and so allow them to open themselves to the illumination of the spirit; to make themselves ready “to acquire true understanding of Holy Scripture, which … is not acquired by knowledge and should not be procured by curiosity, but is acquired by experience and must be procured with simplicity;” to expedite the times with which “God reveals his secrets” or “those parts that God wants to be discovered to those to whom the Holy Spirit is given;”212 and to indicate a path along which each one’s “journey” then becomes autonomous. Hence his “conclusion” that the Gospel of Christ be offered generally to all, intimating to them the indult and general pardon through the justice of God effected in Christ and that the doctrine of Christian living be only offered to those who have accepted the Gospel of Christ, and the secrets of Christian regeneration, the privileges that the children of the Kingdom of Heaven enjoy, be only mentioned to those who begin to feel in themselves the fruits and effects of the Gospel.213

It was in this perspective, to start her “secret journey” and to teach her the first steps of Christian regeneration “without being seen by the world,” that Valdés gave Giulia Gonzaga the Alfabeto as a kind of elementary “grammar,” like those for “children who study the Latin language,” useful for learning only “the principles of Christian perfection, bearing 210  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 308–10; see pp. 237ff, 283–4; Valdés, Consideraciones, p. 46 (“sometimes I thought, […] other times I believed, … other times again I was convinced, …, finally … I believe most resolutely”); Valdés, Trataditos, pp. 126– 7; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 286, 289, where, though claiming to be certain “that with time … I shall understand better,” he wrote that “the knowledge of Christ and God that I had years ago, compared with what I have now, I do not call knowledge.” 211  Valdés, Matteo, pp. 128, 209; Valdés, Romanos, p. 212; Valdés, I Corintios, p. 39. 212  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 233, 261. 213  Valdés, Matteo, pp. 213–14; see pp. 243, 521–3.

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in mind that, having learned them, one must leave the alphabet and apply one’s mind to things greater, more excellent and more divine.”214 A better understanding of the divine mysteries is precluded to reserved for the “sages of the world” and is possible only for those “to whom God has given more knowledge of Himself and revealed more of His secrets,” meaning those who have trusted in the gradual unfolding of the inner revelation and thus acquire “more perfect and spiritual judgment,” who prepare themselves to understand “many more things” with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and so are able to go “further”215 along the path of Christian perfection till they completely abandon “the milk of the doctrine of beginners” and nourish themselves exclusively on the “food of the perfect.”216 Both these foods are found in Scripture, “divine nourishment adapted to the taste of those who read:” the supreme source of inspiration for the perfect, “poison to the soul that does not have … humble disposition,”217 and a simple “alphabet of Christian piety” for “the learned man who has spirit” and can therefore use it as the ignorant make use of sacred images – to learn that which pertains to piety, until it penetrates the soul, until he tastes it and feels it, not with the judgment or with human intelligence, but with his own soul, in which it impresses those concepts and those opinions of God that are written there in such a way that, when he desires to understand some secret of God, first he goes to the book of his soul, first he consults the spirit of God, and then goes to confirm what he has understood by what is written in those holy books: so that, having used the holy Scriptures at first as an alphabet, he then lets them perform the same service for other beginners, while he waits upon his inner inspirations, keeping his own spirit of God as his master and using the holy Scriptures as a holy conversation that brings him recreation. 218

Far from being just a means of pedagogic prudence, then, Valdés’ gradualism had esoteric connotations, which are clearly expressed in an image in which he once again returns to the metaphor of light: the morning sun that gradually illuminates the night path of the traveler without dazzling his gaze, so as not to blind him. “If the spirit of God,” he wrote, “gave a person at once all the knowledge that it has to give over a long period of time, it would obfuscate him and put him in a worse state than 214

 Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 7, 83; see Valdés, Matteo, pp. 387, 416–17.  Valdés, Matteo, p. 284; Valdés, Romanos, pp. 55–6 (see p. XVIII); Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 203–204 (see pp. 210ff, 391ff); Valdés, I Corintios, p. 99; Valdés, Salmos, p. 129; Valdés, Dimande, p. 123. 216  Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 7. 217  Valdés, I Corintios, p. 175; Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 83. 218  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 124–6; see also pp. 143ff. 215

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before.”219 Consequently, he constantly exhorted his disciples to preach and teach “the mysteries of God on the basis of each person’s capacity;” always to recognize one’s ignorance “in things reserved to those that possess the Holy Spirit;” to wait for further revelations in the future and limit oneself in the present to “taking what is given and waiting for more,” without thinking one will find anything in “books written by men;” to bear in mind that all believers “are members of Christ” but “to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the part of faith and the Holy Spirit that each one possesses” and to serenely accept the fact that there are various types of “knowledge of God’s essence that the pious acquire, some more and others less, some with greater evidence, others less, according to the will of God.”220 Inner revelation depends only on God’s unfathomable decrees and differs from one person to another as “it is not part of the essence of the Holy Spirit when it enters the soul of him who, piously inclined, makes use of Holy Scripture to show and reveal all the secrets that are enclosed in it,” but only “those parts that God wants to be revealed to the man to whom it is given:” “The gifts of the Holy Spirit are various, and as the Holy Scripture is written by various people who had different gifts of the Holy Spirit and so wrote differently, in consequence it is understood by people who have the Holy Spirit by one in a certain part and by another in another, depending on the different gifts communicated to them by God with the Holy Spirit.”221 The radical implications underlying Valdés’ teaching are evident: his spiritualism – as the Spanish inquisitors were not slow to realize in the case of the alumbrados – risked opening the way to a religious subjectivism that might eliminate the very concept of doctrinal norms and the authority of any ecclesiastical institution that claimed to watch over them. That is why in a short time his writings proved to be incompatible both with Catholic orthodoxy and with Reformation doctrines (though they shared the premise of justification by faith as an indispensable foundation of Christian belief) and also why they systematically avoided polemics and controversies that could only create clashes and splintering in the name of theological certainties that were sometimes different in their content but identical in being established by ecclesiastical authorities. He took an entirely different point of view, stemming from the awareness that personal 219

  Ibid., pp. 181–2.  Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 70–71; Valdés, Romanos, p. 219; Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 300–301, 348; see p. 463; Valdés, Consideraciones, p. 55: “That what I say is the truth is understood from their experience by those who have received the spirit of God, some more and some less according to how much of this divine spirit they have received”; Valdés, Salmos, p. 95. 221  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 261–2. 220

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Christian experience takes many different paths and from the desire to free the individual conscience, especially for those who are “perfect in Christian living,” those “elected by God”222 that make up only a tiny minority in the community of the Church. The “light of faith inspired by the Holy Spirit” that lights up their souls can only manifest itself as “secret knowledge,” “secret revelation” that gradually makes them participants in a secluded “knowledge of the perfect,” thanks to which they can “know, taste and feel God” with a depth precluded to most people, and so inevitably “hidden, … secret and concealed,” to be preserved and communicated with cautious discretion so as to avoid any scandal.223 That is why “the Christian way is for few … because there will always be more followers of the world than followers of Christ,” he wrote, observing how serious were the consequences of wanting to extend it to many, “while it was for the few, indeed for the very few.”224 At the heart of these ideas is the fundamental principle of Christian freedom that Luther claimed in a famous pamphlet of 1520 that Valdés took up in his Alfabeto, while grafting on to it the spiritualism he had learnt in the school of Erasmus and the alumbrados, which allowed religious dissimulation and esoteric gradualism in communicating to the outside world the secret content of a faith that was becoming more and more radical. How to live it out and practice it “could only be understood by experience” and it could not be misused by turning it into “license of the flesh.”225 Wholly and exclusively spiritual, it authorized religious opinions and behavior different from those of the official Churches, but also imposed caution in expressing the former and practicing the latter so as not to scandalize the “weak of faith,” “children” who need help to grow “in Christ until they become of perfect age in him,” making them “secretly” aware of their errors, guiding them “with care” toward Christian perfection, encouraging their development without impatient insistence.226 That is why it is important to avoid any kind of “contentious examination” but, instead, to conduct them “adroitly from weakness to sturdiness,” as one would with someone who “is recovering from an illness,” like “a doctor with someone whose eyes are diseased, forcing them to see by candle-light so that the sun may not hurt them until their eyes are healed and they can enjoy the light of the sun.” St Paul had done 222

 Valdés, Trattatelli, pp. 9, 18.  Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 60; Valdés, Two Catechisms, p. 191; Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 35, 37. 224  Valdés, I Corintios, p. 143; see p. 167; Valdés, Matteo, p. 218. 225  Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 107; Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 139–40 (see pp. 137ff). 226  Valdés, Matteo, pp. 372ff, 387, 445. 223

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just that, and so had Christ, who had tolerated “the incredulity of the disciples” while teaching them the faith, “wholly dissimulating His most high divinity.”227 “If a Christian person who understands the truth of the Gospels and knows the Christian faith finds himself among others who are learning both those things, by adapting himself to their incapacity and fragility he will do like them, adroitly seeking to bring them to knowledge of those things.”228 In this clear assertion of Nicodemism as an arm of defense for “true Christians” who are sometimes forced to conceal themselves “for fear of the superstitious,” Valdés suggested his disciples abstain from any incautious speech about “things of the spirit and regeneration in the presence of carnal men,” avoiding martyrdom “when fleeing it more readily benefits than defrauds the Gospel” and advised silence, given “the false doctrine and the malice of the holy ones of the world.” As a flexible maieutic tool, in the awareness that “the Christian faith is such a delicate food that few stomachs will suffer it,” he insisted that “Christian people” humiliate themselves by “dissimulating their spiritual dignity when it is necessary they dissimulate it, showing themselves equal to other men, … so that as the saints of the world seek to publish their perfections, they will seek to dissimulate their perfections.”229 Thus, while one should refrain from “dissimulating in any way” when in the presence of “those who are free of superstition,” different behavior is called for with those who have not yet understood that a righteous man is so through faith, not works, and who continue to need external acts. “I must take care how far it is possible not to use my Christian freedom in the presence of Christians who are sluggish and weak of faith,” wrote Valdés, underlining the expediency of “repressing in the strong of faith the use of what they know” so as not to scandalize the “sluggish and weak,” meaning – according to St Paul’s teaching – “the superstitious and the scrupulous.” That is why he warned against doing “what is allowed in the presence of those who think it forbidden,” to avoid the risk of making them “judge as carnal license what is Christian freedom, which is the heart of Christianity.”230 The “children of God,” “ashamed to examine what is permitted, look at what suits them,” and so their duty is not to “look to what is permitted, but to what serves as spiritual edification for 227

 Valdés, Romanos, pp. 265–6 (see pp. 49–50, 280); Valdés, I Corintios, p. 198; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 157, 325. 228  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 323. 229  Valdés, Trattatelli, pp. 20–21; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 158, 213–14, 218, 260, 445. I do not share, therefore, the opinion of Bozza, Nuovi studi, pp. 95ff, on Valdés’ essential anti-Nicodemism. 230  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 323ff; Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 153–4 (see pp. 84, 181, 193); Valdés, Romanos, p. 275 (see p. 256).

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themselves or someone else.”231 This rule is always best respected, both in doing and in not doing, both in speaking and remaining silent, in always being wisely discreet, as Valdés suggested to Donna Giulia, urging her to speak prudently and to keep in the silence of her heart the “most Christian truths” entrusted to the Alfabeto cristiano, without reckless proselytizing enthusiasm: As I have seen by experience that many persons, as soon as they know them, speak and communicate them without any thought, which can create awkwardness, listen my lady that in this case know how to wisely control yourself and see that you behave as the good sheep that show the shepherd the grass they eat in the wool and the milk that they give him, and not like those sad ones that show it to him by throwing it back up from their mouths. And I would have you know that the doctrine that is cooked and digested in the soul gives forth its fruits, and that which emerges at once from their mouth does not feed the soul: and I desire you to keep the doctrine in your soul and not on the tip of your tongue.232

Influenced by Erasmus,233 these guidelines had also inspired the proselytism of the alumbrados, whose deep-seated aversion for the many constraints of rites, ceremonies, duties and devotions derived from a tradition marranique which was an important source of Valdés’ Nicodemism.234 There is no doubt, in any case, that he had provided an unequivocal example of this kind by hiding under Erasmus’ name the Lutheran quotations scattered throughout the Diálogo de doctrina christiana, where he had also insisted that it was more expedient to keep certain truths “printed and stored in the soul than written in books.”235 As for the masters of his youth, who were convinced that “the spirituals are not bound by the ordinary laws and by the main precepts of the Church,”236 this kind of Nicodemism was based on a conception of the Church as an “association or congregation of persons called to the grace of the Gospel,” of “the saints” and “the righteous” who make up a minority “spiritual communion” in a wider earthly community and 231  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 394; Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 190–91; see Valdés, Matteo, p. 440. 232  Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 88. 233  Biondi, La giustificazione, pp. 23ff; see Rotondò, Atteggiamenti; and Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo. 234  Bataillon, Juan de Valdés nicodémite?, now in Erasme, 3, pp. 313–24; see also Márquez’s analysis of the “carácter esotérico” of alumbradismo, (Los alumbrados, pp. 214ff). 235  Valdés, Two Catechisms, p. 152; see above, pp. 23–4. 236  Selke, Vida y muerte, p. 159.

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which, as such, “embraces and contains good and ill” and “consists of men who are creatures in whom we cannot place our hope and trust:” “The Church is where Christ is.”237 Valdés’ judgment was explicit on a Church that, “claiming to be capable and to know how to rule for itself, and allowing itself to be deceived by human philosophy, submitted to the rule of men without spirit,” to the point that, over the centuries, it had lost the “effects of the Christian spirit that was seen in the primitive Church” and, losing the authentic message with which it had been entrusted, had become contaminated by “human philosophy and human prudence.”238 It was not, then, through the “relation” of the visible Church and by trusting to its authority, but through “revelation” of the spirit that Christians know the will of God, each in a different way, some called “only with external vocation … and others with an external and internal” one.239 As an institution and a hierarchy, therefore, the Church has no prescriptive authority as “a man who believes as he should has no need of doctrine or external government, as he has his faith within him, and with it the Holy Spirit, which teaches him, supports him and governs him.”240 Hence the re-emergence, with clear Erasmian and Lutheran echoes, of the Pauline opposition between the old and new law,241 the antithesis between the dead faith of false Christians and the living faith of those who know evangelical freedom, between letter and spirit, between the rule of human prudence and the rule of the spirit. And hence the polemic against a Christianity that had been gradually modified over the centuries and often reduced to sterile ceremonies and pharisaical rituals by those who had arrogated to themselves the right to “tyrannize and oppress the Christian people,”242 the negation of any distinction between clergy and laity and the claim (already present in the Diálogo) that Christians should not serve “God for the Church, but the Church for God.” Deprived of any monopoly and authority over religious truth, the ecclesiastical institution keeps its role in defining the rules and precepts necessary for maintaining “Christian peace and concord” but they affect only external behavior and not the sphere of conscience, as Christians are bound to obey the orders of God “externally and internally,” while those of the Church require only formal respect, however reluctant.243 237  Valdés, Romanos, pp. 205, 295ff; Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 65; Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 148–9; Valdés, I Corintios, p. 208. 238  Valdés, Dimande, p. 135. 239  Valdés, Matteo, p. 402. 240  Valdés, Romanos, pp. 187–8. 241  On this, see the opening pages of Valdés, Salmos, pp. 16ff. 242   Ibid., p. 77. 243   See above, pp. 24–5.

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This sharp distinction between inner and outer could justify any kind of Nicodemitic caution and ambiguity but also discourage any desire to open controversies or break Christian unity: “Men of great wit are those who lose themselves in heresies and false opinions through lack of judgment.”244 This was also the position of Alcaraz, who, asked by the inquisitors if he had thought that the alumbrados he knew at Guadalajara and Pastrana intended to leave the Church, had replied that he “had never heard such a suggestion, but that he knew they regarded themselves as exempted from doing what other Christians normally do in all things concerning the Church.”245 Safeguarding Church unity and obeying the external rules require freedom to be protected, consciences respected and useless conflicts, disputes and condemnations to be avoided,246 because often they concern just those sterile “ceremonies and external works with which men claim to be religious” that are only pretexts which the impious use to create “disorder, … perplexity and … lack of union” among Christians. It follows that there is a duty to avoid at all cost “persecuting any man, with the claim that this is in the service of God.”247 Persecutions against “spiritual living” inflicted by the superstitious, who “claim to be pious with wit and human prudence” are, in fact, the “supreme degree of impiety,” just as suffering them is a distinctive sign of true Christians, who live like “sheep among wolves,” who “should … not contend with or combat those who do not want them in their company, but withdraw from them in peace.”248 We should, then, live in “peace with everyone, not agitating … or attacking anyone,”249 as there are different vocations, different kinds of knowledge and different forms of truth for Christians, though all of them are still children of God and members of a single community, as Valdés wrote in a metaphor that compared the Church to a “divine palace” in which there are no “strangers,” although some are happy to admire it from afar, while others come closer, and others again burn to enter and examine it from inside: This Kingdom of God, this Christian Church where we live as Christians, is very like a beautiful and magnificent palace set in a public square, for, just as there are some who, though they take pleasure in seeing the palace from outside, 244

 Valdés, Diálogo de la lengua, p. 170.  Ortega Costa, Proceso, p. 508. 246   See Valdés, Romanos, p. 266; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 236, 267. 247  Valdés, Romanos, p. 279; Valdés, I Corintios, p. 270 (see p. 53 and Valdés, Matteo, p. 332); Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 324. 248  Valdés, Salmos, p. 169; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 236, 259 (see pp. 135, 169–70, 258ff, 312ff, 404, 447; Valdés, I Corintios, p. 277; Valdés, Salmos, pp. 71, 194, 234). 249  Valdés, Matteo, p. 169; see I Corintios, pp. 9, 53, 110, 204. 245

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have not enough spirit to enter inside as they would not miss the conversation of the square, and there are others who enter the porch-way but have not the spirit to go further so as not to lose sight of the square, and there are others who enter the first room but have not the spirit to go to the chambers as they fear they will be chased from the palace for their low standing, and there are others who are strong spirited and want to go and see even the things the lord keeps inside his chests, not looking at their own lowness but at the greatness of the lord of the palace who built it and beautified it so that it might be seen, appreciated and admired; in the same way there are some men that, though they take pleasure in seeing this divine palace of Christian life from outside, have not the spirit to enter inside so as not to lose the satisfactions of the world, and there are others who dare to enter it but do not dare to go quite inside so as not to strip themselves wholly of their affections and their appetites, and there are others who dare to enter but, without depriving themselves of their appetites and affections and regarding their imperfection, they stop and hold back on the path of Christ, and there are others that are strong-spirited and brave and never stop on the path of Christ, but go as far as they may, not looking at their own imperfection but at the greatness of God and the perfection of Christ, in whom they know themselves perfect although they know they are imperfect in themselves. All this I would order to be said like this so that no one may despair, considering they are not strangers in the divine palace, even including those who are looking at it from outside, as God can make them enter in just as in the same way he can make those who are in enter further and further, so that there may be no man of those that have faith, although a human faith, who is to be regarded as a stranger by the Church of Christ.250

The criterion of truth and behavior that Valdés suggested to his disciples was wholly subjective. He exhorted them to find it in the “full and perfect certainty of the soul,”251 in the awareness of Christian freedom, the rule of the Holy Spirit and its inner illumination, in the “peace of conscience”252 that comes from emancipation from the works of the law and from the certainty of one’s predestination to eternal salvation, which “is the highest and most excellent thing that a man may obtain in this life.”253 “The Christian kingdom consists in peace of conscience, Christian freedom and the guidance and government of the Holy Spirit,” while those that, 250

 Valdés, Trattatelli, pp. 23–5.  Valdés, Salmos, pp. 32–3. 252  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 110–11, 419, 436, 453–4; see Valdés, Salterio, p. 136; Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 41, 57; Valdés, Trattatelli, p. 78; Valdés, Romanos, pp. XV, 47, 98, 273; Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 5–7, 15, 22, 71, 74, 226, 250, 283, 313; Valdés, Matteo, pp. 142ff, 169, 229, 288. 253  Valdés, Romanos, p. 145. 251

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“making the Gospels into laws, claim to justify themselves by observing the doctrine of Christ … never find peace in their conscience.”254 There is no doubt that it was from these pages that the doctrine of the “most sweet predestination” derived, which the Beneficio di Cristo would speak of shortly after. It was described by Valdés as “something that gives great satisfaction to the souls of believers.”255 And it is here, in the considerable space that opens up between the assertion of the Christian’s invincible inner freedom and his duty to adapt to the requirements of conformism, that Valdés’ spiritualism found the underlying reasons for its extraordinary capacity to attract and expand, to offer flexible responses to needs that had developed in various ways in the religious crisis of sixteenth-century Italy, to take on different forms, to arrive at dissimilar outcomes and to welcome all kinds of contributions without ever losing its coherence. It was a sort of Christian pluralism based on the principle that “in different ways God … communicates His spirit, to some more, to some less, and to some in one way and to others in another,” which calls for the recognition of different levels, of gradual progress, of various experiences; it suggests the caution of esoteric communication so as not to scandalize those “who are still sluggish and weak”;256 it demands the practice of religious dissimulation as a constituent element of freedom of conscience and as the inescapable consequence of the various gradations “of the faith and of the Holy Spirit that possesses each of us”;257 and it indicates the way of patience, of slow progress and of hope in a change that is always possible as “it is good that the Church at certain times changes what at others it ordered.”258 Devotional customs, liturgical ceremonies, sacramental practices, theological doctrines, all ecclesiastical norms and doctrines seem to lose any significance and importance in an adiaphorism that leaves each Christian the responsibility of understanding “what in Scripture is substantial,” to define his own version of the truth and trace his path in the light of the Gospel that lives and throbs in him through the light of God – not as knowledge, but as revelation and experience, not as doctrine, but as a

254

 Valdés, I Corintios, p. 80; Valdés, Matteo, p. 120.  Valdés, Romanos, p. 154; see p. 161: “Pious persons see in predestination the justice of God, knowing God is just, while … those without piety see in predestination the injustice of God”; for the Beneficio see above, pp. 3–4. 256  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 21 (see Valdés, Consideraciones, p. 55); Valdés, Matteo, p. 178 (see p. 374). 257  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 348; see Valdés, Romanos, p. 244; Valdés, Matteo, p. 516. 258  Valdés, I Corintios, p. 126. 255

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“form of doctrine”, not as “moral living,” but as “Christian living”,259 not as the letter but as the spirit, not as content and prescriptive rule, but as inspiration of faith: “The Christian ruled by God through the spirit does not need rules of charity, as he keeps the true and certain rule of the spirit of God inside himself.”260 Every believer should trust unreservedly in this sense of faith and inner serenity, relinquishing the idea of delegating the guarantee of the truth and of salvation to men and authorities that insist on conditioning the Christian’s freedom and coercing the illumination of the spirit. Valdés’ polemic against the ecclesiastical hierarchies was therefore explicit: Those who sent for Christ to be seized were the leaders of the Hebrew religion, not before God but before men. And here I learn how little I may trust those who in the Christian religion are the leaders before men if they are not so before God too, and I know the error of those who depend on men and trust in men.261

This Christian Church is a community of the elect through the grace of the Gospel, united in its institutional structures and collective practices, but within it there is the little community of the “spirituals,” the perfectos (“rare birds” these262), who silently, protected by Nicodemitic caution, set out along an arduous journey of initiation that “is not for all,” as “few people walk the Christian path”263 and few are the elect of God, able to take fully to heart his revelations and their own experience. Evidently with a proselytizing purpose, explaining the basics of Valdés’ theological thinking, the catechism Qual maniera si devrebbe tenere a informare insino dalla fanciullezza i figliuoli de’ christiani delle cose della religione is a short, concentrated compendium of the main points, while more or less hiding the more radical implications between the lines of an argument that is on the surface plain and simple. The short prolog sets out the distinction between the “false religion, which consists in superstitious observations” and the “true religion, which consists in embracing in one’s 259  Valdés, Romanos, n.p. (Argumento), pp. 92, 282, 299; Valdés, Salmos, pp. 16–17; Valdés, Dimande, p. 148. 260  Valdés, Romanos, p. 250; see Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 194–5, where, on being asked how to put into practice what St Paul had said “on the things that are prohibited for the moment,” Valdés replied that, “as one could not make a general rule, spiritual persons should be able to decide a rule for themselves”; see also Valdés, Dimande, pp. 147ff. 261  Valdés, Matteo, p. 493. 262  Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 87; see Valdés, Matteo, p. 218. 263  Valdés, I Corintios, pp. 224–5 (see p. 143; and Valdés, Romanos, p. 174); Valdés, Alfabeto, p. 26.

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heart the grace which is offered us through Christ,” in which the doctrine of justification by faith is made the decisive choice for the Christian, offering from the first lines a clear answer to the crucial question raised by the Reformation but at the same time avoiding any polemical reference to the Roman Church.264 Far from proposing a series of doctrinal definitions, the whole text concentrates on this single theme, contextualized historically in the Old Testament episodes that preannounced the Gospel: Adam, whose fall had transmitted an indelible sin to all men, who, like him, became like “brute animals” and “enemies” of God; Noah, who, “trusting in the word of God,” had built the ark; Abraham, who had “believed” the divine promises and Moses, who had received the law on Mount Sinai, which would “show those under it the depravity that is natural to all men” and so teach them to mistrust “their own forms of justice” and to place themselves exclusively under that of Christ. Only the coming of “this Son of God” however, and his sacrifice on the cross had been able to redeem “all the iniquities, all the rebellions and all the sins of all men,” reconciling them with the divine creator, who had then sent his spirit to “his elect.” This had sealed the new pact and the spread of Christianity had coincided with the proclamation of the “most happy news” of this “general indult and pardon” to all those who had received it without “basing their faith on the judgment of human prudence,” but receiving it as a “gift of God,” a “vocation,” a “grace” and a “most unique benefit.” Hence the definition of the Church as the “congregation in one spirit of all those who throughout the world are baptized in the acceptance of this Gospel,” whose distinctive sign is mutual love. It is this Christian faith, “when it is true and not feigned, when it is inspired and revealed,” that induces the believer to love God, to feel certain hope in the life eternal and to feel “peace of conscience,” “to do good to all men,” to mortify his passions, and to pray according to the teaching of the Gospels, understanding the sense of the words he speaks. Wholly centered on claiming the centrality of faith, Valdés’ catechism actually comes down to an impassioned exhortation to “retrieve the image and likeness of God” that was lost in the earthly paradise so as to be able to “enter the kingdom of God, which is the heavenly paradise,” trusting in his providence and waiting with trust for the last judgment, which will see the eternal salvation of “those who have accepted the grace of the Gospels.” The first lessons for children were to concentrate on these “divine concepts,” leaving for later discussion, “little by little as they grow in the things that will be proper to their age,” questions such as confession, the Eucharist and the “mystery of the most holy Trinity,” on which Valdés said not a word in these pages, any more than on the other sacraments, 264

 Valdés, Catechism, p. 255; see Nieto, Juan de Valdés on Catechetical, pp. 267ff.

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on the mass, on the priesthood, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, purgatory, or hell. The important thing, he emphasized in the conclusion, was that the young should not get that first, decisive step wrong, to avoid “being deceived by false religion” and so set off with certainty on the path of the “true religion when it will please God to call them with the spiritual, inner vocation to the grace of the Gospels.” It is a text wholly aimed at bringing out the centrality of the “benefit of Christ,” and therefore it is simpler than, and to some extent it prepared the way for, the Alfabeto cristiano, which does have a few cautious comments on the mass, fasting, confession and communion,265 just as the Alfabeto or the Considerationi were preliminary to the Dimande et risposte, which considered doubts and offered clarification of specific questions (while always avoiding topics at the heart of theological controversy). These were the teachings Valdés spread in Italy, first in Naples among his friends and then elsewhere through a cautious distribution of manuscripts that would leave a deep mark on those who were able to read them, in Rome as in Siena, in Florence as in Verona. There is clear evidence of this in the group of disciples from various parts of Italy that gathered round him in 1539–40 (including Marcantonio Flaminio, Bernardino Ochino, Pier Martire Vermigli, Iacopo Bonfadio, Pietro Carnesecchi, Donato Rullo and Vittore Soranzo). It was they who, after his death in July 1541, carried on his work of proselytism with greater vigor, managing to penetrate many strata of Italian society, partly thanks to the fact that some highly influential prelates and members of important aristocratic families adhered to these doctrines. It was then that his sophisticated religious thinking and the unequalled fascination of his teaching gave life to a new and different perspective with which to face the rending ruptures of the religious crisis, work for a reform of the Church that would preserve its unity, direct the activities of the Tridentine assembly to avert the outcome that took place and influence the outlook and the choices of those who sought credible answers to their religious anxieties and uncertainties. It was this action that led to the publication of the Beneficio di Cristo in 1543, on the occasion of the first convocation of the Council, and then of the Alfabeto cristiano and Valdés’ catechism in an attempt to indicate an alternative not only to Catholic orthodoxy, but also to the followers of the Protestant Reformation in Italy. It is to them that we must now turn, to understand the terrain in which the success of Valdés’ ideas was rooted.

265

 Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 89ff.

CHAPTER II

Italy and the Reformation 1. Reformation and the vernacular The Protestant heresies spread quickly: shortly after the Wittenberg theses of 1517 Luther’s books were being read in Italy and his doctrines found fertile ground in the urban world,1 with its traditions of civic religion, anticlericalism, prophetic and millenarian expectations, humanist culture and the appeal (philological, theological and ethical) to an evangelical Christianity brought back to its apostolic origins and purified of scholastic philosophy. It was not only the serious crisis in which the Church found itself in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that fed the flames of Reformation, but also an intense religious sensibility that expressed itself in devotional practices, which continued to fuel the polemics against a corrupt and ignorant clergy, absentee bishops, the undisciplined monasteries and convents, the scandalous accumulation of benefices and the widespread practice of simony in the offices of the curia. Even cardinals such as Ercole Gonzaga and Gian Pietro Carafa, for example, condemned the Datary and the Penitentiary as a “sink of iniquity” and a den of “rabid dogs.”2 The cast-iron layman Francesco Guicciardini drew from the spectacle the bitter autobiographical reflection that, if his “particular interest” had not led him into the service of the popes, he would have loved Martin Luther as himself, “not so that I might be free of the laws based on Christian religion … but to see this bunch of rascals get their just deserts, that is, either to be without vices or without authority.”3 And Niccolò Machiavelli expressed a similar opinion when, in the Discorsi, he attributed to the priests the fact that the Italians had “become without religion and wicked.”4 The tarnishing of the Church’s moral authority, the disorientation of its leaders, pastoral neglect and the constant postponement of a reform always promised, even after the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–16), brought many to listen to the new doctrines, 1

 Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation.   Processo Morone, 1, p. 102, note 139; CT, 12, p. 70. 3  Guicciardini, Ricordi, pp. 735–6 (tr. Mario Domandi), available at http://www.scribd. com/doc/222753573/Guicciardini-Ricordi-Politici-e-Civili, last accessed November 15 2014. 4  Machiavelli, Discourses, p. 38 (I, 12). 2

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to read the Bible, and to crowd round the pulpits in an attempt to find their bearings in the meanders of theology. At the same time, the criss-cross of different religious messages, the difficulties of the present and the hopes of reform became a stimulus to independent thought that induced ordinary people, artisans, shopkeepers, students, doctors, notaries, schoolmasters and even “gentlemen” to try the new ways, to steep themselves in the reading of St Paul or St Augustine and to make an effort to “learn what they needed for their salvation by studying Holy Scripture.”5 “It seems from what is said this Martin / excels in every art of doctrine. / He does not leave aside the Gospel pure. / Luther on men’s minds has much allure,” wrote a Venetian jeweler-poet in 1541, hoping that the imminent Council would resolve the doubts that tormented many consciences: “Some are speaking the truth, some are lying in their teeth.”6 It is no surprise that this need for religious answers was all the more responsive to novelties the more that people felt abandoned to themselves by a clergy that no longer seemed able to embody the sacrality whose powers and symbols it continued to claim. It was subject to criticism and derision that it was quite unable to control and repress. There were differences of emphasis and degree but in Italy too, many looked in the direction indicated by Luther and Calvin, and also by Erasmus and Valdés, for the renovatio invoked by the humanists, announced in the public squares by wandering hermits in sackcloth and demanded from the pulpits of the churches by fiery preachers. One of these, of course, was Girolamo Savonarola, who might have seemed as a sort of “Italian Luther.” Doctrinally, it is a misleading image7 and one that was soon to be denied by the very reformers who had coined it. Nevertheless, it also suggests how the late Renaissance, the age of Leonardo and Bramante, Raphael and Ariosto, flourished amid the prophecies accompanying the devastations, plagues and famines caused by the unbroken sequence of “horrible wars” that was to overwhelm the country’s fragile political structures. There is no doubt, too, that the combination of the spiritual crisis of the Church and the political crisis of the States (ancient communal republics or adventurous signories created by warlords through a mixture of virtue and fortune) helps explain the climate of epoch-making expectations that greeted the Reformation in Italy, where Luther’s name was synonymous with heresy, giving rise to the opposing images of the stubborn rebel, embodiment of all vice, teacher of moral corruption, a new “Muhammad”8 or the “German monster,” as he was described on a loose sheet attached to the original manuscript of 5

 Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, p. 307.  Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, p. 200. 7   Lazzerini takes a different view in Teologia del Miserere. 8  Simoncelli, La crisi religiosa, p. 252. 6

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Marin Sanudo’s Venetian Diarii, and the “most learned man who follows St Paul and is much against the pope,” as Sanudo himself wrote in 1520.9 Rome’s first response to Luther was slow and inadequate, in the form of hasty theological or juridical refutations aimed only at protecting papal authority and quite unable to perceive how deep-rooted were the needs and resentments that were attracting ever more followers both inside and outside the German world, thanks to the speed with which the press could put ideas into circulation. Provisions against those clerics who were “rebellious and ill-disciplined in matters regarding the Catholic faith” were poorly coordinated, while condemnations, arrests and flights marked the presence of Lutheran hot-beds in many cities.10 The heterodox, Gospel-based preaching of suspect friars in the 1530s went hand in hand with the increasing circulation of heretical writings. As early as 1519 the Basle publisher Johannes Froben told Luther that a bookseller in Pavia had requested his works, and the following years saw the works of the reformers spreading more and more, first in the original editions, but soon in translations published by enterprising printers. In early 1524 a papal breve urged the Bishop of Trent, Italy’s gateway for trade with Germany, to burn any of Luther’s books that were sold in the city.11 Similar orders were passed on to Venice, Brescia, Verona, Milan, Lucca and Naples, with the sole result of encouraging a flourishing clandestine market through smuggled editions, the comings and goings of foreign students in the universities of Padua and Bologna, anonymous books, false attributions (for example, the editions of Luther’s works that appeared under the name of Erasmus or Cardinal Fregoso), the more or less transparent pseudonyms that transformed Philipp Melanchthon into Ippofilo da Terranegra or Reprigone Rheo, Huldreych Zwingli into Coricius Cogelius and Martin Bucer into Aretius Felinus. A decree of the Milanese Senate in 1538 banned as many as 42 books by authors including Bucer, Melanchthon, Calvin and Oecolampadius. Two years later Melanchthon rejoiced in the fact that every year whole libraries of heterodox books could be sold in Italy.12 In the following decade, despite the attempts of the ecclesiastical authorities to stem the flow with prohibitions and pyres, they would be flanked by texts in Italian: translations, such as the Summario della santa Scrittura (which went through many editions),13 the Medicina dell’anima, the Capo finto, the Desordine della Chiesa, the Dottrina vecchia et nuova, 9

 Niccoli, Il mostro di Sassonia, pp. 14ff.  Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, pp. 321–2; see Città italiane del ‘500; Delph, Fontaine, Martin (eds), Heresy, Culture, and Religion. 11  Fontana, Documenti vaticani, p. 77. 12   De Frede, Ricerche, pp. 55ff. 13  On this book, see Peyronel Rambaldi, Dai Paesi Bassi all’Italia. 10

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the Libretto consolatorio a li perseguitati per la confessione de la verità evangelica and many others. There were also works by Italian authors, such as the Beneficio di Cristo, the Prediche of Bernardino Ochino and Giulio da Milano (Giulio Della Rovere), the Pasquino in estasi, the Tragedia del libero arbitrio, and the myriad of polemical works and propaganda pamphlets published by the former Bishop of Capodistria, Pier Paolo Vergerio, after his flight in 1549. Hence the anguish of the custodians of the Catholic faith at the sight of religious debate overflowing unstoppably among “low persons,” who discussed it “in the squares, in the workshops, in the taverns and even at the women’s washing places,”14 and at the unheard-of boldness that had been shown in that “calamitous century” by “even the tailors, the carpenters, the fish-sellers and other dregs of the earth in discussing the mystery of predestination, the article of justification, the prescience of God and the most holy sacrament of the altar, grace and free will, faith and works and other tangled questions and most high dogmas of the faith,” as a preacher denounced in 1565, expressing his fears of the new issues that had been put on the agenda by the Reformation.15 The use of the vernacular meant breaking down a linguistic barrier designed to protect the exclusive domain of the clergy on questions of faith and opened an unexpected front in the struggle against heresy, which could no longer be confined to the ivory towers of the universities, to monastic studies, humanist declamationes, or theological controversies peppered with scriptural quotations and scholastic doctrines. New voices and forms of communication expressed moral indignation and anti-clerical contempt but also examined delicate doctrinal questions, discussed with full awareness of their consequences, breaking the principle by which “the difficult questions of the Catholic faith should not be spread among the coarse folk,” as Tommaso Badia, a Dominican and later a cardinal, wrote in 1532. His words were echoed by Cardinal Gasparo Contarini’s exhortations not to preach the arduous “questions of predestination and the prescience of God” and, to avoid misunderstandings, never to question the merit of good works.16 An example of what was feared was a furrier from Bassano, Domenico Cabianca, hanged in Piacenza in 1550 for having pronounced heresies during a sermon that, though a layman, he had dared to preach while wearing a priest’s headpiece, thus putting into

14

 Thus wrote Alvise Lippomano in his Confirmatione et stabilimento di tutti li dogmi catholici, published in Venice in 1553 (Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e Controriforma, p. 241). 15  Cantimori, Le idee religiose, p. 46. 16  Giombi, Dinamiche della predicazione, pp. 77–9; Simoncelli, La crisi religiosa, pp. 268–9.

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practice the universal priesthood of believers.17 In 1532 the Franciscan Giovanni da Fano published the first work in Italian “against the most pernicious Lutheran heresies,” the Incendio de zizanie lutherane, in which he tried to challenge them on their own ground, attacking Luther as the arch-heretic who, so as to “draw down a greater number of souls into eternal destruction, had written in the vernacular books of his diabolical heresy, so that idiots, women and children may with him be trapped in this most perverse dogma and open damnation.”18 Soon the professional theologians had to come to terms with the “extremely irritating” need to fight the heretics in everyday language,19 only to realize later that even their refutations sometimes risked becoming instruments of knowledge and propaganda. The translations of the Holy Scriptures, the spread of religious discussion, the right to explain the Bible “and to dictate to the prelates of the Church” having extended even to cobblers, scrap-dealers and farriers, it became necessary to answer heresy in language that was in common use, suited to the “low capacity” of the ignorant.20 The keen debate on the question of language that accompanied the success of the vernacular in the first half of the sixteenth century took place in decades during which Protestant doctrines were spreading in Italy too.21 The two phenomena were not only contemporaneous but also interconnected, as is suggested by the fact that belief in those doctrines directly involved some supporters of the linguistic battles that aimed to free from the university enclosure not just the ancient classics, science and philosophy, but also Erasmus’ works, the Bible and theology. One of the first demands of the reformers, indeed, was the need to make the word of God accessible to the humble and unlettered. This happened in Italy too, where the connections between the demands for religious renovation and the diffusion of the vernacular are evident,22 as we can see, for example, from the anthologies of Lettere (and, to a lesser extent, of Rime) that appeared in Venice from the 1540s to the 1560s, in which heterodox themes and attitudes were a constant presence, just as the authors and dedicatees of those texts included figures on whom the Holy Office was concentrating its suspicions and investigations. The very success of these publications in the 20 years of the Council of Trent indicates the existence 17

 See the entry of Domenico Caccamo, DBI, 15, pp. 689–90.  Cavazza, “Luthero fidelissimo inimico de messer Jesu Christo”, pp. 69–70. 19  Politi, Compendio, pp. 347ff. The question of the relation between religion of the learned and religion of the simple is at the center of the essay by Prosperi, Intellettuali e Chiesa, pp. 198ff. 20  Firpo, Nel labirinto del mondo, pp. 96–7. 21  Here and for what follows, see Firpo, Riforma religiosa e lingua volgare. 22  Dionisotti, Geografia e storia, p. 187. 18

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of a huge readership sympathetic to their content.23 Even the great Pietro Bembo, author of the Prose della volgar lingua, did not hide his admiration for Ochino’s preaching and, after he had been made a cardinal in 1539, identified himself with Contarini’s irenic and reformist approach, defending in Rome the doctrine of duplex iustitia during the Regensburg discussions of 1541 and, on the point of death, insisting on his hope of salvation ex sola fide.24 Giangiorgio Trissino from Vicenza, author of the Epistola de le lettere nuovamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana, was linked to Roman orthodoxy but that made him no stranger to theological Paulinism. He opened his villa at Cricoli to men sympathetic to northern heresies, such as Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, to whom he entrusted the education of his son Giulio, dean of the cathedral and known as a “most great Lutheran,” who was later condemned in absentia by the Holy Office in 1556.25 As for Aretino, the cantankerous master and envied model of a whole new generation of literati in the 1530s and 1540s, he pronounced eulogies for figures later tried for heresy, such as Antonio Brucioli and Bernardino Ochino, and displayed religious tendencies that he would later disown at the first breath of the Counter-Reformation.26 Still more compromising were the positions taken up by others who, like him, tried to exploit the success of the vernacular and the new opportunities it offered to publishers, such as Niccolò Franco, Ludovico Dolce, Anton Francesco Doni, Ludovico Domenichi and Ortensio Lando.27 In 1565 Alessandro Citolini, one of the leading figures in the linguistic debate in those years, took refuge in England to escape the Inquisition: in his Lettera in difesa della lingua volgare of 1540 he had defended biblical translation and denounced “the corrupt and abominable life of priests, the incredible, infinite iniquities of the friars, and the dishonorable, filthy chastity of the nuns” and in his Tipocosmia of 1561 he contrasted the primitive Church with the Roman Church, the one founded on grace, faith, baptism, “the Lord’s supper” and inner confession and the other on ecclesiastical hierarchy, ceremonies, hypocrisy, free will, good works as necessary for salvation, sacramental confession and the intercession of saints.28 Another active promoter of the 23

  Jacobson Schutte, The “Lettere Volgari”; Simoncelli, Evangelismo, pp. 282ff; Braida, Libri di lettere, pp. 21ff. 24  Simoncelli, Pietro Bembo; Righi, Sogni profetici; Fragnito, L’ultima visione; Firpo, Pietro Bembo cardinale. 25  Olivieri, Riforma ed eresia, pp. 86ff, 194ff, 211–12, 224ff; Paschini, Venezia e l’Inquisizione romana, pp. 89, 104–107; Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 40, 74. 26  Cairns, Pietro Aretino, pp. 69ff. 27  Grendler, Critics; Di Filippo Bareggi, Il mestiere di scrivere. 28  See my entry in the DBI, 26, pp. 39–46; Prosperi, Un processo per eresia, pp. 784ff; Della Giustina, La “Tipocosmia.”

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vernacular was the philosopher and man of letters Bernardino Tomitano, author of Ragionamenti della lingua toscana, later reworked as Quattro libri della lingua thoscana, published in Padua in 1570, who in 1555 went spontaneously to the Holy Office to dispel any suspicion that might arise from his translation of Erasmus’ Paraphrasis in Mathaeum evangelistam, printed in 1547 and placed on the Venetian Index in 1549.29 Tomitano was one of the group of people of varyingly heterodox views that was involved in the short experience of the Academy of the Infiammati (Burning Ones) founded in Padua in 1540.30 Bitter linguistic polemics divided the Florentine Academy, whose main exponents seemed, however, to share Valdés’ spiritualism, which at that time was pervasive in the Medici court, if only for its irenic and pro-imperial overtones, in line with the Duke’s sharply anti-papal policy. A leading member was Benedetto Varchi, who sought to celebrate in verse the “good Valdés, who / knew so well the road that leads to heaven,” and transcribed whole passages of the Beneficio di Cristo in his Sermone fatto alla croce of 1549. It is also significant that Varchi kept a manuscript copy of Valdés’ Diálogo de la lengua in his library.31 The Infiammati in Padua were also linked to the Sienese Intronati (Dazed Ones), of whom Mino Celsi was a member. He later fled to Chiavenna and then to Basle, where his In haereticis coërcendis quatenus progredi liceat, a brave defense of religious tolerance, was published in 1577 (a year after his death).32 In Siena there had also been a previous Academy whose members were followers of the new doctrines, such as Aonio Paleario, Lattanzio Ragnoni (later an exile in Switzerland) and Bartolomeo Carli Piccolomini, whose Regola utile e necessaria a ciascuna persona che cerchi di vivere come fedele e buon christiano, published posthumously in 1542, testifies to the speed with which Valdés’ spirituality was becoming known in Siena. It is no coincidence that both Carli and his master Paleario, author of the lost treatise Della pienezza, sofficientia et satisfatione de la passione di Christo, wanted to “entrust the testimony of the acceptance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone to the Italian language.”33 In mid-century the Addormentati (Sleepers) of Rovigo also 29

 Girardi, Il sapere e le lettere, pp. 67–70.  Mazzacurati, La questione della lingua, pp. 47ff; Samuels, Benedetto Varchi; Vianello, Il letterato, pp. 47ff; Sperone Speroni; Fournel, Les dialogues de Sperone Speroni. 31  Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo, pp. 155ff, 291ff; see Caponetto, Aonio Paleario, pp. 41ff; Simoncelli, Evangelismo, pp. 330ff. 32  On him, see Peter G. Bietenholz’s entry, DBI, 23, pp. 478–82, and Celsi, In haereticis coërcendis. 33  Marchetti, Gruppi ereticali; p. 30. On the Intronati, see the two articles by Kosuta, Aonio Paleario, pp. 10ff, 27–9, and L’Académie siennoise, pp. 151–4; Caponetto, Aonio 30

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included suspect characters, so much so that the Venetian podestà finally decided to close the Academy as a “refuge of heresies and perhaps other evil activities.”34 The same happened for the Ortolani (Gardners) of Piacenza and the Vignaiuoli (Vinedressers) of Rome and, very probably, the link between academies and heresy would be confirmed by further research in other parts of sixteenth century Italy, including the South, where the Pontaniana and the Cosentina were significantly infiltrated by followers of Valdés.35 As for the members of the Academy of Modena, a real nest of heretics deriving from the school of Panfilo Sassi, who was tried for heresy in 1523, it was said in town that “the more they read the more incredulous they are of faith in Christ.”36 It may be no coincidence that some of the heterodox communities swarming in the Italian cities in that period were described as “academies,” such as the Modenese achademia errorum, of which the Duke of Este was informed in 1545, or the “academy … of many Lutherans” who gathered in Bologna.37 Behind the diffusion of the vernacular language there was, then, a variety of men and ideas more or less connected to the appeals for religious renewal and to heretical doctrines. In any case, throughout Europe the spread of printing presses extended the pool of readers for a myriad of books and pamphlets that the ecclesiastical authorities tried to stem with burnings, censorship and the bans of the Indexes which affected biblical translations immediately, in the conviction later expressed by Pope Paul V that “reading Scripture too much damages the Catholic faith.”38 The concerns of Roman controversialists that a dangerous breach had opened in the clerical stronghold of theology were also a consequence of the attempt to win over to the new doctrines the common people who crowded the squares and churches during the preaching cycles of Advent and Lent and sought to get their bearings from the various messages handed down from the pulpits. In 1532 the Florentine exile Antonio Brucioli was thinking of them in dedicating to Francis I of Valois the Bible he had translated into Italian, recalling that Christ’s first hearers had included many of “the blind, the lame, beggars, publicans, centurions, craftsmen, women and children, and that it was therefore also necessary for the humble to understand the Paleario; on Carli see Rita Belladonna’s studies Bartolomeo Caroli, Intorno al capitolo bernesco, La svalutazione della cultura, Aristotle, Machiavelli; Firpo, Tra alumbrados e “spirituali”, pp. 39ff, and the bibliography there. 34  See the two articles by Ferlin Malavasi, Intorno al testamento and Intorno alla figura. 35  Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 61ff, 139–43; and Dalla riforma italiana, pp. 45ff. 36  Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, p. 63. 37   Processi Soranzo, 1, p. 155; see Processo Morone, 1, pp. 284–5, note 6; 2, p. 1480. 38  See Fragnito’s fundamental studies, La Bibbia al rogo (p. 330), and Proibito capire; Caravale, Forbidden Prayer.

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word of God.39 They and those who could not read were also the intended recipients of the loose leaves with anti-papal images that accompanied the forbidden books that were smuggled into Italy. 2. Venice, the “gateway” of the Reformation The major center of heterodox propaganda in Italy was Venice, with its printers, its merchants in contact with half the world and its Fondaco dei tedeschi where bales of woolen or fustian cloth could easily conceal smallformat books that were later cautiously put up for sale by the booksellers. As early as 1520 a German Franciscan informed Georg Spalatin, preacher to the Elector of Saxony, that Luther’s works were on sale in the city and in 1524 they were described as being appreciated by many for their solid scriptural foundations: “If we could only get hold of them – he said – we would gladly buy them.”40 The Italian translation of an anthology of writings by Luther and Nikolaus von Amsdorf (significantly, devotional treatises without any explicit anti-Roman polemic) entitled Uno libretto volgare, con la dechiaratione de li dieci comandamenti, del Credo, del Pater noster, con una breve annotatione del vivere christiano, went through at least three anonymous editions in Venice (1525, 1530c., 1556) and another four under Erasmus’ name (1526, 1532, 1540, 1543),41 no doubt to facilitate their circulation as well as to put potential censors off the scent. Though no printer is indicated, the Opera divina della christiana vita, a translation of De libertate christiana, was probably printed in Venice where, in 1532, a book of clear Protestant inspiration appeared with the title of Unio dissidentium and, shortly after, a version of Philipp Melanchthon’s Loci communes (1521) by the Modenese Ludovico Castelvetro, who entitled it I principii de la theologia.42 It should therefore be no surprise that a papal breve of February 16 of that year urged that this flourishing trade in heterodox writings on the banks of the lagoon be put down.43 With its own proud, centuries-long traditions in religion, as in everything, Venice jealously guarded its jurisdictional prerogatives, which were often 39   I take the two quotations from Simoncelli, Evangelismo, p. 305, and Prosperi, Intellettuali e Chiesa, pp. 208–9; on him, see Spini, Tra Rinascimento e Riforma; Del Col, Il controllo della stampa; Boillet (ed.), Antonio Brucioli. 40  Zonta, Francesco Negri, p. 275. 41  See the studies by Seidel Menchi, Le traduzioni, and Erasmo in Italia, p. 83; see, too, Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian. 42  Melantone, I principii della teologia; see Caponetto, Melantone e l’Italia. 43  Fontana, Documenti vaticani, p. 128.

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in political conflict with Rome, and the local authorities refrained from intervening or condemning. In March 1528 Luther himself communicated to the Venetian government his pleasure at how the authentic word of God had been received there and in August 1530 the Paduan priest Lucio Paolo Rosello, later tried in 1551, exhorted Melanchthon to continue along the path opened by the Reformation, assuring him that “all Italians” were anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Diet of Augsburg as a signal for a reform that would then be extended to the whole of Christendom under the imperial aegis.44 In March 1530, on the eve of the Diet of Augsburg, when the imperial ambassadors presented a request “that Lutherans and heretics be not accepted in the Dominion,” the Venetian Senate replied firmly “that our State and Dominion is free, and so we cannot forbid them.”45 In a letter addressed in 1539 “to some Venetian lovers of the Gospel,” Melanchthon hoped that the republic would wish to contribute to religious renewal by taking a stand against papal tyranny while also keeping an eye on the AntiTrinitarian heresies that had started to appear.46 The letters of the papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro became more and more alarmed, denouncing to Rome the dangers of a situation that risked getting out of control, the more so as these subversive doctrines were being spread “along the Rialto and in the squares and churches” by knife-grinders, lute-makers, poulterers and tailors, as we learn from a trial of 1533.47 The fact that they were able to ground their certainties and propaganda on the Bible and felt the need to read heretical books shows how hope of a renewal that might restore the purity of primitive Christianity offered for some time a freedom to ordinary people that would later be lost in the post-Tridentine age with its increasingly rigid social hierarchies, the primacy of obedience and the all-seeing eye of the censor. “There’s no need to confess yourself to priests, but … it’s enough to confess yourself to a wall,” said the carpenter Antonio, a “rough and ignorant man, who wanted to discuss matters concerning the faith.”48 A few years later a certain Franceschina explained to her neighbors that “it is a bad thing to go to Mass, because Christ did not establish it,” and backed up her warning with detailed quotations from the Old Testament against adoring the consecrated host “as an idol:” “We should pray to God, because he is the principal one … and we must 44  See the studies by Del Col, Note biografiche and Lucio Paolo Rosello; on the Reformation in Venice in general, see Pommier, La societé venitienne; Seidel Menchi, Protestantesimo a Venezia; Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies; the studies by Ambrosini, Tendenze filoprotestanti and Storie di patrizi; Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. 45  Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, pp. 64–5. 46  Cozzi, I rapporti tra Stato e Chiesa, pp. 28–9. 47  Gaeta, Documenti, p. 10. 48   Ibid., p. 28.

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worship Christ in spirit and in truth, not in that piece of dough … He is our purgatory, and when we die we shall either go to heaven or to hell.”49 With an explicit reference to members of the laity who wanted to discuss matters that did not concern them, in 1533 Aleandro excommunicated anyone who had read Scripture “in public or in private” without proper authorization.50 This measure was a response to cases like that of the “miraculous” carpenter who, though illiterate, “knew the whole of Scripture by heart,”51 or the preaching of the Savonarolian Zaccaria da Fivizzano, a reader of the Bible who was salaried by the Venetian government and who commented on St Paul’s letters to “many more poor ignorant than learned listeners.” More and more concerned about the discussions that such readings led to “among artisans and the rabble,”52 with the risk of heresies taking on subversive connotations along the lines of the egalitarian model of Christus pauper, the nuncio insisted on the principle that “sacred doctrine is not subject to being put in the hands of the ignorant common people, since it was quite clear that this was how the Lutheran heresy had sprung up and grown in Germany.”53 Between 1530 and 1532 an Italian Bible appeared in Venice, translated by Antonio Brucioli (later put on trial many times). Its title page was probably designed by Lorenzo Lotto, a friend of various figures under suspicion, who in October 1540 recorded in his accounting book that he had painted a portrait of Luther and his wife.54 A few episodes indicate that heterodox propaganda was also spilling over into the countryside, as near Modena, for example, where in the early 1540s Camillo Renato “was subverting the peasants.”55 In June 1550 the Venetian ambassador in Rome was informed that in Bergamo there were artisans who on rest days went “through the villages and climbed onto the trees to preach the Lutheran sect to the common people and peasants.”56 The reading of Scripture in Italian would continue to foster the religious life of heterodox groups that came to light in the future, such as the so-called Ecclesia of Massimo Massimi.57 However, the repression of the 1530s remained sporadic and essentially ineffective in the absence of adequate measures from the Roman curia. And so the Reformation continued to make new adepts around Venice, 49

 Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation, p. 219.   Gaeta, Documenti, pp. 21–2. 51  Pagano, Il processo, p. 248. 52   Gaeta (ed.), Nunziature, p. 48. 53  Gaeta, Documenti, p. 27; see Niccoli, Prophecy and People, p. 119. 54  Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, p. 3. 55  Renato, Opere, p. 170. 56  Paschini, Venezia e l’Inquisizione romana, p. 42. 57  Olivieri, L’“Ecclesia” di Massimo Massimi. 50

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to the point that in 1531 it could be said that in Padua, the destination of many German students, there was not an educated person who was not Lutheran.58 Sometimes linked to the humanists who gathered at the Paduan villas of Trifon Gabriele and Pietro Bembo, men of letters and professors such as Lazzaro Bonamico, Romolo Amaseo and Benedetto Lampridio and students such as Marcantonio Flaminio, Aonio Paleario, Cosimo Gheri, Alvise Priuli and Reginald Pole (the future Cardinal of England) were developing their irenic tendencies in studying the Bible, the Fathers and Erasmus. The Italian translation of Enchiridion militis christiani appeared in 1531 in Brescia, where in 1542 the translation of De amplitudine misericordiae Dei was published under the name of the Mantuan monk Marsilio Andreasi. Many works of Erasmus were edited in Venice to satisfy the needs of a public that was also eager to read in Italian the Moria, the Colloqui, the Dichiaratione de’ dieci comandamenti, the Ordinatione del matrimonio de’ christiani, as well as the Enchiridion, which was reprinted many times. In Padua, which was the center of Italian Erasmianism in the 1520s, the Franciscan Girolamo Galateo was arrested in 1530. He had already had to retract from the pulpit the Lutheran heresies he had preached.59 His case was mentioned in a famous memorandum Gian Pietro Carafa sent in October 1532 to Clement VII, which defined the essential lines of a program to combat heresy, whose fulcrum would later be the Roman Inquisition which he reorganized and directed with an iron fist until he was elected pope in 1555. “Heretics should be treated as heretics,” wrote Carafa, denouncing the corruption and ignorance of the clergy of every level and order and the spread of heterodox books among clergy and lay people, as well as the flood of “errors and … heresies” and the “Lutheran … plague” spread by friars such as Galateo, a “relapsed, incorrigible heretic,” or Bartolomeo Fonzio who, “finding he could no longer go around infecting and corrupting the poor souls in this land, went off to Augsburg and threw away his habit and lives as a Lutheran.”60 Though contriving to save him from more severe punishment, the magistrates of the republic imprisoned Galateo until his death in January 1541, except for a short period in 1538 which he made use of to present to the Senate a courageous summary of the doctrines he professed: justification by faith, predestination, and the denial of purgatory, indulgences, vows, the adoration of saints and sacred images and papal authority. A few months after his death, in confirmation of the thick web of relations linking heterodox groups in many Italian cities, it was printed

58

 Brown, Italy and the Reformation, p. 116.  Freschi, Girolamo Galateo, pp. 53ff. 60   CT, 12, pp. 67ff. 59

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in Bologna as a summary of the “main articles of Christianity” to be used in proselytizing.61 In 1540 the learned Benedictine and future cardinal Gregorio Cortese (who had complained earlier of the absence of checks over the many heterodox books not only “read in public, but also appreciated”) could read in Padua the Institutio christianae religionis by John Calvin, a “Lutheran” as yet unknown to him. It was a book he found to be “full of evil erudition”62 and next year it was also circulating in Florence. In Venice in 1541 the arrest of the Augustinian Giulio da Milano induced Bernardino Ochino to thunder from the pulpit against the blindness of those who persecuted the preachers of the Gospel. At the end of the following year, as soon as he arrived in Geneva, he hoped that Venice would soon manage to free itself “of every diabolical yoke,” the first and decisive step in the triumph of the Reformation throughout the country: “Christ has already begun to penetrate Italy, but I would like him to enter in glory, for all to see, and I believe Venice will be the gateway.”63 One of his adversaries did not differ that much from him when, in February 1546, he wrote to Rome that “many pseudo-prophets are happy to come and infect such a splendid city, so that the rest may be easily infected.”64 Up till the 1560s and later, the “Lutheran” heresy, to use the all-embracing category of the inquisitors, had followers and supporters here (“in infinite number,” it was claimed65), sub-divided into various intersecting groups and protected by a web of solidarity. In some cases they gave life to authentic heterodox communities, linked at times to foreign embassies and ready to welcome foreigners seeking refuge in the shade of republican freedom, sometimes men of letters connected with the University of Padua or with the workshops of the Venetian printers. As was the case almost everywhere in Italy, the Protestant movement was very varied: there were priests and merchants, artisans and lawyers, shopkeepers and doctors, notaries and schoolmasters, professors and students and also holders of distinguished aristocratic names such as Marcello, Mocenigo, Bembo, Foscarini and Tiepolo. In 1538, for example, Girolamo Galateo could count on the support of “some gentlemen” such as Francesco Contarini and Andrea Pasqualigo,66 and leading citizens intervened in 1541 in favor of Giulio da Milano, to the horror of the nuncio, Fabio Mignanelli. In Cyprus in 1544 Bernardo Pesaro defended 61

 Freschi, Girolamo Galateo, pp. 72ff.  Cortese, Opera, pp. 127, 136. 63  Piccolomini, Due lettere, pp. 204ff. 64  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, p. 253. 65  Seidel Menchi, Protestantesimo a Venezia, p. 134. 66  Tacchi Venturi, Storia, I/2, pp. 118–9; Ambrosini, Storie di patrizi, pp. 183ff. 62

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the preaching of the Augustinian Ambrogio Cavalli, claiming that “those who say that he is Lutheran know not what they say, as Lutheran means good Christian.”67 In the 1550s and 1560s many noblemen gathered in private houses or meeting places to read, discuss and swap books and celebrate the holy supper.68 The Inquisition in Rome prosecuted famous prelates such as the Patriarch of Aquileia, Giovanni Grimani, the Bishops of Bergamo, Vittore Soranzo, of Chioggia, Iacopo Nacchianti, of Capodistria, Pier Paolo Vergerio and of Limassol (in Cyprus), Andrea Zantani. The aristocracy’s traditional aversion for Hapsburg and papal power encouraged these heterodox ferments, while in future the Huguenot rebellion in France would seem to give hope that Italian religious dissent might survive through international support. The flight to Geneva of Andrea Da Ponte, brother of Niccolò, future Doge of Venice, caused a sensation in the city in 1560.69 Despite the reluctance of the authorities to involve in the repression highly placed social figures who risked compromising the governing class, Carlo Corner, Alvise Malipiero, and Antonio Loredan underwent the humiliation of abjuration in 1565, as did Francesco Emo in 1567, Giacomo Malipiero and Marcantonio da Canal in 1568 and Alvise Mocenigo in 1569.70 The developments in heterodox propaganda were no different on the mainland, where the discovery of crypto-Lutheran groups aroused much concern both in Venice and Rome. The commitment to reform of the Bishop of Verona, Gian Matteo Giberti, whose preaching was centered on St Paul’s letters, may have helped cut the ground from under the dissenters’ feet, but here too (particularly after he was succeeded in 1544 by the intransigent Alvise Lippomano) books were seized, arrests made and trials held to put down these heterodox cabals. Vicenza was a significant case: it was the scene in 1537 of a bitter controversy over grace and free will, deriving from the Augustinian preaching of Ambrogio Quistelli and in November 1540, with the prospect of the convocation of the Council in Vicenza, a papal breve urged the Doge to intervene to purge the city of any sort of heresy, prohibiting public discussion of free will and predestination.71 Later, an exile among the Protestants would recall Vicenza as a cradle of truth, whose warmth “was such as to heat the whole of Italy,”72 while in 1547 the Venetian rettori regarded it as “much infected with these new opinions against the honor of God and against the 67

 Ambrosini, Tendenze filoprotestanti.  Ambrosini, Storie di patrizi, pp. 90ff. 69   Ibid., pp. 151ff. 70   Ibid., pp. 96ff. 71  Fontana, Documenti vaticani, pp. 380–81. 72  Negri, Della tragedia, p. [B6]r. 68

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Christian faith and religion,” to the point that the most delicate dogmatic questions were discussed “publicly in the streets of the city … to the great scandal of the people.”73 Here a substantial heretical community, more and more Calvinist in tendency, was assuming ecclesiastical autonomy, gathered around a core of “major leaders,” including members of the most powerful families (Trissino, Thiene, Porto, Pellizzari and Pigafetta), who were at the center of a web of relations with heterodox circles throughout the Veneto, as well as with the Churches of Geneva and Chiavenna. The Count Giulio Thiene, known as a “great enemy of the Church,” moved to Geneva (later followed by other members of his family) after his flight in 1555. In 1563 Alessandro Trissino fled to Chiavenna to escape the Inquisition and here took on the role of pastor in 1570, continuing to exhort his “brothers in Italy” to follow his example in avoiding any contamination by popery.74 There was also a substantial radical movement in Vicenza, where Anabaptist meetings were held. The situation was particularly serious at Cittadella,75 where Pietro Speciale was arrested in 1543. He was the author of an unpublished work De gratia Dei in which he formulated heretical doctrines that he had been thinking of for many years. Thrown into prison, he finally abjured in 1551. The group of Lutherans who were inspired by his teaching was quickly joined by “a congregation of Anabaptists between fifteen and twenty in number.” Here too Francesco Spiera met his dramatic end: denounced in late 1547, he was forced to abjure in June 1548 and died in despair, certain of eternal damnation for having denied the true faith. Rovigo, where a prominent figure was the notary Domenico Mazzarelli, experienced something similar: he had converted as a student in Padua in the 1540s and ended up an exile in Geneva in 1573 after twice being put on trial.76 Padua too was a center of Protestant and radical groups: between the 1540s and 1560s the small heterodox community that had gathered around the noblewoman Caterina Sauli and her husband Giovanni Gioacchino Da Passano (both of them from Genoa), was a center for the promotion of editions of Erasmus and a welcoming refuge for those under suspicion. It kept up relations with other heterodox circles around Venice and Mantua, and their work was taken over by their daughter Isabella.77 Here the student from Nola, Pomponio Algieri, was arrested in 1555 and the following year consigned to Rome, where he was executed.78 He had links 73

 Stella, Utopie, pp. 181–2.  See the studies by Olivieri, Alessandro Trissino and Riforma ed eresia. 75  Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella. 76  See above, note 35. 77  Ambrosini, L’eresia di Isabella. 78   De Frede, Pomponio Algieri. 74

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with communities of “brothers” throughout the republic and one of his associates was the schoolmaster Francesco Scudieri from Cremona, who in 1552 left his habit as a Canon regular of the Lateran and in 1560 was imprisoned in Padua. Oddo Quarto from Monopoli in Puglia had in his villa near Monselice a veritable warehouse of heterodox books to be used for clandestine propaganda. This wealthy man had been linked since the 1530s to Camillo Orsini, and finally withdrew to his own land, perhaps after a period in Geneva, bringing with him the fame “of being Lutheran” and a reference point for heretics from every part of Italy. Arrested in late 1562 on the charge of being a “most great heresiarch” and for setting up in his house a “hideout for congregations,” in 1566 he was transferred to Venice, where on July 1 he was condemned to life imprisonment, against the protests of the Roman Holy Office, which had hoped for a more severe punishment of that “relapsed and impenitent” man.79 One can easily understand, then, why a Jesuit wrote of Padua in 1558 that “this land … is full of heretics,” lamenting the lack of interest in repressing them.80 The same was also true of Brescia, where in 1527–8 a Carmelite was preaching heterodox doctrines and banned books were on sale from booksellers like the Britannico family, from whose stock Cardinal Gonzaga himself kept up to date on the main novelties from the North. Here in the 1530s some of Erasmus’ works were translated and published, and in the following decade some crypto-Reformation communities were set up, against which severe provisions were taken to extirpate the errors “from the minds of so many ignorant” people, as was written in 1545, in a denunciation of their spread everywhere, sometimes even in rural areas.81 Those whose dissent grew stronger here were lay figures like Andrea Ugoni and members of the Church from leading local families, including the Benedictine Vincenzo Maggi, later a refugee in the Grisons in 1553, or the Canon regulars of the Lateran, Ippolito Chizzola and Celso Martinengo, the former later abjuring in Rome in 1551 while the latter fled to Geneva, where he became the pastor of the Italian Church.82 Bergamo too saw a flourishing trade in heterodox texts, which led to the ecclesiastical authorities threatening to excommunicate the guilty booksellers in May 1539. Here religious dissent was strong, both in town and country, particularly after 1544, when Vittore Soranzo became coadjutor and later successor of Cardinal Bembo in the government of the diocese, where he made every effort to spread the teachings of his master Juan de 79

 See Vasoli, Il processo per eresia.  Tacchi Venturi, Storia, I/2, pp. 171–2. 81   Ibid., pp. 133–6. 82  See Caravale, Predicazione e Inquisizione and the essays collected in Lorenzi (ed.), Riformatori bresciani. 80

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Valdès (whom he had met in Naples in 1540), until he was put on trial by the Inquisition in 1551.83 In the same year Girolamo Zanchi, a Canon regular of the Lateran, fled from Bergamo to Geneva and Basle, later to become a professor in Strasburg and finally a distinguished theologian in Heidelberg.84 The regions of Istria and Friuli, from Pordenone to Udine, from Trieste to Gorizia, and from Portogruaro to Cividale were particularly exposed to heretical infiltration. As early as 1524 the Patriarch of Aquileia had emanated the first decrees against Lutheran books and had, in 1539, obtained special powers for eradicating the heresies in his diocese and in those of Ceneda and Concordia.85 In 1534 the papal nuncio in Vienna, Pier Paolo Vergerio, denounced the penetration of the “lutheristic sect” and guaranteed his commitment to “extirpating those diseased plants” and preventing the “Saxon goods” from invading Italy from the NorthEast.86 The Bishop of Trieste, Pietro Bonomo, was accused of ill-concealed sympathy and collusion with the supporters of the new doctrines. Later, in the 1550s, his successor (an intransigent Spanish inquisitor) denounced the heresies that contaminated almost the whole of the city.87 Trieste and Gorizia were under Hapsburg rule: they were border-lands used to trafficking both goods and ideas,88 and here too there were priests longing for the reform of the Church, itinerant preachers such as the Franciscan Baldo Lupetino (arrested at Cherso in 1542 and condemned to be drowned in Venice in 1556), schoolmasters and educated men, such as the doctor, Giovan Battista Goineo, who transmitted the new doctrines, which drew new vigor from the discredit of the clergy.89 When Vergerio settled in Capodistria in 1544 to govern his diocese, he tried to support his reforming activity by preaching the new doctrines, fighting a difficult struggle not only to extirpate the abuses of the convents, superstitious practices and the ignorance of the clergy but also to popularize the themes of the Beneficio di Cristo and the Summario della santa Scrittura.90 Hence the accusation launched in late 1544 by some friars who had been affected by his reforms, according to whom the bishop had behaved less as a 83

 Firpo, Vittore Soranzo, pp. 305ff; see below, pp. 156ff.  Bravi, Girolamo Zanchi. 85  Fontana, Documenti vaticani, p. 374. 86  Gaeta, Documenti, pp. 17ff. 87  Cavazza, Bonomo, Vergerio, Trubar, pp. 103ff; on Bonomo, see Di Brazzano, Pietro Bonomo. 88  Cavazza, Un’eresia di frontiera; Ferigo, Morbida facta pecus; Rozzo, Gli eretici. 89  Cavazza, Umanesimo e Riforma in Istria. 90   For this and what follows, see Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio; particularly for the years of exile, see Rozzo (ed.), Pier Paolo Vergerio; Pierce, Pier Paolo Vergerio. 84

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shepherd of his flock, more as a “destroyer, dissipater and rapacious wolf, for he goes spreading about the city and country the profane Lutheran sect.” These accusations were the basis of the trial against Vergerio, whose diocese seemed infected in the eyes of the apostolic commissioner, Annibale Grisonio, who had been sent by Rome to investigate his behavior. Equally worrying was the presence of heresy in Pola, Dignano and Pirano, where significant Anabaptist communities also took root until at least the 1560s, as in the whole of the area around Venice. During the first meetings of the Council of Trent, Venice continued to be the main center for the printing of heterodox books, both Italian and foreign, a crossroads of men and ideas in keeping with its tradition of freedom and tolerance. Indeed, as we have seen, Galateo deluded himself that the Venetian government might become the driving force of a religious renewal that was capable of expanding to the whole of Italy. But in 1542 Baldassarre Altieri, secretary of the English ambassador, wrote to Geneva and Wittenberg in the name of the “brothers” of the Churches of Venice, Vicenza and Treviso and in the following year Martin Luther himself wrote a letter to encourage them. In 1545, from Mantua (where he had taken refuge with Cardinal Gonzaga), Vergerio sent the newly elected Doge Francesco Donà, who was known for his dislike of the curia, an impassioned exhortation for Church reform, which was published in Florence two years later. “Have care for the souls, the souls, the souls of your children … have care for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ,” he exhorted, underlining the importance of not missing the opportunity offered by the imminent Council and the duty of the civil authorities to intervene to clear away “vices and abuses and superstitions:” “I well know that God is rousing on every side good souls with a proper understanding.”91 In the same year Baldassarre Altieri informed Martin Bucer and the Schmalkaldic League that the young patricians in Venice were so openly favorable to the doctrines of the Reformation that there was hope that they could soon be preached publicly. This was confirmed in June 1546 by Guido Giannetti in a letter to the Duke of Saxony, extending to the whole of Italy an optimistic picture of the large number of people desiring to return to the purity of the Gospel.92 In Trent, in the very year the Council was inaugurated, the Venetian ambassador to the imperial court mentioned having seen written on a door the words: “Long live Christ and death to the pope.”93 And in the translation of Celio Secondo Curione’s Pasquino in estasi, which had just appeared in Venice, there was an open request to the government to rebel against the “tyrannical” 91

 Stella, L’orazione di Pier Paolo Vergerio.  Stella, Utopie, pp. 169–70. 93  Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation, p. 166. 92

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Pope and thus become “lords of all Italy,” embracing “the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the giver of all dominions and of all goods.”94 But a turning-point was imminent. In February 1543, in response to the nuncio’s protest, a decree of the Council of Ten forbade the publication and sale of books “against the honor of the Lord God and the Christian faith.” In 1547, the year of the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League at Mühlberg and the approval of the Tridentine decree on justification, the office of Tre savi sopra l’eresia was set up with the task of assisting (and overseeing) the ecclesiastical tribunal in safeguarding the Catholic faith from the snares of a religious dissent that was no longer limitable to general requests for renewal and anti-clerical polemic, but ready to look at the Reformation as a possible alternative. The nuncio, Beccadelli, wrote to Rome in September 1550 that “here the inquisition against heretics is carried out most diligently, nor can we complain of the Venetian government, because it does its duty.”95 The seizing and burning of books increased in the 1540s: 1400 volumes were burnt at Rialto in 1548 and in the following year the nuncio, Giovanni Della Casa, published in Venice the first Index of prohibited books, which condemned the Opera omnia of 47 authors and a hundred individual volumes, almost all of them anonymous. In 1556 the first extraditions to Rome were authorized for some of those charged who, as foreigners, were not Venetian subjects.96 From the pulpits and the confessionals, in diplomatic correspondence and polemical writings, especially after the civil wars broke out in France, no occasion was lost to underline the role of the Church as an indispensable bulwark of the social order and the political integrity of States.97 “Every day goes from bad to worse,” wrote the Bishop of Verona, Alvise Lippomano, in 1547, recalling that “this heresy begins with the Lord’s Prayer and ends in the pike and the arquebus,” and praising the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, thanks to which in those countries “Martin’s name” was never even heard.98 This had already been clear to the wholly political mind of Guicciardini, for whom the most serious obstacle to the spread of heresy in Italy was precisely the early awareness of the fact that heretics were “no less hostile against temporal princes than against the authority of the Roman Pontiffs.”99 In February 1521 Cardinal Giulio de Medici, the future Clement VII, had urged Girolamo Aleandro, the papal legate at the Diet of Worms, to inform Venice that that “rascal” Luther “simply wants to 94

  Ibid., p. 47.  Sforza, Riflessi, p. 42. 96   Ibid., pp. 44ff. 97  Fontana, Documenti vaticani, p. 399. 98  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, pp. 289–90. 99  Guicciardini, The History of Italy, p. 323. 95

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depose the great prelates and powerful citizens and excite the mob and the commoners, and all his venom tends to this: to arouse tumult and scandal and set all peoples on fire against their superiors.”100 As time went by, the Venetian authorities came to a similar conclusion: in a decree of April 1564, for example, they committed themselves to clearing the State of “that evil kind of men that follow the new opinions on religion, who cannot be other than scandalous to Catholic Christian men and a perturbation of our government.”101 The myth of the freedom enjoyed in Venice was slow to die, however: significantly, Jean Bodin set his Colloquium heptaplomeres there. Although the repression was intensified, as late as 1565 Matthias Flacius Illyricus, the promoter of the Centuriae of Magdeburg, urged the Venetian authorities to side with the Protestant cause, in keeping with the ancient religious and political tradition of the Republic, appealing to the celebrated name of Cardinal Gasparo Contarini. At the end of the century Giordano Bruno, and later Paolo Sarpi, still continued to put hope in a possible transition of the Serenissima to the anti-papal camp.102 3. The diffusion of heresy in Italian cities Only toward the mid-1530s, after the assembly of Chanforan in 1532, did the surviving enclaves of medieval Waldensians in the Piedmontese valleys merge with the Reformation, thus establishing those strong ties with the Church of Geneva that would strengthen their religious awareness in the future and enable them to withstand growing persecutions. The French conquest of much of Piedmont, with preachers accompanying the Swiss or German troops, also helped to spread Calvinism in the dominions of the Savoys. As early as 1521, for example, Saluzzo saw a trial against an Augustinian friar and, in 1523 in Turin Celio Secondo Curione was able to acquire Zwingli’s De vera et falsa religione, Melanchthon’s Loci communes and Luther’s De captivitate babylonica Ecclesiae and his writings on indulgences.103 It was then that, struck by the praise of those who had depicted him as a prince “most favorable to true religion and piety,” Luther wrote to the Duke of Savoy, laying out the basic points of his doctrine and urging him to revive “the spark that has already made Your Excellency glow” and to propagate it in such a way “that it may set all France ablaze like stubble.” These hopes were, of course, illusory, soon 100

 Simoncelli, La crisi religiosa, p. 252; see Miccoli, La storia religiosa, pp. 989ff.  Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella, p. 32. 102  Cozzi, I rapporti, pp. 30ff. 103   For this and what follows, see Jalla, Storia, pp. 14ff; Pascal, Il marchesato di Saluzzo; Addante, Giampaolo Alciati, pp. 3ff. 101

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to be disappointed by measures designed to smother at birth the hotbeds of heresy, in full agreement with Rome and the local episcopate, though as late as 1570 the Venetian ambassador reported that Margaret of Valois, wife of Duke Emanuele Filiberto, was suspected of “filling her whole house … with Huguenots.”104 There was then a series of synodal decrees, condemnations, arrests and trials throughout the State, from Aosta to Savigliano and from Asti to the lands beyond the Alps in Savoy, Provence and Switzerland. Early in 1543 the City Council of Turin complained of the presence of “many men infected with the Lutheran sect” and the following year reported that a lampoon had been fixed to the cathedral doors against the Eucharist and the cult of the saints.105 The numbers of Piedmontese exiles to the Swiss cantons increased in the 1540s, including noblemen such as Gian Paolo Alciati (who would later play a leading role, together with a doctor from Saluzzo, Giorgio Biandrata, in the Anti-Trinitarian controversies against Calvinist orthodoxy) and aristocrats who were later part of the Council of 200 in Geneva, ecclesiastics who would play a leading role in the new Churches, including the Augustinian Agostino Mainardi, pastor of Chiavenna until 1563, and simple weavers or artisans, like the printer Giovanni Girardi, whose name appeared as Jean Girard on the title pages of books published by his Geneva printing company, many of them in Italian, intended to evangelize the country. Because of the loss of the Inquisition’s archives we cannot reconstruct Protestant infiltration in Genoa, which had many trading and financial relations with northern Europe. In April 1539, however, the Dominicans denounced “some seeds of heresy” and clearly not just among the commoners, as the Doge hastened to inform Rome, since in June of the following year the nobleman Giacomo Fieschi abjured after being accused with others of denying the need to observe Lent, the veneration of images and relics of saints and the lawfulness of indulgences, which he described as “trickery thought up to make money.”106 Other trials held in 1540 were related to the circulation of works by Luther and Melanchthon and the spread of heterodox doctrines on justification, free will, the merit of good works, purgatory and the celibacy of priests, as well as the denial of the real presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist. The persistence of the Lutheran “plague” in the Ligurian Republic is documented by the arrest in 1567 of Bartolomeo Bartoccio, born in Umbria but resident in Genoa for the last 10 years, where he used his trading connections in the South to “sow heresy.”107 Despite intervention on his behalf in some Swiss cities 104

 Albéri (ed.), Relazioni, pp. 112–92; see p. 168.  Jalla, Storia, pp. 56ff. 106  Rosi, La Riforma religiosa in Liguria, pp. 593ff, 678ff. 107   Ibid., pp. 617ff. 105

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(where the Genoese had substantial interests), the Inquisition’s pressure ensured he was consigned to Rome, where he was burnt alive in 1569. He may have been linked to a group of 10 or so people who had been investigated the previous year by the Holy Office in Rome: despite the Senate’s assurances that they were just a few people “of small importance,” a special commissioner was sent to interrogate these “Calvinists who have celebrated the Lord’s supper heretically,” a claim which seems to be confirmed by the numerous Genoese colony that established itself in Geneva in the second half of the century. In 1521 Duke Francesco Sforza promulgated the first ban on the possession of heterodox books in Milan, where verses hymning Luther had been circulating for two years.108 Here too, the ecclesiastics who were able to read Latin and find their way in the labyrinth of theology had at first been the intended readership of heretical propaganda. As in Piedmont, the Augustinians (Luther’s order) led the field, including Egidio della Porta (from Como) who in 1525 and 1526, along with some of his brethren, wrote to Zwingli that his writings had taught him the truth. In the same period the city authorities of Cremona, which was an epicenter of religious dissent in Lombardy, had to intervene against “those who defaced images and figures of God or our Mother or the saints,” as well as against all those (mainly German) who “dispute, argue and speak of things regarding matters concerning faith and Christian religion, believing in and wanting to support the reprobate opinions of Martin Luther.” One of the first Italian exiles in the Grisons was Bartolomeo Maturo, a Dominican who in 1528 had fled Cremona, where the many trials in the following years were unable to prevent a fully-fledged heterodox community setting itself up there, with branches not only in the “mob,” but also among “noble and good families.” It was called Ecclesia cremonensis, and its adepts celebrated the Eucharist following the Calvinist rite.109 There were also heretical ferments at Piacenza, once again with the collusion and complicity of the local nobility and the men of letters who gathered in the Academy of the Ortolani.110 The Alpine passes made it easy in Lombardy to communicate with the Swiss cantons, as we know not only from the flourishing trade in banned books but also from the opening in the late 1540s of Delfino Landolfi’s printing company at Poschiavo. In 1539 the “errors of modern heretics” seemed to be spreading so unstoppably as to create “total ruin,” while in 1545 two Spanish bishops on their way to Trent claimed to have found everywhere in the area “a great and incredible infection 108

 Brown, Italy and the Reformation, pp. 78ff.  Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, pp. 307, 357–9; for the next decades, see Maselli, Saggi di storia ereticale. 110  Castignoli, Eresia e Inquisizione, pp. 27ff. 109

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of this pernicious Lutheran heresy, which is constantly extending.”111 This is confirmed by the many decrees against religious dissent enacted throughout the duchy, though they seem to reveal more clearly the spread of heterodoxy than they do the effectiveness of its repression. In 1541 in Pavia, for example, and in 1547 in Como and Casalmaggiore, which hosted a community led by a doctor, Pietro Bresciani, later an exile in the Grisons and linked to Anabaptist and radical groups. In Mantua too, demands for Church reform blended with the spread of the new doctrines, further stimulating the curiosity and interest already aroused by reading heterodox books and listening to preachers. As already indicated, Vergerio was able to escape the Inquisition for a time here, thanks to the protection of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, the regent of the small State and brother of the Governor of Milan, Don Ferrante, who, like him, was a fierce adversary of Paul III, against whom (as we have seen112) he railed in his correspondence with Juan de Valdés, the charismatic master of his cousin Giulia. The rediscovery of a Pauline interpretation of the Gospel seemed for a time to break down rigid social barriers, involving clergy and laity, aristocrats and “bold artisans” who assumed the right “to speak out on matters concerning the Christian religion.”113 During his inquisitorial trial in 1568, Endimio Calandra, secretary of the Cardinal of Mantua in the 1530s and 1540s, recalled the “constant series of friars who preached always bad doctrine from the cathedral pulpit, some a little more covertly, others more openly” and listed the many heretical books he had been able to read in the house of his patron, who sometimes had them sent to him straight from Germany “and had collected so many that he had a library full of them”114 (though this did not stop him, in April 1544, from emanating a decree outlawing their possession). In this way, while being careful not to compromise himself and ready to adopt severe measures when the theological debate risked turning into proselytism, particularly in small villages, Gonzaga created in Mantua a climate of discussion that was not limited to the court which was a meeting-point for suspect friars and powerful figures from every part of Italy. Functionaries (like Calandra) and administrators, cathedral canons and noblewomen linked to the prince’s family, artists and notaries, doctors and merchants gave life to a “heretical sect,”115 with many links abroad, protected by a web of complicity that ensured it lasted the whole 20 years of the Council of Trent 111

  Ibid., pp. 318, 336.  See above, pp. 33–4. 113   Bertazzi Nizzola, Infiltrazioni protestanti, pp. 119ff; see Murphy, Ruling peacefully, pp.141ff. 114  Pagano, Il processo, pp. 251, 261. 115   Ibid., p. 123. 112

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and after. The same happened in the Duchy of Urbino, which had close links to the court of Mantua, at least until the Cardinal’s sister, the Duchess Eleonora Gonzaga, died in 1550. Her receptiveness to the new doctrines was confirmed by her relations with Antonio Brucioli, Cardinal Federico Fregoso, who dedicated to her his Pio et christianissimo trattato della oratione (published posthumously in 1542) containing many heterodox ideas,116 and Pietro Panfilo, whom some thought responsible for infecting with heresy all the country around Fossombrone, where he lived.117 The seriousness of the problem was also shown by the request advanced by Duke Guidubaldo II Della Rovere in 1549 to Cardinal Marcello Cervini, seeking his help in “extirpating Lutheran impiety from this State.”118 The situation was particularly serious in the Este domains, where heresy was widespread in the University of Ferrara and, above all, in the family of the Duchess Renée of France, who had converted to Calvinism. Her court, where even the stable-lads were said to be able to explain the Bible, became a place of help and refuge for the heterodox from every part of Italy. As well as many French, such as Lyon Jamet and Clement Marot, who worked there on his translation of the psalms, it included the humanist Fulvio Pellegrino Morato and his daughter Olimpia, who later married a German doctor who had taken a doctorate at Ferrara and went into exile in Germany with him in 1548. Ambrogio Cavalli, a friar who was in the Duchess’s service for a time and was eventually burnt at the stake in Rome, later revealed that he had taken part with her and her daughters in the holy supper following the Calvinist ritual.119 There were at that time many contacts in Ferrara not only with heterodox preachers and suspect figures, but also with France and the emerging Huguenot coterie. Calvin himself stayed briefly in Ferrara in 1536, just after the publication of the first edition of the Institutio, a year in which the arrest of some “Lutheran rascals” in the service of the Duchess created a stir, inducing Ercole II to deplore the fact that “word has got about the town that the whole of Madama’s court was full of heretics.”120 More and more irritated by this embarrassing situation, furious with the small group of heretics who had settled in Ferrara and also convinced that the cause of “the calamities of the house” was his wife’s “bad religion,” in 1554 the Duke asked for her to be put on trial (from which only an act of submission could save her) and had her shut up in her rooms, giving orders that some of her family, “Lutheran rogues who infested the whole city,” should be 116

 Caponetto, Motivi di riforma.  Pastore, Pietro Panfilo, p. 635; see Firpo, Biferali, Battista Franco, pp. 158ff. 118  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, p. 315. 119  Fontana, Renata di Francia, 3, p. XLVI. 120  Fontana, Documenti dell’Archivio, p. 121. 117

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driven off.121 When she was freed, Renée continued to practice her faith privately, giving an example of perfect Nicodemism that not even Calvin dared to condemn, despite his harsh polemics of those years against the Italian “delicate protonotaries” who went on hiding their faith. When her husband died, in 1559, the Duchess of Ferrara returned to France, where for more than 20 years she offered asylum to fellow-believers in her castle at Montargis. As for the other Este city, Modena, the new doctrines found great favor among the nobility and merchants, artisans and literary men, giving rise to what for three decades may have been the largest heterodox community in Italy. We shall consider it in the next section. We know little about the spread of heresy in Bologna in the 1520s and 1530s. It was only a few miles from Modena, but in papal territory and was a university city with many German students. But it was here, in 1532, that the Incendio di zizanie lutherane by the Franciscan Giovanni da Fano saw the light of day. It was one of the first pieces of polemic, as we have seen,122 to be aimed at “idiots, illiterates and simple folk” against “the blind ignorance and bestial temerity” of the “wicked” Luther, whose success could only be explained by his willingness to allow his followers “the life of beasts, gluttony and lechery.” Here in the early 1530s a group was gathering around the mysterious Eusebio Renato, author of a volume of Omelie sui vangeli di tutto l’anno, Fileno Lunardi and the student Giovan Angelo Oddoni (native of Abruzzo). They were a mixed bunch of humanists, interested in the theological problems that were agitating Europe, admirers and correspondents of Erasmus whose writings were the starting-point of a process that would link them with Martin Bucer in the perspective of an evangelical reform that overflowed from the moral plane onto doctrinal ground.123 Oddoni and Lunardi spent three years in Strasburg between 1534 and 1537, returning to Italy to promote a cautious campaign of proselytism: in 1551 the former was in Vicenza, with the reputation of being a “great Lutheran” and there he had for some time been reading the Bible in the heretical communities.124 Many copies of the Summario della santa Scrittura were burnt in Bologna in 1538, the year in which many were following the sermons of the Franciscan Giovanni Buzio da Montalcino (burnt at the stake in Rome in 1553 as an impenitent heretic) and the Lent preaching of Giulio da Milano induced the papal legate to put him on trial. In April 1540 the authorities announced that two “casks 121

 Fontana, Documenti dell’Archivio vaticano e dell’estense; and particularly Belligni, Renata di Francia, pp. 150ff. 122  See above, p. 63. 123   For this and what follows, see Seidel Menchi, Sulla fortuna di Erasmo, pp. 541ff; Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori, pp. 73ff. 124  Ginzburg, I costituti, p. 76.

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of Lutheran books” “supposedly containing wheat” were on their way to the city from Germany, while the following year Galateo’s Apologia was printed there.125 In the same year Bucer wrote to his “brothers” in the Churches of Modena and Bologna, congratulating them on the success of their proselytism and urging them not to get mixed up in disputes over the sacrament, which was dividing the Reformation world along more and more rancorous lines.126 Paolo Ricci, alias Lisia Fileno, alias Camillo Renato, the Sicilian heretic who had been tried in Italy on various occasions for his spiritualist and radical doctrines (which scandalized even the guardians of Zwinglian orthodoxy in Valtellina),127 after living for a period in Venice, returned to Bologna in 1538, surrounded by the admiration of leading townspeople who were ready to protect him and by a host of disciples “most curious for novelties.” The trials of 1543, two years after Renato’s flight, show the complex doctrinal and social breakdown of “heretical depravity” in Bologna, which included knights, noblemen, professors and students and also schoolmasters, merchants, grocers, cobblers and weavers, all bound together by a sense of community, who passed from hand to hand books by Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Bucer, Curione’s Pasquino in estasi and unpublished works by Juan de Valdés. An artisan who was implicated in religious dissent and then forced to abjure later recalled that “sect and congregation of many people, women, men, friars, nuns and every kind of people,” whose leaders were in contact with Germany and the communities of Lucca, Modena and Ferrara.128 It should not be forgotten that between 1547 and 1549 the Council was held in Bologna and the town was a meeting-place for theologians from every part of Europe: indeed, in 1547 a bishop denounced the presence in the city of “an infinite number” of heretics and was concerned that “this impiety is sown more among women than men, and yet no one investigates it, and every day it gets worse and worse.”129 A new wave of trials and abjurations followed in 1549, while four years later there was the scandalous discovery of a heterodox group among the pupils of the College of Spain, where Anabaptist and AntiTrinitarian doctrines were rife. Religious dissent was also present in Romagna and in 1548 Rome was informed of “much noise of Lutheran depravity there.”130 In 1549 a suspect friar preached in “a most Christian [way] but very disguised and 125

 Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori, pp. 80ff.  Simoncelli, Inquisizione romana, pp. 36ff. 127  Renato, Opere. 128   Processo Morone, 2, pp. 1479, 1482. 129  Tacchi Venturi, Storia, 1/1, p. 457; see Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori, pp. 167ff. 130  Cortini, La Riforma, p. 3. 126

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veiled” in Imola, where a tribunal of the Holy Office was set up in 1551. Four years earlier, a Jesuit passing through Faenza claimed that many men and women had long been used to discussing religious questions in the shops and were stained with Lutheranism. In 1547 Fanino Fanini, a baker, was forced to abjure there, then re-arrested at Lugo and, despite Renée of France’s attempts to intervene on his behalf, executed in Ferrara in 1550. The story soon became an example of heroic martyrdom for the faith throughout the Protestant world, thanks to an account (published in Latin and translated into German) by the ex-Benedictine Francesco Negri. More than 150 people (including ecclesiastics, doctors, notaries, merchants and artisans) are mentioned in a list of locals under investigation there in the period, where a fully-fledged Church was being organized that involved some members of the leading families of the town, whose trials continued into the 1570s.131 In Florence the hopes for a profound renewal of the Church were grafted onto the Savonarolian prophetic tradition, as we can see for example, from the Dialogo della mutatione di Firenze, written in 1520 by the piagnone Bartolomeo Cerretani. It evoked both Erasmus, “man of the greatest learning and exceptional dedication … to sound religion” and the “venerable religious” Luther, “whose writings, having appeared in Italy, and in particular in Rome … bear witness that he must be for custom, doctrine and religion most endowed.”132 The longstanding aversion for the “tyranny” of greedy, corrupt priests, whose roots lay not only in the clash with Alexander VI but also in the decline of individual freedom under the dominion of the Medici popes, also suggested to someone of a very different social and cultural level, such as Francesco Guicciardini, the bitter comments in his Ricordi and his Storia d’Italia. In 1529, during the last, short republican parenthesis, Antonio Brucioli, whom we have already mentioned (he later translated the Bible and published heterodox writings in his long Venetian exile), was tried and banished from Florence for having read “to some young people things of Martin Luther publicly.” He had certainly adhered to the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation during his travels to Lyons and Germany, but it is likely that his religious choices were also grafted onto a platonic spiritualism and the anti-Medici tradition of the Orti Oricellari.133 In 1531, after the final conquest of Florence by the Medici with the support of the imperial troops, serious accusations of heresy were launched against Girolamo Buonagrazia, a republican doctor, who admitted to telling a member of the Camaldolese order that, if he 131

 Lanzoni, La Controriforma.  Cerretani, Dialogo, pp. 4–5, 16–17; see Seidel Menchi, Alcuni atteggiamenti, pp.

132

79ff. 133

 Spini, Tra Rinascimento e Riforma, p. 65.

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were ever exiled, he would go “and find Martin Luther.”134 In 1550 a fiery Catholic preacher reported to Rome that the Augustinians in Florence included some who did not hesitate to claim that “if we were not afraid of the flames, we would all be living Luther’s way,” and that many considered him “a great saint.”135 In 1542 the Florentine canon regular Pier Martire Vermigli, formerly in Naples and now a leader of heterodox groups in Lucca, was summoned to Rome by the Holy Office and decided to flee to the North, becoming a distinguished theologian at Strasburg, Oxford and Zurich. The apostolic protonotary Pietro Carnesecchi, a former secretary of Clement VII and later a devout follower of Valdés in Naples, escaped the Roman Inquisition, thanks to the protection of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, until 1566, when he was consigned to Rome and executed the following year. In 1548 a Spanish Jesuit painted a dark picture of the spread of heresy in Tuscany where, even in Garfagnana, Catholic doctrine and ritual were openly contested and mocked, while the Summario della santa Scrittura, the Beneficio di Cristo and books by Bucer, Luther and Oecolampadius were standard reading.136 A few years later a Dominican wrote that in Tuscany “many of the principal cities seemed infected with heresy, so much so that nowhere could one worship without needing to beware of wolves in every condition of person.”137 It should be underlined, however, that in Florence the heretical upheaval left the common people largely untouched. Still less did it affect a patriciate that had now lost political power and sought simply to protect its economic interests. The most serious suspicions concerned those close to Cosimo de’ Medici himself, including many members of the Florentine Academy, such as the already mentioned Benedetto Varchi138 or Cosimo Bartoli, and other men of letters such as Anton Francesco Doni and Ludovico Domenichi, the official printer of the Duke, Lorenzo Torrentino, some functionaries and assistants at court, such as Lelio Torelli, Alessandro Del Caccia or Pier Francesco Riccio (who in 1544, for example, had arranged to have some of Luther’s writings sent from Venice139), rich bankers and merchants who traded with Lyons, including Bartolomeo Panciatichi, who was tried in 1551 along with some noblemen and artisans140 and, finally, noblewomen such as the Duchess of Camerino, Caterina Cibo, who had taken refuge in Florence after losing her small state. Dramatic confirmation of the religious 134

 Caponetto, Aonio Paleario, p. 43.  Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation, p. 15. 136   Ibid., pp. 82ff. 137  Pirri, Episodi, p. 103. 138  See above, p. 65. 139  Fragnito, Un pratese, pp. 19–20. 140  Caponetto, Aonio Paleario, pp. 86ff. 135

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climate in the Florentine Academy and court is provided by the great cycle of frescos begun in 1546 by Iacopo Pontormo (completed after his death by Bronzino in 1558) in the choir of the family church of the house of the Medici, the basilica of San Lorenzo, where, obviously with the Duke’s support, he translated in visual terms with mighty Michelangelesque figures the religious message of Juan de Valdés’ catechism for children, which had just been published in Venice.141 Varchi probably had a decisive role in defining this project, which was fully consonant both with his acceptance of justification by faith and with his commitment to defending the vernacular, as the stories told in those frescos were a sort of Biblia pauperum illustrating the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine in the light of the justifying power of grace. In Pisa, too, a heterodox community formed around the merchant Bernardo Ricasoli, with some offshoots in the university. But the problem became particularly important in the other two republics that had remained independent, Siena and Lucca. In Siena the first provisions against suspect friars were taken in the late 1520s and early 1530s, but without effect, as is clear from the repeated decrees in the next decade that sought in vain to prohibit heterodox doctrines and books. The Augustinian Agostino Museo preached in Siena in 1537, and this set off an important debate on grace and free will throughout Italy, while already at this time some disciples of Aonio Paleario are known to have been familiar with as yet unpublished writings by Valdés.142 Ochino sent his Epistola to the Sienese authorities in 1543, immediately after his apostasy, to explain his flight to Geneva. It created an immediate stir (magnified by the response of his compatriot Ambrogio Catarino Politi) and was at once used by those in the city who longed to speak “freely … of matters of religion in every place and with every kind of person.” In Grosseto, for example, this text became the focus for a new heterodox group that was forming around the doctor Achille Benvoglienti and the notary Fabio Cioni.143 In Siena young men from the ruling class, but also with links to goldsmiths, weavers, barbers, blacksmiths, apothecaries, and swordmakers took charge of a secret movement with various influences (Erasmus, Valdés and Calvin) which, in the early 1550s, was even thinking of the possibility of turning the Tuscan republic into an outpost of the Reformation. The sons of the famous jurist Mariano Sozzini were finally forced to take refuge in Switzerland. Their role was crucial, particularly that of Lelio,144 whose daring theological reflections in Italy were to make a decisive contribution to the radicalism 141

 Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo.  See above, p. 65. 143  Marchetti, Gruppi ereticali, pp. 15, 74ff. 144  Marchetti, Sull’origine; Sozzini, Opere. 142

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of his nephew Fausto in the long Polish exile until his death in 1604. He was to give his name to Socinianism, the Anti-Trinitarian, rationalist and tolerant arch-heresy that would disturb the slumbers of all Protestant theologians of seventeenth-century Europe. Even at the end of the 1550s, when Siena had been absorbed into the Medici duchy, the swarming “infection,” “the heretical humor and seed” that involved “many persons, some nobles and some artisans and rabble,” as well as some intellectuals from the Academy of the Intronati, aroused the concern of the new government, even though it was anxious to avoid any conflict with the patrician families in matters of religion.145 It was, indeed, mainly the Jesuits and the ecclesiastical authorities who were behind the repression that managed at last to eliminate the heresies which had developed for more than 20 years in the troubled political and social tissue of the Sienese Republic, which was on the eve of being conquered by Cosimo de’ Medici. Still more serious was the potential danger in Lucca, where the whole of the aristocracy, whose political independence was threatened by Medici expansionism, had for some time been involved in Protestant doctrines that would increase for decades the number of rich bankers and merchants emigrating to Switzerland. As early as 1533 Bishop Giovanni Guidiccioni had denounced the presence in the city of heresies learnt at the school “of him, who I know not if I should call a venomous plague or infernal monster, the worst of men, Luther.”146 Here too, heterodox books from northern Europe, which entered the city easily through normal trading channels (the first decree prohibiting their distribution dates from 1525), and the preaching of the friars, were the main means by which the new ideas became known, and their success bears witness to the fact that they were responding to real needs of the faithful in the urban world of Northern and Central Italy, whose social and political structures were in some ways very similar to those of the cities leading the German and Swiss Reformation. Encouraged and justified by some Augustinians and Canons regular of the Lateran, dissent against the doctrines, rituals and institutions of the Roman Church quickly became public and collective, involving sizable “cabals” led by “leading figures in the city”147 rather than being limited to “a few pedants and women,” as Cardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccioni claimed in 1542. This explains the sharp reaction of the ecclesiastical authorities, made the more severe for their awareness of the delay with which they were dealing with the danger of the “pestilential errors of that condemned

145

 Marchetti, Gruppi ereticali, pp. 143ff.  Berengo, Nobili e mercanti, pp. 401–2. 147   Ibid., p. 407; but see above all the valuable monograph by Adorni Braccesi, “Una città infetta”. 146

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Lutheran sect,” which in recent years had “multiplied.”148 In Rome it was said openly that “the most corrupt place of all is Lucca,”149 often mentioned in the comments accompanying the institution of the Roman Holy Office with the bull Licet ab initio on July 21 1542. It was immediately after this turn of the screw that the small Tuscan republic was abandoned by the prior of the Lateran canons of San Frediano, the already mentioned Pier Martire Vermigli and his companions Emanuele Tremelli and Paolo Lazise, as well as Celio Secondo Curione, preceptor in the house of Niccolò Arnolfini, where people said he was translating into Italian “some works of Martin to give that good food to the simple women.”150 But even without the guidance of the clerics who had fed the dissenting flames, the heretical movement in Lucca did not die out but was protected by tenacious social and political connivance (as is suggested by Paleario receiving a public teaching position in 1546), despite the baleful eye of the Roman authorities, who were more and more convinced that evil was lurking in the nobility. The Inquisition was not willing to believe in the image fostered by local magistrates, by which there were only “a few hot-heads of each sex who, while having no understanding of the holy Scriptures or the sacred canons, burn to have their say on matters concerning the Christian religion and to speak freely about it as if they were great theologians,” as we can read in the decree of May 12 1545, which set up a special Officio sopra la religione.151 Rome’s vigilance is demonstrated by the failed attempt in 1549 to introduce the Inquisition, which lost no time in closing the remaining spaces of freedom that had enabled the Ecclesia lucensis (according to Vermigli’s definition after going into exile152) more or less to survive in the shade of the small Republic’s autonomy. The trials and condemnations that rained down on the nobility of Lucca from the mid 1550s indicate how rooted heretical dissent was there and added to the notable flow of exiles to Geneva, whose residents soon included the names of distinguished families from Lucca such as Arnolfini, Burlamacchi, Calandrini, Micheli and Minutoli, who played a leading role in the economic, cultural and religious life of the city in the following decades and centuries. One need only recall Niccolò Balbani, pastor of the Italian Church from 1561 to 1587, Giovanni Diodati, a Calvinist theologian of European fame and author of a famous Italian translation of the Bible (1607), or the many descendents of the Turrettini

148

  Gandolfi, La Riforma a Lucca, p. 50.  Solmi, La fuga di Bernardino Ochino, p. 64. 150  Berengo, Nobili e mercanti, p. 411. 151   Gandolfi, La Riforma a Lucca, p. 50. 152  Berengo, Nobili e mercanti, p. 431. 149

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family who taught in the University of Geneva in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The greater geographical distance, the weaker relations with the reformed countries, and the lower urban density made Protestant infiltration in the Spanish kingdoms of southern Italy less significant, though by no means negligible. We have already glanced, though, at Naples’ centrality in the 1540s as the spreading center of Valdesianism, which was to leave a profoundly original mark on the nature and development of the Italian Reformation. Here many forbidden books from northern Europe circulated clandestinely, and no amount of vice-regal decrees could stop them.153 There were many sturdy offshoots from Naples in Capua, Caserta, Calabria, Lucania and Puglia, where Michelangelo Florio (who was later a pastor of the Italian Church in London) said he was helped by “Christian brothers” to flee the Inquisition in 1550.154 Probably, the absence of a tribunal of the Holy Office partially explains our lack of information on the extent of heresy in the 1520s and 1530s. Indeed, the very idea of introducing the Spanish Inquisition led to violent uprisings in Naples in 1547 and 1564, though such a court had already been set up in Sicily in the late fifteenth century. All the same, the Viceroy, Ferrante Gonzaga, left it essentially inactive after 1535, thus helping heretical ideas to gain ground.155 The activities of heterodox groups, the circulation of prohibited books, and the preaching of suspect friars (such as Bernardino Ochino) are documented throughout the island, particularly in Palermo, Messina, Syracuse and Catania, until the 1560s and 1570s. In 1543 the Inquisitor of Palermo emanated an edict to “repress the temerity of those who trust more to their own intelligence than the Gospel truth, claiming the right to utter and discuss heretical or suspect conclusions, with serious harm and scandal to the faithful and the ignorant.”156 Friars and priests, schoolmasters, merchants (local and foreign), booksellers, lawyers and doctors were victims of the first repressions, but, later, a dozen bishops too were investigated. Also from Messina were the nobleman Bartolomeo Spadafora, excommunicated by the Sicilian Inquisition in 1547 and then arrested by the Roman Holy Office in 1556; the Augustinian Lorenzo Romano, who was tried in Rome after an eventful career propagating the new faith; 153  Amabile, Il Santo Officio, 1, pp. 121ff; Lopez, Inquisizione, stampa, pp. 78ff; De Frede, Ricerche, pp. 109ff, 143ff. 154  Welti, Breve storia, p. 30; on Capua and Caserta, see Scaramella, “Con la croce al core”; on the areas south of Naples, Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 23ff. 155  Renda, L’Inquisizione in Sicilia, pp. 63ff; Caponetto, Bartolomeo Spadafora; Zaggia, Tra Mantova e la Sicilia, pp. 207ff. 156  Caponetto, Bartolomeo Spadafora, p. 242.

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and the ex-friar Ludovico Manna, exiled in Geneva in 1552, where he was joined in 1555 by his fellow-citizen Giulio Cesare Pascali, poet and translator of the psalms and of Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis. They were the vanguard of around 30 families that would follow their example, and many Italian heretics ended up Calvinists,157 though some groups of radicals clashed bitterly with the Swiss Reformation. From Palermo there was Girolamo Ferlito, pastor of the Italian Church in London after 1565, and perhaps also Camillo Renato, whom we have already mentioned in relation to heresy in Bologna.158 There were trials, condemnations and burnings in Palermo in the years that followed too, as the Inquisition began to bite. From Catania there was Giorgio Siculo, the Benedictine monk who became a charismatic leader of a radical group inspired by prophetic Anabaptist and Anti-Trinitarian ideas, known as the “Georgian sect,” which included such distinguished figures as Benedetto Fontanini of Mantua, the first author of the Beneficio di Cristo.159 Even after the Council of Trent had ended, some heterodox groups survived in Sicily, as is shown by the many autos de fe on the island till the end of the century, while there were fewer in Sardinia, where religious dissent apparently was limited to young people who had left the island to enroll in some university: Sigismondo Arquer, for example, after graduating in Law at Pisa in 1547 and in Theology at Siena, returned to the island before brief but crucial visits to Switzerland and Germany. He then moved to Spain, where he was arrested in 1563 and executed at Toledo in 1571 after an interminable trial. Another, Nicola Gallo, studied in France before going into exile in Geneva in 1556, where he was tried two years later with Valentino Gentile for his Anti-Trinitarian doctrines.160 To sum up, between the 1530s and 1570s, from Turin to Palermo, from Venice to Naples, Italy was swarming with groups and movements connected with the Protestant Reformation in various ways, with social and doctrinal connotations that were not identical but still shared many features. In the future, the more intransigent defenders of orthodoxy would feel that in those years it had been fashionable even among some of the cardinals and bishops who crowded the papal court to cultivate “some erroneous or heretical opinions.”161 Around 1534, for example, the Roman palace of the Cardinal of Mantua was the haunt of “an old Florentine who had been in Hungary and Germany, who spoke as freely

157

 Peyronel Rambaldi (ed.), Giovanni Calvino; Felici, Giovanni Calvino.  See above, p. 84. 159  On Siculo, see Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande. 160  Firpo, Alcune considerazioni; Spini, Di Nicola Gallo. 161  Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, p. 311. 158

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of the German ideas as if he were reciting the Lord’s Prayer.”162 For a year, before someone woke up to the fact, Philipp Melanchthon’s Loci communes, despite being peppered with praise of Luther’s writings and accusations against priests as “prophets of Jezebel, that is to say Rome,” was so popular in the papal city that further copies were ordered from Venice, where it had been printed.163 In the churches of Rome the Augustinian, Girolamo Seripando, a future general of the order, a cardinal, inquisitor and president of the Tridentine assembly, preached justification by faith to high-ranking prelates, “and all the world ran to hear, as this doctrine was much liked.”164 Bernardino Ochino’s homilies were extremely popular too, and the bishops most aware of the need for reform sought his services as a preacher, though a few years later he would be blacklisted by the Inquisition. In 1543, Alfonso Zorrilla, a Spanish cleric, later secretary of the imperial ambassador to the Council of Trent and finally a Benedictine, could publish in Rome De sacris concionibus recte formandis (dedicated to the Dominican Juan Álvarez de Toledo, one of the cardinal inquisitors), a compendium of Lutheran texts that had appeared in Basle in 1540. Not only did it pass unnoticed, but a few decades later he was praised by as sharp a theologian as St Robert Bellarmine.165 On Christmas Eve 1545 another Spaniard, Diego de Enzinas, in the name of a Roman group linked to him, sent a letter to Luther asking him for doctrinal explanations on the Eucharist.166 In addition, some distinguished members of the Roman aristocracy, such as the Orsini and, particularly, the Colonna families had close links with leading members of Italian heterodoxy. “In those days everybody spoke of nothing else and thought freely and fearlessly about it,” and “things were not so strict”: with these words Endimio Calandra167 will recall the first years of Paul III’s pontificate, when a few timid reforms and the first convocation of the Council seemed to be inaugurating a new season. In 1557, now imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo with serious accusations of heresy, a powerful cardinal such as Giovanni Morone, several times nuncio and papal legate in Germany, evoked sharply the climate of uncertainty, discussion and confusion that was the background and, to some extent, the justification for the many flurries of heterodoxy in sixteenth century Italy:

162

 Pagano, Il processo, p. 250; cfr. p. 259.  Caponetto, Due opere, pp. 256, 260. 164  Pagano, Il processo, p. 333. 165  O’Malley, Lutheranism in Rome. 166  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, p. 292; see Tacchi Venturi, Storia, I/2, pp. 137–9. 167  Pagano, Il processo, pp. 331, 333. 163

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Many years ago matters of religion in Italy were little regulated, because there was not the Holy Inquisition or it was not yet well grounded and robust. Yet in every district there was talk of ecclesiastical dogma and everyone was his own theologian, and books were written in many places and sold without attention everywhere. And many places were without the Inquisition and in many the inquisitors counted for little, so that it was almost allowed or tolerated for everyone to do and say what he wanted.168

The summary sketch I have so far tried to outline suggests some essential features of the Italian Reformation. First of all, it was a phenomenon of social significance, widespread throughout the country in such measure as to arouse serious fears among the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was an almost entirely urban phenomenon, connected with the crisis of the ancient Communes and the defense of republican freedom (in Venice, Siena and Lucca, for example) as a reaction to reinforcement of the political power of imperial Spain under Charles V and of a Roman curia increasingly centralized around papal authority. The protest against the Church was also displayed in verbal rebellion, iconoclasm, anticlerical mockery, demonstrations of incredulity and sometimes blasphemy toward traditional doctrines, ceremonies, worship and rituals. Through preaching, books, letters and personal contacts, heterodox proselytism gave rise to small clandestine groups and, in some cases, communities of “brothers,” properly organized and with strong ties of internal solidarity. Heretical ideas spread in all sorts of social groups (the clergy and the laity, the simple and the learned, ordinary people and the aristocracy), giving life to shared religious identity and creating forms of association that were unusual in a society whose hierarchies were becoming more and more rigid. The clergy were of decisive importance in the early phase, particularly the preaching friars and itinerant monks (Augustinians and Franciscans, above all, flanked by Canons regular of the Lateran, Minims and Benedictines), but there was also a growing insistence by the laity for a new role in tackling theological problems that involved not only human destiny after death but also everyday religious practices of men and women who were no longer willing to entrust themselves to an ignorant, discredited clergy. Both individually and collectively, dissent took form and developed in complex ways, often with an eclectic syncretism that could absorb different religious traditions, drawing on Luther and Erasmus, Calvin and Valdés. It was independent and creative, and it would be reductive to describe it as a passive adhesion to the Reformation in Northern Europe. It was able in the 1540s to give rise to new forms of association and lead to very different personal choices. Finally, any hope that it could be successful was dashed 168

  Processo Morone, 1, pp. 427–8.

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with the weakening of the social and political protection it could count on in the 1530s and 1540s, the definitive conclusion of the Council of Trent and the intensification of the Holy Office’s repression. Hence the difficult choice between Nicodemitic compromise or exile, above all toward the Swiss cities, with their many opportunities for work and investment close to Italy, and Geneva in particular, where, around 1568, the Italian exiles amounted to 5 per cent of the population. 4. Modena, “infected with heresy like Prague” The wealth of documentation available allows us to follow the case of Modena closely (though a similar picture would emerge for Lucca, Siena or Mantua), and so it is a useful example for giving a diachronic account of the origins and developments of religious dissent in a city that for some time could be described by the Landgrave of Hesse as the “only one blessed in Italy.”169 Here in 1537 anybody could purchase the Summario della santa Scrittura in the shop of the heterodox bookseller Antonio Gadaldino, who in 1543 ordered from Venice various copies of the Beneficio di Cristo and in 1555 was still hiding in a ceiling the heterodox texts he was dealing in. When the Summario was denounced as a Lutheran work, bitter controversy followed: at a wedding reception, a sheet was read aloud containing violent insults against the preacher and inquisitor who had condemned the book.170 While the Council of Trent was preparing to meet, Filippo Valentini, a simple layman, commented on Matthew’s Gospel in the presence of leading citizens, to the great irritation of the Dominicans, who were determined to shut up this sophisticated young man who “preached without license and without being an ecclesiastic.” Before suspending his lessons, however, he gave a rabble-rousing reply to their accusations, his listeners crying that they would go to the church of San Domenico “and drive out the friars as enemies of the faith and the public good.”171 There are countless documents testifying to the discredit into which the religious orders had now fallen in Modena too, and also to the atmosphere of freedom and open contestation of ecclesiastical authority that was breathed there. Away from the diocese in the German nunciatures between 1536 and 1542, the bishop of the city, Giovanni Morone, was kept constantly informed of the situation by his vicar, Giovanni Domenico Sigibaldi, who 169

 Sandonnini, Lodovico Castelvetro, p. 171.  Lancillotti, Cronaca, 5, pp. 389ff, 428; ibid., 8, p. 500–504, 684–6. 171  Cavazzuti, Lodovico Castelvetro, pp. 10–14. 170

LXIV;

Processo Morone, 1, pp.

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denounced with growing concern the spread of heresies, as the bishop himself reported to Rome in March 1540.172 “I have been informed in various ways from Modena,” he wrote a few weeks later, “that in that city there are the worst principles of heresy, and people speak in public of purgatory, indulgences, the mass, the intercession of saints, the pope’s authority, free will and other articles just as the Lutherans do, and the mischief-makers are most cunning and cautious and learned, and they are already many in number.” As is evident from Sigibaldi’s letters, the detection of these mischief-makers went hand in hand with that of the ignorance and indiscipline of the clergy, starting from the cathedral canons, “jackasses” whose provost, Bonifacio Valentini, was a “perfect Lutheran” on good terms with some outsiders (including Camillo Renato, who had fled from Bologna) who spread “these rancid Lutheran materials” about the workshops. It seemed to him that gradually the doctrinal and social content of this dissent was becoming more and more clearly defined, with its supporters not only among the members of the chapter and secular priests (such as Don Giovanni Bertari, who commented on St Paul’s letters in the home of the Molza family, or Girolamo Teggia, the preceptor of Countess Lucrezia Rangoni’s son Fulvio), or the series of preachers whose disenchanted audiences were ready to seize on any overtone or halfspoken phrase, but also among the laity that met in the Academy, which was a cultural center for religious discussion − Filippo Valentini (nephew of Bonifacio), the Greek scholar Francesco Porto, on the city’s payroll as a public teacher, the great philologist Ludovico Castelvetro (who had translated some of Melanchthon’s works into Italian),173 doctors such as Giovanni Grillenzoni, Niccolò Machella and Gabriele Falloppia, and members of the nobility, such as the Sadoleto, the Molza and the Rangoni families, who could provide support and protection. “The whole city (it is thought) is spotted, infected by the contagion of various heresies like Prague. In the workshops, street corners, homes, etc., all (I understand) discuss faith, free will, purgatory, the Eucharist and predestination,” insisted Sigibaldi in November 1540, leading Morone to ask Rome to send “discreet, loyal and learned” inquisitors who would be able to remedy this situation before it was too late, “because if the good minds and men of letters of that city with some outside help fell into evil, as they may intend, it would do irretrievable harm, and all would feel the effects.” But nothing changed for the moment: “The sect carries on and multiplies, but nothing is denounced,” Sigibaldi repeated in January 1541, and two months later, more and more disconsolate at his 172   For this and what follows, see Processo Morone, 1, pp. 841ff; ibid., 2, 290ff; Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, 223ff; Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 55ff. 173  See above, p. 67.

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powerlessness, he railed once more against these “new evangelists who have forgotten Christ, and are not lovers of Him as they pretend,” among whom “very many eat meat on Friday, do not pray on the Sabbath or fast etc. A great abomination!” The attempt to prevent the suspect preaching of an Augustinian had served only to unleash controversy and bring about active intervention on his side by many citizens. In Modena too it was the Augustinians who were supposedly responsible for having “fraudulently with great art … spread bad seed through the whole city.”174 Something similar happened shortly after, when the whole chapter opposed the inquisitor’s excommunication of Don Giovanni Bertari, who continued to attack vows and fasts “because these things are not to be found written in the Gospel.” “We are free, and not as the ignorant think,” proclaimed Bonifacio Valentini, while another member of the Academy, Francesco Sighizzi, was investigated for contradicting the content of three homilies defending the merit of good works delivered by Diego Laínez, one of the first companions of St Ignatius.175 The religious life of the city, in short, seemed to have escaped episcopal authority, while the very confusion of the messages coming from the pulpits fed doubts and discussions, as is suggested by the words with which Sigibaldi commented on a homily delivered in Modena by Ochino, who, he thought, was able to transmit “such confidence, love and devotion in Christ” to those “marble men,” as to convince him “that the Lord God would extirpate these heresies when this Capuchin preached.” To attain this end, to “provide spiritual food for this strange city,” he exhorted the distant bishop to ensure that this holy man returned again for a longer period in the future, though actually he was on the point of fleeing to Geneva after preaching “under a mask” the truth of the Gospel throughout Italy. “This sect is worse than the Lutherans, as I seem to understand they have embraced all the German heresies,” poor Sigibaldi anxiously reported to Germany in April 1541, now convinced that measures needed to be agreed by the civil and religious authorities. The bishop suggested now that they get “to the root of the evil without favor to anyone,” to prevent “this infirmity … by being hidden infecting the whole Church.” But it was not easy starting to take a strong line, as “no one wants to be an informer either to me or the inquisitor,” wrote Sigibaldi, revealing his awareness of the social protection that the heterodox enjoyed. The news on the religious discussions of the Diets of Hagenau, Worms and Regensburg circulated among the academicians in Modena “as if they had letters about them every day, and every so often they say the most impertinent things against the dogmas approved, according to the opinions they hold or would like.” 174

 Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, pp. 217–18.   Ibid., pp. 246ff.

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In June the doctrinal discussions had become so bitter that it seemed “a great danger to worthy men to preach or read publicly in this city, where some go to one extreme, others to the other on good works, which some trust too much, and others wholly despise saying they are superfluous.” To re-establish some discipline in all this confusion, doctrinal clarification was therefore essential, to shut up those who talked nonsense about the most sacred mysteries of the faith, which all now felt authorized to discuss without hiding the hope “that ecclesiastical authority goes up in smoke and that in the other articles whatever they want is allowed, according to fleshly Christian freedom as they understand it.” Only in May 1542 was Morone able to return to Modena, where he spent the whole summer before going to Rome to be made a cardinal and appointed as a legate to the Council. He tried to remedy the situation by adapting to the small dimensions of his diocese the moderation that had inspired his diplomatic action in Germany: “Heretics should be treated with mildness,” he had written in 1536. I cannot go into detail here about the wearying negotiations the bishop got involved in to induce his counterparts to underwrite a confession of faith that would deny the accusations which in December 1541 had suggested that the Pope ask the Modenese Benedictine, Gregorio Cortese (who would soon become a cardinal), to investigate and report back to Rome on whether Modena was swarming with heresies. The first obstacle to Morone’s negotiations with the academicians was the choice of the text, with the refusal of the sharpwitted dissidents to accept the simple catechism indicated by their bishop, who was in turn forced to reject the suspect writings they proposed, and to ask Gasparo Contarini, then legate of Bologna, to draw up a short confession of faith. But it was necessary to discuss some philological and doctrinal aspects of Contarini’s Articuli orthodoxae professionis. The Venetian Cardinal was now in turn faced with the subtle dialectic and duplicity of these men until he lost patience: “I seem to see in them such arrogance and pride, mother of all evil, together with great ignorance, that I think every possible evil of them,”176 he wrote dispiritedly on July 13. A few days later came the turning-point, with the setting up of the Roman Holy Office and six cardinals designated to deal with “heresies, and particularly in Modena, Naples and Lucca.”177 Everything now changed, and the trial of strength that was going on in Modena concentrated no more on the text of the Articuli but simply on the formula with which to underwrite them. The academicians were cornered: either they gave in or faced a trial. Desperately, they tried to safeguard some margin of ambiguity in which they might hope to hide their religious convictions. But it was all 176

  Processo Morone, 2, pp. 353−4.   Ibid., pp. 355−6.

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in vain, and in a few days they had to give up any hope of avoiding the painful choice that hung over them, as we can see from a dramatic letter sent by Filippo Valentini to Contarini in a last-ditch attempt to convince him to protect his dignity and also the “most unquiet quiet” and “troubled tranquility” that agitated his conscience.178 The one concession the suspects managed to obtain was that both clerics and citizens of certain Catholic faith were asked to underwrite those Articuli, to avoid it seeming like an abjuration. Between late August and early September most of them decided to give in, although some preferred to flee, only to return shortly afterwards and submit. For many, though, it was a mere “simulation,” an opportunistic decision that did not mean they renounced their religious identity, whose deep roots were evident in the tenacity with which the academicians had tried to defend it in the preceding months. If they had thought during the long skirmish with their bishop and Contarini that they would be able to carry on professing those doctrines inside the Church, avoiding clashes and condemnations, in the end they had to obey, but without renouncing their faith. They simply hid it beneath the mask of a formal participation in Catholic ritual, keeping it in secret, sharing it among themselves in small groups, aware of being members of a different Church, and fed by the hope (still alive in 1566, after the conclusion of the Council of Trent) “that one day we will be able to preach openly the truth of the Gospel, which for a long time has been persecuted and concealed.”179 A consciously Nicodemitic choice, in short, which in Modena marked the end of any illusion of promoting from inside the Church a renewal that could absorb the religious demands that the Reformation had unleashed. Far from putting a stop to religious dissent, the hectic events of 1542 were simply a turning-point, making the role of the so-called Academy gradually more marginal, though, according to one chronicler of the time, it could still boast “more than 50 men of letters” in 1545.180 In May of that year a papal breve urged the Duke of Este to have the iniquitatis filius Filippo Valentini arrested.181 The young man was clearly tipped off and could make his getaway and hide in the country until his friends were able to ensure his return to Modena on payment of bail. The Greek scholar Francesco Porto, realized that these events marked an irreversible turningpoint and preferred to leave (he was a foreigner, anyway) and seek refuge in the court of Renée of France. The fact that these aristocrats, ecclesiastics 178

  Ibid, pp. 357–8; on Filippo Valentini see Valentini, Il principe fanciullo.  Bianco, La comunità di “fratelli”, p. 666; on heretics in Modena, see also Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli. 180  Lancillotti, Cronaca, 8, p. 15. 181  Fontana, Documenti vaticani, p. 400. 179

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and men of letters were not spared the humiliation of submitting to Contarini’s Articuli, however prudently they had tried to keep their opinions to restricted cultural and social élites, helped inaugurate a new season, opening the heterodox movement to those “plebeians” by whose “follies” they had not wanted to seem to be contaminated.182 As soon as Morone left, in fact, as we can see from a letter dated March 1 1543, Sigibaldi returned to denouncing the “Lutheran infection” that had “generally taken over the corporal senses and spiritual taste of this people,” adding to the most well-known members of the “diabolical synagogue” of the Academy the names of more humble figures that had never emerged previously. They were probably the same ones that the Venetian friar minor, Bartolomeo Fonzio, addressed in those weeks. His trial in Modena in 1544 reveals the doctrinal and social radicalism that inspired his preaching, while from both Ferrara and Bologna too, arrived alarming news of the discovery of “Lutheran mechanicals.”183 The following years would see new heretical groups forming, guided by well-heeled merchants such as Giovanni Bergomozzi, Pietro Curioni, Giacomo Graziani and Francesco Camorana (who kept in their homes works by Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Brucioli, Mainardi, Curione and Ochino), notaries such as Marco Caula and schoolmasters such as Giovanni Maria Tagliadi, known as Maranello. Their members included an assorted heretical world of artisans, carpenters, mask-makers, weavers, and cobblers such as the old, lame Bartolomeo Ingoni or Bernardino Pellotti, known as Garapina, who was illiterate but had his fellow-believers read to him forbidden books and the Gospel in Italian. New polemics and debates, however, had accompanied some suspect claims made in February 1543 by the Dominican Bernardo Bartoli, who had been sent to Modena by Morone, now converted to the Valdesian doctrines and – as we shall see184 – deeply involved in heterodox doctrines similar to those of the academicians that he had helped repress not long before. In August, in one of his brief stays in his diocese, the bishop also got rid of the Jesuit Alfonso Salmerón, irritated by his defense of the value of good works.185 The following year it was the turn of the Franciscan Bartolomeo della Pergola, also sent by Morone to preach in Modena, where his Lenten homilies aroused new debates and conflicts whose echoes reached Rome. Put on trial by the Holy Office, the friar had to pronounce a dramatic public recantation in the presence of hundreds of people who

182

 Firpo, Inquisizione romana, p. 124.   Processo Morone, 2, p. 448. 184  See below, pp. 151–3. 185   For this and what follows, see Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 250ff. 183

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hung on every overtone his words might have.186 Again in 1544, Giovan Francesco da Pontremoli, the guardian of the Franciscans of Modena, preached in the cathedral, openly claiming “that Christians are justified only through the blood of Christ and not through their works.”187 Morone’s new religious identity influenced not only the pastoral care of his diocese but also the secular government of Bologna, which had been entrusted to him between 1544 and 1548 and which he used to support people, doctrines and behavior that were doubtfully orthodox. “In Modena it was said he was suspect,” it was later claimed of him, and some Catholics even regarded him as an “explicit Lutheran,” seeing him as responsible for having done nothing against “so much heretical plague with which the whole city was full.” Ambrogio Catarino Politi wrote a letter “to the Catholics of Modena, urging them to stay true to their faith against the Lutherans who were in power then, and who insulted and offended them,” and a Spanish Franciscan even dared to denounce the bishop to the Duke of Este as the main obstacle in the fight against heresy.188 It is not surprising, therefore, that Morone finally decided to leave the diocese, which was entrusted in May 1550 to Egidio Foscarari, a Dominican from Bologna and a universally admired theologian, quite without heretical tendencies but convinced that moderation was the best way to deal with suspects of heresy and bring them back to Catholic orthodoxy. To avoid intervention from the Roman Inquisition (and also to protect his predecessor), he preferred to note down in a private register the secret abjurations he received from many of the heterodox. This explains why, in 1572, after his death and in a particularly intransigent period, a cardinal could claim that the Holy Office paid no regard to what he had done over heresy and Inquisition.189 In February 1551 the Jesuits who had recently arrived in Modena were concerned about the suspect preaching of Giovan Francesco da Bagnacavallo (investigated in 1558 and later a refugee in Switzerland) and its success among the epigones of the Academy, who included Filippo Valentini and Ludovico Castelvetro. They felt they were “wasting their breath” when they tried to convince the bishop to intervene.190 The trials held during his episcopate in the 1550s were mainly of artisans such as Paolo da Campogalliano, Giovanni Terrazzano and Pellegrino Civa, while the learned and the noble 186

  Processo Morone, 2, pp. 492ff; see Bianco, Bartolomeo della Pergola.  Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, p. 226. 188   Processo Morone, 1, pp. 133, 284–5, note 6, 304–305, 379, 593; see Firpo, Inquisizione romana, 125ff. 189  Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli, pp. 59ff; see Fontaine, For the Good of the City; Fontaine, Making Heresy Marginal. 190   Epistolae mixtae, 2, p. 502. 187

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with connections with the Academy were left pretty much undisturbed, as is shown, for example, by the “infinite tenderness” that in the summer of 1556 Foscarari unhesitatingly accorded Castelvetro, consoling him for the “persecution” inflicted on him when the Inquisition called him to Rome with the bookseller Antonio Gadaldino, Bonifacio and Filippo Valentini. Not even the Duke of Ferrara’s protection, which had often been requested by the Modenese government in defense of “those our citizens, who are not among the least … held to be virtuous persons and not such as should be dishonored in this way,”191 could then prevent those who had been playing with fire too long from being consigned to Rome. In the spring of 1555, when Paul IV became Pope, a new season of severe repression began against the many forms in which religious dissent had manifested itself in the past. Only in May 1557, however, and only for the old Gadaldino, did the insistent pressure of the Roman authorities succeed in obtaining an extradition. Imprisoned for having sold a large number of heretical books for 20 years, Gadaldino was at last forced to abjure in October 1559. Of the others, who at once fled the city, only Bonifacio Valentini was arrested and transferred to Rome, where he had to abjure on March 6 1558. His trial was then repeated in Modena, where he suffered the additional humiliation of wearing the yellow tunic. His nephew Filippo’s situation was more serious: after a first trial in the mid 1540s he had privately abjured in the presence of Foscarari, and now as a relapsed heretic risked the death penalty. He therefore decided to leave Italy once and for all, but not before writing to the Duke of Este a letter accusing him of abdicating his authority and leaving his subjects at the mercy of the Inquisition. Moving to Grisons, he joined the most radical of the Italian emigrants and, accused of professing Anabaptist and AntiTrinitarian doctrines, finally gave up any religious identification and died in solitude. As for Castelvetro, he went to Rome in 1560 after the death of Paul IV but quickly fled again to escape a sentence of condemnation for being an impenitent heretic, which had been passed in his absence. The following year he took refuge in Geneva, moving to Lyons and Valtellina, before dying in 1571 at Chiavenna, “in a free land.”192 These events did not mark the end of the community of “brothers” in Modena, which was divided into many groups, for obvious reasons of caution. It survived and even expanded for at least another decade, thanks to its roots in the social context of the city.193 There were meetings in private homes and workshops to read the Bible in Italian and forbidden 191

 Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, p. 238.  On him, see Castelvetro, Filologia ed eresia; Firpo, Mongini (eds.), Ludovico Castelvetro. 193  Bianco, La comunità di “fratelli”; Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli, pp. 70ff. 192

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books, discuss doctrinal problems, pray and sing psalms, organize forms of solidarity and assistance (almsgiving, visiting the sick), coordinate proselytism (thanks to the free movement of artisans from one city to another), and also – at least in the core groups – celebrate the Lord’s supper together. This collective rite expressed what was now a fully developed sense of otherness from the Roman Church, making a sharp distinction between those who were convinced of “being saved through the death and passion of Christ” and those who “believed they were saved through indulgences, pardons, vows, pilgrimages and other such works,” which were alien to the authentic “congregation of the faithful.” These groups, whose offshoots extended far beyond the 30 or so people who were their backbone, consciously felt themselves close to the origins of religious dissent in Modena, to the Academy and the preaching of Pergola and Fonzio, and the circulation of books such as the Summario della santa Scrittura and the Beneficio di Cristo. We have already mentioned the social contours of the movement, which found most converts in the 1550s among artisans, weavers and merchants, although we should emphasize the prestigious role at the top, among the “grandees,” the leaders of the community, of the Count Giovanni Rangoni, who claimed to feel toward Pergola “a debt greater than that to his father” for having shown him the way to the true faith. Even after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the surviving community of “brothers” continued to practice their faith under a Nicodemitic mask in the hope that the expansion of Calvinism and the Huguenot rebellion in France could give them a new chance also in Counter-Reformation Italy. The turning-point, the onset of a crisis that was in a few years to extinguish the movement, took place in 1566 after the election of Pius V, an intransigent Dominican who was determined to use the “iron rod”194 of the Holy Office with maximum severity to put down what remained of heresy in Italian cities. In Modena too the word soon spread that “there was going to be a persecution of those of this sect and that there were forty of them on the list.” This was understating the case, as at least 20 trials were held between the autumn of that year and the end of 1567, around 50 the year after (during which, demonstrating the solidity of the movement, the “brothers” continued to meet in homes and workshops), and dozens more in the following years. The decisive blow in this campaign of repression was dealt by the breve of February 10 1567, in which the Pope authorized the bishop of the city (once again, ironically, Morone, who had been personally examined by the Pope during his imprisonment of 1557–9) to absolve with secret abjurations all those who might wish to become reconciled with the Church, recognizing their 194

 Pagano, Il processo, p. 76.

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errors.195 This apparently mild measure was actually motivated by the awareness of the crisis which the heretical movement was undergoing, hounded by the Inquisition, at times disappointed by the drying up of the Reformation’s original claim to freedom in the new orthodoxies of Wittenberg and Geneva, while the renewed doctrinal certainties and efficient reorganization of the post-Tridentine Church demoralized, reduced and constrained the last epigones of heterodox groups. For some of them the breve was an opportunity to return to the fold, renouncing what were mere illusions of the past, “old errors” as the Inquisitor of Modena called them in October 1567, an “infection … of many years ago,” as Charles Borromeo wrote the following year, inviting similar measures of clemency to eradicate heresy in Mantua.196 The following months thus saw many people coming forward: people who had been compromised by their dissent in the previous decades and now saw a cheap way of freeing themselves from the Inquisition, although they also had the bitter duty of revealing the names of accomplices, thus setting off a chain reaction of denunciations, abjurations and flights. Those who did not wish to give in had no other choice but exile, and this was the path taken by Giovanni Rangoni, Giacomo Graziani, Giovanni Bergomozzi and Pier Giovanni Biancolini, following in the steps of Ludovico Castelvetro and Filippo Valentini toward Grisons, where in some cases they joined the most radical groups against the Reformation establishment. One of the last to leave Modena, in late 1569, was Giulio Sadoleto, whose image was finally burnt at the stake in January 1571, when the heretical movement in Modena had been extinguished. 5. Circulation of men and ideas “Now the whole of Italy is infected and made Lutheran in secret,” wrote Dionigi Zannettini, known as Grechetto, from Trent on October 13 1546. Always on the lookout for heretics, he thought much of the responsibility for the situation lay at the door of the mendicant orders (“all infected except the religion of St Dominic”), which, along with books, had been the first channel for spreading heresy: “If the preachers in Italy had been sound, Italy would not be infected as it is.”197 “I see and understand that little by little everything goes to ruin,” echoed the papal legate in Brussels, Alvise Lippomano, in March 1549, while in April of the following year 195

 Bianco, La comunità di “fratelli”», pp. 623ff; Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli, pp.

80ff. 196

 Pagano, Il processo, p. 103.  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, pp. 260–62.

197

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his vicar in Verona wrote to Rome underlining the need “in these days not only to use every diligence with the preachers, but zealously watch over and observe, so to speak, what their doctrine is.”198 If we concentrate on the geographical distribution of heresies, as in the previous pages, we risk missing the mobility of men and ideas, particularly due to the preaching of the itinerant friars and to the heretics themselves, who were sometimes simply trying to escape the Inquisition. This mobility was most marked in the 1530s and 1540s, when the movement was expanding and, with the growing need for caution and secrecy that this imposed, establishing a dense network of relations and ties between groups from different cities. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it is worth giving a few examples, starting from the adventures of the Bolognese Carmelite, Giambattista Pallavicino, who was first accused of making erroneous statements in Brescia in 1528, and of defending “Lutheran law” shortly after in Chieri. The bland measures taken by the superiors of his order did not prevent him from returning soon into the good graces of Clement VII, in whose presence he preached in Bologna in 1533, despite having signed an opinion, not long before, that was favorable to Henry VIII’s divorce. At the court of France he spoke “contre Dieu et contre le pape,” to the point of being imprisoned in 1534, and again in 1536 after a short period in England. Handed over to Rome in 1539 with the reputation of being “the greatest rogue that ever was in the world,” he was nonetheless set free a few months later and was once again preaching successfully the following Lent to “the whole of Rome.” His immediate return to prison was not due to suspicions of heresy but to his role in political intrigues connected with the marriage of Margaret of Austria and Pier Luigi Farnese.199 If Pallavicino can be dismissed as an unscrupulous opportunist, the case of the Augustinians in Lombardy is very different. In the 1530s they were the most significant group to first come under the influence of Luther’s doctrines. Agostino Mainardi from Saluzzo, for example, began to display his opinions in Lenten homilies delivered at Asti in 1532, though this did not stop him from becoming prior of Pavia the following year. Here he became friendly with Celio Secondo Curione and began a cautious work of proselytism. New suspicions about him emerged concerning his preaching in Rome in 1538, in Venice in 1540 (now “a known Lutheran”), and in Milan in 1541, sowing “in public and private various heresies and articles that are wicked in the eyes of the Holy Mother Church.” This led to him being put on trial, being judged a “furious lion armed

198

 Tacchi Venturi, Storia, 1/2, pp. 146–7, 152–3.  Staring, Giambattista Pallavicini.

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with perverse doctrine,” and saving himself by fleeing to Switzerland.200 Niccolò da Verona, a prior in the monastery of the city from 1537–8, had ties with Mainardi and was accused of supporting heresy from the pulpit in Genoa in 1539. He was deprived of the permission to preach but very soon reinstated, until it was discovered that he was responsible for a clandestine edition of the Doctrinae novae et veteris collatio by Urbanus Rhegius, which appeared shortly after in Verona. He fled when summoned to Rome and was expelled from his order, though he was received by the Augustinian monastery in Tortona where he preached during Advent and Lent. In June 1541 the governor of Milan finally ordered the arrest of Fra Niccolò and Mainardi, who were accused of “stamping falsities in the souls of many persons,” to the point that “some were so infected with heresy that not only did they burn to speak of it in public but also insisted on discussing it.” Even then he was able to find help in Pavia and finally take refuge in Trent under the protection of Cardinal Madruzzo (who was probably unaware of the business), who dismissed him only after repeated insistence from the Roman authorities.201 Another Augustinian eremite was the Milanese Ambrogio Cavalli: after studying in Padua he became Regent of Studies in Bologna, where some of the homilies he had given in Milan in 1537 aroused the first suspicions about his religious sympathies. In 1540 he renounced any official role in his order, indicating a separation that became more evident shortly after when he decided to accept the position of vicar to Bishop Andrea Zantani in the Cypriot diocese of Limassol, where his preaching in 1544 led to his trial in Venice the following year. After abjuring, Cavalli took refuge for a short time in Chiavenna, and then, between 1547 and 1554, in Ferrara as almoner of Renée of France. When the Duke of Este started a crackdown in 1554, he was forced to take shelter again in Switzerland, in Grisons and Geneva. But he returned to Italy shortly after, only to be arrested by the Roman Inquisition and, at the end of a short trial, condemned as a relapsed heretic and burnt at the stake in Campo dei Fiori on June 15 1556.202 Another fellow-member of his order, Giulio da Milano, had been involved in Cavalli’s activities in Padua and Bologna, after which he went to Pavia between 1533 and 1535. Here he met Mainardi, who influenced his religious ideas, as became clear in the Lenten cycles in Tortona in 1537, in Bologna in 1538 (where he was first investigated by the Inquisition), and in Monza in 1539. A year later, after arguing against the attempts of the general, Girolamo Seripando, to repress the spread of heresy in the 200  Armand Hugon, Agostino Mainardo; on Luther’s first Augustinian followers see Peyronel Rambaldi, Dai Paesi Bassi all’Italia, pp. 79ff. 201  Tacchella, Il processo, pp. 56ff. 202  Rozzo, Vicende inquisitoriali; Rozzo, L’”Esortazione al martirio”.

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order and regain control of the many friars who were “rebellious and ill-disciplined in matters concerning the Catholic faith,”203 he gave up his position as Regent of Studies in the Milanese monastery where Cavalli was the prior. His Advent homilies in Trieste and during Lent in Venice in 1541 (published in two volumes in Basle in 1547) were accompanied by more and more bitter disputes: he was accused of “disseminating … Lutheranism” in “attractive, hidden and malicious ways.” The papal nuncio had him arrested, confiscating books by Erasmus, Melanchthon, Calvin, Bullinger, Pellikan and “many suspect letters.”204 The trial revealed his involvement in proselytism and the many relations he had with Italian dissenters from Veneto to Piedmont, from Romagna to Tuscany, from Lombardy to Dalmatia.205 Forced to abjure and driven from the order, Giulio managed to escape from prison in Milan in February 1543 and two years later, flee to Grisons, where he was a Calvinist pastor in Vicosoprano and Poschiavo till his death in 1581, taking part in bitter anti-Nicodemitic polemics.206 Nor did Augustinian preaching give rise to suspicion and accusations only in Lombardy. It is worth mentioning, for example, the case of Giuliano Brigantino from Colle Val d’Elsa, whose homilies in Parma in 1542 brought about the first accusations against him. At first, to avoid a trial, the general of his order went no further than an oral rebuke and sent him to the monasteries of Pavia and Milan until, in 1547, he was able to start preaching again in Ferrara and Padua, then in Venice and Vicenza, in a climate of growing suspicion, which resulted in him being transferred again in 1549, this time to Siena. But, after his Lenten preaching in Florence the following year, he was arrested and consigned to the Roman Inquisition, in whose prisons he died a few months later.207 One last example from Tuscany was the Augustinian, Andrea Ghetti da Volterra,208 who, after graduating in Padua, moved to Verona in 1539 and then to Trento in 1542 as preacher for Cardinal Madruzzo. Though his homilies in Mantua the following year were full of heterodox content, he was much admired by Cardinal Gonzaga, while more and more serious suspicions about him accumulated in Trent during the failed convocation of the Council that year, when he was heard to express himself in a most unorthodox fashion while conversing with high-ranking prelates. In 1544 he preached during 203

 Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, pp. 321–2.  Tacchi Venturi, Storia, 1/2, pp. 122–4. For Seripando as general of the order see Jedin, Papal Legate, pp. 116ff. 205  Peyronel Rambaldi, Dai Paesi Bassi all’Italia, pp. 88ff. 206  Rozzo, Le “Prediche”. 207  See the entry of Vittor Ivo Comparato, DBI, 14, pp. 262–3. 208  On him, see Processo Morone, 1, p. 385, note 158. 204

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Lent at the court of the Duchess of Ferrara and published in Florence a speech “on the dispute about grace and works” whose content induced Ambrogio Catarino Politi to denounce him to the Holy Roman Office. He was absolved and returned to the Council in 1546, where once again he was accused of stirring up trouble. His superiors urged caution on him, to avoid the possibility of his words being misinterpreted, and Cardinal Gonzaga exhorted him “not to give scandal.” But Volterra continued to sound off from the pulpits of Naples in 1547, Venice and Ferrara in 1548, and Genoa in 1549, leaving polemics and suspicions in his wake that forced the Inquisition to intervene again. Summoned to Rome, he had to abjure his alleged heresies, but thanks to the protection of his general, Seripando, was able to return to preaching in Bologna in 1553, when he also went to visit Renée of France, and in Udine in 1554, while the Holy Office reopened its investigations on him, more and more irritated by “his old follies that he has abjured so often” but which he continued to preach. Shut up in the prison of Ripetta in 1555, he escaped during the popular uprising on the death of Paul IV in August 1559 and was acquitted in July 1560. After a few years’ enforced silence he was admitted to the meetings of the Council of Trent in 1563 and started preaching again in Bologna, then in Milan in 1564, Messina in 1565, Rome in 1566 (where he was much admired as “benemerito of the order”), and Florence in 1567. He died in 1578, an extraordinary example of a religious career that developed on the fringe of doctrinal and institutional compatibility in those decades; but his career is also clear proof of the persisting uncertainties and delays, as well as of the protection and complicity, that afforded some degree of freedom even after the setting up of the Holy Office and the first meetings of the Council. Just as much as the Augustinians, the lives of many Franciscan preachers are worth examining in detail. In addition to the cases of Girolamo Galateo in Venice and of Bartolomeo della Pergola and Giovan Francesco da Bagnacavallo in Modena, which have already been mentioned, we may consider that of a figure of remarkable stature, such as Bartolomeo Fonzio, who was at an early age denounced by Gian Pietro Carafa, as we have seen, as a leading exponent of “that damned brood of those friars minor conventual,”209 responsible, in his view, for the spread of heresy in Veneto. The first measures taken against him were based on the “Lutheran and heretical articles” that he had openly preached in San Geremia in Venice around 1528, and in June 1531 the order for his arrest arrived from Rome. He escaped capture with the help of some Venetian noblemen, left his Order, and fled to Germany, where he seems to have sought a role in the 209   CT, 12, p. 647. On Fonzio, see the studies by Olivieri, Il “Cathechismo”, and “Ortodossia” ed “eresia”; Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella, pp. 141ff.

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attempts at reconciliation with the Protestants and where he came into contact with Martin Bucer, taking great pains in looking for doctrinal possibilities that might avoid the “bitter discord” over the question of the Eucharist, which was tormenting the reformed Churches. Fonzio’s irenicism led some to dismiss him as “a lost Lutheran” who, despite his apparent moderation, had “the whole of Luther hidden in his belly.” This judgment was corroborated by his reworking in Italian of Martin Luther’s famous pamphlet, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, published in 1533 with the title De la emendatione et correctione dil stato cristiano.210 This book was widely circulating the following year in Venice and even read by simple women as a book of chivalry, to the great concern of the nuncio, who was convinced it “had diseased half this city.”211 He is known to have been in Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg and Strasburg in this period, while in 1534, using a safe-conduct given him by Rome the previous year, he was able to return briefly to Venice and did so again in 1535, probably after another stay in Germany and a trip to Constantinople, still regarded with suspicious mistrust by Aleandro. The desire for complete absolution took him to Rome in 1536 and again in 1537, after staying for more than a year in L’Aquila: he lived there till 1541, with long periods in Farfa abbey, where he prepared a Catechism and 75 articles to submit to a commission of Roman theologians. Received back into the bosom of the Church, he returned to Venice, but his peregrinations continued, moving to Modena around 1544, where he gave himself to intense heterodox propaganda, becoming known as the “prince of heretics.” The documents presented at his trial made clear how radical his doctrines were. Leaving Modena, he spent a few months in the Marches as a schoolmaster, a profession he continued to follow on his return to Padua in 1548 after another two years spent in Rome in 1546–7. The community of Cittadella paid him in 1551 for his services as a teacher, and there for seven years he commented on Scripture, using his Instrutione fanciulesca cerca le cose della religione. Controversy was not so slow to reach him, and the attacks on him led the Venetian authorities to issue another order for his arrest in 1557. He managed once again to escape, wandering between Padua and Vicenza, Verona and Brescia, Valtellina and Como, Lecco and Bergamo, spreading his religious message wherever he went. On returning to Cittadella early the following year, he was authorized to take up his post again, indicating how successful his teaching had been. But now Rome too was seeking his arrest, which took place at the end of May, though without him being extradited. Fonzio was transferred to Venice, where he remained in prison for four years. 210

 Seidel Menchi, Le traduzioni italiane, pp. 64ff.   De Frede, Ricerche, pp. 51–2.

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His “wickedness and obstinacy” in refusing to abjure condemned him. He was drowned in the lagoon on August 4 1562, shortly after handing the executioner his Fidei et doctrinae ratio, which he had written in prison, a brave, final summary of his religious credo. His request that it be sent to the heads of the Council of Ten was ignored. Bernardino Ochino, too, came from the world of Franciscan spirituality, which he brought with him to his new Order of the Capuchins, of which he became general. He was the most acclaimed preacher of his day, constantly moving between the major Italian cities till his flight to Geneva in the summer of 1542 left many nonplussed. They had had no idea of his doctrinal propensities, but had seen in him a model of Christian life, ascetic rigor and reforming zeal. “He argues very differently and in a more Christian manner than all the others that have stood in the pulpit in my time, and with more living charity and love and better and more beneficial things,” wrote Pietro Bembo to Vittoria Colonna in 1539.212 Admired by all, heard with veneration by cardinals of the curia, powerful lords and noblewomen, and by Charles V himself, fought over by bishops throughout Italy who wanted him in their cathedral pulpits, Ochino was undoubtedly an important vehicle of heterodox propaganda between the late 1530s and early 1540s. What made him so effective was “that sweetness of speech that tends so gently to open the ears of the souls of the servants of God,” as the Marquis of Vasto, Governor of Milan put it.213 The doctrinal message he conveyed was formulated on the basis of the religious maturity of his listeners and, possibly, made more explicit in private conversation and in the books he recommended, starting from those published before his flight, like the Dialogi sette, which was constantly reprinted in Venice between 1540 and 1542. After the homilies he gave in Rome in 1534–5, Ochino was in Perugia and Naples in 1536 (already regarded with suspicion by those who came to hear him so that they might accuse him214), in Rome, Bologna, Florence, Ferrara and Venice in 1537, in Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Faenza and Naples in 1538, in Venice, Siena, Rome, Naples and Sicily in 1539, in Palermo, Messina, Naples, Perugia and Siena in 1540, in Modena, Milan, Casale, Mantua, Bologna, Rome, Naples and Florence in 1541, and in Venice and Verona in 1542.215 Another celebrated preacher, the Florentine Pier Martire Vermigli, a Canon regular of the Lateran, fled to Switzerland at the same time as Ochino. Before becoming Prior of San Pietro ad Aram in Naples in 1537 and of San Frediano in Lucca in 1541, he too had been constantly on the 212

 Simoncelli, Pietro Bembo, pp. 3–4.  Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, p. 278. 214  Tacchi Venturi, Storia, 1/2, pp. 116–17. 215  Bainton, Bernardino Ochino; Ochino, “Dialogi sette”. 213

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move from one city to another.216 Another Canon regular of the Lateran was the already-mentioned Ippolito Chizzola, whose suspect preaching in Mantua, Cremona and Venice in the 1540s led to a trial of the Holy Office in Rome, which ended in 1551 when the flight to Switzerland of another member of his order, Celso Martinengo, convinced him to recognize the error of his ways and turn over a new leaf as a controversialist in defense of Catholic orthodoxy.217 Many Benedictines moved from one monastery to another of the congregation of Santa Giustina, within which commitment to the reform of the Church was often inspired by significant heterodox influences. Francesco Negri da Bassano lived at San Benedetto Po and at Santa Giustina, for example, before becoming one of the first Italian exiles in 1525, first in Strasburg and then in Switzerland, where the two editions of his Tragedia intitolata Libero arbitrio, a violent piece of anti-papal propaganda, appeared in 1546 and 1550.218 The Mantuan Don Benedetto Fontanini spent his life among the monasteries of San Benedetto Po, San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Santi Severino e Sossi in Naples, San Niccolò l’Arena in Catania, Santa Maria at Pomposa, and again San Benedetto Po. He was the author of the first draft of the Beneficio di Cristo, and his personal and religious destiny constantly intersected those of other members of the Order who fell into the hands of the Inquisition, such as Luciano Degli Ottoni, Antonio da Bozzolo and Giorgio Siculo.219 Heresy also penetrated to a remarkable extent the Order of the Minims (founded by St Francis of Paola), whose leaders were promoters of Valdesian proselytism: Gaspare Dal Fosso (twice a general), the two provincials of Sicily and Calabria, and the whole monastery of the Trinity near Cosenza were tried and condemned. An exemplary case was that of the Calabrian Giovanni de Alitto: he began as a propagandist for Valdés’ ideas in Calabria and Lucania before becoming a spy of the Holy Office, accusing the Waldensian populations of two Calabrian villages. This led to a bloody campaign of repression in 1561, for which Fra Michele Ghislieri rewarded him after he was elected pope by having him made general of his Order.220 Pietro Manelfi from the Marches was a simple priest who on October 17 1551 described to the Inquisitor of Bologna how he had become converted to the new doctrines (ending up an Anabaptist “bishop”) and 216  McNair, Peter Martyr in Italy; on him see also Olivieri (ed.), Pietro Martire Vermigli; Campi (ed.), Peter Martyr Vermigli. 217  Caravale, Predicazione e Inquisizione. 218  Zonta, Francesco Negri l’eretico. 219  See in general Collett, Italian Benedectine Scholars; Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande. 220  Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 66–7, 94ff. On the bloody repression of the Waldensians in southern Italy in the 1560s see Scaramella, L’Inquisizione romana.

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spread them in Veneto, Romagna, Istria and Tuscany between 1545 and 1547 as a “minister of the word:” About ten or eleven years ago, when I had Hieronimo Spinazzola, a Capuchin, preach in my Church for Lent, this said friar began to persuade me that the Roman Church was against Scripture and something diabolical that had been made by men. After Lent, when I went to Ancona, I met this said friar again, who took me to Bernardino Ochino, who was then in that city, and this Fra Bernardino confirmed me in the doctrine taught me by the said Fra Hieronimo and, still more, told me that the pope was the Antichrist and that all the ceremonies and other things of the Roman court were of the devil, confirming his statements with some authorities in Scripture, and he gave me some Lutheran books, to wit Martino Luthero sopra la pistola di Paolo ad Galatas, the Annotationi del Melantone sopra san Matheo and another book by Martin entitled De papatu invento Sathanae. After about a year, one master Iulio, formerly a Capuchin, came to my house from Geneva sent by the said Fra Bernardino, who began to show that the mass was a diabolical thing and the greatest idolatry imaginable, and that if I wanted to live like a Christian then I needed to have no commerce with priests and friars and their ceremonies, which were things taken from the devil; and so, convinced by him, I began to believe the Lutheran doctrines were good and holy, and came closer to their institutions and positions, and left off saying offices and celebrating the mass, and to speak of these things with my relatives and friends to bring them round to my opinion. For which I was accused to the legate who was then in Ancona, and I fled and went to Vicenza, where I was for three years having always conversation with other Lutherans. Leaving there, I went to Padua, always conversing with Lutherans who were where I was, from which I was made minister of the word so that I might go around to comfort and initiate those who were of the same company in different places. And so I went to Venice, to Treviso, in Aquileia and in Istria, and when I had visited all these places I returned to Venice, and from there went to Rovigo, to Badia, to Ferrara, to Consàndolo, to Ravenna, to Bagnacavallo, to Imola, to Florence, to Pisa, to Lucca, and after to Venice, to Asola di Treviso, to Cittadella, to Verona and to Vicenza. And so for about two years I went always to all the abovementioned places, visiting and speaking the Lutheran doctrine and confirming to my brothers to persevere in that.221

The freedom with which clerics moved from one convent or pulpit to another in Italian cities was decisive as a channel of propaganda and “networking,” but the same can be said for some of the laity, particularly schoolmasters and professors, students and scholars educated in humanae 221

 Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 31–3.

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litterae, eager to understand the message of Christian renewal, scriptural rigor and return to the purity of the Gospels that the Reformation brought with it, as well as being passionate readers of Erasmus, whose works they sometimes used as a teaching tool. One striking example is the Piedmontese Celio Secondo Curione, who taught in Milan and at Casale Monferrato, was a professor in Pavia between 1536 and 1539, when the pressure of the Inquisition forced him to take refuge in Venice and then in Ferrara with Renée of France, who found him hospitality in the home of a noble family of Lucca as preceptor. In 1542, hounded by the Inquisition, he took refuge in Switzerland, with the reputation of being “a very bad spirit” who, according to Cardinal Farnese, “using his role as a schoolmaster … publicly and in many places has professed Lutheranism.”222 Actually, Curione was more a follower of Zwingli, Erasmus, and later Valdés, whose Cento e dieci divine considerationi he published in Basle in 1550, with a preface in which he pointed to him as a master of the Christian life. Another professor of the humanities was Aonio Paleario from Veroli in Lazio. His heterodox tendencies had developed from his Erasmian convictions while a student in Padua. He first taught in Siena in the 1530s (where the doctrines expressed in the now lost treatise Della pienezza, sofficientia et satisfatione de la passione di Christo and explicit accusations of Lutheranism first attracted the attention of the Inquisition in 1542), then in Lucca from 1546 and in Milan from 1556. Here he concluded the final draft of his Actio in pontifices romanos (on which he had been working for 30 years and which was published posthumously in 1600), and in 1567 he was summoned to Rome, tried, found guilty, decapitated and burnt at the stake as an impenitent heretic on July 3 1570.223 Another typical case was that of the already-mentioned Francesco Porto from Crete, who in 1536 was employed by the city of Modena to hold public lessons in Greek: “The more they read, the less they believe in Christ,” commented one chronicler sourly, referring to the spread of heresy. Porto was a leading religious dissenter of the period and a member of the Academy. He fled the town to avoid having to sign the declaration of faith imposed by Morone in August 1542 but, shortly after, decided to return, agreeing to conform to the rules so as to continue teaching. Once again in 1567 it was said in Modena that “since Francesco Greco began reading … many are infected by his doctrine.” In 1545 the city was again under the eye of the Inquisition, and the following year he found refuge in Ferrara, working as lector in Greek at the university, as well as being preceptor of Renée’s daughters and a member of the Calvinist community 222  Kutter, Celio Secondo Curione; Curione, Pasquillorum tomi duo; Felici, Da Calvino contro Calvino. 223  Caponetto, Aonio Paleario.

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around her, in whose private rooms he took Communion in the manner “used by Lutherans and Zwinglians.” Driven out by the Duke of Este in 1554, he moved to Venice, keeping in close contact with heterodox circles, which cost him further attention from the Holy Office in 1558. Tried and forced to abjure, in 1555 he fled to Grisons, at last obtaining the chair in Greek at the Academy of Geneva in 1561, where he died 20 years later.224 Another renowned university teacher was the Modenese doctor Gabriele Falloppia, who, like Porto, had signed the Articuli orthodoxae professionis in 1542225 and later taught in Ferrara, Pisa, and Padua, where he died in 1562, as the Inquisition was preparing to arrest him.226 At a more modest cultural and social level, merchants and artisans, too, moved frequently from one city to another, helping to create a clandestine network that extended throughout the country, able to provide solidarity and protection, exchange of books, news and letters, and give a sense of collective identity, as the possibility of resistance seemed more and more uncertain and the hope of survival more and more illusory. The Modenese printer Antonio Gadaldino, for example, like many others in Italy, went back and forth to Venice to add to his stock of books to sell in the city, just like the rich merchant Giovanni Bergomozzi, one of the leaders of the community of Modenese “brothers,” who used his many business trips to Venice for the same purpose.227 Tommaso Bavella, a weaver from Bologna, worked in Ferrara, where he was forced to abjure in 1542. But he continued his proselytism, first in Bologna, where the following year he was put on trial once again, and then in Modena, where in 1544−5, with the help of Bartolomeo Fonzio and members of the Academy, he spread the word among the artisans and merchants whose workshops he visited.228 Another artisan and merchant was Giovan Battista Scotti, a leading heretic in Bologna in the 1540s and a key figure as the center of a network with other heterodox groups in Venice, Bergamo, Rome, Modena and Ferrara, in close contact with the highest authorities of the Church.229 Interrogated in Bologna in February 1560, the weaver Domenico Rocca described very clearly how he and many others had been introduced to Protestant doctrines by Scotti, who later betrayed them when he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. This may explain his rancorousness toward this “Judah against decent men:”

224

 Belligni, Francesco Porto, pp. 357–89.  See above, pp. 97–8. 226  See Processo Morone, 1, p. 10, note 10. 227   Ibid., p. 264, note 7. 228   Ibid., p. 629, note 121. 229   Ibid., p. 3. 225

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[Scotti] gathered many people, women, men, friars, nuns of every kind into a sect and congregation, and brought them over to his opinions and persuaded them that going to mass was neither good nor necessary, and that invoking and venerating the saints was a joke and superfluous, and it was enough just to appeal to Christ. And he said the sacrament of the Eucharist was no more than an example using bread, water and wine, and any normal bread was good, and otherwise Christ our redeemer was not transubstantiated in it nor were words of a priest necessary for it to transubstantiate … He burst out on many other things that were monstrous, terrible and foul, most of all in matters concerning auricular confession, which he said were not at all necessary, and that the priest had no authority to absolve, nor did he absolve, but mere penitence addressed to Jesus Christ was enough, as only He could absolve: which he proved using many passages of Scripture … He said that many other sacraments were superfluous, like extreme unction and some others, which he said were also abuses. He spoke ill of confirmation, saying it was for the bishop to confirm a baptized person when that person was adult, showing and teaching him how to live like a Christian, without any oil. And he said this of the pope: that he was not the vicar of Christ, but rather the Antichrist, as he did everything against Christ and did not serve the rule and manners that Christ has served … He taught all these things to those congregations and meetings of all manner of people. He did as I have said and, to do it better, he contrived to fill this city with forbidden Lutheran books full of a thousand heresies, such as those of Martin Bucer, Philipp Melanchthon, Zwingli and Martin Luther and a thousand other infernal devils, which he then distributed to them and those of the sect. And he used me as his tool, as a foolish, ignorant person that knew nothing of Latin, to bring these books into the city and spread them there. 230

6. From Erasmus to the “Beneficio di Cristo” Justification by faith and denial of the mass, the sacraments, the invocation and veneration of saints, the authority of the Pope (denounced, indeed, as the Antichrist): Rocca’s words describe a proselytism based on Protestant theology, a sort of combination of Zwingli and Luther, Bucer and Melanchthon. But this picture is partially misleading, because it reflects a later period, when religious identities and theological doctrines were much more clearly defined, while in previous decades they had been much more fluid, varied and eclectic. It has rightly been noted that “any attempt to interpret in confessional terms the movement of opinion that, for brevity’s sake, is normally called the Reformation in Italy is probably

230

  Ibid., 2, pp. 1479–81.

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doomed to failure.”231 The more we learn about the various social contexts, religious stances, sources of inspiration, communities and events, and their historical outcomes, the harder it is to undervalue these specific features, reducing it to more or less robust offshoots of the evangelical and reformed churches. Of course, just as the ecclesiastical authorities ended up identifying Luther as the initiator responsible for the flood of heresies that swamped the whole of Christian Europe, Italian dissenters saw him as a kind of archetype, even describing him as an “ocean,” an inexhaustible reservoir on which all other heretics had drawn.232 But this did not prevent them from looking toward other masters, above all Juan de Valdés, whose teaching had left an indelible trace on those who had experienced it first-hand. Valdés’ unpublished works, for example, circulated among the heretics of Bologna linked to Scotti – works, as we have seen, that are only partly in line with Reformation doctrine. Equally marked by the influence of Valdés was the Beneficio di Cristo, the most famous and widespread text of Italian religious dissent. The lack of an authoritative and hegemonic ecclesiastical structure certainly contributed to the climate of experimentation, theological flexibility, syncretism, free discussion and, perhaps, improvisation that marked the spontaneous upsurge of heretical groups in the 1530s and 1540s. All this helps us understand how Erasmus’ appeal to a Christianity brought back to its moral substance, redeemed of the sterile forms of devotional piety made up of superstitious practices and repetitive gestures, and Luther’s message of the inner freedom of every believer through justification by faith could coexist, despite the underlying contrasts that had emerged in the controversy over free will in 1524–5. The Roman curia’s aversion to Erasmus contributed to the idea of a “Lutheran Erasmus”233 in which different and, to some extent, antithetical messages could converge in a perspective that gave less importance to doctrinal questions than to the need to reform the religious life and replace ritualistic and superstitious devotion with the original and authentic spiritual and moral sense of Christianity. These convergences may explain, for example, why in 1539 the Dominicans of Modena, whose suspicions had been aroused by a Franciscan friar’s preaching based on the Old Testament, St Paul, St Augustine “and other excellent learned men” could denounce him to the Inquisition as “of the Lutheran sect,” for “he preaches the sect of Erasmus.”234 In 1554, again in Modena, The Praise of Folly

231

 Seidel Menchi, “Certo Martino è stato terribil homo”, p. 135.   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 558; see above, p. 71. 233  Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, pp. 41ff. 234   Ibid., p. 81; Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, pp. 208–9. 232

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could be described as “an opuscule written by a Lutheran.”235 Only later, with the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the reinforcement of the Inquisition’s repression, the failure of important social protections and the consolidation of the alliance between secular and ecclesiastic authority, the exhaustion of the original energy of the Reformation, and the loss of all hope of its success in Italy, would what remained of the heretical movement and groups finally take on Calvinist connotations. The reasons for this included, as Delio Cantimori has written, not only the geographical proximity and close trading relations, not only the revival of the Waldenses after the decision to accept Calvinism, particularly in southern Italy, not only the general humanistic characteristics, radicalism and coherence of the Swiss doctrines, but also, as far as Lucca and Florence were concerned, the social and political background of the Swiss Reformation.236

Thanks to a number of editions and translations that appeared in Italy in the 1530s and 1540s (as early as 1537 the Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia warned against the dangers hidden there), Erasmus could be absorbed “into the ideological baggage of the Protestant movement,” partly because, as has been noted, “south of the Alps the Erasmian phase of the Reformation or, if we prefer, the Pre-Reformation was still relevant, as it had never materialized.”237 This explains the persistent freshness of the message of evangelical freedom, which argued against the empty, repetitive Christianity of indolent friars and scholastic theologians (following both Erasmus’ Enchiridion or Colloquia and Luther’s De libertate christiana or his commentaries on St Paul) and required an immediate response on the level of religious behavior and worship, purifying them of the sterile constraints of time and place, gestures and objects, rituals and ceremonies. The refusal of ancient devotional practices, condemned as superstitions, flowed into what has been called a “practical theology,” an “everyday theology”238 in which the fundamental premises of the Reformation – justification by faith, predestination, the bondage of the will, with all their ecclesiological consequences – lost some of their doctrinal firmness but acquired a substance of their own, a direct relation with daily actions and choices that explains their increased popularity and capacity to speak to many people’s confusion. A profound belief in the principle of evangelical freedom, a desire to re-appropriate the sacred, removing it from clerical control, a sharp distinction between what is authentically spiritual and 235

 Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, p. 125.  Cantimori, Eretici, p. 40. 237  Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, pp. 88–9. 238   Ibid., pp. 100ff. 236

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what is merely carnal, a Christian witness that emphasizes the ethical dimension of Christianity rather than its theological content: these were the fundamental features, to some extent encapsulated in Luther’s sola fide, of the drive for renewal coming from the North. The immediate effects of all this on everyday experience contributed to spreading these religious ferments, although there was a risk of theological blandness, inevitably removed from the great questions that agitated and divided the Reformation world, which were increased by the fragmented, unstructured nature of the movement, lacking an institutional center. There were few echoes in Italy of the controversy between Erasmus and Luther on free will or of that on the Eucharist, with its lacerating consequences, in which, in the early 1540s, Martin Bucer urged his Italian “brothers” in Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Venice and Sicily not to get embroiled. Behind this distance from the reality of the reformed Churches, their gradual institutionalization and the fractures that now divided them, were not only the different Italian context, where religious dissent was limited to small minorities, but also some specific features which we should briefly consider. A chronicler from Modena, arguing against the academicians and suspect preachers who spread wicked doctrines about the city, denounced their teaching as designed to eliminate any form of moral rigor, spreading the false conviction that one need only profess faith in the redemption of the cross, without bothering oneself with useless works of piety, to have the certainty of salvation and “going into paradise in soled stockings.”239 This Erasmian theme240 of God’s infinite mercy, which dissolved the severe doctrine of predestination in the certainty of the universal gift of grace and of heaven open for all believers, became the favorite interpretation of justification by faith alone and circulated widely among Italian dissenters. In the 1540s, for example, after hearing some sermons on Paul’s letters given by a heterodox friar, an artisan from Verona became convinced that “all we who believe in Christ are elected and predestined: and those who do not have this true faith of being predestined to life eternal by the grace of God do not even believe in God.” In the same way, among the heretics of Pirano, many believed that “we do good, we do bad, we all go to heaven … We’re all saved … because Lord Jesus Christ with his blood has given paradise to all.”241 In the same way, at the other end of Italy, in Calabria, Baron Abenante claimed “that divine predestination was necessary and not contingent, and that a man predestined to paradise may do all the evil he wants but still he will go to

239

 Lancillotti, Cronaca, 8, p. LXIV.  Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, pp. 143ff. 241   Ibid., pp. 147–9. 240

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paradise,” while those who are not predestined “may do all the good they want but they cannot save themselves.”242 Even the Beneficio di Cristo, the most emblematic text of the Italian Reformation, insisted above all on the message of freedom and salvation announced by the cross to all men, at last freeing them from the “curse of the law,” reconciling them with God enabling them to do good, “healing free will”: “What consolation, what happiness in this life can resemble that of those who, feeling oppressed by the intolerable burden of their sins, hear such sweet and gentle words of the son of God, that promise them so kindly to recreate them and free them of this heavy weight?”243 In its pages the doctrine of justification by faith was the foundation of a radical theological simplification that avoided any doctrinal “deductions” (purgatory, vows, sacraments, mass, ecclesiastic hierarchy, etc.), any antipapal polemics, any controversial ideas. It simply proclaimed a positive and liberating message of grace and salvation, a “general pardon to the whole human generation,”244 making every believer and the whole Church – “that is, each faithful soul” – “like Christ” and his “bride,” able to defeat “sin, death, the devil and hell” because perfectly “holy, innocent, just and divine.”245 Redeemed from the fear of an inscrutable, threatening divine will, the doctrine of predestination became “most sweet” and “holy,” offering serene hope and “constant spiritual joy” for anyone who trusts the sacrifice of the cross to be certain of being called by God “to life eternal … elected and predestinated to the glory of his sons.” On the foundation of this firm conviction of being chosen as a “citizen of heaven,” predestination become synonymous with election and so “most effective in arousing the love of God and zeal for good works in truly Christian souls.”246 As we have seen, in the Compendio d’errori e inganni luterani of 1544, Ambrogio Catarino Politi did not merely denounce the use of the vernacular to trick ignorant people but acutely recognized the “poison” in that “sweet doctrine of freedom and predestination” that he tried in every way to relate to Luther,247 caricaturing his thought as “inviting men to sin and make a mockery of the law.”248 “Now isn’t it true in these wretched times that there have been a mountain of masters who gently scratched them where it itched,” he insisted, “because they would like to do anything they want and then go to heaven notwithstanding and not have to do anything 242

 Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 84–5.   Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo, p. 19. 244   Ibid., p. 22; see pp. 41ff. 245   Ibid., pp. 27–8. 246   Ibid., pp. 69–70. 247  See above, pp. 1–5. 248  Politi, Compendio, p. 359. 243

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but believe, and so persuade themselves to be predestined?”249 Just then, Cardinal Marcello Cervini, too, urged his vicar in the diocese of Reggio Emilia to ban the Beneficio, worried that it could mislead the faithful into thinking they could get into paradise “shod and dressed.”250 This would lead in the future to the long-lasting topos by which the impious, “abusing the blood of the slaughtered lamb … saying that believing was enough to save us,” simply encouraged “vain confidence,” took one down a path that was “flat, wide and pleasant,” and justified any spirit of anarchy and “freedom of the flesh,” turning Christians into “idle, negligent, fleshly and sensual creatures.” “You heretical rogue,” wrote a Catholic polemicist around 1550, “you want to be in the shade of the bell-tower and enjoy yourself, taking it easy on your bed in filthiness and indulging pleasures of gluttony,” waiting “for manna … from heaven.”251 Despite the prompt condemnation of the Beneficio, which was pronounced during the first sessions of the Tridentine assembly and sanctioned by the Indexes of forbidden books that appeared in the following years, it continued to circulate widely, as is confirmed by constant mention of it in inquisitorial documents. It would, however, be misleading to read the Beneficio di Cristo only in the light of Protestant doctrine,252 as Politi tried to do, because it actually reflected many aspects of the fluid theological situation which I have tried to indicate in these pages. This is also revealed by the fact that, in the book, quotations from Calvin’s Institutio were integrated with Valdés’ spiritualism, just as the editor of the 1545 Venetian edition of Calvin’s catechism had inserted in the preface a page written by Valdés. The reason for the treatise’s extraordinary success may lie in its very contradictions, in its offering itself as a link between diverse ideas, combined in the framework of a religious message based on abandoning oneself to the saving power of grace and without any polemical digging at the doctrines and institutions of the Roman Church. This success demonstrates its capacity to provide real answers to the religious doubts of those years, to interpret their most authentic requirements and indicate possible solutions. Not being reducible to a banal restatement of Protestant doctrines, the Beneficio di Cristo allows us to grasp some characteristics of the religious crisis in sixteenth century Italy and what was inspiring and driving it, and see that its syncretism may have been a key feature.

249

  Ibid., pp. 371, 410.  See Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo, p. 433. 251  Firpo, Nel labirinto del mondo, pp. 87–8. 252  As has already been suggested by Bozza, Nuovi studi. 250

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The book was first published in Venice in 1543,253 the result of a work of collaboration in two phases. The outline had been drafted in Catania around 1540 by the Benedictine Don Benedetto Fontanini, a “friend” of Valdés and Flaminio.254 It was Flaminio who rewrote it in 1541-2, adding some passages taken from Calvin’s Institutio but without modifying the original inspiration. He prepared it for the press in Viterbo, where he lived as an intimate familiar of Reginald Pole after having left Naples with Carnesecchi in the spring of 1541, a few weeks before Valdés’ death.255 Then the papal legate to the Patrimony of St Peter, Cardinal Pole was shortly after designated, with Giovanni Morone, to preside over the first convocation of the Council of Trent, and we can reasonably see in the Beneficio di Cristo a kind of manifesto, cautiously protected by anonymity and by the lack of any anti-papal comments, in which a group of important prelates tried to give a practical response to the religious needs that tormented their own consciences and at the same time offer the bishops who were preparing to intervene at the Council a proposal that could take on board the theological foundations of the Reformation while avoiding devastating lacerations in the body of the Church and its hierarchical structures. It was an illusion, of course, that, with hindsight, was clearly doomed to failure, but we need to bear in mind both the personal prestige and the political role of the illustrious prelates who sponsored or shared that proposal and the crucial moment of the opening of the Tridentine assembly, with Pole and Morone designated by the Pope to preside over it. There was nothing accidental or episodic about this, as is clear if we think of the new legation entrusted to Pole in 1545 and to Morone almost 20 years later in 1563, when Pius IV and the future St Charles Borromeo praised him for having steered the Council to a successful conclusion with miracles of diplomatic ability. The dense texture of spiritualist theology, political strategy and demands for reform to be found in the Beneficio di Cristo explains not only its great success, but also why it was condemned, first by Ambrogio Catarino Politi in 1544 and then by the Council of Trent in 1546. But the fact that it had been printed at the behest of the papal legates reveals how far heterodox ideas had penetrated more or less consciously to the heart of the Church. It was a peculiar feature, wholly absent in other European countries, apart from the Spanish case of Bartolomé Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, who was accused of heresy and condemned to abjure in Rome in 1576 at the end of a trial lasting almost 20 years.256 But, carefully considered, the case 253

 See above, pp. 2–3.  See above, p. 110. 255  See below, pp. 141ff. 256  Tellechea Idígoras, El arzobispo Carranza. 254

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of Carranza, too, is strongly marked by the close contacts he maintained in Italy with the group surrounding Pole (with whom he collaborated both at Trent and in England) and is really further confirmation of how bishops, archbishops and cardinals were involved in doctrines that had various connotations of heresy. Quite apart from the obvious certainty of the Inquisition as to the “Lutheran” nature of this heresy, it is necessary to look more closely at these heresies at the top of the Church – so to speak – if we want to understand religious ideas, attitudes and behaviors that cannot be reduced to a simple distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and may therefore reveal some of the specific features of religious dissent south of the Alps.

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CHAPTER III

Valdesianism and the “Spirituali”: An Italian Reformation? 1. After the Sack of Rome We have already referred to how slowly the Roman curia reacted to Luther’s challenge, too absorbed by political matters and financial dealing to let itself be distracted by a Saxon monk who launched his thunderbolts against the splendid papal court and the crowd of hangers-on with their noses in the trough. The inescapable need for a reform of the Church had been clear for years, but it continued to run up against the fears and selfinterest of the many who were willing to accept it only on condition that it was done with such “moderation that it does not spoil the pheasant’s tail of this Holy See and partly shut the mouths of those blasphemers in Germany,” as Paolo Giovio wrote in March 1547.1 It was the terrible experience of the Sack of Rome, in spring 1527, and the hideous cruelty and profanation of the German lansquenets that enforced – but still only for a minority – a change of direction. Only then was it clear that any hope of limiting Charles V’s power was mere wishful thinking: the Pope himself had to swallow the violence and humiliation of the Sack as a counterpart to the restoration of the power of the Medicis in Florence after placing the imperial crown on his head in Bologna in 1530 (the last papal coronation of a Holy Roman Emperor). The Sack also marked a change in the spiritual climate, evident in the severe penitential beard that Clement VII (and his successors after him) decided to grow, and in the Last Judgment then commissioned for the altar-wall of the Sistine Chapel.2 It was not just a new awareness, de rigueur after the sacrilegious mockery with which the unruly German soldiery, drunk with blood, had violated and derided all that was most sacred in the papal city – churches, convents, consecrated hosts, vestments, relics, cardinals, bishops, priests, nuns – or acted out mock-conclaves to elect as pope Martin Luther, whose name can still be read in the graffiti scored by the German lances on Raphael’s frescos 1

 Iovii, Epistulae, 2, p. 76.  Chastel, The Sack of Rome; Firpo, Il sacco di Roma del 1527; Firpo, Biferali, “Navicula Petri”, pp. 127ff. 2

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in the Vatican Stanze and the Farnesina, one of which branded Rome as Babylon. Many also began to reflect on the warnings of the itinerant hermits who, on the very eve of the devastation, had prophesied imminent disaster to that “sodomite and bastard” pope, while they anxiously reread the ancient prophecies about the imperial eagle that “fired with rage will enlist his armies not only with Germans, but the worst people of each generation and will enter Rome in arms and seize all the religious, prelates and citizens and will kill many with various tortures.”3 Starting with the unofficial Hapsburg manifesto, Alfonso de Valdés’ Diálogo de las cosas ocurridas en Roma,4 there were many expressions of ill-concealed satisfaction that ”what happened in Rome … was God’s judgment, which brought about the punishment of that city. God realized that the Christian religion was being disgraced by the incredible wickedness practiced so widely there. He intended that Christendom should wake up and clean house so that we could live again like the Christian we’re so proud to be.”5 Even those far removed from Alfonso de Valdés’ Erasmian thinking expressed similar judgments. Ludovico Guicciardini spoke of “God’s righteous wrath” against “the insatiable appetite and abominable desires of so many unchecked prelates and courtiers”;6 Benedetto Varchi was ready to claim that “never was chastisement more cruel or more deserved”;7 despite his pro-Medici sympathies, Francesco Vettori saw in it “an example that proud, avaricious, murderous, envious, libidinous and deceitful men cannot last long”;8 Bishop Giovanni Stafileo commemorated the tragedy the following year to his colleagues of the Rota by interpreting it as a punishment “for our crimes and our sins”;9 a Dutch eye-witness reevoked with prophetic tones the raining down of divine indignation on the ignominy of a Rome that had become a new Sodom, filled with hypocrisy, avidity, simony, libertinism, sacrilege and tyranny of every kind.10 A chronicler in Modena could not hide his satisfaction at that “judgment of God” that had at last arrived against the “great extortion and tyranny” at Rome, where “all that should be spent in adorning and governing well the faith was spent in … adorning mules, horses, great courts, great palaces 3

  Pronosticatione in vulgare, p. [Fiii]v; see also Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy; Niccoli, Prophecy and People. 4   See above, pp. 6–10. 5  Longhurst, Alfonso de Valdés, p. 25. 6  Guicciardini, Il sacco di Roma, p. 125. For what follows, see also Firpo, Il sacco di Roma del 1527. 7  Varchi, Storia fiorentina, p. 45. 8  Vettori, Sommario, pp. 380–81. 9  Staphileus, Oratio, p. [Ai]v. 10  Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. Lat. 2137, pp. 163, 167–78.

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with fine furnishings and many other vanities,” where most of the cardinals were “ignorant and of low condition, immoral, enemies of God and the saints … full of vices and sins,” and where the Church had reached “such a state of abomination that every man prophesied that it was going to ruin.” His conclusion was that the dreadful violence of the Sack had been due to the fact that “they believed in naught but gold and silver, riding, courts, dressing well and eating better, and the least part was divine worship and the greatest part was ruining Italy and all Christendom.” “God has performed a great miracle in punishing all Rome from top to bottom with the Spanish and the lansquenets as he has done,” he concluded, “and has punished the good and the evil, and still it is not finished.”11 The pro-French propaganda, on the other hand, censured Charles V for unleashing against the Holy See those hordes of Lutherans whose heresies were “all founded on blaspheming and mutilating the Roman court, the ancient ceremonies, the councils, the canons and the doctrines of the holy Fathers, and on disturbing the peace and quiet living, resting on and supported by the flesh and the belly and drunkenness, scorning God and the saints and every law, divine and human.”12 At a lower cultural level, there was a similar message in the verses of a Lamento de Italia contra Martin Lutherano, which beseeched the Almighty to punish the accursed Lutheran sect, whose success could be explained only with the moral anomie that it seemed to allow: He says: “Let this Martin come now, so I can take two wives too” … The priest says: “I’ll have a wife too,” and this seems good news to him … The young nun hopes to marry and leaves fasts and scourges, and thinks she’ll be squired by a husband. O how many open errors and great ruin! Once again the friar thinks of satisfying himself and feels not still his stinging pains, but desires always this Martin, so he need no more sing vespers and matins. He says: “I’ll no longer have to confess.” A thousand heresies go around the world.13

11   Lancillotti, Cronaca, 2, pp. 223, 304; Firpo, Dal sacco di Roma all’Inquisizione, pp. 27ff. 12  Santoro, Dei successi, pp. 3–4. 13   Lamento de Italia, pp. aiiv–aiiir, avv–[avi]r.

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Still more vulgar was Paolo Giovio’s invective in 1540 against the “Lutherans divided in 48 sects [that] mock Christ and do not believe in God and want to enjoy the goods of the Church, screw nuns and eat meat on Friday, not tire themselves going to mass, not spend on rites for the dead and not spoil their bellies with Lent.”14 Apart from these crude simplifications, the trauma of the Sack induced some members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to seek new ways of reacting to the pit into which the Church had sunk, aware that more was now needed than the noble but bland (and always ignored) exhortation to reform men through sacred things and not vice versa, which was the formula used by Egidio da Viterbo at the fifth Lateran Council. Rather than words, concrete facts and courageous choices were required. Erasmus, too, underlined this: in 1528, without wasting a word of regret on what had happened, he harshly attacked in his Ciceronianus the high-flown literary model favored by the curia, based on a complacent ecclesiastical triumphalism and a rhetorical synthesis of Christianity and classical antiquity, light years away from the problems that were tormenting people’s consciences. No longer caput but cauda mundi, as Aretino scoffed, reduced to “extermination and total ruin,”15 Rome was certainly not the center of the most significant experiences of a renewal that started from shared premises and aims, but was to take many different directions. It was elsewhere that new forms of religious life were being worked out, often marked by severe moral or even penitential rigor, which, in a few years, would lead to the congregations of regular clergy, who were to provide the post-Tridentine Church with far-reaching means of contact with the faithful, through the new duties of evangelization and catechism, charity and assistance, education and the care of souls − Theatines (1524), Somaschi (1528), Barnabites (1530), Jesuits (1540). What concerns us here, however, is the gradual outlining of two different tendencies, first united and then quickly diverging, until they were bitterly opposed to each other, the one aiming at a reform of the Church based on a strengthening of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and unconditional opposition to heresy, and the other on the pastoral work of the bishops, their residence in the dioceses, the renewal of the clergy, and the evangelization of the faithful on the basis of religious doctrines that were not always very different from those of the Reformation. The former was guided by the Neapolitan Gian Pietro Carafa, member of a feudal aristocratic family and nephew of a cardinal. With Cajetan of Thiene he founded the Theatines, who took their name from his diocese of Chieti (Theates). He was soon the target of Pasquino’s satires for the hypocrisy and false sanctity with which he tried to hide his ambitions (he 14 15

 Iovii, Epistulae, 1, p. 248.  Luzio, Isabella d’Este, p. 121.

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obtained the cardinal’s hat in 1536). In his quest for power he seemed well aware that his rigorous attitudes would only be able to gain ground from a position of strength, which he achieved through the Roman Holy Office.16 He succeeded in having it formally set up by the Pope in 1542 after covert preparations in the 1530s, and he directed it energetically and unscrupulously until it was installed at the top of the Church with his election to the papacy in 1555. Under his guidance it soon extended its functions, taking over the supreme task of protecting religious truth, which first freed it of any authority, whether of the Pope or the Council, and then allowed it to impose its own authority above any other.17 In this sense, there is no doubt that it was Carafa who laid the foundations for the Counter-Reformation Church, built on the primacy of orthodoxy, the control of consciences and Roman centralism. The second group was more varied, with a markedly Venetian inflection, and had developed in the university lecture halls of Padua and the humanist circles, with further nutriment from the French evangelism that had been brought to Italy by Florentine republicans in exile, by men of letters working for the printers in Lyon, by scholars such as the Benedectine Gregorio Cortese or the Genoese nobleman Federico Fregoso (brother of Doge Ottaviano), both called in the Sacred College by Pope Paul III, or the Veronese Bishop of Bayeux, Ludovico Canossa, who was in close contact with the milieu of Marguerite de Navarre and Guillaume Briçonnet.18 Another leader of this group was the impressive figure of Gasparo Contarini, who had experienced in the 1510s a religious crisis not unlike Luther’s Turmerlebnis and, along with other Venetian noblemen, had been involved in projects of reform of the Church while being determined to continue his work in the government of the Republic until he was made a cardinal in 1535. Paul III entrusted to him the task of directing the new course of papal policy that had been inaugurated with his election19 after Clement VII’s continuous shillyshallying, which had led to the tragedy of the Sack. Though eager first of all to increase the power and wealth of his family, the new Pope at least tried to make a show of promoting a renewal of the curia and to summon the Council that from many sides had been invoked during his predecessors’ pontificates. It was Contarini who guided the work of the commission for reform then set up by Paul III, which in spring 1537 presented a Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia, from which nothing whatever came. The other signatories were Carafa and Girolamo Aleandro (rigidly anti-Erasmian and anti-Lutheran), Iacopo Sadoleto (a friend of Bembo with whom, as 16

 Vanni, “Fare diligente inquisitione.”   See my studies Inquisizione romana, pp. 243ff, and La presa di potere. 18  Alonge, Ludovico Canossa. 19   On him, see Fragnito, Gasparo Contarini; and Gleason, Gasparo Contarini. 17

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secretary, he had flanked Leo X), Reginald Pole (celebrated for his learning and piety, and a cousin of Henry VIII, whose schism he had condemned), the Dominican Tommaso Badia, the already mentioned Gregorio Cortese and Federico Fregoso and the Bishop of Verona, Gian Matteo Giberti. Giberti had been Clement VII’s powerful datary, and also bore a great deal of the responsibility for the disastrous anti-imperial policy. He decided to abandon the papal court after the Sack and withdraw to Verona,20 where he drew on Ludovico Canossa’s experience to promote a moral and disciplinary renewal based on the bishop’s work in his diocese, following the French example. This would later encourage the view of him as the archetype of the exemplary post-Tridentine bishops, living in their dioceses and anxious to attend to their flocks, preach the Gospel, instruct the faithful, reform monasteries and convents and visit regularly the churches, guiding the priests and reminding them of their pastoral duties in the service of their parishioners. This was the so-called Gibertalis disciplina, which went ahead for 15 years thanks to the special favors that Rome granted Giberti to break the inveterate power and privileges of the canons of the cathedral and of the mendicant orders who were exempt by episcopal authority. From the first moment he tried to remedy the serious inadequacy of the clergy, and to this end he surrounded himself with clerks and men of letters who were eager to join in this project of reform, which was not starting from the summit of the Church but from pastoral work in one specific diocese − Adamo Fumano, Girolamo Fracastoro, Niccolò Ormanetto, Girolamo and Francesco Della Torre from Verona, Tullio Crispoldi from Rieti, Alberto Lino from Milan, Reginaldo Nerli from Mantua, Galeazzo Florimonte from Campania, Marcantonio Flaminio from Veneto, and the Flemish scholar Johann van Kampen, who had been a professor of Hebrew at the tri-lingual college of Louvain, and who for a time read to the bishop’s household the prophetic books and St Paul’s letters,21 speaking of justification by faith and predestination. It was in Verona, around 1530–31, that Francesco Berni, previously a typical figure of Medici Rome, finished his reworking of Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato from the 1545 posthumous edition of which, according to Vergerio, some pungent stanzas against the avidity, ignorance and corruption of priests were removed: Some folk say that now the pope wants to reform, with the other prelates; I say the turnip has no blood, and with vinegar you don’t make zestful sauces; 20 21

  On him, see Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e Controriforma.   Ibid., p. 226.

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I say that they will be reformed, when hot days will be without gadflies, the shambles without bones and dogs … Today he’s thought a blunderer and poltroon the man who speaks of Christ and St Peter; in the eyes of today you are always a rogue, hypocritical, with severe, arched brow, and they call you bizarre or Lutheran: and Lutheran means good Christian.22

The combination of a commitment to dealing with the crisis of the Church by studying and reflecting on the great theological questions raised by the Protestant Reformation helps explain why, in Verona, the group that was centered around Giberti produced doctrinal views that were less and less compatible with orthodoxy and thus quickly diverging from Carafa’s plans. We can see it, for example, in Crispoldi’s preaching in 1530: after promising to confute the doctrine of justification by faith, which many openly professed, he actually confirmed it by claiming that “it is true that works without faith are no justification and that the good works in the world will not make an unjust person become just” and that only “faith makes us do good.”23 These issues would also appear later, with a more marked spiritualist connotation, in Alcune interrogationi delle cose della fede et del stato overo vivere de’ christiani, which Crispoldi published in Verona in 1540. Giberti himself praised works such as the Summario della santa Scrittura, which he recommended in his diocese as a “very useful little book for those poor creatures that cannot read Latin,”24 and the Beneficio di Cristo, which he read in manuscript shortly before dying in late 1543.25 Death removed the incipient suspicions of heresy (due partly to his friendship with Ochino, whose flight to Geneva the previous year he had abetted), which later tarnished his exemplary image as the “glory and honor of the episcopal order,”26 in which he would be soon replaced by St Charles Borromeo. It is no surprise, then, that in February 1546, immediately after the first meeting of the Council of Trent, Bishop Grechetto, ever on the look-out for opportunities to denounce heretical bishops and preachers, inveighed against “that wicked seed of the dead bishop of Verona.”27 22

 Caponetto, Lutero nella letteratura italiana, pp. 56–7.  Niccoli, La crisi religiosa, pp. 108–9. 24  Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e Controriforma, p. 277. 25   Processo Morone, 1, pp. 720–21. 26  [Lando], Paradossi, p. [Dvi]v. 27  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, p. 251. 23

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Nor can one describe as orthodox the results of an important discussion involving Crispoldi and Flaminio in Verona concerning the echoes of the Lenten preaching held in Siena in 1537 by a friar from Treviso, which had led to Contarini sending the Sienese nobleman Lattanzio Tolomei a letter De praedestinatione. In a lengthy exchange of letters with Contarini in winter 1538–39, Flaminio sided with Crispoldi. He was open to discussion, but his opinion was clear: there was a strong basis in Scripture for the view that “without particular grace and help from God man cannot refrain from opposing” the “most heavenly light” with which God calls us to salvation, which therefore depends on predestination alone.28 In the summer, returning to the debate with Seripando, Flaminio repeated his view as to the “stupendous mystery” of predestination and the certainty “that our free will is most weakly directed to good,”29 curtly refusing in a few formally polite lines30 to continue a debate that was now pointless between positions that were too far removed from each other to be reconciled. In short, it was better to interrupt the discussion than to make even clearer the doctrinal differences that were now undermining from within the unity of men and groups that until then had been in agreement in their desire for renewal and discussion with the Protestant world. The letters are cautious and at times ambiguous, revealing a theological viewpoint that could no longer be contained in the nuanced doctrinal formulas of Contarini and Seripando, who were trying to retrieve the Augustinian tradition not only as a response to religious anxieties they felt personally, but also to define an irenic framework that could heal the fractures in Christendom. What emerges from them is a perspective similar to that shortly afterwards expressed in the Beneficio di Cristo with a convinced acceptance of fundamental cornerstones of the Reformation such as justification by faith and predestination, though with a partly different meaning. Here too, not only the polemic against the Pope as Anti-Christ and the Roman Church as Babylon, but also the explosive consequences on the ecclesiological and sacramental plane gradually disappeared in a positive discourse that carefully avoided the whole arsenal of “inferences” that were derived from it regarding the Church hierarchy, the mass, the cult of the saints, purgatory, the sacraments, etc. It would be wrong to dismiss all this simply as Nicodemitic caution or propagandistic stratagems, as they display a particular religious inspiration that is not simply dependent on the great masters of the Reformation but introduces different elements in the way the Italian religious crisis developed.

28

 Flaminio, Lettere, pp. 63ff.   Ibid., pp. 75ff. 30   Ibid., p. 83. 29

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2. “Valdés has infected the whole of Italy” Flaminio’s letters to Contarini and Seripando were written from Naples, where he had arrived in autumn 1538, by which time he had certainly read some of Valdés’ writings, which he sometimes used and quoted. It is very likely that his decision to leave Verona was connected with them. Though still unpublished, the Cento e dieci divine considerationi and other works had circulated widely in the preceding years, thanks partly to Bernardino Ochino, who had gone on to spread their message from pulpits all over Italy. Flaminio was not alone in moving to Naples, where he was a guest, first of the Prince of Salerno, Ferrante Sanseverino (who later fled to France, where he became a Calvinist), and then of Giovan Francesco Alois, who was involved in spreading Valdés’ doctrines in his estates around Caserta.31 By 1540 the group gathered around Valdés, Flaminio, Ochino and Vermigli (then in Naples as prior of San Pietro ad Aram) attracted many other figures who would later have an important role in Italian religious life,32 such as the Florentine protonotary Pietro Carnesecchi, who had previously been secretary to Clement VII. The records of his last trial in Rome (1566–7) give us an idea of how and when he converted to Valdés’ doctrines (a conversion probably similar to that of others), which left an indelible mark on his life until he was sentenced to death by the Roman Inquisition in 1567. He came to Naples in early 1540 to see Giulia Gonzaga once more, while Ochino’s preaching from the cathedral pulpit resounded “to the wonder of all.”33 Flaminio introduced him to the circle of Valdés, whom he had already met at Clement VII’s court and whom he now discovered as a “theologian,” “wholly intent on spiritual things and on the study of Holy Scripture.” It was there, in Naples, that their old “human friendship” became a “spiritual” one.34 It was mainly Flaminio (now on very close terms with Valdés) who patiently guided his spiritual steps with the help of Ochino and Vermigli, another “great friend” of Valdés, he too preaching on Paul’s letters. Shortly after Carnesecchi’s arrival in Naples, Flaminio persuaded him to confess with Vermigli, concealing his view that this sacramental practice was simply a mask for an initiation into a new religion that was different and sometimes distant from Catholic orthodoxy. The conversations in these weeks with those whom Carnesecchi later described as his “masters” at first avoided openly discussing “any dogma” but simply spoke “of piety and religion in general,” and he was given some writings that would set 31

 Scaramella, “Con la croce al core.”   See below, pp. 136–7. 33   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 143–4. 34   Ibid., p. 143. 32

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him thinking for himself. Gradually, however, the talk became more urgent, particularly on “that blessed article of justification,” which was then at the center of Ochino’s preaching. It was presented “skillfully and cautiously” so as not to “shock anyone,”35 using the method of “preaching Christ in jargon,” which Ochino followed before being exiled,36 in line with Valdés’ principle of adapting to the “incapacity and fragility” of neophytes to guide them “adroitly” to knowledge of the “truth of the Gospels” and the “Christian faith.”37 And so they began to speak to him of justification by faith, reassuring him that it was a Catholic doctrine, founded on Scripture and approved by all the Fathers of the Church, who had mentioned human merit in their writings only to prevent coarse, ignorant men from feeling authorized to “live too loosely and licentiously, scoffing at good works, just as we see among the peoples of Germany and other places where this article has been freely preached.” This anti-Protestant note was designed to confirm “that justification by faith was most Catholic,” even though some letters of the same period indicate that Flaminio was well aware of the contrary and used these arguments just to convince Carnesecchi, claiming the need to preach this fundamental principle of the Gospel to all the people.38 In their meetings they discussed the opinions of the German and Swiss heretics39 and substantially accepted their theological premises while carefully avoiding any hint of polemic and rejecting their break with the Church, in line with an essential cornerstone of Valdés’ thinking: “If the so-called heretics had stayed within the terms of this article [justification by faith alone] and had not in their passion wanted to destroy the Roman papacy, they may not have deserved to be called heretics,”40 Carnesecchi was told by his Neapolitan masters, whom he had clearly pressed on this point. The relation of Valdés’ disciples with the German Reformation went this far, but no further. They were willing to accept fully the principle of justification “through the faith infused by the spirit … in our hearts,” but only “affirmatively” and so far as it was consistent with the authority

35

  Ibid., pp. 1111–13; see pp. 1185–7; Ortolani, Per la storia, pp. 34ff., and for what follows, Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 24ff. 36  Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, p. 282. 37   Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 323. 38   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 567–8, 576; see Flaminio, Lettere, pp. 63ff. 39   Giovan Francesco Alois later reported to the Inquisition that “Carnesecchi talked very freely to me of these opinions … and he told me to hold and believe the opinions of Valdés, Marcantonio Flaminio and Fra Bernardino da Siena, who was then preaching in Naples” (Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 997). 40   Ibid., p. 568.

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of the Roman Church.41 They strongly deplored the shipwrecking of the respublica Christiana on the treacherous reefs of contrasting dogmatic certainties, ecclesiastical authoritarianism, useless controversies and persecutions that sprang from theological formulas in which “human prudence” won the day. That is why, in discussing justification by faith, Valdés, Flaminio, Vermigli, Ochino and Gonzaga had warned Carnesecchi against condemning Luther and his followers “until the Council was held … apart from the inferences and conclusions that they drew from that principle to discredit and destroy the Catholic Church.”42 That is why the fact that they had passed on heterodox books to him shortly after did not mean that “they were imbued with heretical opinions, as they had not sworn on this in verba magistri, but made use of the work of others in their studies, imitating the Israelites who took the Egyptians’ silver when they served their needs.”43 These subtle distinctions were designed to indicate the paths allowing the neophytes to find their bearings in the labyrinth of doubts, proposals, polemics, conflicts and anathema in which consciences risked losing their way, and at the same time introduced them to Valdés’ spiritualism and its sophisticated doctrinal syncretism. Eager to understand the origins and contents of a religious vision that seemed to escape the theological framework and the simplification of history in which their deepest certainties were rooted, Carnesecchi’s inquisitors were disconcerted when he claimed to regard Luther as “a great man in doctrine and eloquence” and to have “been inclined for some time to assent to some articles of the said Luther, but not all of them universally,” while having always condemned him and anyone else for choosing to break with the Catholic Church, “because such a break can only come of mere pride, which cannot belong with charity and the spirit of God.”44 Still more surprised were they by his answer to their question as to what he meant by breaking with the Church. Carnesecchi emphasized even more those subtle distinctions and mental reservations: I see it as consisting in two things: one in difference of opinions, the other in failing in obedience, which was particularly evident in not wanting to appear at the Councils or submit to their decisions, as well as being contumacious in all other things and with the pope and the apostolic see. So that neither Flaminio nor Priuli entirely approved the doctrine of this Luther, saying that being extra Ecclesiam it was therefore extra caritatem, and though he had spoken well in many things and interpreted many parts of Scripture well, this did not mean 41

    43   44   42

Ibid., p. 1185. Ibid., p. 568. Ibid., p. 266. For this and what follows, see ibid., pp. 556–8.

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he had the spirit of God any more than God had granted him to the benefit and edification of his elect. And so they took some things from his doctrine tanquam aurum ex stercore colligentes et caetera (ut aiunt) reddebant coquo [as if picking up gold from dung, and leaving everything else (as they say) to the cook].

This view was shared by Flaminio, who sent Carnesecchi a letter in 1543 sharply criticizing the “false doctrine” of the Protestants on the Eucharist and the vain “imaginations” of those who had let themselves be blinded by “human pride, which loves novelty and hates the common ways.”45 He continued, revealingly: This pride is easily hidden under the false zeal of religion, and so its deceits are most difficult to discover when people for these novelties put themselves in danger of losing honor, material goods and life; because they cannot think they have been deceived by the flesh and the devil: and so each hour they harden themselves in falsities and become the most bitter censors of their neighbors, condemning as impious the universal sense and everlasting custom of the Church, and anyone who does not submit to their opinions. Free them from this arrogance and this bitter zeal, our Lord God, and give them charity and sweetness of spirit and so much humility that they abstain from rashly judging the dogmas and customs of the Church, rigidly condemning all those who with true humility of heart revere and follow them; and may they start to believe that many of them whom they condemn and hold as idolaters and blasphemers, because they do not believe what they believe, are truly religious, pious and dear to God; and on the contrary those who follow this proud presumption of theirs are enemies and hated of God. And we, sir, if we do not want to founder on these most dangerous rocks, let us abase ourselves before God, and not allow ourselves for any reason, however true it may seem, to break with the union of the Catholic Church … where, if we wanted to judge divine things with human discourse, we would be abandoned by God, and in this contentious century so much we shall approach one of the parts and hate the other, that we shall lose all judgment and charity, and name the light darkness and the darkness light, and persuading us to be rich and blessed, we shall be poor, wretched and miserable, through not knowing how to separate preciosum a vili [the precious from the base]: which science without the spirit of Christ cannot be learnt.

45

 Flaminio, Lettere, pp. 136–7; see also pp. 161–3; Firpo, Marcatto, Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi, pp. 89–91; Firpo, Giovanni Calvino e Juan de Valdés, pp. 107–10.

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The final reference to the “spirit of God” in the context of expressions almost identical with those used by Carnesecchi (“the precious from the base,” “gold from dung”) is a clear effect of the discussions of those weeks, underlines the shared Valdesian matrix of these statements (and the behavior that followed from them) and clarifies the reasons for their essential agreement with the basics of Lutheranism combined with an evident distance from it as an unacceptable breaking of Church unity. This means we cannot describe the religious feeling of Valdés and his Italian disciples as a sort of liminal preamble that in some cases would develop into a fully-fledged adherence to the Reformation (a historical account that dates back to some of the exiles of the period).46 It was really something quite different, which both absorbed and transcended the Protestant experience, rejecting its disruptive force, its denunciation of the Roman Anti-Christ,47 to stop on the threshold of the individual conscience and enclose itself in the narrow bounds of Nicodemism. But that is why it was also radically new,48 tending toward the dissolution of the very idea of theological orthodoxy and ecclesiastical authority. This helps us understand the irony with which Vittore Soranzo “used to call Luther his old dad,” or “the ocean” that had supplied all the heresies, “just as the rivers receive their waters from the sea: … Zwinglians, Calvinists, Anabaptists and others.”49 These words also reveal an awareness of the inner fractures of the Protestant world and help explain the sturdy defense of Church unity. Already in Naples, as later in Florence, Viterbo, Venice and Paris, Carnesecchi read works by the Northern reformers, partly because his “masters” had taught him that there was much to learn from them and that many of the “inferences and conclusions” that followed from justification by faith were to be shared, as long as they did not involve polemics, condemnations and clashes. That is why Valdés’ writings and the Beneficio di Cristo taught that doctrine “simply and without even hinting at or touching on some of the above-mentioned conclusions,” Carnesecchi later explained, his master’s reticence suggesting “he did not hold them himself or dissimulated them, so as not to shock his disciples.”50 Once Carnesecchi seemed to have accepted the doctrine of justification by faith, Flaminio raised other problems and insinuated other doubts, sowing a few other “seeds” that would only bear fruit later: for example, on purgatory, on which he showed him a corrosive piece by St Augustine, or on confession, which Flaminio praised and practiced, but at the same 46

    48   49   50   47

See above, pp. 37–8. Rotondò, Anticristo e Chiesa romana. See below, pp. 177ff. Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 558. Ibid., pp. 1185–6.

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time criticized because there was “no place in Scripture where one could conclude that it was de iure divino.”51 Carnesecchi ended up accepting these doctrinal developments but stayed within the Roman Church, without following the example of others who were “more subtle and speculative than the lady [Giulia Gonzaga] and I,” although, from the start, “the consequences that followed and their similarity with the opinions of heretics” had made them doubt whether Valdés’ doctrine “was Catholic or not.”52 His Neapolitan masters had warned him against such consequences but, proceeding along the path they had indicated, he had finally been able to free himself completely “from the superstitious and false religion, meaning by that what was different from the faith and doctrine taught to her [Giulia Gonzaga] and me by Valdés, in that the former places our hopes in works, while the latter places it in faith.”53 It was a path that gradually revealed the truth of the Gospels, but it was so long ago he could no longer remember when and how quickly, “because they are things, as we all know, that gradually steal into our souls, almost without our noticing if not after we have almost made a habit of holding this or that opinion.”54 In this way Flaminio gradually involved Carnesecchi in the spirituality of that “blessed soul of our signor Valdes,”55 and he soon became part of the “synagogue of male and female disciples” gathered round this “Lutheran who had been driven out of Spain,” an “inventor of new erroneous opinions” in the view of his adversaries.56 The records of the final trial against Mario Galeota, a “dear and loved disciple of Valdés,” the “dearest child of his dogmas” who believed Valdés to be as “useful to the excellence of God as St Augustine,”57 give us a glimpse of the core of his Neapolitan followers, many of whom in the 1530s already had a leading role in the confraternity of the Bianchi di giustizia58 − great aristocrats, barons, doctors, men of letters, jurists, figures variously linked to the Vice-Regal court, clerks, friars, and some sisters of the convent of St Francis of the Nuns where Giulia Gonzaga lived.59 Shortly after Flaminio’s 51

  Ibid., pp. 91–2.   Ibid., pp. 569, 1186. 53   Ibid., p. 565. 54   Ibid., p. 145. 55   Ibid., p. 257. 56  Lopez, Il movimento, pp. 170–72. 57   Ibid., pp. 148, 153, 162. 58  Romeo, Aspettando il boia, pp. 108–10. 59  Lopez, Il movimento, p. 123; also by Lopez, Sulla diffusione, pp. 243–4, 255ff; De Frede, Notizia. But the social roots and internal organization of Valdesianism in Naples and throughout the Kingdom require a fuller treatment than that found in Nicolini, Una 52

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arrival in Naples, and very probably on his initiative, many others from all over Italy converged on the Neapolitan group in 1539–40. Valdés, Ochino and Flaminio were recognized as the “masters” and “tutors”60 of the group, which came from various cultural backgrounds. As well as those already mentioned, Neapolitan and otherwise,61 there was also the Venetian nobleman Vittore Soranzo, later successor of his master Pietro Bembo as bishop of Bergamo; Donato Rullo, a merchant from Puglia; the Sienese man of letters and “musician” Lattanzio Ragnoni and Iacopo Bonfadio from Garda, all of whom would spread the word of Valdés’ teaching and sometimes pay the consequences for it with prison or flight abroad. As we have already pointed out,62 Ochino’s constant moves from one city to another and his great prestige and reputation for sanctity were undoubtedly an important means of making Valdés’ teaching known. When he preached in Naples, there were many spiritati who came to visit him in the monastery, in the hospital for the Incurables or in the Church of St Paul, where “they have painted over the many figures of saints that were in the church before.” Displays of anti-Catholic polemic are also witnessed by Galeota’s habit of speaking “very ill of the Sanctity of the pope and of some cardinals” or not respecting fasts (“what is fasting? take care not to sin, because fasting is nothing”), which soon gave the ecclesiastical and civil authorities the erroneous idea that the group was a “Lutheran sect.”63 But it would be misleading to see in Valdés’ numerous followers in Naples proof only of his success among the social élites, thanks to Giulia Gonzaga and the charm of his teaching, which the poet Giano Anisio celebrated in verse.64 The growth of the group demonstrates, rather, the success of a proselytism that was able to use various means to gain new followers, including direct meetings and personal discussions, like those with Lorenzo Tizzano for example, who found the master kind but also very wary. He had been introduced to him as a “great man,” the author of fascinating writings, some copies of which he obtained on request and from which he managed to understand his ideas better, “because from his mouth I only understood something de primatu pontificis.”65 But there were also biblical readings, such as the lessons on St Paul’s letters which calvinista; Caserta, Juan de Valdés, pp. 24ff; Castellán, Juan de Valdés; Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance, pp. 90ff. 60   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 330, 567. 61   See above, pp. 37–8. 62   See above, p. 109. 63  Lopez, Il movimento, pp. 51–2, 138–9, 141, 145; see also pp. 148ff, 174ff. 64  Anisio, Epistolae, p. 23v: “Tu specus sanctas animique lautas / sectaris mensas aetheriasque dapes.” 65  Berti, Di Giovanni Valdés, p. 69.

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Valdés gave in 1540 in some noblemen’s palaces.66 He also encouraged preaching from the pulpit, well aware of the importance of this as a channel of communication with the people, as Carnesecchi testifies, commenting on the great success of the Neapolitan homilies of Ochino, who “claimed to practically take the theme of many of his sermons from Valdés, through a written announcement that he sent the evening before the morning he was to preach.”67 And then there were his writings, which Giulia Gonzaga, for example, “often” read to Apollonio Merenda.68 For the moment these works circulated circumspectly in manuscript, helped by what was practically a workshop for transcribing the texts, organized by Galeota.69 Carnesecchi was not alone in being struck by how discreet this proselytism was: others, too, noticed that Valdés “spoke cautiously,” that Mario Galeota was a “learned, subtle and skilful [man] in reasoning without revealing the poison” and that his disciples avoided discussing suspect doctrines “openly”70 but preferred the strategies of dialog and gradual persuasion. Their success is also confirmed in the scanty documentation available on the later trial against Giovan Francesco Alois, who revealed the names of 11 bishops and archbishops of the Kingdom of Naples who had embraced heterodox doctrines in the 1540s (and, in particular, “justification according to Valdés’ doctrine”). Among them the Bishop of Catania, Nicola Maria Caracciolo, collected in his library Ochino’s Sermoni, the Beneficio di Cristo and other writings by Valdés,71 while the Archbishop of Otranto, Pietro Antonio Di Capua, brother-inlaw of Don Ferrante Gonzaga, “with the very greatest vehemence and authority, speaking with others, expounded, preached and taught Lutheran doctrine.”72 Nor was this proselytism limited to Naples, Salerno (a fief of the Sanseverino family) or Caserta (where already, around 1540, under the protection of Alois, Lorenzo Romano, a former Augustinian from Sicily,

66  Bobadilla, Gesta et scripta, pp. 17–21; see Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 16ff; Firpo, Inediti valdesiani. 67   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 143. 68  Firpo, Juan de Valdés, p. 305. 69  Lopez, Il movimento, pp. 27ff; see also by the same scholar, L’”officina.” 70  Lopez, Il movimento, pp. 157–8. 71  The letter “sobre las cosas de la religión” of the Vice-Roy of Naples, Don Perafán de Ribera, dated 7 March 1564, containing this information, is published as an appendix in Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Boehmer), pp. 599–603. Another prelate who should be added to this list is Giovan Francesco Verdura from Messina, from 1549 bishop of Chironissa on the island of Crete, on whom see Aubert, Note. 72   Su di lui cfr. Gardi, Pietro Antonio Di Capua; Marcatto, “Questo passo dell’heresia.”

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“schooled many gentlemen”73). It also looked further afield to spread books and doctrines and acquire followers throughout the land, to the point of giving warrant to the widespread conviction that “this Valdés has infected all Italy with heresy.”74 This opinion was soon shared by the Roman Holy Office, which wasted no time in demonizing the elusive figure of this arch-heretic, whose name would continue to emerge in trials in the following years. Clear traces of the success of his propaganda were soon visible in Sicily, thanks to Ochino’s preaching, the presence of Benedetto Fontanini in the Catanian monastery of San Niccolò l’Arena,75 and the nobleman Bartolomeo Spadafora from Messina, who converted to his doctrines and established close contacts with his disciples and followers.76 In the 1550s, in Palermo, Valentino Gentile wrote to Naples asking for a copy of the Alfabeto cristiano, with a view to using it to win over to its teachings a lady who, after listening to a reading, had the impression “she had become a saint.”77 They were visible in Lucca, where Vermigli took up residence in 1541, after staying in Naples between 1537 and 1540, when he became friends with Valdés and Ochino, with whom he fled to Switzerland in the summer of 1542. As late as 1575 the Offizio sopra le scuole had to intervene against a schoolmaster in Lucca who was using Valdés’ catechism for his lessons.78 They were visible in Florence, where Flaminio and Carnesecchi stayed a while in the summer of 1541, when they recommended two former Benedictines to Caterina Cibo, who was already “initiated” in the doctrine of justification according to Valdés’ doctrine;79 and in the following years many members of the Academy of Florence who were close to the ducal court demonstrated their responsiveness to this spirituality.80 They were visible in Siena, where a manuscript indicates an early circulation of Valdés’ texts, including the catechism and some Considerazioni.81 They were visible in the 1540s and later in Mantua, 73  Scaramella, “Con la croce al core”; per Salerno cfr. Miele, La penetrazione protestante. 74  Lopez, Il movimento, p. 152. 75   Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo, pp. 481ff; Menegazzo, Per la conoscenza. 76  Caponetto, Bartolomeo Spadafora; Salvo, Dalla spada alla fede. 77  Romeo, Aspettando il boia, pp. 273–7; Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 110ff. 78  McNair, Peter Martyr, pp. 139ff, 206ff; Berengo, Nobili e mercanti, pp. 402ff; Barsanti, Il pubblico insegnamento, p. 178; and, above all, the studies by Adorni Braccesi, “Una città infetta”, and Eterodossia, pp. 222ff. 79   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 164–5; on her, see Moriconi (ed.), Caterina Cybo, and Zarri, Caterina Cibo. 80   See above, pp. 86–7. 81   See above, p. 65.

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Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Venice, Pisa, and Rome, in all the main centers of religious dissent, but also in more distant lands, including Puglia, Lucania and, above all, Calabria, where Valdesianism became widespread among friars and academicians, schoolmasters and barons.82 As early as 1539, for example, Valdés himself had tried to make contact in Rome with Bartolomé Carranza, the future Archbishop of Toledo, who would later suffer an interminable trial at the hands of the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions. They had met in Spain, and Carranza may have read the Diálogo de doctrina christiana in the home of his uncle Sancho, the Inquisitor of Navarre who had been tasked with censoring it, and whom Valdés visited frequently.83 In 1539 Carranza was about to receive his diploma as magister theologiae and was busy disputing Protestant doctrines when he was approached by a fellow-countryman who gave him a letter in which Valdés invited him to Naples, as well as a sheet of paper with the text of one of the more explicit of his Considerazioni on the illumination of the spirit, which some of his accusers would later judge to be full of “many different errors and heresies of Luther and Calvin” and “stuff of those devils, the alumbrados.”84 Bearing in mind this keen action of proselytism, we can easily understand why in 1568, when interrogated by the Inquisition of Mantua, Endimio Calandra could speak of the “enormous ado” Valdés had created throughout the land: “After I went to Naples I heard so much talk of him that it was a miracle.”85 All this helps refute a traditional image of Valdés’ group (and also of the so-called spirituali of Viterbo) as a small coterie of prelates, noblewomen and men of letters, smugly retreating “into the peace of almost academic conversations.”86 Yet this does not mean, though it has been claimed in the attempt to define an elusive Valdesian orthodoxy, that the Neapolitan group constituted an authentic Church with some sort of embryonic organization and, however autonomously, an essentially Protestant credo,87 given that, as we have seen, any desire to break with the Church was alien to Valdés’ spiritualism. Hence the many faces of Valdesianism, the various religious approaches it inaugurated and the very different outcomes these led to.

82

 Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 45ff.   See above, p. 26. 84  Tellechea Idígoras, El arzobispo Carranza, 1, pp. 347ff (see pp. 350–51, 361), 380ff. 85  Pagano, Il processo, pp. 250, 259; see p. 298. 86  This is what we read for example, in the confused compilation by Castellán, Juan de Valdés (1965), p. 146; but see also Cantimori, Eretici, pp. 37–8, for whom this spirituality, “emphasizing the reason for inner reform, led to a purely individual piety or one of small groups.” 87  This is the opinion of Nieto, Juan de Valdés, pp. 254ff, and particularly 267ff. 83

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Perhaps the group’s most significant success outside Naples was one for which Flaminio can take the credit, as he soon became recognized as the most genuine interpreter of Valdés’ thought. He had shrewdly assisted Carnesecchi in his conversion to a new faith, and then a stream of letters from him in 1540–41 also convinced Alvise Priuli88 and, through him, Reginald Pole of the “new opinions … he had acquired through conversing with Valdés.”89 Flaminio left Naples for Verona in the spring of 1541, accompanied by Carnesecchi, which suggests that he hoped to win Giberti over to Valdés’ doctrines. But his success with Pole persuaded him to change his plan: he went first to Florence, where he met Ochino and read Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis, and then to Viterbo, in the household of the Cardinal of England, who was now papal legate at the Patrimony of St Peter. It was during this journey that he learnt of Valdés’ death, which had occurred in Naples in July. This induced him to accept Pole’s invitation to stay in Viterbo, where he was joined in the autumn by Soranzo and Merenda.90 The diaspora of Valdés’ closest associates was beginning. Donato Rullo and Lattanzio Ragnoni went to Venice, and Iacopo Bonfadio and Marcantonio Villamarina also left Naples, the former entering the service of Cardinal Ridolfi and the latter that of Cardinal Morone. This helped spread Valdesianism throughout Italy, where it was about to take on a political role under the new leadership of the Cardinal of England, one of the most prestigious figures in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The sudden departure of Valdés’ disciples in the spring of 1541 took place before his death, which had probably been preceded by a long illness, to judge from the documents he had signed in the previous months concerning the ecclesiastical benefits he still held in Spain.91 In his will, dated July 16 and opened four days later, he left Giulia Gonzaga his manuscripts,92 while Giovanni Tommaso Minadois was charged to distribute his estate in Italy, worth more than 2,000 scudi in capital and 200 in income, what he owned in Spain being left to members of his family.93 Valdés’ death, however, did not mean the end of the Neapolitan 88

  On him, see Paschini, Un amico del card. Polo.   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 1041–2; see p. 196; Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 135ff, 177ff. 90   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 145, 153–5, 263ff, 1111–13, 1363–4. 91  Menegazzo, Per la conoscenza, pp. 211–12. There seems to be no documentary evidence for Bataillon’s opinion in Erasme, 1, p. 549, that Valdés died a good Catholic, as would happen later to Flaminio, “dans un catholicisme que Pole lui faisait comprendre et aimer”. 92  Nicolini, Giulia Gonzaga, p. 84. 93   See the documents published as an appendix in Valdés, Alfabeto (ed. Croce), pp. 173ff; Domingo de Santa Teresa, Juan de Valdés, pp. 227ff. 89

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group, which was to last another 20 years or more despite harsh repression under the pontificates of Julius III and Paul IV.94 Carnesecchi moved to Venice in 1543, where he was in constant touch with various suspects who, claimed the Spanish ambassador, “always had Valdés’ books about them and read them.”95 Here, for example, in 1543, he could see again the Archbishop of Otranto, Pietro Antonio Di Capua, back from the aborted convocation of the Council presided over by Pole and Morone, and a guest of Rullo, with whom he spent much of the time reminiscing about Valdés, “practically competing with each other as to which of us admired and praised his writings more,”96 he later stated to the inquisitors, indicating the deep mark left on him by his period in Naples and its continuing legacy of friendships, loyalty and complicity. In the meantime Flaminio had published the Beneficio di Cristo, while in Carnesecchi’s house an apostate friar, Francesco Strozzi, had translated into Italian Urbanus Rhegius’ Medicina dell’anima (printed in Venice in 1544) and was preparing a translation of Celio Secondo Curione’s Pasquino in estasi, which included a eulogy of the “Spanish knight of Caesar who became a knight of Christ, called Giovan Valdesse.”97 It was partly in connection with these matters that Carnesecchi was hauled before the Holy Office in Rome in 1546. 3. The “Ecclesia viterbiensis” and the “spirituali” Valdés’ death, then, shifted the center of gravity of this group of men from Naples to Viterbo, and then to Rome, around another charismatic figure – Reginald Pole − whose social rank, institutional responsibilities and prestige in the Sacred College gave a new lease of life to Valdés’ ideas on the eve of the first convocation of the Council over which he was to preside. Between 1541 and 1542, in the secluded residence in Viterbo, Flaminio followed his master’s example, guiding a small community of spirituali, as they were then known, using an expression that caught some of Valdés’ inspiration and teaching. The few documents that reveal something of the life of this brotherhood, which was also known as Ecclesia viterbiensis,98 give us a 94

 Firpo, La presa di potere, pp. 114ff.  Tellechea Idígoras (ed.), Fray Bartolomé Carranza. Documentos, 2/2, p. 570. 96   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 1230; see also pp. 1115–17. 97   Pasquino in estasi, p. 42. On the two editions of this book that appeared around 1545–6 (one of which was probably printed in Venice) see Biondi, Il “Pasquillus extaticus”; Cavazza, Libri in volgare, p. 15. On Strozzi see ibid., pp. 20–21; Fragnito, Un pratese, p. 17, note 48; Santosuosso, Vita, pp. 109–11. 98   On Pole and the Ecclesia viterbiensis see Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience, pp. 69ff; Pastore, Marcantonio Flaminio, pp. 117ff; as well as the studies of Simoncelli, Evangelismo, 95

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glimpse of Flaminio’s daily work in preparing for the press the Beneficio di Cristo and the Alfabeto cristiano, suggesting suitable readings for his disciples (including works by Luther and Bucer), and writing commentaries on the Gospels and Paul’s letters,99 on which he preached in the presence of the Cardinal and his closest collaborators: “In the evening,” wrote Pole to Contarini in December 1541, “messer Marco Antonio gives food to me and most of my family, that food that does not perish in such a way that I do not know when I have felt greater consolation or greater edification.”100 Under Flaminio’s guidance Carnesecchi continued to use that “most sweet quiet”101 to continue the religious initiation that had begun in Naples, “making greater progress” and gradually being persuaded of some of the “inferences” that depended on the “article of justification according to Valdés’ doctrine,” making him realize it was “Lutheran and heretical,” modifying his earlier, reassuring impression “that it contained, at least in appearance, nothing scandalous or contrary to the Catholic faith.”102 Pole, Soranzo, Merenda and other friends and relations were undergoing a similar change of heart and were now far from Contarini’s views,103 just as had happened to Flaminio a few years earlier in 1538, when he discovered Valdés’ religious message.104 Flaminio continued to keep in touch with Giulia Gonzaga and the epigones of Valdés’ group in Naples through letters and the exchange of books and manuscripts. Back in Naples it was well known that “some of Valdés’ sect were close to Marco Antonio Flaminio, and their leader was the … cardinal of England.”105 Before long, the supreme inquisitors were talking of an authentic “school” that had gathered around Pole, which included “many men of letters who smelled of Lutheran doctrine.”106 From Viterbo, in January 1542, Flaminio sent Donna Giulia a copy of some of his thoughts on the model of their “common master,” as well as some “comments on St Matthew,” where “he spoke at large of justification in the manner of the Beneficio di Cristo,” or the Meditationi et orationi

and Il caso Reginald Pole; Nieto, Valdesianism; Mayer, Reginald Pole, pp. 103ff. 99  Flaminio, Meditationi et orationi; Flaminio, Apologia. 100  Pole, Epistolae, 3, p. 42. 101  Flaminio, Lettere, p. 112. 102   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 145, 568–9. 103   See above, p. 130. 104  Simoncelli, Evangelismo, pp. 66ff, 101ff; Pastore, Marcantonio Flaminio, pp. 93ff; Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 66ff. 105  Lopez, Il movimento, p. 160. 106   See the letter of Ferrante Gonzaga to Charles V of October 1551 in Marcatto, “Questo passo dell’heresia”, pp. 151–2.

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formate sopra l’epistola di san Paolo ai Romani,107 and recalled in his letters “the doctrine and institution of that holy soul,” who had advised him before leaving Naples “not to be rash in his writings” and to keep secret his “prattle until the spirit had fully conquered the flesh.”108 In Naples, meanwhile, Giulia Gonzaga was constantly in touch with Flaminio and, when Merenda visited Naples, seized the opportunity to question him on the progress “on justification” made by Pole, Priuli and Vittoria Colonna under Flaminio’s guidance, to confirm him in the doctrine “that only the blood of Christ purges us of our sins and purchases us paradise and life eternal,” to resolve his doubts on the consequence of these opinions in destroying “purgatory and indulgences” (“what, didn’t you know?” was her comment) and to urge him to follow the now standard Nicodemitic practice: “Almost laughing he told me not to speak of such destructions, if I did not want to suffer.”109 Also Vittore Soranzo was in touch with Mario Galeota and other followers of Valdés all over Italy to discuss “errors and heresies,”110 while Flaminio congratulated Galeazzo Caracciolo on his “holy vocation,” mentioning the “most great joy” of Pole, Vittoria Colonna and the rest of the group gathered around the Cardinal of England in Viterbo at his new religious convictions and urging him to go on trusting in the “holy light” of the spirit, the living faith and the certainty of being among those “predestined to life eternal.”111 In Viterbo Flaminio also translated some works by Valdés that he had brought with him, while others were sent to him from Naples piecemeal. After the success of his proselytism these translations were no longer intended merely to be circulated in manuscript, but were to be printed and disseminated. To this end Giulia Gonzaga suggested he make use of the “opinion of the Cardinal of England and the master of the Sacred Palace,” the Dominican Tommaso Badia (shortly to become a cardinal), who was ready to declare that in his judgment they “seemed good and Catholic.”112 This assent was obviously conditioned by Pole’s prestige but may also have been carefully prepared with a view to establishing the orthodoxy of these writings before they were published. Carnesecchi later claimed that one of the reasons he had accepted Valdés’ doctrines had been the approval of these works by “learned and Catholic persons,”, including Badia and Contarini, though he was not sure if they “had read one part

107

 Flaminio, Meditationi.  Flaminio, Apologia, pp. 201–3; Processo Morone, 1, p. 827. 109   Processo Morone, 1, pp. 827–8; see Firpo, Juan de Valdés, pp. 304–6. 110  Lopez, Il movimento, p. 176. 111  Flaminio, Lettere, pp. 117ff, 139–43. 112   Marcatto, “Questo passo dell’heresia,” pp.165–6, 168–9. 108

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of Valdés’ writings more than another.”113 It was the start of an ambitious attempt to assemble politico-religious consensus, both upwards, to obtain the assent of eminent theologians and cardinals, and downwards, to offer a credible reference point to the heterodox groups that were swarming in the Italian cities, such as those of the Academy of Modena, or those “brothers” of Bologna to whom Carnesecchi in 1544 sent from Venice a booklet of Valdés’ writings.114 Soranzo had just done the same a few days before from Rome with “Valdés’ Questions (Preguntas) which you may keep for yourselves, reading them and passing them on, with caution, as there are a few sheets written in my own hand.”115 Clearly, then, there was a similarity of views, if not actual complicity, and also an attempt to use Valdés’ spiritualism as a flexible means of offering a positive outlet, a possible mediation, or margin of compatibility with Roman orthodoxy, to prevent religious dissent from hardening into an irreversible break with the Church. There are enough documents from the Inquisition for us to lift the veil of discretion with which Flaminio and Pole (a man to “whom nothing was more suitable than silence,” in the words of Seripando116) sought to present a reassuring image to the world of a group that was immersed in Bible reading, placid reflection and mutual edification, which marked the serene rhythms of their day. In this way they sought to protect, or hide, a work of proselytism and recruitment, though they also believed that only God held the reins of history and that patience was therefore necessary in awaiting the gradual spreading of his illumination in the minds of the faithful, certain that, in the long term, persuasion and dialog would win. On the other hand, those bishops and cardinals with political and pastoral responsibilities, surrounded by solid networks of relations and supported by imperial favor, offered important protection and legitimacy to individuals and groups involved in religious dissent. We have already seen, for example, how in the summer of 1542 the members of the Academy of Modena refused to certify their orthodoxy by signing a simple text presented to them by Morone,117 but suggested to him a book “which they said had been written by messer Flaminio and the company of Viterbo,” in which we can identify Valdés’ catechism for children.118 This disconcerting episode reveals the exchange of ideas and heterodox writings between the Modenese heretics and the group close to Pole, which worked in favor of 113

  Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 1187.   Ibid., pp. 1222ff; Firpo, Juan de Valdés, pp. 314–15. 115   Processi Soranzo, 2, pp. 619–20, 629. 116   CT, 2, p. 415. 117   See above, pp. 97–8. 118  Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 57 ff. 114

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the side opposing that of Morone and Contarini, the latter of whom could gauge in the last weeks of his life, just by reading the Beneficio di Cristo, the now unbridgeable distance of Pole from the doctrinal positions that he had shared a short time before.119 Actually, Contarini had already noticed in the previous year, at the time of the Diet of Regensburg, the rifts in the front of which he had been until then the undisputed guide, and he had tried to understand the reasons for it, opening a discussion which Pole had preferred not to respond to. He had politely indicated some reservations, to avoid having to bring into the open doctrinal differences that now ran deep and could no longer be mediated by Contarini’s formulas on the duplex iustitia. The move to Viterbo of a number of Valdés’ followers, guided by Flaminio and the link with the Modenese dissenters on the basis of Valdés’ catechism, make clear the premises and religious content of these differences. It was at this point, just when heresy seemed out of control, not only in Modena but in Lucca, Naples and many other Italian cities, that it became clear that the margins for compromise were running out and the opposing sides were becoming polarized, even in the highest reaches of the Church. From this point of view the hectic events of the spring and summer of 1542, between Morone’s return to Modena in early May and the death of Contarini on August 24, marked the sunset of a season of concordia discors between the forces of renewal that had begun when the latter had been made a cardinal, and inaugurated a period of fierce conflict in the Sacred College to define the aims and strategies of papal policy, the reform of the Church, the Council, and the struggle against heresy. The first, decisive signal was the bull Licet ab initio of July 21 1542, which set up the tribunal of the Holy Office in Rome with the task of guiding and coordinating the local inquisitors. This simply formalized the control and repression that had been going on for years on the initiative of Gian Pietro Carafa,120 but at the same time it clearly repudiated the attempt by Contarini and Morone to find an agreed way of reabsorbing the dissent in Modena. Although Paul III tried to counteract the inquisitors by nominating as cardinals some of those close to Contarini, such as Tommaso Badia, Gregorio Cortese and Morone himself, it was clear to all that this bull marked an important success for the intransigent line of Carafa, who gained exclusive control of the Inquisition, which, under his energetic direction, would soon be guaranteed its definitive triumph. It is no accident that among the first to be called to Rome in those very weeks were Bernardino Ochino and Pier Martire Vermigli, both of them marked by their connections with Valdés, while the rumor soon spread that Flaminio, too, “and the others 119

  See below, pp. 150–51.  Vanni, “Fare diligente inquisitione”.

120

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in Viterbo with the Cardinal of England,”121 as well as Valdés’ Neapolitan epigones, were under suspicion and secret investigation. Rightly convinced that he would have to choose between denying his ideas or facing condemnation, and certain that in any case he would no longer be able to “preach Christ disguised in jargon”122 as he had managed to do till then, Ochino finally decided to disobey the convocation to Rome and, after a final meeting with Contarini, who was now on his death-bed, took the irrevocable path of exile in Switzerland, to be followed soon after by Vermigli and Curione.123 The effect was sensational, given the famous preacher’s personal prestige, and created no little embarrassment among his friends, including Giberti, who bitterly deplored his flight (after having protected it), partly to throw off any suspicion of complicity. On August 28 he wrote to Ercole Gonzaga that he wanted to break off all relations with “these spirituali”124 and two weeks later, in a letter to the Marquis of Vasto, he spoke out against “the rage or imprudence of those who have upset the whole world to no purpose,” underlining the need never to stray from “those paths that are loyal, to speak in private, to write, admonish and weep and pray in private.”125 Yet a few weeks later, before the Cardinal of Mantua, Pole, and other leading figures (who made no objection), Flaminio commented outright and publicly that with Ochino and Vermigli “the apostles of Italy” had gone.126 Despite the standard view, however, the setting up of the Holy Office and the flight of Ochino and Vermigli did not mark the end of the spirituali but inaugurated the most intense period of their work, with Pole’s appointment to preside over the Council of Trent, both in the first aborted convocation of 1542–3 and that of 1546–7. In those years it was the group round him that published in Rome and Venice the Beneficio di Cristo, the Alfabeto cristiano, the catechism for children, a short anthology of Valdés’ and Flaminio’s writings under the title of Modo che si dee tenere ne l’insegnare et predicare il principio della religione christiana,127 and Flaminio’s Meditationi on St Paul’s letter to the Romans. There is no doubt that Flaminio, abetted by his patron, was behind the printing of these books, in particular the Beneficio di Cristo, as is indicated by some witnesses in the trial against Morone, such 121

 Luzio, Vittoria Colonna, p. 39.  Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, p. 287. 123   On this see the fundamental study by Fragnito, Gli “spirituali”. 124  Solmi, La fuga di Bernardino Ochino, p. 76. 125  Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e Controriforma, p. 315. 126  Pagano, Il processo, p. 298. 127   See [Vergerio], Il catalogo de’ libri, pp. hiiiv–hiiiir: “This booklet has just 13 folios in 8, the most sweet, serious and pious that one could read”; see Bozza, Scritti pseudovaldesiani, p. 364. 122

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as Bernardo Bartoli, who said “Marcantonio Flaminio brought to the light of day a book entitled Il beneficio di Christo,” and Giovan Battista Scotti, who was aware that he had sent it “to the press” after “revising and reorganizing [it] in his way.”128 Contact with the printer Bernardino de’ Bindoni may have been the responsibility of Carnesecchi, whose house was “like an asylum of Lutherans in Venice.”129 In 1557 a Bologna priest claimed that “the said Carnesecca praised that book called the Beneficio di Cristo, according to Flaminio, and I believe Carneseccha was one of those who translated it or had it translated.”130 Shortly after, the first editions of the two Dialoghi by Alfonso de Valdés and many other heterodox books appeared in Rome and Venice, to the great concern of the nuncio, Fabio Mignanelli, who in January 1543 lamented “the great freedom of printers.”131 There were many other books of this kind, including, for example, a new edition in 1543 of the Summario della santa Scrittura, numerous translations of works by Erasmus that appeared in Venice between 1542 and 1547 at the same time as six volumes of the writings of St Augustine (Contra pelagiani, De la fede et de le opere, De la predestinatione etc.) published by Comin da Trino, the editions of the Bible by Antonio Brucioli, the Rime spirituali and the Trionfo della croce by Vittoria Colonna, the new editions of the Regola by Bartolomeo Carli Piccolomini, which appeared in 1543, Flaminio’s Meditationi on the letter to the Romans, and the Trattato della oratione by Cardinal Federico Fregoso in 1543 and 1546.132 The Swiss presses too (particularly in Geneva) were working round the clock publishing heterodox propaganda for Italy, starting with Ochino’s Sermones. This is just a short list, which could easily be added to, but it shows there was a clear interest in texts of this kind, and the readership, whether sympathizers or the merely curious, increased whenever the opening of the Council was announced. As we know, the success of the Beneficio di Cristo, a “very spiritual book,” was extraordinary, “and everyone who read it thought the same,” though actually there were also “different views,” as Morone admitted later. For this reason, after the Council of Trent’s unofficial condemnation of it, he had sought an opinion from Cardinal Cortese, who was then “one of the most reverend inquisitors” (his reply had been “when I put my jacket on in the morning, I don’t know what else I would wear but this Beneficio di Christo”). He also asked Cardinal Madruzzo, who told him openly that 128

  Processo Morone, 2, pp. 82, 243.   Ibid., p. 225. 130   Ibid., 1, p. 7. 131  De Frede, Ricerche, p. 83; Firpo, Juan de Valdés, pp. 316–17; see Cavazza, Libri in volgare. 132  Firpo, Una nuova edizione. 129

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it was in his library “for delight, bound in gold.”133 Late in 1545 Vergerio wrote that the Beneficio “to many ardent spirits and men that are in the Church seems a good thing and most fruitful,”134 and after the Venetian Index of 1549 condemned it, he underlined that as many as 40,000 copies of the work had been “printed and sold in Venice alone.”135 Don Benedetto da Mantova’s little treatise on the benefit of Christ had a great success, which can help us to understand the role and strategies of the spirituali in the 1540s, bearing in mind the ferment of expectations at the time when discussion of different positions was still open. It had been revised by Flaminio in 1541-2, when it was probably also read by Pietro Carnesecchi (who had already seen Fontanini’s first draft in Naples136) and Apollonio Merenda, who would reveal to the inquisitors that Flaminio was then preaching in the presence of Pole “most openly that only through the blood of Christ do we have remission of sins and life eternal and not through our works.”137 The same short period also saw the failed attempt by Morone to reach a compromise with the dissenters in Modena, the setting up of the Inquisition, the sensational flights of Ochino, Vermigli and Curione, and then the convocation of the Council. The fact that Pole was one of the papal legates presiding, while his home was being used to prepare the book for press, may give us an idea of what he hoped the outcome of the Council would be, but also it helps explain why, as early as September 2 1542, little more than a month after the bull Licet ab initio, a Roman agent of Cardinal Gonzaga could write that in the Holy Office there was “talk of Flaminio and the others who are in Viterbo with the cardinal of England, at which the good laugh,” adding: “Let them say what they like … there is a good opinion of those of Viterbo.” But it did not escape him that this disturbing news was connected with the first investigations against Valdés, and that in any case it was being said that “those delegated will examine everything in the greatest detail.”138 This news also helps us understand why Valdés’ disciples decided to suspend for the moment the edition of the Alfabeto cristiano that was ready to be printed, probably because it opened with words of praise for Ochino.139 Before publishing the Beneficio di Cristo, Pole and Flaminio wanted to 133

  Processo Morone, 1, pp. 427–33.  Stella, L’orazione di Pier Paolo Vergerio, p. 35. 135  [Vergerio], Il catalogo de’ libri, p. giiiiv; see Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio, pp. 180–81. 136   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 1363–4. 137   Processo Morone, 1, pp. 817–18. 138  Solmi, La fuga di Bernardino Ochino, p. 51. 139   See the Vatican manuscript published in Valdés, Alfabeto (ed. Prosperi), in particular pp. 13ff; and the note to the text in Valdés, Alfabeto cristiano, pp. CLVff. 134

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verify how much support it might have from some influential figures, as a guarantee for the doctrines it contained being able to get a hearing at the Council, particularly on the question of justification, which was at the center of the work. The very titles of Valdés’ and Flaminio’s published works – Alfabeto… Qual maniera si dovrebbe tenere… Modo che si dee tenere… – indicate an intention to spread the basics of Valdés’ teaching and to present them as a positive response to the religious dilemmas, the expectations for reforms, and the diffusion of heresy in Italy. What the spirituali entrusted to those books was not so much a theology as a method, an alternative to doctrinal controversy and repression, which could suggest a viable path for the reconciliation and peace of the respublica christiana. It was an illusion, of course, that would shortly be swept away by the sharp anti-Protestant rigor of the Tridentine decrees and the strengthening of the Inquisition, as we can see, for example, from the inclusion of those books on the very first Index of prohibited books, published in Venice by the nuncio, Giovanni Della Casa, in 1549.140 The first person the spirituali of Viterbo asked to comment was obviously Contarini, whose secretary, Ludovico Beccadelli, had already read the still unpublished Beneficio. In April–May 1542 Alvise Priuli had informed Contarini of the “small book” that Flaminio was writing, in which he had also included a few suggestions from the Venetian cardinal,141 and in August it was delivered to Niccolò Bargellesi, a Bolognese priest whom Flaminio had for some time been trying to convert to Valdés’ doctrines, praising the Beneficio di Cristo as a work containing “the principles and foundations of Christianity.”142 Bargellesi later explained: Marco Antonio Flaminio sent me a copy of the book Del beneficio de Cristo written by hand, which I transcribed, but always with notes and marks here and there where I disliked it. And I showed it with these notes and marks to the most reverend Monsignor Contarini, and His most reverend Lordship told me that I had done well, because indeed it went beyond the limit; that is what he said to me, and several times replied on the matter: “Oh poor Flaminio, he goes too far!”

We do not know if Contarini, who died a few days after, had time to send this opinion to Viterbo, but his immediate reaction to reading the work further clarifies the sense of the break with Pole after his acceptance of Valdés’ doctrines and the birth of the Ecclesia viterbiensis. Flaminio had also sent other unpublished writings by Valdés to Bologna, both to 140

  Martínez de Bujanda (ed.), Index, 3, p. 392.   Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo, p. 431. 142   Processi Carnesecchi, 1, pp. 4–5. 141

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Bargellesi and to the heterodox group whose leader was Giovan Battista Scotti,143 just as he had sent a manuscript copy of Valdés’ catechism to the members of the Academy in Modena.144 Carnesecchi, too, gave the still unpublished Beneficio di Cristo to some of his friends,145 who may have included Pier Francesco Riccio, butler and secretary to the Duke of Florence, who owned the only surviving manuscript, along with writings by Contarini, Sadoleto and Valdés.146 At the same time other works by Valdés (perhaps including the Beneficio) were sent to someone very close to Contarini, the Dominican Tommaso Badia,147 and this confirms that Pole and Flaminio were working both to prevent dissenters from making a final decision in favor of the Reformation and to keep open channels of mediation with the summit of the Church. Flaminio’s revision was certainly finished in October, when Pole had to return to Rome to take the papal legate’s cross to the Council of Trent, which had been convoked for All Saints Day. It was on that journey that Flaminio described Ochino and Vermigli as “apostles of Italy.”148 And it was in those weeks that there occurred what, 15 years later, a witness against Morone described to the inquisitors as his being “seduced” to Valdés’ doctrines.149 It was a turning point in the Cardinal’s life, all the more unexpected because only a few months before he had tried everything to bring the Modenese dissenters back to the fold. Many people who met Morone in those weeks noticed his new attitudes after being involved in the intense “spiritual confabulation” of the Viterbo group and initiated to a new faith without any sort of “controversy and contention” against Catholic doctrines.150 For Morone, reading some of Valdés’ writings had been the liberating discovery of the unique saving value of grace. Obviously the Beneficio di Cristo was one of the works given him by Flaminio, who at once reported to Merenda “that he liked it a lot.”151 Other unpublished spiritual works were given to Morone in the following weeks and months: writings by Cardinal Federico Fregoso “on the questions of grace and free will, faith and works” as well as his lost “treatise on the Christian life,” a lost work by Valdés entitled Una efficacissima confirmatione della verità della fede cristiana, the Cento e 143

    145   146   147   148   149   150   151   144

Ibid., pp. 4, 9, 141. See above, pp. 145–6. Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 170–71. Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo, pp. 499ff. Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 1187. See above, p. 147. Processo Morone, 2, p. 8. Ibid., p. 518. Ibid., p. 818.

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dieci divine considerazioni, the commentary on the psalms, the Preguntas, and other unidentified works, some of which were certainly by Flaminio.152 After his arrest in 1557, Morone claimed he had never had the time and patience to read books,153 but the conversations with the Viterbo group and the reading of those texts actually marked a religious conversion, a kind of inner revelation that he gratefully attributed to Pole, claiming that he “had been enlightened by him on this question of justification.”154 In May 1543, while still in Trento, Morone sent to Modena a disciple of Pole, the Dominican Bernardo Bartoli, with the task of preaching “the holy Gospel, mentioning most often the benefit of Christ, impressing it on human hearts.”155 Shortly after, in Viterbo, Bartoli heard Vittoria Colonna state that in the past Morone had been an enemy of the Lutherans but had now changed his ideas, having been enlightened regarding the fact that our justification depends on the blood of Christ alone.156 Pole himself had clearly said to Bartoli in 1541–2 “that this question of justification that has emerged nowadays is a great light in the Church of God,” urging him to preach like “the apostles,” which meant announcing “the benefit of Christ and justification in the Lutheran way.’157 In the view of a Bolognese dissenter, Flaminio too had become “Lutheran,” committed to teaching “secretly Lutheran things,” though “with great circumspection, so that with good intelligent Catholics he seemed Catholic and with Lutherans he seemed Lutheran.”158 Morone’s abrupt conversion was all the more significant in that it was not just a personal matter, kept in the secret of his conscience or among a few trusted friends. Immediately after, in the spring of 1543, while the Beneficio di Cristo was being printed in Venice, Flaminio and Priuli in Trento were hastening to inform the Valdesians in Naples “of his fine mind and fine soul, of his being enamored of God and not of the things of the world, of his being able to understand justification through Christ, and that he seemed more and more fervent in the love of God.”159 This was noticed by many in Trento too, where, during meetings with the few prelates that had then assembled, Morone adopted imprudent positions, which are further proof of the enthusiasm his conversion had set off, and of its immediate effect on his action and behavior. His Pauline 152

    154   155   156   157   158   159   153

Ibid., pp. 523ff, 537ff. Ibid., pp. 426–7. Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., p. 670. Ibid., pp. 75, 114. Processi Carnesecchi, 1, p. 142. Processo Morone, 1, p. 827.

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readings, for example, led to the disturbing question, clearly inspired by Valdés, “whether a spiritual person was subjected to the human law of the Church,” and to the conclusion “that a person can be so full of the spirit that he may not be subject to the human laws of the Church.”160 In a short time, rumors began to circulate about his doctrinal positions, which were accused of being identical to those of the heretics,161 and about his daring projects for radical reforms of the curia, which entailed abolishing most of the Chancellery, almost all of the Penitentiary, and … that bishops be made who knew how to preach, and that the parishes be not given to courtiers, and the whole of its jurisdiction be left to the bishops, and that they be men worthy of episcopal dignity, just as was done in the primitive Church,

in the conviction that the Germans had been given “good cause to become heretics and that, if Rome had put its house in order, they would quickly have returned to the faith.”162 At the outset of his inquisitorial trial, in June 1557, Morone admitted “reading … and almost devouring most avidly” the Beneficio di Cristo and purchasing various copies, but he lied in claiming he saw it for the first time in Modena in printed form, when the bookseller Antonio Gadaldino asked him for permission to sell it.163 On June 30 1557, Gadaldino confirmed to the judges of the Holy Office in Rome that he had visited the Cardinal in summer 1543 with a copy of the Beneficio to ask for this permission, but also stated that “he told me he had seen one in manuscript form, and it seemed very good to him. And so he gave me a license to sell it,” offering to pay himself “if some poor person could not afford it.”164 In those weeks Morone donated a copy to a lady in Modena, with the suggestion to “study this work as a very Christian book,”165 and he gave two to Fra Bernardo Bartoli in Rome, asking him to give one “to a companion.”166 It is not possible to analyze here the profound changes that these meetings and readings had on Morone and his pastoral care of the diocese, to the point of showing solidarity with the heterodox communities of Bologna and Modena. Further evidence of the extent of this complicity is the fact that Flaminio in person announced the “good news that their bishop … had become one of them and loved them” to the 160

    162   163   164   165   166   161

Ibid., pp. 102–3. Ibid., p. 759. Ibid., pp. 774, 778–9. Ibid., pp. 427ff. Ibid., pp. 503–4; see p. 291. Ibid., pp. 288–9. Ibid., pp. 87–8, 657–8.

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Academicians of Modena,167 who “celebrated, saying: ‘Thanks be to God, that our most reverend cardinal Morone has become one of us.’” And when the bishop returned briefly to the city they did not hesitate to go to him “freely,” while, previously, “they would not have dared to go before him,”168 as now they knew he “had been illuminated with the truth and had become their brother in matters of the faith.”169 According to them, Morone himself had asked their forgiveness for “having at other times tormented them for matters of faith.”170 These astonishing revelations are confirmed by other tales of his behavior in ruling the legation of Bologna he was entrusted with in 1544, where he guaranteed his protection for the heterodox group, gave Giovan Battista Scotti money for the “brothers,” promising to warn them in advance if he should hear that the Holy Office was investigating them,171 and even to help a suspect preacher with money and horses for the journey, if he decided to flee the country.172 Even earlier than Morone, on the eve of the solemn entry of the legates into Trento in November 1542, Gian Matteo Giberti may also have seen a manuscript of the Beneficio di Cristo, which the Dominican Reginaldo Nerli too read “before it was printed,” in Verona, where Flaminio had given it to a longstanding friend, the canon Iacopo Pellegrini.173 It was Pellegrini who passed it on to Giberti, who read it at once and said openly “that it was a good thing.” But he had to change his tune when Nerli gave his view that it was heretical, inducing him to ask the Mantuan friar and three other theologians to prepare a detailed critique of the book. It was this censure by four “doctors” that Ambrogio Catarino Politi read before printing his own Compendio d’errori et inganni luterani, satisfied that they had reached conclusions identical to his own.174 In any case, despite Contarini’s criticism and the setback in Verona, Flaminio and Pole decided to publish the book, but anonymously. It was a kind of manifesto of the spirituali, aimed at indicating a way out of the religious anxieties that were widespread throughout society, directing the Council’s debates toward conclusions that would avert a dangerous Protestant drift in the heterodox ferments that were springing up everywhere, and suggesting a possible mediation that could heal the fracture of Christendom in the framework of a renewed Church. 167

  Ibid., p. 688.   Ibid., pp. 194, 698. 169   Ibid., p. 232. 170   Ibid., p. 8; see Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 116ff. 171   Processo Morone, 1, p. 234. 172   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 332. 173   For this and what follows, see ibid., pp. 720–22. 174  Politi, Compendio, p. 4r; see above, pp. 1ff. 168

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There is no doubt that the approval of the Tridentine decree on justification in January 1547 marked a defeat for the fragile strategy of the spirituali, as was evident to all from Pole’s withdrawing from Trento and refusing to add his seal to a doctrinal definition that effectively condemned his deepest religious convictions. It was a dramatic and, at the same time, sterile decision, and yet it was admired by Vittoria Colonna, who expressed her satisfaction to Carnesecchi on “how well it had all gone in relation to this gentleman, saying that God had almost miraculously disposed and ordered matters thus, so that the cardinal had not intervened on the decree.”175 It is also probable that in those very weeks Pole handed over to one of his assistants at the Council, the Spanish Juan Morillo, later an exile in France and then a reformed minister in Frankfurt, the original manuscript of Valdés’ commentary on Paul’s letters,176 published in Geneva in 1556–7 by Juan Pérez de Pineda.177 This was a clear sign that Pole was finally throwing in the towel, now definitely aware that the Tridentine decree on justification meant the condemnation of Valdesianesim. He shut himself away in the inner reaches of his conscience, divided between firm loyalty both to what he saw as the kernel of the Gospel message and to the Church of Rome and papal authority, which he continued to profess even on the point of death.178 The failure of the Council and the increasing pressure of the Inquisition’s investigations ended up paralyzing his movements, while the defeat of his candidacy in the conclave of 1549–50 was the final blow to the hopes of those who, in the early 1540s, had rejoiced at “having such a man who shared their religious opinions and was to help them in time of persecutions. That is what they believed, hoping that if Pole had been pope then matters of faith would have gone their way.”179 We can reasonably suppose that the ambiguous doctrinal tendencies, which were both heirs and prisoners of Valdesian spiritualism, of its religious intensity and its political weakness, had been more of a check than a stimulus to the spread of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenthcentury Italy, as indeed, Vergerio and Negri had already complained, and as has been claimed by historians.180 In any case, the frenzied circumstances of the drafting, manuscript circulation, publication and success of the Beneficio di Cristo on the eve of the Council of Trent, as well as the speed with which it was attacked and condemned, reveal the conflicts 175   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 1232; see Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience, pp. 174ff; Mayer, Reginald Pole, pp. 143ff. 176   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 1007ff. 177   See below, p. 198. 178   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 444–6. 179   Processo Morone, 1, p. 218. 180  Cameron, Italy, pp. 201, 212–13.

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that divided the upper reaches of the Church and which could no longer be contained in the reassuring framework of what was described as the Catholic Reform or “reform tendency,”181 a tendency so vague as to be able to incorporate Reginald Pole and Gian Pietro Carafa, Giovanni Morone and Marcello Cervini, binding together political and religious attitudes that were not only different but opposed, the inquisitors and their victims, the victors and the defeated. The condemnations that forced the Beneficio di Cristo into the cage of Lutheran heresy and the investigations against the spirituali throughout the 1540s reveal that the Holy Office regarded them as the most dangerous of its enemies because they were promoting a completely different reform of the Church. They also reveal that Catholic orthodoxy was then defined, above all, by the Inquisition, without waiting for Tridentine decrees, which were actually heavily conditioned by it, as is suggested by the denunciations of the predictable Grechetto or the harsh attacks on bishops such as Braccio Martelli, Giovanni Tommaso Sanfelice, Iacopo Nacchianti and Vittore Soranzo, who dared to differ from the line laid down by the Roman curia and the papal legates in Trent.182 4. A Valdesian Bishop In the early 1540s, when highly placed figures with great responsibilities at the summit of the Church, in papal diplomacy and in the running of legations and bishoprics were becoming involved in Valdesian spirituality, it acquired an unexpected political role that the small Neapolitan group had never enjoyed. The choice of preachers to send to the dioceses, pastoral instruction to the clergy, the attitude to take to the many forms of dissent everywhere, the institutional role within the Roman curia in the projects for the reform of the Church, the meetings of the Council and papal European policy offered these doctrines new fields of action, but at the same time involved them in a public dimension that risked detonating their contradictions. We have seen this in the case of Morone, and we may also consider the commitment to reform by bishops such as Pier Paolo Vergerio in Capodistria and Iacopo Nacchianti in Chioggia, both of whom were put on trial by the Holy Office in Rome.183 But the most striking case was that of Vittore Soranzo, who after undergoing an authentic religious conversion in Naples in 1540 became a regular presence in the 181

  See Jedin, Catholic Reformation; Hudon, Marcello Cervini, and also his review Religion and Society; Mayer, Reginald Pole, and also What to call the “spirituali”. 182   See the acute remarks by Miccoli, La storia religiosa, pp. 1071ff. 183   Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio, pp. 156ff; Mozzato, Jacopo Nacchianti; Italiano, La pastorale eterodossa.

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Ecclesia viterbiensis, devoted himself to the work of proselytism (at times imprudently), and finally became bishop of Bergamo, where he did not simply combat the abuse and ignorance of the clergy and the superstitious practices of the faithful but tried to leave a mark of the new faith on the religious life of clergy and laity. His career was short-lived: the trial in Rome in 1551 finished it, despite the constant support of the Venetian government.184 On July 18 1544 Vittore Soranzo was made bishop coadjutor with the right of succession to the diocese of Bergamo, which had been assigned shortly before to his revered master, Pietro Bembo. But Cardinal Bembo put it in his hands right away, struck by his being “so good and true and certain a Christian and … so learned … in the holy writings that perhaps between here [Rome] and Verona at the moment there is no religious man more humble and reverent to our Lord Jesus Christ than he.”185 Soranzo’s letters to Giovan Battista Scotti give a clear idea not only of his religious attitudes but also of his complicity with the “brothers” in Bologna who, on April 19 1544, he urged to practice the “business of being a Christian” as “experience” and not as “knowledge,” as Juan de Valdés had taught.186 A month later he confided to Scotti his anxiety at the prospect of being made a bishop, asking him to help find a vicar who was a “practical man and in touch with true piety and Christian mortification.”187 On leaving Rome, he took with him many heretical books, including a Protestant treatise on the role of the bishop that had been a present from the dissenter Guido Giannetti. On the way to Bergamo, he rebuked the vicar of Brescia, Annibale Grisonio, for banning the Beneficio di Cristo.188 When he reached his diocese in early November he at once began corresponding again with Scotti, to whom he sent a manuscript with some of Valdés’ Preguntas, asking him to keep him informed on the “brothers of Bologna, and also on messer Ludovico Castelvetro and the others in Modena.”189 Now he had to bear witness to his faith, to express it in his pastoral work, in rules and behavior, and to give up, at least partly, the Nicodemism that had always been practiced by Valdés’ disciples. This meant difficult mediations between his conscience and his prudence and involved serious risks, which he faced courageously, perhaps partly out of a sense of impunity due to his social rank and highly placed friends in Venice and Rome. 184   For this and what follows, see my studies L’eresia del vescovo, and Vittore Soranzo, pp. 215ff. 185  Bembo, Lettere, 4, p. 499. 186   Processi Soranzo, 2, pp. 619–20. 187   Ibid., p. 622. 188   Ibid., 1, pp. 104–5. 189   Ibid., 2, pp. 629–30.

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The situation he found in Bergamo was not unlike that of other Italian dioceses, starting from a clergy that was generally inadequate in its pastoral care, frequently ignorant and absentee, and unable to perform the most elementary liturgical and sacramental functions, while the convents and monasteries were often completely out of control. This reflected on the religious life of the laity, which was centered on superstitious devotional practices, making it difficult to further a reform of the Church based on the theology of the Beneficio di Cristo. But Soranzo gave himself body and soul to the task, and, following the example of Giberti’s reforms in nearby Verona, he tried to encourage a cultural and moral renewal of the clergy as the indispensable premise and practical tool for spreading among the laity a different way – founded on the theology of grace – of understanding and practicing the Christian faith. To gain souls for God, Valdés had written, no means is more effective than “to be a prelate,”190 and there is no doubt that Soranzo brought with him great hopes when he took over the diocese, though the results were often disappointing. This was partly because of the contradictions inherent in Valdesianism, especially the illusion that one could avoid any kind of institutional break while adhering to doctrines that the Council of Trent was about to condemn and that had, in any case, been repressed by the Inquisition for some time. These contradictions were particularly obvious in pastoral care, whose inevitably public nature left little room for the caution, gradualism and ambiguity on which the Valdesians had built their slender political strategies. How could the daily need to teach, admonish, take decisions and govern the diocese coexist with its structural postponement of the problems of the present to the progressive illumination of individual consciences and the unfathomable decrees of divine providence? How could one use these doctrines to govern the diocese, and at the same time avoid being put on trial by the Inquisition, which had always been suspicious of the little Ecclesia gathered around Pole and Flaminio and now eyed with ill-concealed disapproval the work of Soranzo? This was certainly one of the reasons for his religious identity becoming more and more pro-Lutheran during his period in Bergamo. In the confession presented on July 3 1551, on the eve of being sentenced in Rome, he listed openly the many heresies he had professed, convinced that the Church had never had the authority to “add anything to the first institution of the sacraments and the rest of ecclesiastical worship other than that laid out in Scripture.” For him, as for all Valdés’ disciples, the first step had consisted in accepting justification by faith, after which, “harnessed, seduced and tricked by wicked German books,” others had been taken: purgatory had been denied, along with intercession for the dead, the invocation of the saints, the veneration of images, 190

  Valdés, Two Catechisms, p. 233.

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miracles, confession to priests, indulgences, vows, ecclesiastical celibacy, the authority of the pope, and the doctrine of transubstantiation.191 He admitted to the inquisitors that these heresies had been at the center of his ministry: “I longed,” he wrote, “for all to believe what I did, but I complained to some of my intimates that I could not extend in my diocese the Gospel as I longed to.”192 The well-stocked library of heretical texts he had collected in Rome and increased in Bergamo, thanks to his relations with Baldassarre Altieri in Venice and Pietro Perna in Basle, is unequivocal evidence of his theological views: writings by Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Brenz, Giulio da Milano, Ochino, Vergerio, the Valdés brothers, the Pasquino in estasi, the Medicina dell’anima, the Tragedia del libero arbitrio, the Summario della santa Scrittura, and the Beneficio di Cristo, were kept on display in his rooms in the bishop’s palace.193 In a few years he distributed dozens of copies of the Beneficio, giving it to anyone who asked for it194 and taking whole parcels of it – sometimes with the Alfabeto cristiano – to the convents he visited, where he forbade the recitation of the rosary and “books of devotions and prayers,” replacing them with the Pie et christiane epistole by Giulio da Milano, the Summario della santa Scrittura and the Medicina dell’anima. In one convent he ordered the nuns to read the Beneficio di Cristo, and in just one day he distributed 20 copies of it in another, where Ochino’s Prediche and the Tragedia del libero arbitrio were also circulating. At San Fermo in the summer of 1557 Valdés’ Alfabeto cristiano was seized, which Soranzo had sent to the abbess 10 years before, ordering her to read it “in the refectory, and that they left alone the other books to read this one.”195 He transcribed, lent and donated many books to close friends and collaborators, suspect preachers and persons in odor of heresy. Soranzo’s religious and pastoral tendencies were clearly reflected in his choice of assistants, many of whom were later put on trial with him, starting with his vicar, Carlo Franchino, whom the bishop had wanted as his confessor for some time by virtue of their shared views on the Eucharist, which he himself sometimes administered sub utraque. There was also Cesare Flaminio, cousin of Marcantonio, who in 1545 sent to Bologna a manuscript of Valdés’ Preguntas, Pasino da Carpenedolo, who was taken in on Carnesecchi’s recommendation, the Capuchin Rufino, a former disciple of Ochino, the clerk from Albenga Paolo Firpo, and many others.

191

    193   194   195   192

Processi Soranzo, 1, pp. 390ff. Ibid., p. 425. Ibid., p. 324. Ibid., pp. 108–9. Ibid., 2, p. 987.

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Soranzo’s first provisions were in line with his predecessor’s but in a short time he became more and more radical in his reforms. On December 3 1544 he promulgated an Edictum generale, which was a kind of catalog of the many abuses that infested the diocese and which the new bishop wished to combat, not only by calling on his clergy to behave more decorously, respect their duties and observe the regulations that had fallen into disuse, but, above all, by trying to regain control over confession, preaching and the circulation of books. He made use of his influential Roman connections to obtain, in early 1545, two papal breves that allowed him to bring under his control confessors and apostate friars, who were a constant source of corruption and unruliness. He put the main churches in the town in the hands of such heterodox priests as Giovan Francesco da Asola, Omobono Asperti da Cremona and Gian Pietro Faceti, known as Parisotto, who was also charged with confessing the nuns of Santa Maria Mater Domini and preaching to those of San Fermo, where he hid a whole case of forbidden books and secretly married a nun.196 Having granted him protection in all circumstances, the bishop was much embarrassed when Parisotto shortly afterwards fled to Switzerland. In his last confessio, however, he admitted seeking out priests who shared his opinions, “but secretly, to have them care for my diocese.”197 For the same reasons he sought to control the choice of preachers, so that the pulpits resounded with the voices of clergy whom he trusted to spread the new religious message. The local inquisitor later denounced the fact that, after Soranzo’s arrival, all the preachers “were always magnifying faith and seemed to speak of nothing else, and covered their words so well that we could not easily know them for heretics and punish them.”198 Already in 1544–5, the Augustinian Angelo da Crema preached “with Lutheran expositions given him by the bishop,”199 while another Augustinian, Tommaso da Carpenedolo (later condemned for heresy), denied the miracles of the saints in his homilies. The scandal was all the greater when Soranzo openly defended him.200 One priest later claimed that, in those years, one heard nothing from the pulpits but justification by faith, and the bishop claimed to be well pleased, “though keeping his eyes open to avoid being discovered too quickly to be against the Roman Church.”201 This led to open conflict with the Dominicans of Bergamo, until they were expressly forbidden from preaching during 196

    198   199   200   201   197

Ibid., pp. 678ff, 831ff. Ibid., 1, p. 425. Ibid., pp. 176–7. Ibid., 2, p. 647. Ibid., 1, pp. 370–71. Ibid., pp. 396, 424.

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Advent in 1546.202 There was a scandalous incident in August 1550, while Soranzo was already being investigated in Bergamo, when he forbade the Franciscan Girolamo Finucci from continuing his anti-Lutheran homilies on the value of good works.203 This unequivocal attitude went beyond the city to the preachers sent around the local villages, whom Soranzo tended to choose only after checking on their opinions, urging them to explain “that faith was what justified” and to refrain from attacking the “Lutherans or heretics, showing he was displeased if they were preached against.”204 Hence the unforeseen Nicodemitic stratagems of some zealous friars to escape their bishop’s iron control by pretending “to have a little of the modern Christian.”205 Equally significant, and often equally imprudent, was how Soranzo handled the practical questions of behavior and personal relations that managing the diocese involved every day. One example was the cult of saints and the popular devotions connected to it, which were a priority field for reforms inspired by a spiritualization of worship but also offered a chance for adversaries (friars in particular) to oppose the reforms, often with the help of common people defending traditional cults and devotional practices. A clear example of this was the opposition to the closure of the tomb of the mythical proto-bishop, St Narno, which Sorzano had decreed in 1549 to combat belief in the thaumaturgic powers of the water that issued from it.206 Instead of backing down in the face of the friars’ protests, he took the same line with the similar cult of the tombs of the holy martyrs Fermo and Rustico after discovering that it was a “sham,” as some nuns filled them with water during the night.207 Other decisions of Soranzo were interpreted as designed to question the worship of saints: for example, he interrupted the tradition of conceding indulgences to the confraternities of the Battuti; he reprimanded the habit of using alms to buy candles instead of using them for the poor; he suspended the processions praying for rain or fine weather; and he forbade some feast-days of the confraternities, which he would have actually liked to wind up altogether, so as to eliminate “the disorders and avarice and theft of their officials and ministers.”208 Still more serious was his gesture in August 1546, when, during the pastoral visit at Vilminore, so irritated was he by the many images of saints on the high altar that he was unable to control his rage, “and in the presence of 202

    204   205   206   207   208   203

Ibid., pp. 176–7. Ibid., pp. 15 ff. Ibid., pp. 23–4, 73; see also pp. 70–71. Ibid., pp. 26–8. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 129, 288. Ibid., pp. 67, 290–91, 398.

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many persons, clergy and laity, took two of those images and tore them up and threw them down at his feet,” to the great consternation of those present. To make matters worse, around the same time he had been audible in his appreciation when visiting another church with all the walls freshly painted, without “any image of Christ or the saints, except for a crucifix painted on the high altar.”209 He himself lost no opportunity to teach that “one should go to Christ alone and not invoke the saints,” and it was observed that in the rooms of the episcopal palace there were no figures of saints.210 Similar reforming measures, aimed at simplifying worship, were also behind his attempt to extirpate the benediction of the candles and the rosary beads blessed by the pope, which he regarded as superstitious practices of which there was no trace in the Gospels.211 Still more severe, and with far-reaching theological implications as well as risks, was his battle against the friars who wandered the diocese using some indulgences to milk money from the poor, as happened when one appeared with a papal bull for the release of prisoners. To him Soranzo gave a scudo, not for the indulgence, “but because you are my brother in Christ,” claiming not to know “other indulgences than the blood of Christ.”212 No less delicate was his battle against vows: monastic vows, vows to saints, often made by “poor men … with children to support,” and vows of chastity, from which he did not hesitate to release some young women, telling them: “I leave you free as any other woman is in the world so that you may do as you wish.”213 More cautious, but equally a source of suspicions, were the bishop’s and vicar’s teaching and behavior over the sacraments, which convinced the inquisitor that he did not believe in Catholic transubstantiation but in Lutheran consubstantiation – “that together with the body of Christ the bread was still there.”214 He faced other serious accusations in the future for imprudently protecting some dissenters, who in some cases he helped to flee by warning them that the Inquisition was on the point of arresting them. Guglielmo Grataroli, Vincenzo Marchesi and Francesco Bellinchetti, all later exiles in Switzerland, were constant visitors to his residence and sometimes supplied him with banned books. But this created further ambiguities as the doctrinal premises of his commitment to reform did not coincide at all with those of the heretics in Bergamo, who were now essentially Calvinist, convinced that the Church of Rome, which the bishop still represented, 209

    211   212   213   214   210

Ibid., pp. 91–3; see also pp. 210–11, 237ff. Ibid., pp. 79–80, 144; see pp. 109, 291–2. Ibid., pp. 71, 127. Ibid., p. 136. Ibid., pp. 82, 84, 86–7, 121, 125–6, 114, 298, 300. Ibid., p. 173.

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was none other than the Babylon of the Anti-Christ, to be destroyed to its foundations.215 Hence, judged by the supreme tribunal of the faith as an accomplice of these heretics, and used by them as a mere tool to give them greater room for maneuvering and to hold the repression of the Inquisition at bay, Soranzo ended up crushed in a deadly vice. In different ways, depending on various political contingencies and individual cases, this was the outcome for almost all the Italian Valdesians. It is worth mentioning that Soranzo could count on the constant support not only of the Venetian central and local authorities but also of the patriciate and aristocracy of Bergamo, who in large measure sided with this morally exemplary bishop because he was personally involved in pastoral work and in promoting the long-desired reforms throughout the diocese, from the large towns in the plain to the most distant mountain villages. He went everywhere personally, seeking to remedy the various disorders and abuses and to promote a more rigorous presence of the Church in society, insisting on the clergy performing its duties in the care of souls and using proper liturgical and devotional forms for religious life. It was an immense task, and he only had a few years for it, between late 1544 and 1550, when he was called to Rome and shut up in Castel Sant’Angelo, where the protection of the Republic of Venice could not save him from trial. This ended in September 1551, when Julius III decided personally on the sentence that saved him from a shameful condemnation by the Inquisition, allowing him to abjure privately in his presence.216 Striving to limit the power of the Inquisition, the Pope even allowed him to return to the diocese after a while, where the Holy Office put him on probation, until the new trial and the condemnation in absentia decreed by Paul IV in 1558, a few days before his death. The many rules and regulations issued by Soranzo give us only a partial idea of the spirit in which he promoted his pastoral reforms. The records of the visits probably contain few traces of what the bishop actually said on these occasions, or what could be interpreted from his gestures and tone of voice, but they indicate that even in country villages, where his work was certainly more difficult, he tried to carry on his battle by taking up positions that came closer and closer to open heresy. At Albino for example, in 1546, he prohibited the candles that were superstitiously placed by mothers-to-be around the images of saints. At Mapello, in 1550, after discovering that a saint’s image was surrounded by words claiming that those who adored it with great devotion would be cured of a fever,217 he ordered them to be removed, also forbidding the sick to 215

 Firpo, Vittore Soranzo, pp. 305ff.   Ibid., pp. 451ff. 217   Bergamo, Archivio della curia vescovile, Visite pastorali, 10, ff. 3vff; 13, ff. 83vff. 216

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prostrate themselves before it. Everywhere he tried to separate the worship of the sacrament from the worship of saints, although he sometimes had to provide relics for churches he consecrated, preach indulgences, and threaten to excommunicate those who did not observe Lent. This indicates not only the caution he had to adopt, but also his commitment to avoiding any institutional fracture, his trust in the long-term effects of preaching and example, his hopes that the Christian regeneration he had experienced by accepting the doctrine of justification by faith might gradually be transmitted to others. His attempt to begin a reform of the Church was based, above all, on announcing the Word, on new sacramental practices, and on a battle without quarter against ignorance, laxity, the abuses of the clergy, the widespread recourse to magic, and the sterile devotional practices of the laity. He tried to eradicate that tangled knot of habits, collective needs and material interests that inextricably bound together popular piety with the pastoral practice and social role of friars and priests. In this perspective, we can understand why Soranzo lost no opportunity to urge parish priests and chaplains to read the Gospel and other books that might provide not only rules for behavior but also doctrines capable of giving genuine religious vitality to their duties. Everywhere, in the city and in the villages, he prescribed the Bible, works by the most learned commentators, and the study of the Concilium Coloniense, in which irenic theology and reforming aspirations came together as cornerstones of a new pastoral commitment on the part of the clergy. Published also in 1541 and 1543 in Giberti’s Verona, the work was finally put on the Roman Index in 1596, due to the suspect doctrines of some chapters of Johann Gropper’s Enchiridion that it included. But the records of his visits document his desire for the pastoral ministry to make use of much more explicitly heterodox texts too. On September 12 1548, for example, in Val Brembana, Soranzo ordered a priest to buy “certain books” by Brucioli, and in his visits of 1550 prescribed to his curates the Concilium Coloniense together with the Medicina dell’anima. What emerges from this vigorous and risky pastoral work, then, is an attempt not just to discipline the clergy, but also to guide the faithful toward a renewal of the religious life based on faith in the “benefit of Christ” and to eliminate devotional practices rooted in the piety of ordinary people, which helped them in the difficulties of a precarious existence and which were also encouraged by the clergy to protect their prestige, income and institutional anomie. This is perhaps the real kernel of the so-called “abuses.” It would be missing the point to see them only as inveterate moral disorders, ignoring their deep roots in popular religious feeling, in which the confines between the sacred and magic were barely distinguishable and the protective role of rites and acts of worship were much more important than their religious value. Hence the tenacious survival of these

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“abuses” even after the conclusion of the Council, despite the efforts of many bishops to activate the reforms that had been passed, though they were often checked, if not openly obstructed, by Roman centralism.218 It was this strong link between popular piety and the clergy that was the main obstacle Soranzo came up against: the support guaranteed him by local political authorities had to reckon with widespread popular hostility whose echoes soon reached Rome. In the eyes of Gian Pietro Carafa and Michele Ghislieri, however, the reform of the Church came after the repression of heresy, starting with that which infested the palaces of the curia. This was the main battle to fight and win, while the rest could wait. Even after the end of the Council, what was asked of the faithful was, above all, orthodoxy, discipline and obedience, which helps explain the rapid exhaustion of the Tridentine reforms in the face of the inextricable tangle of clerical flaws and the religion of the humble. It is this that also emerges so clearly from the records of the apostolic visit to Bergamo by St Charles Borromeo in 1575, when Soranzo’s attempt to extirpate it in the name of a renewed theology seemed to have left no trace. 5. Heresy at the top of the Church and imperial politics Whatever the results in Bergamo, Soranzo’s experience, with its evident challenge to the Inquisition, confirms that throughout the 1540s the group of spirituali guided by Pole, Flaminio and Morone was still very much alive. Indeed, this was the most active and significant period of its shadowy existence: it was at the center of a dense web of personal relations of men of social standing and personal prestige that could influence religious attitudes and guarantee protection and complicity. On the one hand, this explains why many people expected and hoped for a different result from the Council, thus delaying their ultimate religious choices and slowing down the spread of the Reformation; on the other, it encouraged suspicions and the investigations of the Holy Office in Rome, which, ever since it had been set up in summer 1542, saw in the spirituali its most feared adversaries, all the more dangerous in that they had introduced heresy to the summit of the Church, very near to the papal tiara, which they were to be prevented from winning by all means possible. This risk was far from remote as, throughout the 1540s and 1550s, until the abdication of Charles V, Pole and Morone were the first Hapsburg candidates for the papal throne. This is crucial in understanding the political as well as the religious role that Valdesianism had in Italy.

218

  See the fundamental study by Mancino, Romeo, Clero criminale.

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Since 1526 Charles V had been asking for the Council to be convoked as the only remedy to the spread of heresy in the German world and the crisis of the Church, which hardly endeared him to the vacillating and indecisive Clement VII. That is why reforming and irenic tendencies tended to group around the Hapsburgs. Their main standard bearer was Reginald Pole, whose De unitate Ecclesiae of 1536 echoed Erasmus’ De amabili Ecclesiae concordia of 1533. Significantly, his nomination as cardinal was appreciated “most highly by the ministers of the Emperor,” as Ludovico Beccadelli wrote in his Vita of Pole.219 This is confirmed by the careers of Contarini and Morone, both of whom were at various times nuncios and papal legates at the imperial court, and both of whom were to foster their political irenism with doctrinal options that the Inquisition quickly judged heterodox, as in the case of Contarini’s failed attempt at religious reconciliation at Regensburg in 1541 under the aegis of Charles V. Morone met with similar favor from the Hapsburgs: as a young nuncio he had spent many long periods in Germany, where he had established a relationship of mutual regard and trust with Ferdinand and Maximilian of Hapsburg and acquired direct experience of the Reformation and its many religious and political connotations. In his dispatches he tried to explain to Rome the need for a political initiative very different from that suggested in the past by Lorenzo Campeggi and Girolamo Aleandro, whose only recommendations had been repression and war. Morone, by contrast, insisted that “the means to reduce Lutherans” were essentially the Council, the concession of communion sub utraque specie, marriage of priests, “the reform of Rome and of the court and all the bishoprics in Italy,” as well as to refrain from writing “insultingly” against them.220 Even after being made a cardinal, Morone continued to express the view “that the [Roman] court did not live as it should,” as a bishop recalled later: “He always spoke of this reform to the point of boredom.”221 It is also significant that the conflicts of the 1540s regarding the various reform projects222 were also conflicts between different political groupings. If Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pole, Giovanni Morone, Pietro Bertano, Cristoforo Madruzzo, Ercole Gonzaga and Pietro Antonio Di Capua made no secret of their pro-Empire tendencies, there was an equally explicit pro-French voice in the leading member of the intransigent party, Gian Pietro Carafa. His nomination as Archbishop of Naples had been vetoed by Charles V in 1549 on the grounds that he was “too close to the throne of France” and always ready to give “hospitality to all the bandits” in the 219

    221   222   220

Morandi (ed.), Monumenti, 1/2, p. 292. Nuntiaturberichte, 4, pp. 405–7 (opinion delivered to the Pope on 14 May 1539). Processo Morone, 1, p. 773. See above, pp. 146–7.

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Kingdom.223 We have already mentioned the important political roles in the service of Charles V played by Alfonso and Juan de Valdés, and it is significant that figures such as Pole and Morone were asked to preside at the Council, partly by virtue of the trust they enjoyed at the imperial court, to which both Ercole Gonzaga and Cosimo de’ Medici were closely linked, both of them sworn enemies of Paul III. However strange it may seem, in short, the “most religious” Charles V, who in 1543 urged his son Philip to defend the Catholic faith, tolerate no heresy in his kingdoms, and support the Inquisition,224 was paradoxically the political sponsor of the spirituali, who, for this reason too, were regarded by Carafa with deep aversion. It was only by waving documents of the Inquisition and “damnable writings” by Pole in front of the astonished cardinals that Carafa managed to avert by just one vote his election in the conclave of 1549–50.225 To prevent similar dangers in the future, and to block the hopes other suspect figures had of being made cardinals, after the election of Julius III he mobilized all the power of the Inquisition to ensure that, in future, not only would the Sacred College not include figures such as Soranzo, Pietro Antonio Di Capua, or the patriarch of Aquileia Giovanni Grimani,226 but that they would all be put on trial.227 At the same time the Holy Office unleashed a new wave of trials designed to cut down Neapolitan Valdesianism228 and block Morone’s candidacy in the two conclaves of 1555, when Gian Pietro Carafa brought with him “a bundle of inquisitorial documents against … all the likely candidates.”229 Two inquisitors were then elected, one after the other − Marcello Cervini (after giving up a “softer” strategy of repression230) and Carafa, who, once he had become pope, formally indicted Pole, Morone and many others, in a battle against their religious views which coincided with that against the power of the Hapsburgs. It soon became clear that Charles V had good reason to oppose the election of Paul IV, who at once began negotiating with France to restart the anti-Hapsburg war in Italy, despite the new prospects that had opened with the Peace of Augsburg and the solemn imperial abdication at Brussels. It was a war on which Carafa, who 30 years before had been a horrified witness of the Sack of Rome, poured all his “inveterate hatred of the Spanish nation, and particularly 223

  CT, 6, p. 577.   Fernández Álvarez (ed.), Corpus documental, 2, p. 93. 225  Firpo, La presa di potere, pp. 3ff. 226  Firpo, Le ambiguità della porpora. 227   See Firpo, La presa di potere, pp. 52ff. 228   Ibid., pp. 114ff. 229  Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 196–7, 303ff. 230  Firpo, La presa di potere, pp. 203ff. 224

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of the Emperor,” as the Venetian ambassador Bernardo Navagero wrote in a report of 1558, grasping the political and religious significance of the fury with which the Pope intended to combat the man who had “added to the errors of Martin Luther so as to extinguish the pope’s authority and in this way take over what was left of Italy.” Paul IV lost no opportunity to inveigh against “the Emperor’s cupidity and indulgence of heretics” and “never spoke of His Majesty and the Spanish nation without calling them heretics, schismatics and accursed of God, seed of the Jews and renegades, the dregs of the world, deploring Italy’s wretchedness in being forced to serve such abject, base people.”231 Heretics and schismatics, renegades and traitors for him included both Charles and Philip of Hapsburg, whom he tried for heresy. As for Ferdinand, whom he refused to recognize for the imperial succession, he would gladly have driven him from his throne, even if it meant an alliance with the Turks and Lutherans. Thus, we cannot understand the important role of the spirituali in the 1540s and after, and their becoming a reference point for many, if we do not recall that they were the most authoritative exponents of the proimperial party in the Sacred College. As we know, the religious fractures that undermined the very concept of the Holy Roman Empire forced Charles V to adopt a policy of compromise, inviting Rome and the Council to make serious reforms, while at the same time trying to absorb with irenic doctrinal formulas the heresies that were tearing Germany apart. This policy was in line with the attitudes of the spirituali, who argued the case in the commissions of the curia, the Council legations, the consistorial meetings, and talks with the popes. But these attitudes did not just derive from political reasons, family loyalties, personal ambitions or private interests; they sprung also from their religious convictions. What they had sought and found in Valdesian spiritualism had been a way to keep in their consciences faith in the unique saving power of grace, without being sucked into the maelstrom of ecclesiological “consequences” and doctrinal controversies. In this way, as we have seen,232 while sharing its religious foundations, they sharply distanced themselves from the Reformation itself, condemning the historical break that had been its most authentic strength. Hence their pausing on the threshold of an irreparable fracture, their defense of the Church’s hierarchy, as emerges, for example, from the declaration signed by Pole on his death-bed in 1558 “of having always held the pope … as the true successor of Peter and vicar of Christ, and having always revered and obeyed him as such,”233 and their commitment to Church unity, forcing themselves to justify the ever 231

  Albéri (ed.), Relazioni, 3, pp. 388–9.   See above, pp. 135–7. 233   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 445–6. 232

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more restricted spaces of inner freedom. Hence, too, the evasive formulas and the allusive language that these contradictions imposed in order to preserve and transmit that spirituality without detonating its subversive power, as we can see from Pole’s advice to his disciple Vittoria Colonna (who regarded him “as an oracle”). Following one of Valdés’ suggestions, he advised her not to “be too curious” in examining the more subtle doctrinal questions, but simply “to believe as if through faith alone there was salvation and at the same time … to act as if your welfare depended on your works.”234 Hence, too, a personal identity (with its religious and political consequences) based on “that Valdesian doctrine on the article of justification,” which became the criterion for “measuring and judging the doctrine and religion of others.”235 Clearly, all this was only possible in the framework of the many distinctions and “circumstances,” esoteric precautions and Nicodemitic ambiguities that were at the center of Valdés’ “doctrine and institution”236 and were also its profound message, secret fascination and illusory fragility. It is also significant that it was not only the authorities controlling Catholic orthodoxy that condemned these attitudes, but also the northern Churches, which quickly realized the danger hidden in that elusive cancellation of any confine between truth and error, between the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of the Anti-Christ, as we can see from a 1549 contestation by the former Bishop of Capodistria, Pier Paolo Vergerio, against some of the “many disciples, men of importance,” left by the “Spaniard Valdés, who did great work in the Church of Naples and died a few years ago,” who, instead of following the path indicated by him, had remained “with some stains.” These included Pole, easily identifiable in the image of a cardinal “known for having the light, for being aware of the errors of the Church and tasting the sweetness of the Gospel” and for contributing to the publication of the Beneficio di Cristo, while still being convinced “that one should be prudent and wait for the opportunity and proper moment”− “When will he want to declare himself and make himself known as his soldier, if he does not now that his Christ is so contested, embattled, afflicted?” concluded Vergerio.237 Still more explicit was the condemnation that soon followed from the ex-Benedictine Francesco Negri of the “many … men of the greatest authority both in letters and in other worldly dignities,” including Pole, Morone, Priuli, Flaminio, Ascanio Colonna and Camillo Orsini, whom he named outright, though

234

  Ibid., pp. 431, 1041.   Ibid., p. 482. 236   Ibid., pp. 533, 1034. 237  [Vergerio], Il catalogo de’ libri, pp. gvv–[gvi]r, h4v–h5r. 235

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well aware of the Holy Office’s suspicions about them, as if he wanted to face them with the difficult choices they had so far managed to escape: They seem to have made a new school of Christianity ordered in their way, where they do not deny man’s justification being through Jesus Christ, but do not wish to acknowledge the consequences that necessarily follow from that, so that they want to support the papacy all the same, they want to have masses, they want to observe a thousand papist superstitions and impieties, which are clean contrary to true Christian piety [only so as to continue to sit] on two saddles and thus escape the cross of Christ, which they would see before their eyes if they should fully manifest the fact as it is.238

These were severe and compromising accusations for those who still lived and worked in Italy. They were derived from the theological rigor and anti-Roman polemic of the Reformation Churches, which nevertheless seemed not to grasp that this apparent opportunism, aristocratic social caution, and prelatic ambiguity concealed the corrosive esoteric implications of Valdesian spiritualism, with its delegitimization of the very meaning of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. It was in the late 1540s, when Lelio Sozzini’s insinuating questions posed the problem of religious simulation and dissimulation in Geneva too, that the anti-Nicodemitic polemic was unleashed by the exiles and by Calvin himself, who in 1544 had written an Excuse à messieurs les nicodémites, reworked five years later in his De vitandis superstitionibus, and then translated into Italian. In it he criticized sharply the way in which the true faith was professed south of the Alps (“it is well known … how thin, cold and worthless everything there is”) and those who claimed to justify their daily contamination with illicit worship and idols and their continuing under the yoke of the Anti-Christ with the pretext of not wanting to abandon the “Churches that are in Italy.” In his view it was pointless and specious “to fill one’s mouth with the Churches of Italy and exclaim about leaving the Churches, when it was quite clear that there is almost nothing good there and there is no reason at all why others should stay there even a day longer.” It would be better to encourage the few authentic Christians to leave, although most would rather remain at home “all too willingly.” “If many others began to exhort them warmly … crying aloud: ‘Leave, go, flee!,’ I almost seem to see that very few would move. All of them much prefer to remain where they are happy in the soft, sweet pleasures of the beautiful country of Italy.”239 It was a contemptuous judgment, in which Calvin was aiming at the “delicate protonotaries, who are happy already to have the Gospel and to discuss it gently with the ladies 238

 Negri, Della tragedia, pp. [B6]v–[B7]r.   [Calvino], Del fuggir le superstitioni, p. 8.

239

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as a pastime, as long as this does not prevent them living as they want,” at the “delicate courtiers,” “gentlewomen” and those “that have in some way turned religion into philosophy or that at least are not touched to the quick, but are safe and quiet waiting for the Church to be reformed and reduced to some tolerable state, but cannot now stop to do it themselves, as it’s too dangerous.” However, some perception of the spiritualistic nature of Valdesianism seems to emerge from the reference to those who “go around imagining Platonic ideas in the way of serving God, when they excuse a great deal of papist superstition, because they hint that the world cannot manage without silliness of this kind.”240 After 1553, when the English legation and the Catholic restoration forced Pole to take measures against heresy, once again it was Vergerio who relit this controversy, denouncing the contradictions that entangled the tormented consciences of those prelates who were divided between “secret knowledge” of the truth of the Gospels and a refusal to challenge the institutions, to the point of becoming responsible for severe persecution of the English Protestants.241 It is clear that views of this kind were conditioned by a rigid opposition between truth and error, Gospel purity and Roman corruption, Christ and Belial, to put it in Negri’s terms, which was wholly inadequate for understanding what he obscurely perceived while writing of that “new school of Christianity ordered in their way,” of that elusive “mixture of Christian and papist things.” A contrast of this kind has also been reproduced in the judgments of historians, who often disagree in placing such figures as Pole, Flaminio, Morone and Soranzo in the Reformation or Counter-Reformation field, now trying to mitigate the undeniable heterodoxy of their doctrinal positions and attributing it to the climate of pre-Tridentine theological uncertainty, now accepting the Inquisition view that they were crypto-Lutherans involved in some kind of underhand erosion of the Catholic faith from within. In neither case do they grasp the specific features of religious attitudes that were deeply marked by the influence of Valdés and its alumbrado background, though with different levels of awareness and, consequently, a great variety of individual developments, whose premises make it impossible to associate them totally with the Reformation and help to explain the strange mixtures denounced by Negri. It was not only opportunism, conservatism, or protection of their social privileges that lay behind these Nicodemitic attitudes and their refusal to identify the Anti-Christ with the pope,242 but a more radical eclecticism that was no less incompatible with Roman orthodoxy than with that of Wittenberg or of Geneva. But for a short period it alone seemed 240

  Ibid., pp. 89, 91–2; see pp. 37 ff.  Simoncelli, Il caso Reginald Pole, pp. 77ff. 242   See Cantimori, Prospettive, p. 185. 241

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able to indicate the way to promote the renewal of the Church and the reunification of Christendom in a framework of sophisticated spiritualism, along with sturdy providential and sometimes prophetic expectations, such as to justify identifying in the Cardinal of England (anglicus) the mythical angelicus pope of Joachimite tradition.243 The Counter-Reformation would soon put an end to the religious ambiguities and political illusions of the spirituali who, from the early 1540s, had been suspected and finally accused by the Holy Office as seriously “marked by this modern and unhealthy doctrine” and linked in a “league.”244 With these words Bishop Grechetto rather confusedly perceived the combination of religious sensibilities and irenic tendencies that, in various forms and at various levels, inspired Valdés’ disciples and epigones. Members of this network included cardinals, bishops and archbishops, generals of religious orders, acclaimed preachers, illustrious aristocrats from Venice, Florence, Siena and Lucca, Neapolitan barons, Sicilian noblemen, powerful noblewomen and princes such as Cosimo de’ Medici (though only in a political perspective). It is not hard, then, to understand why some thought that those doctrines had involved “the first men of Italy,”245 who were sometimes connected with heretical groups very different from them both theologically and socially, giving rise to surprising relations of solidarity and collusion. Even great artists, including Michelangelo and Pontormo, were attracted to them and left unmistakable signs of this in their works of the 1540s and 1550s.246 Pietro Carnesecchi has left us a penetrating portrait of Camillo Orsini,247 a figure variously linked with the spirituali and many members of the Italian heretical world. Several times in the past he had heard Orsini speak “of things of God very effectively and vehemently and eloquently,” but scrupulously avoid entering into “any dogma in detail, other than saying that the true Christian’s conscience was calm and peaceful and that he could be certain of his salvation, in this way exalting grace and faith and holding that those who were to be saved had been predestined by God from eternity.” Orsini claimed to have learnt these doctrines after “being for a time held by God under the law,” which meant scrupulously respecting the form and 243

  Firpo, Marcatto I processi contro don Lorenzo Davidico, pp. 264–5; see Firpo, Nel labirinto del mondo, pp. 110ff. 244  Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition, pp. 251, 255. 245   Ibid., p. 344. 246  Firpo, La Cappella Sistina; Firpo, Biferali, “Navicula Petri”, pp. 127ff; Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo; see also Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, for the heterodox attitudes of Lorenzo Lotto; and Firpo, Biferali, Battista Franco, pp. 158ff, for those of Franco. 247   On him see Miccoli, La storia religiosa, pp. 1049ff; and Brunelli’s studies, “Sopra tutto fu inclinatissimo alla religione” and Il Sacro Consiglio.

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content of traditional religion, until “suddenly the light of the Gospel had appeared through grace and pity of the same God,” without having had “any other master than saint Paul,” but studying Scripture “for himself without commentary or other teacher than the spirit of God.” It was a new faith that, according to Carnesecchi, had not changed Orsini’s outer behavior: That man had a way of proceeding and speaking and acting that gave him fame of being a good Christian, both by Catholics and those suspected of heresy: and this came about because he was both very free in speaking of faith and the grace of God and predestination … and seemed very sure of his salvation, and also very religious and devout in observing the rules and rites of the Church.248

We need not insist on the many shades and subjective gradations that all this allowed. It not only made unconditional acceptance of the doctrine of justification by faith compatible with remaining in the Catholic Church, on the basis of various Nicodemitic arguments, but actually gave weight to the political and pastoral responsibilities of many of these figures. Hence came, above all in the uncertain years of the Council’s decisions, their fundamental role in suggesting behavior, in encouraging hopes, and in using their prestige to protect religious beliefs that in a short time would be regarded as heterodox and condemned. The social effects of these attitudes in legitimizing the theology of grace were clearly perceived by Negri who, mentioning Pole, Grimani and Soranzo as examples of those “who understand the article of justification and are against certain abuses, but go to mass, but adore the pope, which are the two main articles,” underlined how, far from accusing them, the inquisitors should have held them “very dear, giving them this example to many good men in Italy, who hung on their words and went to mass and regarded the pope as the vicar of Christ, because they knew these three went to mass and believed these things.”249 The spirituali deluded themselves that they might contribute, through Hapsburg policy, to a renewal of the Church and a reconciliation with the Protestant world. During the decade in which the first meetings of the Council of Trent were held, these illusions grew and quickly vanished, though they continued to cherish irenic utopias and providential expectations, such as those of a new Council that would be able to set off a genuine reform of the Church, well into the 1560s and later.250 248   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 348–9; see the subtle analysis by Miccoli, La storia religiosa, pp. 1049 ff. 249  Negri, Della tragedia, p. [P8]v. 250   See the studies of Cantimori, “Nicodemismo”, and Prospettive, pp. 67ff.

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Defeated on both the religious and the political fields, they now had to defend themselves from the accusations of the intransigent party led by Gian Pietro Carafa, who had been aware from the start of the Valdesian infiltrations in the highest reaches of the Church and was ruthlessly determined to use the weapon of the Inquisition he had forged to fight this battle until the shocking trials against Pole, Morone and many others that were opened during his papacy.251 These trials put into practice a plan he had been pursuing for years, even before the Holy Office was set up in 1542, whose first decisive success had been the defeat of Pole’s candidacy in the conclave of 1549–50. Julius III made some feeble attempts to stem the work of the Inquisition, such as forbidding the interrogation of those accused of heresy about cardinals without his express permission, or their being charged with religious deviations from orthodoxy prior to the approval of the first decrees of the Council.252 It was to no avail: it was too late to backtrack now, and Carafa had no scruples in violating these dispositions, beginning a massive campaign of repression against the Valdesians in Naples and secret investigations of the spirituali (and even, posthumously, of Contarini and Vittoria Colonna), who had now become for him a kind of dark heretical specter to be briskly dispelled before it was too late. The election of Carafa in 1555 marked not only the end of the religious experience of the spirituali, who were now forced onto the defensive to protect their good name, but also their official condemnation on doctrinal grounds. This was clear to the whole of Europe in 1557, when Pole’s English legation was revoked and Morone was arrested. “The pope intends to fill the prisons with cardinals and bishops on behalf of the Inquisition,” wrote Carnesecchi to Giulia Gonzaga in June 1557,253 and he too was shortly summoned to Rome once again. He had grasped the full significance of this showdown, which was to involve all those prelates who had been contaminated by those doctrines in the past. The protection of Philip II and Mary Tudor frustrated Carafa’s attempts to get Pole back to Rome and, instead of being locked up in Castel Sant’Angelo, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury continued to do his utmost to restore Catholicism in England, slandered both by the Pope in Rome and by the Protestant exiles. Vergerio took a leading role in this, denouncing him as a vile traitor of the truth of the Gospels, which he had known in the past.254 A heretic for the Pope, and a persecutor for the Protestants, Pole died in 251  Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 113ff, 188ff, 309; very poor on this is the apologetic biography of Robinson, The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone. 252  Firpo, La presa di potere, pp. 52ff e passim. 253   Ibid., p. 268; see Firpo, Inquisizione romana, pp. 177ff. 254  Simoncelli, Il caso Reginald Pole, pp. 77ff.

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November 1558, “a Lutheran in the opinion of Rome and a papist in Germany,” as Carnesecchi wrote,255 underlining an outcome that was to some extent in line with the contradictions that had animated the religious experience of the spirituali for 20 years, leaving a profound mark on Italian religious history in those decades. Carnesecchi himself ended his days hanged and burnt at the stake at the bridge in front of Castel Sant’Angelo in 1567, after yet another trial, which gave his inquisitors the opportunity to retrace his whole life and the many ties that had linked him to the Naples of Valdés, the Viterbo of Pole, and the Venice that was swarming with heretics at the time of the first meetings of the Council and in the 1550s and 1560s.256 But then, the election of Pius V marked a decisive turning-point in the theological and ecclesiological outlook of the Counter-Reformation Church, after the brief parenthesis of the papacy of Pius IV (1559–1566) during which Morone and many other figures against whom Paul IV had hurled his inquisitorial thunderbolts were absolved in 1560–61 and the Council was reopened in 1562, once again presided over by men such as Gonzaga, Seripando, Navagero, and even Morone himself, who concluded its proceedings brilliantly. Pius IV forced Ghislieri, Paul IV’s right-hand man in running the Holy Office and Morone’s inquisitor, to sign his absolution, but when that implacable Dominican became Pope Pius V, he at once took up the investigation again, although – so as not to contradict himself and his predecessor or delegitimize the Council – he had to refrain from formally reopening the trial, which was a tangled knot of the political and religious conflicts that for more than 20 years had divided the summit of the Catholic Church. Intense repression was unleashed everywhere in the years of Pius V, carefully dosed, with mild condemnations for those who more or less spontaneously confessed their past errors and severe punishments for those who were brought before the Inquisition, which now had an efficient, ramified organization and was run by men well aware of their tasks and able to overcome the more and more fragile resistance of State powers. Indeed, these were called on to cooperate in defending Catholic orthodoxy actively and willingly, even if this meant jurisdictional clashes, because that guaranteed the obedience of their subjects. “In the present century princes should not tolerate speaking against religion, whether seriously or in mockery”. These words were written in 1567 to urge the Duke of Mantua to lend all possible support to the Holy Office, as required by “natural, divine, canon and civil law.”257 We have already mentioned the 255

  Processi Carnesecchi, 2, p. 492.  Firpo, Theologie, Geschichte und Politik. 257  Pagano, Il processo, pp. 9, 31. 256

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many confessions, trials, abjurations and condemnations that marked the final crisis of heresy in Modena.258 The story was similar in many other cities: in Milan (under the guidance of St Charles Borromeo), in Genoa, Bologna, Faenza, Ferrara, Mantua, Naples and Cosenza, after the massacre of the Waldensians of Calabria in 1561, while even Venice, more slowly and with greater resistance, gradually strengthened its surveillance of the heterodox ferments that were still present in its territory while preserving civil jurisdiction and the prestige of the aristocracy. Apart from the tenacious Waldensian resistance in the valleys of Piedmont, after the victory at Lepanto and the Night of St Bartholomew only a few epigones of heretical groups would survive in the age of Cesare Baronio and Roberto Bellarmino, until the burning of Francesco Pucci and Giordano Bruno and the thirty-year imprisonment of Tommaso Campanella.

258

  See above, pp. 101–3.

CHAPTER IV

The Radical Heritage 1. Valdesianism, Anabaptism, Anti-Trinitarianism The history of Valdesianism in Italy and Europe is by no means restricted to the Neapolitan group and the spirituali. If we look at its various offshoots and metamorphoses, we shall be able to take the measure of the complexity of Valdés’ religious message. His disciples were certainly not speaking with one single voice in the years after 1542, when hardening repression was rapidly reducing to more or less zero the margins of uncertainty and ambiguity that they had been using, thanks to the Nicodemism they had learnt from him, and sometimes, too, to the high social rank that protected them. We have already seen that, as soon as the Holy Office was set up, Ochino, Vermigli and Curione were forced to leave Italy and take refuge in Switzerland. In this they were pioneers for others who would take the same path in the following years, particularly after the wave of trials in 1551–53 − Galeazzo Caracciolo, Apollonio Merenda, Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Cesare Carduino, Lattanzio Ragnoni, Ludovico Manna, Valentino Gentile, Isabella Breseño and many others. Carnesecchi too, in the 1550s, was often tempted to follow their example. The few surviving documents of those trials show that in various cases Valdés’ followers had absorbed many Protestant doctrines and were clearly aware of their distance from the Church of Rome. In 1553 the former Olivetan Lorenzo Tizzano alias Benedetto Florio revealed that the “Lutheran opinions” that had brought him before the Venetian Inquisition (including denial of free will, fasting, purgatory, invocation of the saints and the Virgin Mary, the primacy of the pope, and confession, the rejection of the mass as “idolatry” as well as the Eucharist as no more than a “sign of the death of Our Lord”) “started … when Valdés was still alive, through his writings and other Lutheran books.”1 An even more complete and detailed catalog of Reformation heresies emerges from the confessions signed in Rome in 1552–3 by some of Tizzano’s Neapolitan friends, while two years later Giulio Basalù, who had lived in Naples between 1542 and 1551, gave the Holy Office in Venice the names of dozens of Valdesians he knew who had moved on from the doctrine of justification by faith to its sacramental 1

 

Berti, Di Giovanni Valdés, pp. 69–70.

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implications.2 Basalù also reported that he had been with them to celebrate the Lord’s supper, and listed the many heterodox books he had been able to read in those years, including works by Luther, Calvin, Erasmus and Sebastian Münster, Celio Secondo Curione’s Pasquino in estasi, Francesco Negri’s Tragedia del libero arbitrio, the Beneficio di Cristo and “many things by Valdés.”3 These documents also reveal, however, the much more radical conclusions that some of Valdés’ followers had reached after his death in 1541. Flaminio certainly had no monopoly over his legacy, though he had now become the leader of the shadowy Ecclesia viterbiensis and offered its simplest and most accessible level in the limpid yet evasive pages of the Beneficio di Cristo. Equally compatible with Valdés’ thought, or at least with some of its premises, though they tended in a quite different direction, was the twist given to Neapolitan Valdesianism by Juan de Villafranca, a Spaniard who had been given positions of trust in the ViceRoy’s court. He was a former “intimate disciple” of Valdés, who used to speak “with great honor and affection of him, praising him as inclined to piety,”4 and he had used Valdés’ teaching to guide neophytes toward ever more advanced levels of knowledge of the secretos de Dios.5 After Valdés’ death Villafranca continued to perform this role as a recognized “master” among his followers, using the tools of doubt and persuasion that he had been taught to lead them toward extremely radical positions. But now he used the same tools to convince those who turned to him “to believe there was no Trinity, but one sole God, that Christ was not God, but that God dwelt in Christ,” making them first “doubt authority and then, how they had fallen into doubt,” then intervening to direct the adept to more and more radical positions: “Well! looked at this way, doesn’t it seem to you to make sense?” It was the gradualist approach, “from one consequence to another,” which Valdés had proposed in his writings and which Flaminio, as we have seen,6 had adopted with Carnesecchi, and that Villafranca now took further, also starting from acceptance of justification by faith as the indispensable foundation of Christianity to reach the second level, whose consequences were the denial of indulgences, fasting, confession, vows, worship of saints, purgatory and papal authority. But this then led to a more radical path which, too, was divided into precise levels and stages, each with heated discussions, long pauses for reflection, and the reading of 2   Ibid., pp. 76ff; Amabile, Il Santo Officio, vol. I, pp. 162–3; and Addante’s fundamental study, Eretici e libertini. 3   Stella, Anabattismo, pp. 28–9, 31. 4   Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 41ff. 5   See above, pp. 43ff. 6   See above, pp. 131ff.

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books. It moved from Lutheran views to Zwingli’s idea of the Eucharist as merely a symbol and memory of the sacrifice of the cross, and then on to the negation of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, the theory that Mary had had other children apart from Jesus, the negation of the authenticity of Scripture, and the doctrine (which some of Valdés’ writings referred to as well)7 that souls sleep after death until the day of judgment, when only the elect will rise again. Villafranca was the recognized leader of many “heretics” who “did not believe in the divinity of Christ” and were well-known to Abbot Marcantonio Villamarina, who had previously been close to Cardinal Morone and who had later reached Anti-Trinitarian conclusions himself. Villafranca took over the whole of Valdés’ thought in his teaching, teasing out some of its more extreme implications, something Valdés himself had preferred not to do. He had always refrained from presenting a systematic religious doctrine, but passed on a multitude of considerations, preguntas, letters, commentaries and short treatises in which he had scattered, rather than condensed, his religious thought.8 Not everyone shared the doctrines taught by Villafranca, but they were openly and freely discussed, not just in his house but also in those of notable members of the movement, such as Cesare Carduino, Giovanni Tommaso Bianco, Brianda Ruiz Sánchez, Consalvo Bernaudo, Isabella Breseño and Girolamo Busale, where the ritual of the Lord’s supper was sometimes celebrated “in the German way.”9 Villafranca died in 1545, a guest of Isabella Breseño, who often discussed “Valdés’ opinions” with Tizzano10 and, shortly after, moved to Piacenza with her husband, Don García Manrique, governor of the city. Here, her guests included Giovanni Laureto, who was also a disciple of Villafranca, and Girolamo Busale from Calabria, whom she appointed as a secretary. Very soon Busale became Villafranca’s successor as leader of Neapolitan radicalism, and between 1546 and 1547 he moved to Padua, where he had studied previously. Here he started a successful campaign to win over to his doctrines the Anabaptists of north-east Italy. Tizzano, too, was persuaded to go along with what he confusedly described as “Anabaptist heresies and opinions,” which actually involved the denial of the divinity of Christ, who was born “as other men are born,” and even went so far as to embrace the “diabolical” doctrines of a “sect” that limited the resurrection to the elect, with the consequent denial of hell, rejected the authority of Scripture, and reduced Jesus to a 7

    9  

See below, pp. 185ff. See above, pp. 39–40. Pommier, L’itinéraire, pp. 317ff; Stella, pp. 15ff. 10   Berti, Di Giovanni Valdés, p. 73; on Isabella Breseño, see Casadei, Donne; Nicolini, Una calvinista. 8

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mere prophet (“the Messiah is still to come and … has not come”). His turbulent heretical career ended with a return to the Catholic fold in 1553, “to find peace and relief in the arms of the holy mother Roman Catholic Church,” claiming to have repented his “infinite errors and diabolic heresies.” He himself reconstructed the stages from his meeting with Valdés to his acceptance of Lutheran and then sacramental doctrines through the influence of Galeazzo Caracciolo, Consalvo Bernaudo, Antonio d’Alessio, Marcantonio Villamarina and, above all, Juan de Villafranca, “all of whom according to their assemblies … held these Lutheran opinions,” although they spoke of them very cautiously “and did not make themselves clear” and continued in Nicodemitic fashion to go to church and mass. And then Tizzano arrived at the final stage of extreme radicalism, under the guidance of Girolamo Busale and the former Capuchin Francesco Renato,11 another Calabrian, once very close to Ochino, then exiled in Switzerland and a reformed pastor in the Grisons until he was expelled in 1544 for preaching Anabaptist and radical doctrines. In the end, Renato returned to the Kingdom of Naples to spread among the Valdesians his “many chimerical interpretations and points of the Hebrew language,” mixed with ideas from Islamic tradition.12 Tizzano’s career resembled that of other figures, such as Matteo d’Aversa, another Olivetan, who studied the Bible with him, questioning the authenticity of the canonical text, comparing it with Erasmus’ Greek edition, and finding evidence there for the doctrine of the sleep of souls after death, the principle that “heretics should not be burnt,” and the pure humanity of Christ, therefore denying his Messianic role. Then there was Girolamo Capece, another Olivetan and disciple of Tizzano, who had convinced him “that Christ was not God,” that the prophecies about the virgin who would conceive the Messiah did not refer to the mother of Jesus, and that only the souls of the just would rise again.13 Scipione Capece was another linked to Tizzano and one who entered the most advanced level of Neapolitan radicalism. He was an aristocrat, man of letters, philosopher, famous jurist, university lecturer and “prince” of the Accademia Pontaniana, and he gave these subversive doctrines a Lucretian twist of Epicureanism and materialism.14 Someone else who “read the Scriptures and turned them upside down” under Busale’s influence, first in Piacenza and then in Padua, was Giovanni Laureto, another former Olivetan who had converted to the Reformation and ended up denying 11   Ibid., pp. 67ff, 73ff, 78ff; Stella, Anabattismo, pp. 26ff; Lopez, Il movimento, pp. 156, 159; Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 16ff. 12   Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 80ff. 13   Ibid., pp. 54ff. 14   Ibid., pp. 61ff.

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Christ’s divinity and the authenticity of the Gospels. “Everyone said what he wanted,” he claimed to the inquisitors in 1553, recalling that season of feverish searching for the truth amid “much disagreement” with the Anabaptists Benedetto del Borgo and Nicola d’Alessandria. He and Busale even had themselves re-baptized in Padua before escaping the Venetian Inquisition in 1551 by returning to Naples, where once again Giulia Gonzaga provided accommodation.15 Ambrogio da Pozzo, too, was convinced by Villafranca, and then by Busale, that Christ was “born of semen like all other people,” that only the elect would rise again while “the impious will be sentenced on judgment day and will be exterminated and be no more,” and “that baptism should be given to adults”: this reflected the Anabaptist doctrines Busale had spread in Naples on his return from Padua in 1551. Busale’s teachings also influenced his brothers, Bruno and Matteo, who studied their scriptural basis with the Valdesians of Naples and spread their prophetic message announcing the imminent advent of Christ “to reign one thousand years.”16 Giulio Basalù, Busale’s cousin, had also studied in Padua, and as a result of those biblical discussions he became convinced that “only what tallied in one law and the other, that is the Hebrew and Christian,” could be regarded as true. But, shortly after, he and his friend Tobia Citarella had become skeptics and libertines, laughing “at everything,” denying the creation of the world and the immortality of the soul “with all that follows,” and claiming that Christ had been no more than a “good man who had taught how to live properly.” In his testimony in Venice in 1555 he listed the various people in Naples, many of whom had been close to Valdés in the past, who had adhered to heretical doctrines on the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, the annihilation of the souls of the damned, the legitimacy of concubinage, and the re-baptism of adults, claiming, among other things, that the Bible had been “mutilated.”17 The meeting of Neapolitan radical Valdesianism and the very different radicalism of the Anabaptists was particularly significant. Anabaptism had achieved a certain popularity, mainly in the north-eastern part of the country, perhaps originating in the Tyrolese and Trentino offshoots of the peasants’ revolt of 1525 and the followers of Michael Gaismayr who had taken refuge in Venetian territory. But it was above all in the 1540s that it began to take hold in the Veneto, under the guidance of the mysterious Tiziano, a former exile in Switzerland, where he had mixed with the Italian radicals who had taken refuge in the Grisons, returning to his native land in 15   On him, see Stella, Anabattismo, pp. 30ff; Pommier, L’itinéraire; Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 7ff. 16   Stella, Dall’anabattismo, p. 101. 17   Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 25ff.

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1549 to proselytize (“he’s forever going about persuading and teaching this doctrine”) and earning the reputation of being the first to bring Anabaptism “from Germany.”18 We get a vivid overall picture of the movement from the detailed interrogation of Pietro Manelfi, a priest from the Marches whose Lutheran conversion we have already mentioned.19 He was re-baptized by Tiziano in Ferrara and became a leading “minister” with the task of visiting the various Anabaptist communities. In October 1551 he appeared before the Inquisition of Bologna to denounce his former co-religionists. In his confession Manelfi listed one by one the many “Lutherans, Anabaptists and other heretics” he had known and mixed with in his travels, not only in the Veneto but also in Ferrara, Romagna, Bologna, Florence, Modena, Pisa, Piacenza and Cremona. There emerges a closely-knit network of groups throughout Venetian territory, in which tailors, hatters, cobblers, innkeepers, weavers, apothecaries, ragmen, tooth drawers, barbers, dyers, furriers, farriers, blacksmiths, sausage makers and grocers (including “a cripple without feet” and a “hunchback who sells bread in the squares”), often with all their families, as well as sword-makers who were sometimes forced to change their trade (“the Anabaptists want no one who makes weapons, or painters”), mixed with doctors, notaries, parish priests and canons of the cathedral of Pola, teachers, stewards, a student, a doctor of law, a rich merchant, ex-priests and married friars who had become artisans.20 They were subject to constant persecution, like Alvise de’ Colti for example, a schoolmaster in Padua, who was re-baptized around the middle of 1550 and then “separated from and driven off by the Anabaptists because he taught the children to make the sign of the cross.”21 He was put on trial after being reported by Manelfi and regained his freedom in 1554, moving shortly after to Vicenza in the service of Count Odoardo Thiene, then to Friuli and Mantua, where he was arrested in 1568, now in his seventies, and executed two years later as an impenitent heretic. Other representative figures were Benedetto del Borgo from Asola (burnt at the stake in 1551), Nicola d’Alessandria from Treviso (who fled to Ottoman lands), and Giuseppe Cingano, a tailor from Vicenza, and Giacometto “the shoe-lacer” (both forced to abjure). But the Anabaptists of the North-East who ended up in the prisons of the Inquisitions ran into hundreds – men and women, most of them belonging to the poorer social classes. Manelfi’s confession gave the Roman and Venetian authorities the decisive weapon for cutting down this dangerous clique, an authentic 18   Ibid., pp. 84ff; on Italian Anabaptism, see Gastaldi, Storia dell’anabattismo, 2, pp. 531ff. 19   See above, pp. 110–11. 20   Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 45, 48, 73–4. 21   Ibid., p. 47; on him, see Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 97ff.

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“conspiracy of rogues against the state of paradise and the world.” In Milan it was said that “these accursed heretics, apart from anything else, remove the authority of every Signoria and preach a Christian freedom that we need not be subject to anyone, directly against and to the destruction of all the States.”22 The disturbing revolutionary specter of the peasants’ war and the tragedy of Münster seemed to be reincarnated in the subversive heresies revealed by Manelfi, who summarized in this way the creed to which he had adhered when he was re-baptized: “Magistrates cannot be Christians. The sacraments do not confer any grace, but are exterior signs. Do not keep anything in the Church but holy Scripture. Do not hold any regard for doctors of the Church. Consider the Roman Church as of the devil and anti-Christian.”23 As Manelfi acknowledged, such “ancient opinions of the Anabaptists”24 quickly developed into more radical doctrines in the late 1540s, as also happened among some Italian exiles in the Grisons, such as Camillo Renato, whose writing, Adversus baptismum, of 1548 aroused hostile and alarmed comment from the custodians of Reformation orthodoxy on “Italian minds always ready to create problems,” sow doubts and start arguments.25 At that time the mysterious Giorgio Filalete, known as Turchetto, was spreading the writings of Miguel Servet in Italy, mainly in the Veneto, where they were certainly known to a distinguished professor at the University of Padua, Matteo Gribaldi. Apart from those of the Spanish arch-heretic, however, it was mainly the radical doctrines of Neapolitan Valdesianism that created a ferment among the Anabaptist groups, who were troubled and divided by them so much that in 1550 they called some clandestine meetings in Padua, and then in Vicenza and Ferrara (the so-called Collegia vicentina)26 to discuss the question “if Christ was God or man.” This was not the only subject on which they had doubts: in the following months there was a debate on the authenticity of the Gospels, which were suspected “of not having been all written by the evangelists, but there were additions.”27 A decisive role was played in this phase by Girolamo Busale,28 whom we have already mentioned several times. In the late 1540s he had had himself re-baptized in Padua after renouncing in 1545 the considerable 22

  Paschini, Venezia e l’Inquisizione romana, p. 90.   Ginzburg, I costituti, p. 33. 24   Ibid., p. 63. 25   Olivieri, “Ortodossia” ed “eresia”, p. 52; Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa, p. 328. 26   See Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 86ff, 111ff, which has clarified many unsolved problems in the studies by Stella, Dall’anabattismo, and Anabattismo. 27   See Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 106ff. 28   On him, see ibid., pp. 76ff. 23

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ecclesiastic benefices he enjoyed, including the commendam of an abbey in Calabria (for which he was known as “abbot” Busale). This did not stop his adversaries from accusing him of feeding on “the blood of the beast, that is of the pope.”29 When he had been received into the Veneto communities, he continued with the gradualist method he had used in Naples to bring about a process of doctrinal radicalization, stirring up doubts on the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, and moving on to the veracity of the Gospels and the future of the soul in the afterlife. He may have been responsible for spreading among the Anabaptists in Veneto the still unpublished Cento e dieci divine considerazioni by Valdés,30 which was published in Basle by the Piedmontese exile Celio Secondo Curione in 1550 – the year in which a “council” of Anabaptists met in Venice.31 In many respects, as a good Nicodemite, Curione was close to figures such as David Joris and Sebastian Castellio, as well as being an admirer of Valdés and, according to Manelfi, he was also present at that council.32 Having quickly become a recognized “minister” in these communities, where he was regarded as “a great man,” “very learned in Hebrew and Greek” and of “ardent nature,” Busale “disturbed everyone he dealt with and … with whom he discussed his opinions, and was convinced that everyone had to accept his arguments.” But Busale’s adherence to Anabaptism almost certainly had an ulterior motive, perhaps connected with his search for a popular base that Neapolitan radical Valdesianism lacked. This is suggested by the fact that both he and Villafranca before him had been generally hostile to the practice of re-baptism and the sectarian choice that it involved. While still in Naples his religious ideas had become extremely radical, “diabolical” in the words of Tizzano.33 A few years later in Galeazzo Caracciolo’s Vita Niccolò Balbani will recall the “many Anabaptists and Aryans” who had spread “their heresies and diabolic opinions” in Naples.34 Manelfi also added that they “deny all the New Testament and say it was invented by Greeks and Gentiles and that Paul understood nothing of the old Scriptures, particularly on justification and resurrection, because he says justification is through the blood and merit of Christ, and Scripture says justification is through God’s mercy.” But it seems that only after Busale had left Padua did the Anabaptists in Veneto come to hear of this “new sect of heretics, which had many adherents, 29   Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 45, 68; on Busale’s renouncing of the abbey, see Addante, Eretici e libertini, p. 173, note 158. 30   Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 58–9. 31   See below, pp. 185–6. 32   Ginzburg, I costituti, p. 65. 33   See above, p. 179. 34   Balbani, Historia, p. 26.

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including some of the most important people in Naples, who among their other heresies claimed Christ is not God but a great prophet and did not come as a Messiah but as a prophet and died for the truth, and is not yet raised from the dead but must be raised from the dead and come as a Messiah.”35 Tiziano tried to oppose the spread of Busale’s teaching, determined to “remain with the Gospel” and be faithful to the original tradition of Anabaptism.36 It was the clash between two different – and in the end irreconcilable – forms of religious radicalism, one founded on a spasmodic philological and rational search for the authentic meaning of the word of God, religious individualism, esoteric spiritualism and indifference for the sacraments and liturgies, while the other was hostile to theological disputes and subtle Nicodemitic distinctions but focused on the moral teachings, the need for justice, and the community brotherhood of primitive Christianity. Hence the Anabaptists’ withdrawal into sectarian isolation, refusing to take part in public life, carry arms, or take an oath in court, and their commitment to an absolute witness to the Gospel, with the rite of re-baptism giving a sense of entering a new Church.37 Tiziano’s defeat was already evident in the discussions that accompanied and followed the Collegia vicentina, and it was finally sanctioned by a “council” called in Venice in 1550 and carefully prepared by the missions of delegates who were sent “as far as Basle to call two per Church there” (striking evidence of the Italian movement’s close-knit network of connections). It is worth reading Manelfi’s disconcerting account of this Anabaptist synod,38 at the end of which “the triumph of the southerners could not be more complete,”39 as is also suggested by Busale’s appointment as “bishop” of the Anabaptist community in Padua: And so in the year 1550 in the month of September sixty ministers and bishops of the Anabaptists met in Venice in council, where for forty days fasting, praying and studying the Holy Scriptures, they decided the following articles: 1. Christ is not God but a man conceived of the seed of Joseph and Mary, but full of all the powers of God. 2. Mary had other sons and daughters after Christ, it being proved in several places of Scripture that Christ had brothers and sisters. 35

  Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 68–9.   Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 97ff. 37   Ibid., pp. 116ff. 38   Ginzburg, I costituti, pp. 34–5; see Gastaldi, Storia dell’anabattismo, 2, pp. 553ff. 39   Addante, Eretici e libertini, p. 110. 36

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3. There is no angelic nature created by God, and where Scripture speaks of angels they are ministers, that is men sent by God with the effect that the Scripture shows. 4. There is no other devil than human wisdom, and thus that serpent that Moses says seduced Eve is no other than human wisdom, because we do not find in Scriptures anything created by God is an enemy if not human wisdom, as Paul says to the Romans [Rom. VIII, 7]. 5. The impious on the day of judgment will not be raised from the dead, but only the elect, of whom Christ was leader. 6. There is no other hell than the tomb. 7. When the elect die they sleep in the Lord, and their souls do not go anywhere to enjoy anything until the day of judgment, when they shall be raised from the dead; the souls of the wicked die together with their bodies, as do all other animals. 8. Human semen has from God the power to produce the flesh and the spirit. 9. The elect are justified through the eternal mercy and charity of God with no visible work, meaning without the death, blood and merit of Christ. 10. Christ died to demonstrate the justice of God, and by justice we meant all the goodness and mercy of God and of his promises.

Far from just rejecting the dogma of the Trinity, these articles involved a denial of the divinity of Christ, who was reduced to a mere man, “conceived of the semen of Joseph,” and so a denial of the validity of the vicarious expiation and salvation provided by the sacrifice of the cross. This led to the abandoning of the fundamental premise of Lutheran and Calvinist doctrine of justification by faith, which was replaced by the unfathomable decrees of divine mercy but without any injustice and terror, given the denial of hell and the resurrection of the elect alone. In all the various forms of European Anabaptism, there is nothing like this theological radicalism throughout the century, apart from the difficult coexistence between the Moravian Anabaptist communities and the followers of the Ecclesia minor fratrum polonorum in the 1560s in the Polish town of Raków, which led to the continuous conflicts of the so-called “uninterrupted synod.”40 Fausto Sozzini always refused to 40

 

Cynarski (ed.), Raków.

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have himself re-baptized, with the paradoxical result of becoming the recognized leader of a Church to which he did not belong. Hence the short duration of the doctrinal decisions made by the Venetian council, which were quickly absorbed by the Anabaptists of the North-East who had survived the repression caused by Manelfi’s betrayal: in a few years, in fact, most of them went back to Tiziano’s “ancient opinions.” But that turbulent season of encounters and clashes throws a light on the cultural and religious origins of the ideas that Busale tried to export to Veneto, which also seem to reflect something of the Nicodemitic vocation, together with the anti-Trinitarian and anti-Messianic idiosyncrasies of the converso tradition, which had offered fertile ground to the alumbrados of Castile. And just as Juan de Valdés’ family in Cuenca was of Jewish origin, so Girolamo Busale was a descendant from a marrano family of Zaragoza. The Inquisition already had its suspicions about Busale before Manelfi denounced him as a subversive heresiarch. In early 1551 he was forced to flee Padua, while Benedetto del Borgo was burnt at the stake in Rovigo. But his unflagging desire to “teach and preach” brought him back to Naples, together with Laureto, who had just entered “the service of my lady Donna Iulia [Gonzaga],” and Tizzano, who had already been making known “privately and very cautiously this new sect.”41 Now convinced that the Holy Spirit was speaking through “his mouth,” Busale was soon assuming airs of inspired prophecy, certain that it was necessary to preach his doctrines “publicly,”42 emphasizing their Jewish elements. It is significant that, when he left Italy to escape arrest, he did not head for the Alpine passes and the Protestant churches, but toward the cities of the Sephardic diaspora: Alexandria in Egypt (where his family had “relations”) and then Damascus, where he died a few years later, remembered by Giorgio Biandrata as one of the founders of sixteenth-century Anti-Trinitarianism, a “man second to none in integrity and theological knowledge.”43 Giovanni Laureto was constantly on the move in his search for the authentic content of original Christianity, and ended up in Thessaloniki, where he set up a small colony of Anabaptists from Veneto, led by Nicola d’Alessandria, and continued his studies of the Bible with “Jews and Rabbis” until deciding to have himself circumcised and become a Jew. Yet, before long, his studies confirmed him “of their many errors and superstitions” and he decided to return to the Catholic fold, after drawing the extreme consequences of the doctrines he had learnt from Busale, to the point of being convinced that

41   Stella, Anabattismo, pp. 24–5; see pp. 38ff; Pommier, L’itinéraire, p. 320; Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 22–4. 42   See Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 11–12. 43   De falsa et vera, p. [AA]r.

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they were all “inanities, superstitions and drivel.”44 He went to the Holy Office in Venice and was imprisoned in 1553, a few days after Tizzano (which can hardly have been coincidence). He soon managed to escape, disappearing for good.45 Their depositions, along with Giulio Basalù’s two years later, led to the Holy Office ordering the corpse of Juan de Villafranca to be exhumed and burnt at the stake in Naples.46 Manelfi’s confession caused an uninterrupted sequence of arrests, confessions, abjurations, condemnations and flights that was to last more than a decade, both in the lands of the Venetian Republic and in Ferrara, Florence and Naples. It marked the beginning of the inexorable disintegration of Anabaptism in the North-East. Some of its followers who managed to escape found asylum in the Hutterite colonies of Moravia, returning to the rigorous separatist and egalitarian positions of their origins. It is worth reading the words pronounced in October 1561 – a year before his death sentence – by the Anabaptist Giulio Gherlandi, who, along with Francesco Della Sega and Antonio Rizzetto (who were also executed a few years later), was one of those mainly responsible for the courageous work of Messianic proselytism that was then being promoted in Italy by the Moravian communities: I tried to find a people who are freed from the slavery of sin through the Gospel and walk in a new life and heavenly regeneration of Jesus Christ, and that has this power from God by virtue of the Holy Spirit to resist sin … which people is his holy Church, immaculate, separated from sinners, without wrinkles or marks or anything of the kind: which, just as it was at the time of the apostles Peter and Paul in Jerusalem, so it is now in the country of Moravia.47

Another Italian exile, Gian Giorgio Patrizi from Cherso, echoed Gherlandi a few years later: They live with charity and the earnings of each are put in common and they live in common; the old men operate dispensaries that give what they need to all and they do not tell lies to each other; they do not carry arms apart from a small knife to cut bread; they preach twice a day and those who sin are separated from the company and eat separately; and if they knew that one of their faith was at the other end of the world, they would send him money to bring him back to them … There is no gaming, blasphemy, homicide, nor vice of any sort, and … all live in common with what they are able to produce by 44

    46   47   45

Pommier, L’itinéraire, pp. 319–21; Stella, Anabattismo, pp. 30ff, 90. See above, note 16. Addante, Eretici e libertini, p. 46. Stella, Dall’anabattismo, p. 109.

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their efforts, in groups of forty or fifty people, according to the places, and … in none of these places do they want to see priests or friars, but when they see them they cry after them: “Wolf, wolf!”48

Francesco Della Sega converted to Anabaptism almost all the inhabitants of Cinto, a small village between Pordenone and Portogruaro. They moved to Pausram in Moravia in a phased collective emigration. It was an extraordinary heterodox community of illiterate peasants, ready even to express their dissent by openly contesting ecclesiastical ceremonies, and it managed to survive until the late 1580s, constantly weakened by the exodus of its members. In those distant lands “are certain Churches … that are governed with great charity and great love, and in this place all may live according to Christ and hold what opinion they want without fear, and those in need are always helped by their brothers,”49 they told each other, though there were to be some bitter disappointments too. Some ended up going back home, for example the Venetian artisan Marcantonio Varotta, who at last decided to return to the Church after a series of journeys and experiences across the whole of Reformation Europe.50 He told the Inquisitor of Udine in January 1567: I left Moravia, where I was around two months, because I saw there many faiths and many sects, and one against the other and one condemning the other, and all have catechisms, and all want to be ministers, and some go this way and some go that way, and they all want to be the true Church, and in just one very small land called Austerlitz there are thirteen or fourteen sorts of sects. I was so shocked by such variety of faith and sects, that I began to ask myself if these heresies might be false and that the faith of the Roman Church was the true one.

2. Valdesian connections The case of Busale and the group which he led in the Venetian council shows the fundamental role of some of the epigones of Neapolitan Valdesianism in determining how Anabaptism developed in Veneto. It gives us a glimpse of some of the premises not just of the Anti-Trinitarianism of the Italian heretics studied by Cantimori,51 of its connections with a tradition of 48

  Stella, Anabattismo, pp. 203ff.   See Paolin, Dell’ultimo tentativo, and I contadini anabattisti, p. 99. 50   Caccamo, Eretici italiani, p. 207. 51   Cantimori, Eretici. 49

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humanist-influenced biblical philology and with the battles in defense of tolerance, but also of a libertinism that was incubating a potential breakup of Christianity in the tangle of theological controversies, scriptural hermeneutics and philological enquiry that lurked in the cracks of the great religious crisis of the century.52 We can also see Valdesian origins in the careers of other leading figures of the Italian Reformation, such as Bernardino Ochino who arrived in Geneva in autumn 1542 and immediately wrote enthusiastically of the city of Calvin as a sort of earthly paradise, though he started to have some doubts later. He had moved from Capuchin asceticism to Valdesian spiritualism, and then to Calvinism, and it was not long before he became disappointed with it, as is suggested by his relations with the radical spiritualist Kaspar Schwenckfeld around 1547. As a result, he began to retrace his steps, particularly after the traumatic experience of seeing Calvin condemning Miguel Servet to the stake in 1553. It drove Ochino back to the anti-dogmatic Christianity he had learnt from Valdés, which had attracted him to Sebastian Castellio. The next step was his corrosive Laberinti del libero over servo arbitrio of 1561 and the extreme radicalism of the Dialogi XXX, which two years later had him driven out of Zurich for his defense of the Anabaptists and freedom of conscience, and his minimalist vision of the doctrinal apparatus of Christianity. At the end of an extraordinary journey through the European Reformation that had taken him from Geneva to Augsburg, from Strasbourg to London, and from Zurich to Kraków, from which he was expelled for his AntiTrinitarian doctrines, he died in 1564 among the Anabaptists of Moravia in the home of the Venetian nobleman Niccolò Paruta.53 The complex religious experience of Valentino Gentile also originated in Valdés’ teaching and finally ended in Bern, where he was beheaded in 1566 as an AntiTrinitarian and impenitent heretic.54 In Padua in the 1540s Lelio Sozzini met Girolamo Busale, who was influential in convincing him to leave his legal studies for theology and encouraging him to question the dogma of the Trinity on the basis of a new exegesis of the first chapter of St John’s Gospel, as he had been taught before by his master Juan de Villafranca. Even after his flight to Switzerland he suggested the reading of the Cento e dieci divine considerazioni, which he may have discovered in Siena, where Valdés’ writings had been known since the end of the 1530s.55 Even Fausto Sozzini’s doctrines on original sin, redemption, Christ as pure man and savior of humanity as a master of justice and not as a sacrificial victim to 52

  Addante, Eretici e libertini, pp. 129ff.   Firpo, “Boni christiani merito vocantur haeretici.” 54   Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 223ff. 55   See Sozzini, Opere, pp. 24ff, 378, and Addante’s studies, Eretici e libertini, pp. 59–60, and Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 17-9. 53

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expiate our sins, and the resurrection of the elect alone, all seem closer to the origins and discussions of Italian radicalism than to the developments of post-Servet Anti-Trinitarianism.56 Some of the most educated exponents of Anabaptism in the Veneto joined the ranks of Polish and Transylvanian radicalism, including Niccolò Buccella, a doctor from Padua. Put on trial in 1562–4, he abjured and, in 1574, moved to the court of Stephen Báthory in Transylvania and then to Poland. Here he became a close friend of Fausto Sozzini, and here he also died in 1599, by which time he had long been extraneous to any particular form of religion, convinced, as he told the papal nuncio, “that each of us, interpreting the old and new Testament as we see fit, must live as our conscience tells us, illuminated by this light.”57 This aspiration was also that of Gian Giorgio Patrizi, who, throwing aside his Nicodemitic mask, left his native land in 1558 to “go where I may believe what I wish,” as he put it.58 It was also that of a humble Anabaptist who was arrested after Manelfi’s confession and who naïvely confessed that he had been captured while on the point of following his many fellow-believers fleeing “to Turkey and Germany here and there” to escape repression: “In a few days I was going too where the others have gone, not to become a Turk, but to live in freedom with my faith.”59 We cannot reconstruct here the many individual experiences that led so many exiles in Switzerland to adopt positions of more or less open dissent with Calvinist orthodoxy, sometimes breaking with it completely. We need only mention some exiles in the Grisons, such as the Sicilian Camillo Renato, the Calabrian Francesco Renato, the Lombards Pietro Bresciani, Girolamo da Milano and Girolamo Turriani, Giovan Francesco Vacca da Bagnacavallo from Romagna, Filippo Valentini from Modena, Niccolò Camogli from Genoa, and many others. This is not to mention Basle, ever mindful of having been host to Erasmus and still leading the battle against the new orthodox and authoritarian dogmatism (the Satanae Stratagemata, denounced by Giacomo Aconcio in 1565). It received into its bosom the printer and ex Dominican from Lucca, Pietro Perna, the Marquis d’Oria Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Celio Secondo Curione, Silvestro Tegli, and also Mino Celsi, Agostino Doni, Fausto Sozzini and Francesco Pucci. The most dramatic sign of Geneva’s intolerance was when Miguel Servet was condemned to be burnt at the stake in 1553, which led Matteo Gribaldi to write an impassioned Apologia and Camillo Renato to pen the indignant

56

  Addante, Dalla Riforma italiana, pp. 203ff.   Stella, Dall’anabattismo, p. 201; see pp. 121ff, 187ff. 58   Stella, Anabattismo, p. 93. 59   Ibid., p. 8. 57

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verses of his Carmen de iniusto Michaelis Serveti incendio.60 But in Geneva too was an anti-Trinitarian coterie whose leaders were Giorgio Biandrata, Valentino Gentile and Gian Paolo Alciati, who clashed forcefully with Calvin until their final break in 1558 and their exile in Eastern Europe. But our task is not to follow the complex story of Italian orthodox and heretical emigrants’ religionis causa in Switzerland, France, England, Holland, Moravia, Poland and Transylvania. Their most significant legacy was the anti-Trinitarian, rationalist and tolerant doctrine of Socinianism, which for two centuries was to trouble theologians from one end of Europe to the other, until it became the faith of Newton, Locke and Voltaire, but with ever more distant echoes in Catholic Italy. Although they were to develop independently in the swarm of faiths, sects, disputes and controversies set off by the Reformation, these radical ferments underline once again the complex cultural legacies, the political and social peculiarities, and the creative experimentalism that marked the sixteenth-century religious crisis in Italy. Yet their rapid exhaustion after the Council had concluded its work does not just mean that the postTridentine Church and its apparatus of repression had consolidated itself, but also that the hopes for authentic renewal that had been set off by the Reformation had now become bogged down in the conflicting doctrines and rules of its many orthodoxies.61 One example is another radical group which was also widespread in central and northern Italy, known to the inquisitors as the “Georgian sect” from the name of the Sicilian Benedictine Giorgio Siculo (or Giorgio Rioli, to give him his true name).62 This extraordinary and, in some respects, still mysterious figure was executed in Ferrara in the spring of 1551 as a “wicked heretic” and “rascal” shortly after the publication of two books, the Epistola alli cittadini di Riva di Trento and the Espositione nel nono, decimo et undecimo capo della epistola di san Paolo alli romani, both of which had appeared in Bologna the year before with the due approval of the inquisitors. Their content was nevertheless harshly contested soon after by Catholics and Protestants, including Calvin himself, who expressed his concern for the remarkable success that the “revelations” of this monk had had in Italy. Siculo had a rare charisma, though little education – indeed, his writings needed translating from his Sicilian dialect. His starting point was a case we have already mentioned,63 that of Francesco Spiera, the heretic of Cittadella who died in despair in 1548 after abjuring at the end of his trial. He was convinced he had denied the truth and was therefore damned eternally, as 60

    62   63   61

Renato, Opere, pp. 117ff. Rotondò, Anticristo e Chiesa romana. See Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande. See above, p. 73.

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he had been predestined to commit the supreme sin that does not admit forgiveness. It was an extreme case of religious crisis and psychological collapse that attracted enormous attention throughout Europe due to the opposing judgments it allowed, as we can see, for example, from Francisci Spierae … historia, published in Basle in 1550 by Curione, who argued against the many Italians who “joke with God” but at the same time (and here he was clearly referring to Calvin and his De vitandis superstitionibus of the previous year) underlined that “Satan is not only in Italy, the AntiChrist is not only in Italy, nor is Italy alone responsible for every enormity, every wickedness, and every evil – the papacy.”64 The tragic story lasted for weeks and so had many eye-witnesses, such as Bartolomeo Fonzio, Matteo Gribaldi and Pier Paolo Vergerio, who finally decided on exile as a result. On the one hand it confirmed the antiNicodemitic polemic of the Swiss theologians, but on the other it showed the extreme consequences of the doctrine of predestination as a sort of denial of any divine mercy, which revealed “the false doctrine of the Protestants” – as Siculo wanted to in the very title of his work – as responsible for the lie, or rather the “great blasphemy of its disciple Francesco Spiera against God and the sound doctrine of his holy Gospel.” These claims seemed to tend toward a polemical defense of Catholic orthodoxy but were actually a concealed enunciation of a doctrine of universal salvation through the forgiveness granted by the Gospel, in which many spiritualist and Nicodemitic implications lurked. Addressing the “infinite number of those who are of the doctrine of the Protestants, especially in Italy, France and other places and kingdoms which are ruled and governed under the order and ritual of the Roman Church” for example, Siculo wrote openly that they do not deny Christ, as Francesco Spiera and his mendacious masters mendaciously say, those who considering the weak brothers, yet also because they are not allowed to behave and to speak differently, agree with the other weak brothers in those rites that they don’t believe proper or true. Nor do they deny Christ those who accept and confess publicly the things and orders that are held by holy Roman Church until their religious authorities legitimately arrange and decide otherwise.65

Still more radical was the message to be found in Siculo’s unpublished writings, and in particular in the Libro maggiore or Libro grande (printed under the title of Libro della verità christiana et dottrina apostolica, 64   Curione, Francisci Spierae, p. *2v; on this, see Prosperi’s wideranging reconstruction, L’eresia del Libro Grande, pp. 102ff. 65   Siculo, Epistola, pp. 49rv, 44v–45r.

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but now lost), which had a cautious clandestine circulation, with new adepts given it to read chapter by chapter on the basis of their spiritual readiness. The little information we have on this “most pestilent” book66 reveals that it gradually made clear not only the anti-Catholic elements of Georgian doctrine (denial of papal authority and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, purgatory, the worship of the Madonna and the saints, the value of good works, the mass, indulgences, the real presence in the Eucharist and all the sacraments), but also its ultimate anti-Trinitarian, Anabaptist and materialist upshot. These were probably in part the result of contacts both with radical groups in the North-East and with radical Valdesianism, in which they had many roots, starting from its theorizing of Nicodemism: “He said our soul was not created by God but by men together with the body, he said there was no hell or purgatory, but our soul went flying through the air till the day of judgment … he denied the Trinity.” But Siculo was also in touch with the spirituali: after trying to intervene in the debate of the Council, sending his De iustificatione in late 1546 to his fellow-Benedictine Luciano Degli Ottoni (who translated this and other writings of his into Latin), he appeared at Trent with the intention of communicating his prophetic revelations to Cardinal Pole.67 It was Christ himself who ordered him to do it in one of his frequent appearances “in person” illuminating his soul with “real knowledge of the holy Scriptures.”68 One of Siculo’s followers wrote to the Duke of Este in November 1550 that “he promises so many things that, if they happen, the whole world will follow him; if not, he will seem an animal and will remain on his own.” Later, another described having been induced by “Giorgio’s doctrine and vision” to expect a new Council that would purify the Church of every “wrinkle or stain,” and even the coming of the “spirit of God on earth.”69 Around 1550 the disciples who shared Siculo’s more radical doctrines included well-to-do merchants, doctors, learned humanists, university lecturers, students and, above all, many Benedictines of the congregation of Santa Giustina, partly thanks to the connivance of its President, Andrea da Asolo, Don Benedetto Fontanini from Mantua, the first author of the Beneficio di Cristo, who had previously lived alongside Siculo in the monastery of Catania in the late 1530s, the Abbot Luciano Degli Ottoni, one of the official theologians of the order in the Council of Trent, linked to powerful cardinals such as Ercole Gonzaga and Cristoforo Madruzzo and reforming bishops such as Crisostomo Calvini or Isidoro Cucchi 66

  See Cantimori, Eretici, p. 71.   Madonia, Un’appendice senese, p. 28. 68   Ginzburg, Due note, p. 188. 69   Ibid., pp. 185ff, 204–5, 212ff. 67

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from Chiari, who drew inspiration from his works for their homilies and pastoral work.70 All this helps explain the fury with which the Holy Office hunted down his followers for more than a decade, while his prophecies proved empty, one after the other. In the case of the “Giorgian sect,” there were also unexpected and, at times, incomprehensible connections linking leading prelates and men of culture with prophetic expectations and popular claims, so as to give birth to new heretical ghosts. In the Esortazione al martirio, for example, Calvin and Giulio da Milano denounced the “Satanic” Sicilian Benedictine and those like him who had “mixed papistry with Anabaptism and … begun to create a third sect.”71 This definition resembled what Francesco Negri had written earlier, stigmatizing the turbid “mixture of Christian and papist things” for which the spirituali were responsible, in his view, so that they could go on sitting comfortably “on two saddles.”72 Probably, the links between the principal members of the world of Anabaptists, anti-Trinitarians and disciples of “Don Giorgio” were not wholly accidental or episodic. In 1550–51, just before his arrest, these various groups met in Ferrara,73 where they could count on the support of Camillo Orsini, who was very close to Pole and Flaminio74 and was also ready to offer his protection to another radical heretic, Pietro Bresciani, who had returned to Italy for the occasion from his exile in the Grisons. These radical ferments would follow their own paths in the flurry of denominations, sects and controversies the Reformation had set in motion. But once again they underline the complex cultural legacy, the political and social peculiarities, and the restless experimentalism that mark the sixteenth-century religious crisis in Italy. It would, of course, be wholly absurd to think of looking for an explicit foretaste of these doctrines in Valdés’ writings, which had carefully avoided tackling questions such as the baptism of children or the dogma of the Trinity, simply expunging the latter from his children’s catechism or commenting on the apostles’ custom of baptizing “those who received the grace of the Gospel” with the words: “And this seems to be what we should do.”75 He also mentioned the condemnation that Christ would pronounce against the wicked on

70

  Maselli, Saggi di storia ereticale, pp. 106ff; Collett, Italian Benedectine Scholars, pp. 246ff; and, above all, Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro grande, pp. 81ff, 255ff, 32ff; see Chiari, Adhortatio ad concordiam. 71   Cantimori, Eretici, p. 72; see Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo, p. 17. 72   Negri, Della tragedia, p. [B7]v; see above, p. 170. 73   See Ginzburg, Due note, pp. 174ff. 74   See above, pp. 172–3. 75   Valdés, Matteo, pp. 522–3.

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the Day of Judgment,76 but with no reference to the pains of hell and with sometimes vague phrases that suggest the sentence might consist simply in eternal death, which would not touch “those who believe” and trust in the “goodness of Christ … which can revive all: but those who do not believe will not benefit from his resurrection.” “The resurrection of Christ will be glorious only for those who, believing they died in Adam and were resurrected in Christ, give themselves to live in the present life as if they were dead and reborn,” he wrote,77 with words that reticently allude to the doctrine of the resurrection of the elect alone while keeping its implications from a wider public. The same applies to other passages of the Considerazioni where Valdés claimed that “only those who are incorporate in Christ are certain of their resurrection”78 or deplored the error of those who, “deceived by human philosophy and its prudence and reason, which cannot reach the knowledge of God, and deceived mainly by superstition and false religion, tell us that God is so delicate and sensitive that he is offended by anything, that he is so vindictive that he punishes all sins, that he is so cruel that he punishes them with eternal pains,” with an equally implicit denial of the eternity of the torments of hell,79 or in which he explained that, on the last day, the just will be “qualified for life eternal being reconciled with God and friends of God, from whose qualification those who do not believe in Christ are excluded, because, although they will be revived at some time, [they] will not live in eternity and forever,” and will be destined “not to life eternal, but to death eternal.”80 The same could also be said of the doctrine of the Trinity, which Valdés reserved for the highest levels of Christian perfection: Let none be so bold to dare – without attaining spiritual regeneration and being admitted to those shrines of God to which St John was admitted when he said: “In principio erat verbum” – to understand, penetrate, or attain it with human intelligence and discourse, holding for certain that of this divine mystery only those are capable to whom by the will of God his own son of God Jesus Christ wishes to reveal it.81

There is no doubt that the spiritualism at the heart of Valdés’ religious inspiration, the esoteric nature of his teaching, his desire to reduce to a minimum the fundamentalia fidei, his constant deferring of further 76

  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), pp. 436ff.   Ibid., pp. 496–7. 78   Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 357. 79   Ibid., p. 144 (my italics). 80   Valdés, Matteo cit., pp. 303–4 (my italics). 81   Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 425; see also Valdés, Matteo, p. 149. 77

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revelations of the spirit of God and his consequent rejection of any rigid framework of orthodoxy allowed these developments. The goal was a Christianity purified of the historical adulterations and exegetical distortions that had gradually corrupted and deviated it from its origins, consigning it to the controversial spirit of professional theologians and the blind authoritarianism of ecclesiastical hierarchies. It also probably expressed the unresolved Judaizing tensions of the converso world (from which he, the Busale brothers and perhaps Villafranca came), as we have seen in relation to the alumbrados of Toledo, whose propositions, condemned by the edict of 1525, included the claim that “even thinking of Christ’s human nature disturbed one’s abandoning of oneself to God,” and that “hell did not exist.”82 It is partly on the basis of these elements that we can judge the severe condemnations that Valdés’ doctrines and books received in Protestant Europe. 3. The European Reformation and Juan de Valdés It was undoubtedly the regular flow of Italian exiles across the Alps that fostered in the 1540s and 1550s the image presented by Curione of the “splendid knight of Christ” who “with sweetness of doctrine and sanctity of life” had been able to win over “many disciples to Christ”83 and become the first master of an experience that led some into the Reformation camp, while others ran aground in the sands of Nicodemism. This also explains why the anonymous translator of Calvin’s catechism, which was published (possibly in Venice) in 1545, could transcribe literally in the short dedication “to the bishops and ministers of the Churches of Italy” Valdés’ introductory words to his much shorter and more evasive catechism for children,84 which at that very moment Iacopo Pontormo was preparing to transfer into the solemn biblical images of the frescoes of San Lorenzo in Florence.85 The essential compatibility between Valdés and Calvin must therefore have seemed more or less obvious to him, as he could juxtapose their words in a text that was clearly intended to evangelize Italy. For the same reason, in 1549, the very year of his final flight across the Alps and 82

  Márquez, Los alumbrados, p. 232; see above, p. 14.   See above, pp. 37–8. For the spread of Valdesianism in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 30ff; and Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 104ff. 84   [Calvino], Catechismo, p. 2rv; see Boehmer, La istruzione cristiana; Nieto, Juan de Valdés on Catechetical, pp. 255ff; Cavazza, Libri in volgare, pp. 18–19. For what follows too, see Gilly, Spanien, pp. 318ff. 85   See above, p. 87. 83

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the publication of the Venetian Index condemning Valdés’ works, Vergerio prepared in Basle a new edition of Valdés’ catechism whose anonymity was designed to facilitate its diffusion in Italy, though it actually encouraged its widespread circulation throughout the Protestant world by virtue of translations into Latin, German and Polish in the following years. The former Bishop of Capodistria had also brought with him from Italy other “fine, pious writings” by Valdés with the aim of having them printed, as happened the year after with the Cento e dieci divine considerazioni, published in Basle by Curione.86 Another example of Protestant propaganda, but this time directed at Spain, was the edition of La epístola de san Pablo a los Romanos i la I. a los Corintios. Ambas traducidas i comentadas por Juan de Valdés, published in Geneva in 1556–7 (camouflaged as “en Venezia, en casa de Juan Philadelpho”) by the exile from Seville, Juan Pérez de Pineda. The original manuscript of these two long commentaries had reached him in Paris a few years before from his compatriot Juan Morillo, a former acquaintance of Pole in Trent and a friend of Flaminio and Priuli. Some of the witnesses against Carranza would recall Morillo as “a great heretic,” but one who claimed to be a disciple of the future Archbishop of Toledo and Pole (“if I believed in Luther’s errors,” he was quoted as saying, “I was taught them by Cardinal Pole … and Bartolomé de Miranda”), with whom he had continued to correspond from his French refuge after the approval of the Tridentine decree on justification.87 A few years later, just before his final decision led him to become “minister in the Church of foreigners” in Frankfurt, where he died in 1554–5,88 Morillo once again saw Carnesecchi, who described him in his final trial as a man whose life was “irreproachable” and firm in the certainty of the “remission of sins … through faith.” “He attributed everything to grace and did not seem to mention works as having merit … in the Valdesian fashion,”89 he said, revealing to the appalled inquisitors that even the Queen of France, Catherine de’ Medici, had much admired Valdés’ Alfabeto cristiano, which

86

  Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione), p. 528.   Tellechea Idígoras (ed.), Fray Bartolomé Carranza. Documentos, 2/2, pp. 561, 564, 851–3. 88   [Vergerio], Giudicio, p. Bvv, a page where the former Bishop of Capodistria also confirmed the fact that “men adorned with much piety and doctrine learnt the truth in that school [of Pole].” 89   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 1107–9. On Morillo, see Kinder’s studies, Juan Morillo, and A hitherto unknown Group. On Pineda, see Kinder, Juan Pérez de Pineda, and Two previously unknown Letters. 87

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had led him to procure for her the text of the still unpublished Cento e dieci divine considerazioni.90 However, almost 30 years after the condemnation of the Diálogo de doctrina christiana, the revival of Valdesian spirituality in Spain was not only due to the Geneva editions of the two commentaries on the letters of St Paul, which were at once included in Fernando de Valdés’ Spanish Index of 1559.91 Other works by Valdés were disseminated in Valladolid by Carlo di Sesso, the mysterious figure from Verona who had arrived in Castille in the early 1540s and whose importance in the history of Spanish heterodoxy in the 1550s has been demonstrated by Ignacio Tellechea.92 These included the Cento e dieci divine considerazioni (along with other writings by Valdés) in Juan Sánchez’s Spanish version, as well as various volumes by Erasmus, German and Swiss reformers, and “many other books in Tuscan and other manuscript papers” that he had brought with him on his return from his journeys to Italy for the Council, and then again in 1550–51. Among them were the Beneficio di Cristo, Vittoria Colonna’s Rime spirituali, a work by Giorgio Siculo, Federico Fregoso’s Trattato della oratione, and some texts by Ochino.93 Arrested in June 1558 and condemned to death as an impenitent heretic in the auto de fe held in Valladolid on October 8 1559, Don Carlo confessed to being “a disciple of the said Valdés.” On his capture, Carranza (who was then in Brussels at the court of Phillip II after a long period in England with Pole, and who would himself be charged with heresy a year later) had been informed that he was a person well known “to those close to my lord cardinal,” with whom he had been in constant contact in Trent in 1546–7.94 In 1563 the distinguished theologian of Zurich, Josias Simler, was still able to claim, in his biography of Vermigli, that Valdés had been the founder of an embryonic reformed Ecclesia in Naples: an idea later repeated by Niccolò Balbani in his biography of Galeazzo Caracciolo,95 but that was soon to be contradicted by theologians in the Swiss Churches. The first sign of this change, in 1563, was the publication by a printer in Lyons, 90

  Firpo, Pietro Carnesecchi, Caterina de Medici.   Martínez de Bujanda (ed.), Index, 5, pp. 462–3. 92   Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso, Don Carlos de Seso. Bienes y biblioteca, Don Carlos de Seso, luterano; see also Domingo de Santa Teresa, Juan de Valdés, pp. 317ff; Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 33ff. 93   See Valdés, Consideraciones, pp. 8ff, and the essays by Tellechea Idígoras, Fray Luis de la Cruz; and Fray Domingo de Rojas. 94   See Valdés, Consideraciones, p. 11; Tellechea Idígoras (ed.), Fray Bartolomé Carranza. Documentos, 2/2, p. 508. On the trials of 1558–59 as turning points, see Schäfer, Beiträge, 1, pp. 233ff,; ibid., 2, pp. 271ff; ibid., 3, pp. 1ff; Bataillon, Erasme, 1, pp. 743ff. 95   See above, pp. 37–8. For what follows, see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 52ff; Bakhuizen van den Brink, Juan de Valdés, pp. 75ff, 84ff; Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 111ff. 91

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Claude Senneton (who five years later became an exile in Geneva), of the French edition of the Cent et dix considerations divines translated, along with Curione’s preface, by the Breton Huguenot, Claude de Kerquefinen.96 The fact that Valdesian doctrines were so soon starting to cause discomfort in the Reformation world is indicated by the inclusion of some marginal notes emphasizing the doctrine of predestination and, above all, striving to prevent Valdés’ central principle of the inner illumination of the spirit as a more authoritative source of truth than the “feeble candle” of biblical revelation from being regarded as similar to the subversive religious individualism “de ces estourdiz spirituels,” leading to an unacceptable delegitimizing of holy Scripture.97 And so, the alumbrado spiritualism lurking at the roots of Valdés’ religious thinking proved to be incompatible with rigid Protestant scripturalism, despite the efforts of inquisitors and Catholic controversialists to underline their substantial identity. These precautionary notes were not enough to placate the suspicions of the Genevan theologians, and Calvin himself found it necessary to intervene, not just to criticize the book but to rebuke the irresponsible printer who had recklessly thought he was performing a good service to the cause of the faith.98 For the moment the matter went no further, and Valdés’ book was remarkably successful, as witnessed by the new editions (both with the marginal notes) that appeared in Paris in 1565, the work of another Lyons printer.99 It is possible that many years later these polemics prompted the idea of republishing, with a new title page, the unsold copies of the 1563 Lyons edition, with Curione’s preface removed, apart from a few passages in the new one, dated Lyons September 10 1600, which included Valdés among the distinguished Spaniards whose writings had made a significant contribution “in preparing stones and other materials for building the Church of God,” such as the Franciscan Bishop Antonio de Guevara and the Dominican preacher Luis de Granada.100 We do not have sufficient evidence to assess the meaning of the reappearance of those Divines considerations et sainctes meditations in France in that period, which had at last found in Henry IV a strong sovereign, but, in any case, once again we can see how Valdés’ message could be used in different forms and contexts, as had happened among his Italian disciples. Even during the papacy of Paul IV, Pietro Carnesecchi had sent to Venice some of the “pestilential books and prohibited writings of the said Valdés” with the intention of having at least some of them “printed and published,” 96

    98   99  

On him, see Baridon, Claude de Kerquefinen. Valdés, Consyderations (fr. 1), pp. 49, 219, 359, 381, 383, 391, 452, 648, 706. Bakhuizen van den Brink, Juan de Valdés, pp. 112–13. Cione, Juan de Valdés, p. 125. 100   Valdés, Considerations (fr. 2), “Le traducteur au lecteur”, pp. n.n. 97

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despite the censorship of the Council and the Holy Office,101 one of whose decrees, on March 17 1556, issued a new summons against his heirs in Cuenca “to condemn him and his works.”102 Preceded by the polemics of 1563, the final sentence of the Protestant world was now imminent. What brought it on was another translation of the Cento e dieci divine considerazioni, this time in Flemish, which appeared in the eastern Frisian town of Emden in 1565 thanks to Adrien Gorin, a pastor of the French Reformed Church there after previous experience in Anvers and London, from which he had been driven out in 1561, accused of plotting with the Anabaptists.103 The book seemed all the more alarming in the eyes of the Geneva theologians as, until recently, Emden had been the nerve center of the Familia charitatis of Hendrik Niclaes, whose spiritualism was founded on premises that had much in common with Valdesianism, such as the supremacy of inner inspiration over Scripture, for example, or the commitment to recreate Christian unity beyond denominational disagreements.104 These cross-fertilizations were encouraged by the adiaphorist doctrines, Nicodemitic caution and esoteric teaching to be found in many expressions of European religious radicalism, from Juan de Valdés to David Joris, from Girolamo Busale to Bernardino Ochino, from Sebastian Castellio to Celio Secondo Curione. It was not long before suspicions centered on Gorin, encouraged both by the semi-clandestine printing without the explanatory notes to Valdés’ work, “abounding in false doctrine and blasphemous expressions against holy Scripture,” and by Gorin’s own insistence on the illegality of the persecution of sectarian groups that contested Calvinist orthodoxy. On the first point Gorin defended himself, stating that the translation in Flemish (a language he did not know) had preceded the publication of the marginal notes, that the printing had been started in his absence, that no laws imposed pre-censorship, that in his opinion the book was not at all full of blasphemous heresies, and that, above all, other books by Valdés had already been printed in Geneva “to great praise of the author,” even from Vermigli in Zurich.105 101   Processi Carnesecchi, 2, pp. 1367–8; see also p. 1370, and Firpo, Juan de Valdés, pp. 317–18. 102   Rome, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Decreta, 1, f. 175r. 103   The only surviving copy of the Hondert en Tien Aenmerckinghen, unfortunately without title page and the short preface, is in the Library of the Hispanic Society of America in New York. On Gorin and the controversies surrounding him, see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 55ff; Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 114ff; and, above all, Bakhuizen van den Brink, Juan de Valdés, pp. 63ff. 104   See Hamilton, The Family of Love. 105   Bakhuizen van den Brink, Juan de Valdés, pp. 96ff, 103ff; see also p. 110.

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This was the last straw, and Théodore de Bèze had to intervene in early 1566, urging the Countess Anne of Oldenburg to “consider that such outrageous spirits deserve to be promptly repressed” and to use an iron fist against the unworthy pastor “who was corrupting the true, solid doctrine” accepted by so many Churches. On September 2 he insisted again on the serious consequences of the scandal that was disturbing “the order given by God to his Church” on highly important doctrinal questions and underlined the need not to lose time, “to cut the evil at the root” before it became incurable, and to bring Gorin to wiser councils one way or the other as a man strongly suspected “of leaning more than he should toward some errors of the Anabaptists or other restless and harmful spirits.”106 The venerable Company of Pastors in Geneva expressed the same opinion in four letters sent the same day to the Churches of Eastern Frisia, in which the condemnation of Valdés and his doctrine now seemed clear, due to the doctrinal consequences of his unacceptable spiritualism which was its most authentic core: We know from reliable persons what damage that book [the Considerazioni] has done to the rising Neapolitan Church: we know what John Calvin thought of it; we also know that Ochino, a man who has left a very bad memory of himself, drew from those evanescent pages those profane speculations of his, gradually distancing himself from the word of God till he fell to that final ruin in which he died a wretch. For our part we would keenly desire that that book, which in many places is not contrary to the Anabaptist spirit, such as to mislead men toward certain empty speculations they wrongly call the spirit, had never been published or had been at once buried.107

With these harsh words Bèze revealed his awareness that those pages contained not only the rudimentary Protestant teaching that had then guided Galeazzo Caracciolo and Pier Martire Vermigli to Geneva and Zurich, but also the religious individualism and adiaphorism that had later led Ochino to publish, in 1563, his wicked Dialogi XXX. In 1550, on publishing the Cento e dieci divine considerazioni (in Italian, and so intended for proselytism in Italy), Curione had presented Valdés as a “teacher and pastor of noble and famous people,” who “enlightened some of the most famous preachers in Italy”108 (an obvious reference to the famous Sienese Capuchin), but 15 years later he had now become the insidious master of Anabaptists and Anti-Trinitarians, and that book could now be described by Bèze as no more than “evanescent speculations, 106

    108   107

Bèze, Correspondance, 7, pp. 37–8, 220–21. Bakhuizen van den Brink, Juan de Valdés, pp. 112–13; Registres, 3, pp. 214–17. See above, pp. 37–8.

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such as to leave one in wonder that they have not made the word of God mocked by womenfolk and the ignorant.”109 This judgment was probably not prompted merely by the doctrines adopted by Ochino or the deviations of Gorin, who would finally be forced to abandon his ministry in 1568, but also by the fact that Valdés’ name was then resurfacing in the Anti-Trinitarian battles of the exiles in eastern Europe. Still in 1568, Giorgio Biandrata published in Alba Iulia in Transylvania De falsa et vera unius Dei patris, filii et spiritus sancti cognitione, an authentic manifesto of sixteenth-century Anti-Trinitarianism, which included a rudimental historical outline De origine et progressu triadis. In it, alongside those who “in our time” had proclaimed the pure Christian truth, fighting the doctrine of the Deus tripersonatus such as Erasmus, Miguel Servet, Bernardino Ochino, Girolamo Busale, Lelio Sozzini, Valentino Gentile and Matteo Gribaldi, there was another name: “What should we say of Juan de Valdés, a most eminent man by birth and by religion? Who, leaving us the proof of his knowledge in his well-known writings, claims to know nothing of God and his son if not that one is the most high God father of Christ and one our lord Jesus Christ, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit in the Virgin’s womb, and one the spirit of both.”110 In England, too, in the 1630s and 1640s, Valdés’ works were diffused in various circles, though they were all considered with suspicion and hostility by the severe guardians of Calvinist orthodoxy. Only because he was unaware of the condemnation of Bèze could the Calvinist Daniel Rogers in 1573 daringly compare Valdés with the most famous Protestant theologians, from Luther to Zwingli, from Bucer to Calvin, from Melanchthon to Bullinger, and from Vermigli to Knox (“the Spanish world may well boast of a writer like Valdés”).111 Although, in one of the accounts he wrote in his defense, Gorin had mentioned an English translation of the Considerazioni,112 the first English edition of the work was probably the one that appeared in Oxford in 1638, based on the Italian text published in Basle in 1550, and also including Curione’s introduction. The translator was a remarkable man, Nicholas Ferrar,113 who may well have obtained 109

  Bèze, Correspondance, 10, p. 36. In the letter to Antonio del Corro around March 1569, Calvin’s successor at the head of the Church of Geneva sharply criticized the “empty subtlety of the Spaniards” and the country that, apart from Valdés, had also given birth to two other “terrifying monsters” of the age − Servet and Ignatius of Loyola: “What people on the face of the earth is today more behind than the Spanish in knowledge of Christ and more stubborn in defending the coarsest superstitions? What country is more dominated by the Roman idol and human traditions?” 110   De falsa et vera, pp. Eir–Eiiv. 111   Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 86–7. 112   Bakhuizen van den Brink, Juan de Valdés, p. 112. 113   On him, see Ferrar Papers; Maycock, Nicholas Ferrar.

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copies of the editio princeps and the first French edition of the book, as well as the Comentario a la epístola a los Romanos, published in Geneva in 1556 (the preface to which he included as an appendix), in the course of a grand tour of Europe between 1613 and 1618, during which he had stayed in Italy for two years to study medicine in Padua. Born into a wellto-do family in 1592, in the mid 1620s he had abandoned both commerce and a seat in Parliament to retire to his estate in Little Gidding, along with thirty-odd friends and assistants, to create a self-enclosed religious community with its own rules, devoted to meditation and Bible readings as well as ascetic practices, fasting and prayer, while still being part of the Anglican Church. In some respects it resembled the Valdesian groups in Naples and Viterbo, and it was here that Ferrar worked on his translation. It was completed in 1632 but published posthumously in 1638, the year after his death, with the official approval of the University of Oxford.114 It was his brother John who oversaw its printing, adding some notes sent to Ferrar in July 1632 by the son of Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, the poet George Herbert, a member of the Anglican clergy who was very close to the community of Little Gidding, and who died a few months later. It was probably these short remarks that convinced Nicholas Ferrar to hold off publication, to cover himself against any accusations concerning some “suspitious places” and “manifest errors” in the work, which was, in any case, admirable for its line on justification and Christian mortification. They were errors that might scandalize even the most judicious readers, and were perhaps justified in his view by the author’s having spent his whole life in countries “where the Scriptures were in no reputation.” In these notes Herbert restated the same reservations as those in the marginal glosses to the Lyons edition of 1563 and that had particular significance on the eve of the great revolution in England, which was swarming with sectarian groups, inspired prophets and enthusiasts of every kind. He felt the need to protect some sort of solid foundation on which “the truth of the doctrine” could be ratified, out of grave concern about the constant insistence on “beleeving by revelation, not by relation,” about the definition of biblical texts as a mere alphabet designed for “an elementary use” and “after a time to be left,” about the centrality of illumination of the spirit, which seemed to authorize every kind of anarchic religious individualism, and about the dangerous undermining of any ecclesiastical authority and any objective rules (“his opinion of the Scriptures is unsufferable”).115 To a certain extent, however, the group Ferrar gathered together at Little 114

  Valdés, Considerations (engl. 1); see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 88ff; see also Firpo, Tra alumbrados, pp. 118ff; Dueñas Martínez, La fama. 115   Valdés, Considerations (engl. 1), p. n.n.: “The publisher to the reader”; Herbert, Works, pp. 304ff; see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 100ff.

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Gidding provided an example of a faith that left ample margins of freedom, and of a search for Christian perfection whose liturgical and devotional practices might induce the intransigent puritans to see in them an example of dangerous Arminian and papist deviations that had for too long been tolerated, if not encouraged, by the crown and the official Church under the guidance of William Laud. One example is to be found in a stinging pamphlet that appeared in 1641, when the secluded community was on the point of being rocked by the Civil War: its title defined it contemptuously as an Arminian Nunnery, and it denounced the wicked forms of “monastic innovation” and “superstition and popery” – “canonicall houres … an altar richly decked with tapestrye … genuflection … fasting … letany … [and] popish prayer books” – that had for years been practiced at Little Gidding and that the new Parliament should sweep away without delay. This invitation was later taken literally by a detachment of the New Model Army, which in 1646 devastated the church of the small community that had been founded 20 years before by a pious Anglican who remained doggedly true to the Protestant tradition and convinced that the mass was an abomination and the pope the Anti-Christ, but was also a passionate reader of St Francis de Sales’ Introduction à la vie dévote and the translator of Valdés’ Cento e dieci divine considerazioni, as well as of the treatise on temperance written by a learned Jesuit of the University of Louvain.116 The guardians of puritan orthodoxy were forced to busy themselves once again with Ferrar and his translation of the Divine Considerations in 1646, as a new edition had appeared in Cambridge with some stylistic corrections. Its editor had discreetly identified himself as E.D., which might suggest he was Edmund Duncan, a figure linked to the Cambridge Platonists, the community of Little Gidding, and Herbert too, though he did not make use of all of Herbert’s notes and played down their significance, placing them (with a few others) in a less prominent position in the margins of the text rather than as a preface to the work.117 The new edition of Valdés’ Considerations was at once commended by the independent preacher Robert Bacon in a book whose very title proclaimed that “the saving and joyful knowledge of God and man … is alone in the spirit by 116

  Maycock, Nicholas Ferrar, pp. 135ff, 195ff, 276ff (for the comments on William Laud and Charles I, who decided to visit Little Gidding in 1633); Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 102–3. 117   Valdés, Considerations (engl. 2); see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 111ff. In the British Library’s copy (4400. l. 36.), on the blank verso of the last page of Curione’s preface, an anonymous reader of the time wrote: “This book is to be read with guarded caution on the subject of Holy Scripture. Its author, in his zeal for divine grace, has unpardonably depriciated the divine word. This savours of enthusiasm. But on the whole this work is truly valuable for the piety and deep sense of God which it displays. All that Mr. George Herbert says of it in his letter to the translator is strictly just.”

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Jesus Christ.”118 But two years later it attracted the attention of the dour Scottish pastor, Samuel Rutherford, in his virulent work entitled A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist, which sought to denounce the anonymous sectarianism that seemed to have more and more supporters in the ranks of the army, which was now in conflict with Parliament and severely contesting Presbyterian authoritarianism. The work consisted of a substantial list of horrible heresies that were spreading unchecked in a country devastated by war and anarchy: Antinomians of every kind, Arminians, Familists, Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, Anabaptists, “Antiscripturarians,” “Seekers,” all aiming “to establish abominable liberty of conscience,” and their historical antecedents, who, alongside Thomas Müntzer, John of Leiden, Melchior Hoffman, Menno Simons, David Joris, Kaspar Schwenckfeld, Hendrik Niclaes and Jan Crell, also included the Spanish “Waldesso,” whose Divine Considerations Rutherford had read with care.119 What roused his indignation was the unacceptable devaluation of the Bible as the foundation of the truth, which was at the heart of the doctrine of this “bishop repented” who had deviously hidden numberless errors among the “good and excellent meditations” scattered through his book: the main one being “the grounds and poysonable principles of Familisme, Antinomianisme, Enthusiasme, for he rejecteth the Scriptures, magnifieth inspirations, vilifieth good works, heighteneth the dead faith, extenuateth sin.” The degrading of the Revelation to a mere “alphabet to unconverted man” was the origin of the subversive conception by which “when men are once iustified, called regenerated, they have no more need of word and ordinances or oblieging lawes to lead them.”120 What all this meant in relation to the total undermining of all authority and the serious risks of civil and religious anarchy that followed was, he thought, evident to all in the England of that period. It would be wrong, of course, to read Juan de Valdés’ writings with the unfocused, sectarian eyes of Samuel Rutherford, but there is no doubt that he saw clearly in that doctrine of the inner illumination of the spirit the crucial element of his inspiration, one that was to return, as we have seen, from Bernardino Ochino to Robert Bacon, from Valentino Gentile to Adrien Gorin, from Lelio to Fausto Sozzini, and from Kaspar Schwenckfeldt to Nicholas Ferrar. It was, at bottom, the same element that, two centuries later, would induce the epigones of the Quaker 118   Bacon, Christ Mighty, p. 138, where, in relation to the concept of the sinner being “condemned in Christ”, Bacon commented: “See John Valdesso, Considerat. 11, a book happily brought into our English coasts”; see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 120ff. 119   Rutherford, A Survey, pp. A2v–A3v, a2r. 120   Ibid., pp. 37–8, 163; see also pp. 175, 138, 198, 319–20, 324; see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 124–6; Hamilton, The Family of Love, p. 138.

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tradition (who were heirs to the English Familist groups), from Benjamin B. Wiffen to Luis Usoz y Río, to republish Valdés’ works and find in them a proof of the deep-rootedness of that doctrine of the inner light on which they based their firmest religious convictions.121 Probably these upshots went far beyond the explicit claims and, perhaps, the most unspoken theological certainties of that Spanish gentleman with his ties to princes, cardinals and glamorous noblewomen, who had lived without scandal and proclamations in his Neapolitan retreat. But there is no doubt that his Nicodemitic spiritualism could suggest further directions through those “inferences” that Pietro Carnesecchi had already perceived in Naples in 1540, amid the pedagogic caution of his spiritual teaching, and that others would carry forward “from one consequence to another”122 to the most extreme radicalism, and in some cases to the point of leaving Christianity altogether. We need, then, to distinguish between Valdés and Valdesianism in its various senses, which were already visible in the mid sixteenth century, when those texts were able to provide answers to the anxieties of high prelates and humble Anabaptists, orthodox Protestants and anti-Trinitarian radicals, powerful aristocrats and ordinary people, while his name could be pronounced with respect in Geneva and Alba Iulia and his works could be printed by Calvinist exiles in Switzerland, such as Juan Pérez de Pineda, cardinals who presided over the Council of Trent, such as Reginald Pole or Giovanni Morone, figures suspected of radical sympathies, such as Celio Secondo Curione, and philo-Anabaptists such as Adrien Gorin. But only if we bear in mind that extraordinary wide-ranging religious thinking can we understand some particular aspects of the many and, at times, contradictory religious tensions that were interwoven in Italy in those decades and which it would be misleading to reduce merely to the spread of the German and Swiss Reformation and the subsequent reaction of the Church of Rome to stem, fight and repress it, ignoring the pervasive presence of Juan de Valdés, with all the radical implications and flexible institutional loyalties it allowed.

121   Wiffen, The Life; Valdés, La epístola de san Pablo; see Ricart, Juan de Valdés, pp. 73–4, 124–6; see Hamilton, The Family of Love, pp. 135, 139ff. 122   See above, p. 130.

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Cortese, Opera = Gregorii Cortesii, Omnia quae huc usque colligi potuerunt, sive ab eo scripta sive ad illum spectantia (2 vols, Patavii: Josephus Cominus, 1774). Cortini, La Riforma = Gian Franco Cortini, La Riforma e l’Inquisizione in Imola (1551–1578) (Imola: P. Galeati, 1928). Costantini, Il cardinale di Ravenna = Enea Costantini, Il cardinale di Ravenna al governo di Ancona e il suo processo sotto Paolo III (Pesaro: Stab. tipo-litografico Federici, 1891). Cozzi, I rapporti tra Stato e Chiesa = Gaetano Cozzi, I rapporti tra Stato e Chiesa, in La Chiesa di Venezia, pp. 11–36. Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance = Daniel A. Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance: The Life of Juan de Valdés (Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Croce, Una data importante = Benedetto Croce, Una data importante nella vita di Juan de Valdés, Archivio storico per le provincie napoletane, 28 (1903), pp. 151–3. CT = Concilium Tridentinum (13 vols, Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1901ff). Curione, Francisci Spierae = Celio Secondo Curione, Francisci Spierae, qui quod susceptam semel evangelicae veritatis professionem abnegasset damnassetque in horrendam incidit desperationem, historia (s.l.: 1550). Curione, Pasquillorum tomi duo = Celio Secondo Curione, Pasquillorum tomi duo, ed. Damiano Mevoli (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2013). Cynarski (ed.), Raków = Stanisław Cynarski (ed.), Raków ognisko arianizmu (Kraków: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1968). Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori = Guido Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori nella Bologna del Cinquecento (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1999). DBI = Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960ff). De falsa et vera = De falsa et vera unius Dei patris, filii et spiritus sancti cognitione (Albae Iuliae: [1568]). De Frede, Notizia = Carlo De Frede, Notizia d’un valdesiano pentito con una digressione sul processo d’una visionaria (Ranieri Gualandi e Alfonsina Rispoli) (Napoli: Arte tipografica, 1990). De Frede, Pomponio Algieri = Carlo De Frede, Pomponio Algieri nella Riforma religiosa del Cinquecento (Napoli: Fiorentino, 1972). De Frede, Ricerche = Carlo De Frede, Ricerche per la storia della stampa e la diffusione delle idee riformate nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Napoli: De Simone, 1985). Del Col, Il controllo della stampa = Andrea Del Col, Il controllo della stampa a Venezia e i processi di Antonio Brucioli (1548–1559), Critica storica, 17 (1980), pp. 457–510.

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Felici, Da Calvino contro Calvino = Lucia Felici, Da Calvino contro Calvino. Celio Secondo Curione e il “De amplitudine beati regni Dei dialogi sive libri duo”, in Peyronel Rambaldi (ed.), Giovanni Calvino, pp. 385–403. Felici, Giovanni Calvino = Lucia Felici, Giovanni Calvino e l’Italia (Torino: Claudiana, 2010). Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience = Dermot Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy. Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Ferigo, Morbida facta pecus = Giorgio Ferigo, Morbida facta pecus... Aspirazioni e tentativi di Riforma nella Carnia del ‘500, Almanacco culturale della Carnia, 4 (1988), pp. 7–73. Ferlin Malavasi, Intorno alla figura = Stefania Ferlin Malavasi, Intorno alla figura e all’opera di Domenico Mazzarelli, eterodosso rodigino del Cinquecento, Archivio veneto, 109 (1977), pp. 67–91. Ferlin Malavasi, Intorno al testamento = Stefania Ferlin Malavasi, Intorno al testamento di Giovanni Domenico Roncalli eterodosso rodigino del Cinquecento, Archivio veneto, 95 (1972), pp. 5–9. Fernández, Iñigo de Loyola = Luis Fernández, Iñigo de Loyola y los alumbrados, Hispania sacra, 35 (1983), pp. 585–680. Fernández Álvarez (ed.), Corpus documental = Manuel Fernández Álvarez (ed.), Corpus documental de Carlos V (5 vols, Salamanca: Consejo superior de investigaciones cientificas, 1973–1981). Ferrar Papers = The Ferrar Papers. Containing a Life of Nicholas Ferrar; The Winding-Sheet; An Ascetic Dialogue; A Collection of Short Moral Histories; A Selection of Family Letters, ed. by Bernard Blackstone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939). Firpo, Alcune considerazioni = Massimo Firpo, Alcune considerazioni sull’esperienza religiosa di Sigismondo Arquer, Rivista storica italiana, 105 (1993), pp. 411–75; also in Firpo, Dal sacco di Roma all’Inquisizione, pp. 161–220. Firpo, “Amorbato delle cose lutherane” = Massimo Firpo, “Amorbato delle cose lutherane” o “fidei catholicae propugnator”? Giovanni Morone tra Inquisizione e concilio, in Roberto Pancheri, Domenica Primerano (eds.), L’uomo del concilio. Il cardinale Giovanni Morone tra Roma e Trento nell’età di Michelangelo (Trento: Comune di TrentoMuseo storico diocesano, 2009, pp. 17–45); also in Firpo, Valdesiani e spirituali, pp. 215–58. Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici = Massimo Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra Riforma e Controriforma (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2001). Firpo, “Boni christiani merito vocantur haeretici” = Massimo Firpo, “Boni christiani merito vocantur haeretici”. Bernardino Ochino e la tolleranza,

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Firpo, La Cappella Sistina = Massimo Firpo, La Cappella Sistina e la Cappella Paolina. Michelangelo tra riforma e crisi religiosa (RomaBari: Laterza, 2013, e-book). Firpo, La presa di potere = Massimo Firpo, La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana (1550–1553) (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2014). Firpo, Le ambiguità della porpora = Massimo Firpo, Le ambiguità della porpora e i “diavoli” del Sant’Ufficio: identità e storia nei ritratti di Giovanni Grimani, Rivista storica italiana, 117 (2005), pp. 825–71; also in Massimo Firpo, Storie di immagini, immagini di storia. Studi di iconografia cinquecentesca (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010), pp. 119–71. Firpo, L’eresia del vescovo = Massimo Firpo, L’eresia del vescovo: il governo pastorale di Vittore Soranzo a Bergamo (1544–1550), in Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, Alain Tallon (eds.), La Réforme en France et en Italie (Roma: École française de Rome, 2007), pp. 161– 81; also in Firpo, Valdesiani e spirituali, pp. 173–93. Firpo, Nel labirinto del mondo = Massimo Firpo, Nel labirinto del mondo. Lorenzo Davidico fra santi, eretici, inquisitori (Firenze: Olschki, 1992). Firpo, Note su una biografia di Giovanni Morone = Massimo Firpo, Note su una biografia di Giovanni Morone, Rivista storica italiana, 124 (2012), pp. 1035–48. Firpo, Per una discussione = Massimo Firpo, Per una discussione su Delio Cantimori e la nuova edizione degli “Eretici italiani”, Studi storici, 34 (1993), pp. 737–56. Firpo, Pietro Bembo cardinale = Massimo Firpo, Pietro Bembo cardinale, in Firpo, Valdesiani e spirituali, pp. 159–72. Firpo, Pietro Carnesecchi, Caterina de Medici = Massimo Firpo, Pietro Carnesecchi, Caterina de Medici e Juan de Valdés. Di una sconosciuta traduzione francese dell’“Alphabeto christiano”, in Michael Erbe, Hans Füglister, Katharina Furrer, Andreas Staehlin, Regine Wecker, Christian Windler (eds.), Dissenz und Toleranz im Wandel der Geschichte, Festschrift zum 65. Geburstag von Hans R. Guggisberg (Mannheim: Palatium Verlag, 1996,) pp. 75–88; also in Firpo, Dal sacco di Roma all’Inquisizione, pp. 147–60. Firpo, Politica imperiale = Massimo Firpo, Politica imperiale e vita religiosa in Italia nell’età di Carlo V, in Martínez Millán (ed.), Carlos V y la quiebra, 4, pp. 197–211; also in Firpo, “Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede”, pp. 159–74. Firpo, Riforma protestante = Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Un profilo storico (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1993). Firpo, Riforma religiosa e lingua volgare = Massimo Firpo, Riforma religiosa e lingua volgare nell’Italia del ‘500, in Marc Fumaroli,

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Marianne Lion-Violet (eds.), Les premiers siècles de la république européenne des lettres, Actes du colloque international, Paris, décembre 2001 (Paris: Alain Baudry, 2005), pp. 153–82; also in Firpo, “Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede”, pp. 121–40. Firpo, Theologie, Geschichte und Politik = Massimo Firpo, Theologie, Geschichte und Politik im letzten Prozess der Inquisition gegen Pietro Carnesecchi (1566–67), in Inquisition, Index, Zensur. Wissenkulturen der Neuzeit in Widerstreit und die Wissensskulturen der Neuzeit (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 2001), pp. 121–40; also in Italian in Massimo Firpo, “Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede”, pp. 227–46. Firpo, Tra alumbrados = Massimo Firpo, Tra alumbrados e “spirituali”. Studi su Juan de Valdés e il valdesianesimo nella crisi religiosa del ‘500 italiano (Firenze: Olschki, 1990); Spanish translation with an introduction by José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras (Madrid: Fundación universitaria española-Universidad pontificia de Salamanca, 2000). Firpo, Una nuova edizione = Massimo Firpo, Una nuova edizione del “Trattato della oratione” del cardinale Federico Fregoso, in Rudj Gorian (ed.), Dalla bibliografia alla storia. Studi in onore di Ugo Rozzo (Udine: Forum, 2010), pp. 95–113; also in Firpo, Valdesiani e spirituali, pp. 195–213. Firpo, Valdesiani e spirituali = Massimo Firpo, Valdesiani e spirituali. Studi sul Cinquecento religioso italiano (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013). Firpo, Vittore Soranzo = Massimo Firpo, Vittore Soranzo vescovo ed eretico. Riforma della Chiesa e Inquisizione nell’Italia del ‘500 (RomaBari: Laterza, 2006). Firpo, Biferali, Battista Franco = Massimo Firpo, Fabrizio Biferali, Battista Franco “pittore viniziano” nella cultura artistica e nella vita religiosa del ‘500 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2007). Firpo, Biferali, “Navicula Petri” = Massimo Firpo, Fabrizio Biferali, “Navicula Petri”. L’arte dei papi nel Cinquecento (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2009). Firpo, Marcatto, I processi contro don Lorenzo Davidico = Massimo Firpo, Dario Marcatto I processi contro don Lorenzo Davidico. Edizione critica (Città del Vaticano: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2011). Firpo, Marcatto, Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi = Massimo Firpo, Dario Marcatto, Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi e la questione eucaristica, in Pastore, Toffoli (eds.), Marcantonio Flaminio, pp. 81–98; also in Firpo, “Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede”, pp. 209–25. Firpo, Mongini (eds.), Ludovico Castelvetro = Massimo Firpo, Guido Mongini (eds.), Ludovico Castelvetro. Letterati e grammatici nella crisi religiosa del Cinquecento (Firenze: Olschki, 2008).

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Firpo, Niccoli (eds.), Il cardinale Giovanni Morone = Massimo Firpo, Ottavia Niccoli (eds.), Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e l’ultima fase del concilio di Trento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010). Fita, Los tres procesos = Fidel Fita, Los tres procesos de san Ignacio de Loyola en Alcalá de Henares. Estudio crítico, Boletín de la real Academia de la historia, 33 (1898), pp. 422–61. Flaminio, Apologia = Marcantonio Flaminio, Apologia del “Beneficio di Christo” e altri scritti inediti, ed. Dario Marcatto (Firenze: Olschki, 1996). Flaminio, Lettere = Marcantonio Flaminio, Lettere, ed. Alessandro Pastore (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1978). Flaminio, Meditationi = Marcantonio Flaminio, Meditationi et orationi formate sopra l’epistola di san Paolo ai Romani, ed. Massimo Firpo (Torino: Aragno, 2007). Fontaine, For the Good of the City = Michelle M. Fontaine, For the Good of the City: the Bishop and the Ruling-Elite in Tridentine Modena, Sixteenth Century Journal, 28 (1997), pp. 29–44. Fontaine, Making Heresy Marginal = Michelle M. Fontaine, Making Heresy Marginal in Modena, in Delph, Fontaine, Martin (eds.), Heresy, Culture, and Religion, pp. 37–51. Fontana, Documenti dell’Archivio = Bartolommeo Fontana, Documenti dell’Archivio vaticano e dell’estense circa il soggiorno di Calvino a Ferrara, Archivio della Società romana di storia patria, 8 (1885), pp. 101–39. Fontana, Documenti dell’Archivio vaticano e dell’estense = Bartolommeo Fontana, Documenti dell’Archivio vaticano e dell’estense sull’imprigionamento di Renata di Francia, duchessa di Ferrara, Archivio della Società romana di storia patria, 9 (1886), pp. 163–227. Fontana, Documenti vaticani = Bartolommeo Fontana, Documenti vaticani contro l’eresia luterana in Italia, Archivio della Società romana di storia patria, 15 (1982), pp. 71–165, 365–474. Fontana, Renata di Francia = Bartolommeo Fontana, Renata di Francia duchessa di Ferrara (3 vols, Roma: Forzani e C., 1889–1899). Fournel, Les dialogues de Sperone Speroni = Jean-Louis Fournel, Les dialogues de Sperone Speroni: libertés de la parole et règles de l’écriture (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1990). Fragnito, Gasparo Contarini = Gigliola Fragnito, Gasparo Contarini. Un magistrato veneziano al servizio della cristianità (Firenze: Olschki, 1988). Fragnito, Gli “spirituali” = Gigliola Fragnito, Gli “spirituali” e la fuga di Bernardino Ochino, Rivista storica italiana, 84 (1972), pp. 777–813; also in Fragnito, Gasparo Contarini, pp. 205–306.

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Giner, Alonso Ruiz de Virués = Severino Giner, Alonso Ruiz de Virués en la controversia pretridentina con los protestantes: su doctrina sobre la justificación y la gracia (Madrid: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1964). Ginzburg, Due note = Carlo Ginzburg, Due note sul profetismo cinquecentesco, Rivista storica italiana, 78 (1966), pp. 184–227. Ginzburg, I costituti = Carlo Ginzburg, I costituti di don Pietro Manelfi (Firenze-Chicago: Sansoni-The Newberry Library, 1970). Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo = Carlo Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del ‘500 (Torino: Einaudi, 1970). Ginzburg, Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza = Carlo Ginzburg, Adriano Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza. Un seminario sul “Beneficio di Cristo” (Torino: Einaudi, 1975). Ginzburg, Prosperi, Juan de Valdés = Carlo Ginzburg, Adriano Prosperi, Juan de Valdés e la Riforma in Italia: proposte di ricerca, in Doce consideraciones, pp. 185–95. Giombi, Dinamiche della predicazione = Samuele Giombi, Dinamiche della predicazione cinquecentesca tra forma retorica e normativa religiosa: le istruzioni episcopali ai predicatori, Cristianesimo nella storia, 13 (1992), pp. 73–101. Girardi, Il sapere e le lettere = Maria Teresa Girardi, Il sapere e le lettere in Bernardino Tomitano (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1995). Gleason, Gasparo Contarini = Elisabeth G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini. Venice, Rome, and Reform (Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford: Berkeley University Press, 1993). Godman, The Saint as Censor = Peter Godman, The Saint as Censor. Robert Bellarmine between Inquisition and Index (Leiden-BostonKöln: Brill, 2000). Goñi Gaztambide, El impresor = José Goñi Gaztambide, El impresor Miguel de Eguía procesado por la Inquisición, Hispania sacra, 1 (1948), pp. 35–88. González Novalín, El inquisidor general = José Luis González Novalín, El inquisidor general Fernando de Valdés. Su vida y su obra (2 vols, Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1968–1972). González Novalín, La Inquisición española = José Luis González Novalín, La Inquisición española, in Historia de la Iglesia en España, ed. Ricardo García-Villoslada, 3/2 (Madrid: La editorial católica, 1980), pp. 107–268. González Novalín, La Inquisición y la Compañía = José Luis González Novalín, La Inquisición y la Compañía de Jesús, Anthologica annua, 37 (1990), pp. 11–56. González Novalín, Luteranismo = José Luis González Novalín, Luteranismo e Inquisición en España (1519–1561), Annuario dell’Istituto storico

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italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 37–38 (1985–1986), pp. 43–73. González Palencia, Mele, Vida y obras = Ángel González Palencia, Eugenio Mele, Vida y obras de don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (3 vols, Madrid: tip. E. Maestre, 1941–1943) Grendler, Critics = Paul F. Grendler, Critics of the Italian World 1530–1560. Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco and Ortensio Lando (MadisonMilwaukee-London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). Guicciardini, Il sacco di Roma = Ludovico Guicciardini, Il sacco di Roma, in Carlo Milanesi (ed.), Il sacco di Roma del MDXXVII. Narrazioni di contemporanei (Firenze: G. Barbera, 1867), pp. 9–244. Guicciardini, Ricordi = Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, in Opere, 1, ed. Emanuela Lugnani Scarano (Torino: Utet, 1970). Guicciardini, The History of Italy = Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, translated and edited with notes and an introduction by Sidney Alexander (New York: Macmillan Co., 1969). Hamilton, An Episode = Alastair Hamilton, An Episode in Castilian Illuminism. The Case of Martín Cota, The Heythrop Journal, 17 (1976), pp. 413–27. Hamilton, El proceso = Alastair Hamilton, El proceso de Rodrigo de Bivar (1539) (Madrid: Fundación universitaria española, 1979). Hamilton, Heresy = Alastair Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth Century Spain. The “Alumbrados” (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 1992). Hamilton, The Family of Love = Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 1981). Headley, The Emperor and his Chancellor = John M. Headley, The Emperor and his Chancellor: a Study of the Imperial Chancellery under Gattinara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Herbert, Works = George Herbert, Works, ed. by Francis Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953). Hofer (ed.), “La gloria del Signore” = Gianfranco Hofer (ed.), “La gloria del Signore”. La Riforma protestante nell’Italia nord-orientale (Gorizia: Edizioni della Laguna, 2006). Homza (ed.), The Spanish Inquisition, = Lu Ann Homza (ed.), The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006). Hudon, Marcello Cervini = William V. Hudon, Marcello Cervini and Ecclesiastical Government in Tridentine Italy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992). Hudon, Religion and Society = William V. Hudon, Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy – Old Questions, New Insights, The American Historical Review, 101 (1996), pp. 783–804.

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Iovii, Epistulae = Pauli Iovii, Epistulae, ed. Giuseppe Guido Ferrero (2 vols, Roma: Istituto poligrafico dello Stato, 1956–1958). Italiano, La pastorale eterodossa = Gianmario Italiano, La pastorale eterodossa di Iacopo Nacchianti a Chioggia (1544–48), Rivista storica italiana, 123 (2011), pp. 741–91. Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio = Anne Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio: the Making of an Italian Reformer (Genève: Droz, 1977). Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian = Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465–1550: a Finding List (Genève: Droz, 1983). Jacobson Schutte, The “Lettere Volgari” = Anne Jacobson Schutte, The “Lettere Volgari” and the Crisis of Evangelism in Italy, Renaissance Quarterly, 28 (1975), pp. 639–88. Jalla, Storia = Giovanni Jalla, Storia della Riforma in Piemonte (Firenze: Claudiana, 1914). Jedin, Catholic Reformation = Hubert Jedin, Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999; 1st German ed. 1946). Jedin, Papal Legate = Hubert Jedin, Papal Legate at the Council of Trent: Cardinal Seripando (London: Herder Book, 1947; 1st German ed. 1937). Jiménez Monteserín, Juan de Valdés = Miguel Jiménez Monteserín, Juan de Valdés (1495?–1541), in García Pinilla (ed.), Disidencia religiosa, pp. 159–97. Jiménez Monteserín, La familia Valdés = Miguel Jiménez Monteserín, La familia Valdés de Cuenca: nuevos datos, in Los Valdés. Pensamiento y literatura, Actas del seminario celebrado en Cuenca, Universidad Menéndez Pelayo (Cuenca: Instituto “Juan de Valdés”-Ayuntamento de Cuenca, 1997), pp. 43–89. Kinder, A hitherto unknown Group = Gordon A. Kinder, A hitherto unknown Group of Protestants in sixteenth Century Aragon, Cuadernos de historia de Jerónimo Zurita, 51–52 (1985), pp. 131–60. Kinder, Juan de Valdés = Gordon A. Kinder, Juan de Valdés (Baden Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1988). Kinder, Juan Morillo = Gordon A. Kinder, Juan Morillo. Catholic Theologian at Trent, Calvinist Elder in Frankfurt, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 38 (1976), pp. 345–51. Kinder, Juan Pérez de Pineda = Gordon A. Kinder, Juan Pérez de Pineda (Pierius): a Spanish Calvinist Minister of the Gospel in sixteenth Century Geneva, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 53 (1976), pp. 283–300. Kinder, Two previously unknown Letters = Gordon A. Kinder, Two previously unknown Letters of Juan Pérez de Pineda, Protestant

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Robinson, The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone = Adam Patrick Robinson, The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509–1580). Beteween Council and Inquisition (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012). Romeo, Aspettando il boia = Giovanni Romeo, Aspettando il boia. Condannati a morte, confortatori e inquisitori nella Napoli della Controriforma (Firenze: Sansoni, 1993). Rosa, “Il beneficio di Cristo” = Mario Rosa, “Il beneficio di Cristo”: interpretazioni a confronto, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 40 (1978), pp. 609–20. Rosa, La Curia romana = Mario Rosa, La Curia romana nell’età moderna. Istituzioni, cultura, carriere (Roma: Viella, 2013). Rosi, La Riforma religiosa in Liguria = Michele Rosi, La Riforma religiosa in Liguria e l’eretico umbro Bartolomeo Bartoccio, Atti della Società ligure di storia patria, 24 (1894), pp. 555–726. Rotondò, Anticristo e Chiesa romana = Antonio Rotondò, Anticristo e Chiesa romana. Diffusione e metamorfosi d’un libello antiromano del Cinquecento, in Antonio Rotondò (ed.), Forme e destinazione del messaggio religioso. Aspetti della propaganda religiosa nel Cinquecento (Firenze: Olschki, 1991), pp. 19–164. Rotondò, Atteggiamenti = Antonio Rotondò, Atteggiamenti della vita morale italiana del Cinquecento. La pratica nicodemitica, Rivista storica italiana, 79 (1967), pp. 991–1030. Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale = Antonio Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale del Cinquecento (2 vols, Firenze: Olschki, 2008). Rozzo, Gli eretici = Ugo Rozzo, Gli eretici e la circolazione dei libri proibiti, in Hofer (ed.), “La gloria del Signore”, pp. 67–90. Rozzo, Le “Prediche” = Ugo Rozzo, Le “Prediche” veneziane di Giulio da Milano, Bollettino della Società di studi valdesi, n. 152 (1983), pp. 3–30. Rozzo, L’“Esortazione al martirio” = Ugo Rozzo, L’“Esortazione al martirio” di Giulio da Milano, in Alessandro Pastore (ed.), Riforma e società nei Grigioni, Valtellina e Valchiavenna tra ‘500 e ‘600 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1991), pp. 3–88. Rozzo (ed.), Pier Paolo Vergerio = Ugo Rozzo (ed.), Pier Paolo Vergerio il Giovane. Un polemista attraverso l’Europa del Cinquecento (Udine: Forum, 2000). Rozzo, Vicende inquisitoriali = Ugo Rozzo, Vicende inquisitoriali dell’eremitano Ambrogio Cavalli (1537–1545), Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 16 (1980), pp. 223–56. Russell, Giulia Gonzaga = Camilla Russell, Giulia Gonzaga and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006).

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Rutherford, A Survey = Samuel Rutherford, A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist, opening the Secrets of Familisme and Antinomianisme in the Antichristian Doctrine of John Saltmarsh and Will. Del, the Present Preachers of the Army now in England, and of Robert Town, Tob. Crisp, H. Denne, Eaton and Others. In which is revealed the Rise and Spring of Antonomians, Familists, Libertines, Swenck-feldians, Embyasts etc. (London: printed by J.D. & R.I. for Andrew Crooke, 1648). Salvo, Dalla spada alla fede = Carmen Salvo, Dalla spada alla fede. Storia di una famiglia feudale: gli Spatafora (secoli XIII–XVI) (AcirealeRoma: Bonanno, 2009). Samuels, Benedetto Varchi = Richard S. Samuels, Benedetto Varchi, the “Accademia degli Infiammati”, and the Origins of the Italian Academic Movement, Renaissance Quarterly, 29 (1976), pp. 599–633. Sandius, Bibliotheca = Christophorus Sandius, Bibliotheca antitrinitarioum (Freistadii: apud Ioanem Aconium, 1684). Sandonnini, Lodovico Castelvetro = Tommaso Sandonnini, Lodovico Castelvetro e la sua famiglia (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1882). Santoro, Dei successi = Leonardo Santoro, Dei successi del sacco di Roma e guerra del Regno di Napoli sotto Lotrech, ed. Scipione Volpicella (Napoli: Stabilimento tipografico di P. Andrisio, 1858). Santosuosso, Vita = Antonio Santosuosso, Vita di Giovanni Della Casa (Roma: Bulzoni, 1979). Sanudo, I diarii = Marin Sanudo, I diarii, 40 (Venezia: Visentini, 1894). Scaramella, “Con la croce al core” = Pierroberto Scaramella, “Con la croce al core”. Inquisizione ed eresia in Terra di Lavoro (1551– 1564) (Napoli: Città del sole 1995); also in Pierroberto Scaramella, Inquisizioni, eresie, etnie. Dissenso religioso e giustizia ecclesiastica in Italia (secc. XVI–XVIII) (Bari: Cacucci 2005), pp. 23–89. Scaramella, L’Inquisizione romana = Pierroberto Scaramella, L’Inquisizione romana e i valdesi di Calabria (Napoli: Editoriale scientifica, 1999). Schäfer, Beiträge = Ernst Schäfer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der spanischen Protestantismus und der Inquisition in sechzehnten Jahrhundert (3 vols, Gutersloh: C. Bartelsmann, 1902). Segre, Un registro = Arturo Segre, Un registro di lettere del cardinale Ercole Gonzaga (1535–36) con un’appendice di documenti inediti (1520–48), Miscellanea di storia italiana, serie III, 16 (1913), pp. 273–458. Seidel Menchi, Alcuni atteggiamenti = Silvana Seidel Menchi, Alcuni atteggiamenti della cultura italiana di fronte a Erasmo, in Eresia e Riforma, pp. 69–133. Seidel Menchi, “Certo Martino è stato terribil homo” = Silvana Seidel Menchi, “Certo Martino è stato terribil homo”. L’immagine di Lutero

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e la sua efficacia secondo i processi dell’Inquisizione, in Perrone (ed.), Lutero in Italia, pp. 115–37. Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia = Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia 1520–1580 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987). Seidel Menchi, Le traduzioni = Silvana Seidel Menchi, Le traduzioni italiane di Lutero nella prima metà del Cinquecento, Rinascimento, n.s., 17 (1977), pp. 31–108. Seidel Menchi, Protestantesimo a Venezia = Silvana Seidel Menchi, Protestantesimo a Venezia, in La Chiesa di Venezia, pp. 131–54. Seidel Menchi, Sulla fortuna di Erasmo = Silvana Seidel Menchi, Sulla fortuna di Erasmo in Italia. Ortensio Lando e altri eterodossi della prima metà del Cinquecento, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 24 (1974), pp. 537–634. Selke, Algunos datos = Angela [Selke de] Sánchez-Barbudo, Algunos datos nuevos sobre los primeros alumbrados. El edicto de 1525 y su relación con el proceso de Alcaraz, Bulletin hispanique, 54 (1952), pp. 125–52. Selke, El caso = Angela Selke de Sánchez[-Barbudo], El caso del bachiller Antonio de Medrano, iluminado epicúreo del siglo XVI, Bulletin hispanique, 58 (1956), pp. 393–420. Selke, El iluminismo = Angela Selke [de Sánchez-Barbudo], El iluminismo de los conversos y la Inquisición. Cristianismo interior de los alumbrados: resentimiento y sublimación, in Joaquín Pérez Villanueva (ed.), La Inquisición española. Nueva visión, nuevos horizontes (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp. 617–36. Selke, El Santo Oficio = Angela Selke [de Sánchez-Barbudo], El Santo Oficio de la Inquisición. Proceso de fr. Francisco Ortiz (1529–1532) (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1968). Selke de Sánchez, Vida y muerte = Angela Selke de Sánchez[-Barbudo], Vida y muerte de Juan López de Celaín alumbrado vizcaino, Bulletin hispanique, 62 (1960), pp. 136–62. Sepúlveda, Opera = Joannis Genesii Sepulvedae, Opera, cum edita tum inedita (4 vols, Matriti: ex typographia regia de la gazeta, 1780). Serrano y Sanz, Juan de Vergara = Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Juan de Vergara y la Inquisición de Toledo, Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, 5 (1901), pp. 896–912; 6 (1902), pp. 29–42, 466–86. Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz = Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz iluminado alcarreño del siglo XVI, Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, 7 (1903), pp. 1–16, 126–39. Sforza, Riflessi = Giovanni Sforza, Riflessi della Controriforma nella Repubblica di Venezia, Archivio storico italiano, 93 (1935), 1, pp. 5–34, 189–216; 2, pp. 25–52, 173–86. Siculo, Epistola = Giorgio Siculo, Epistola alli cittadini di Riva di Trento (Bologna: Giaccarello, 1550).

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Simler, Oratio = Josias Simler, Oratio de vita et obitu clarissimi et praestantissimi theologi domini Petri Martyris Vermilii, divinarum literarum professoris in schola Tigurina (Tiguri: apud Christophorum Froschoverum iuniorem, 1563). Simoncelli, Evangelismo = Paolo Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento. Questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico (Roma: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1979). Simoncelli, Il caso Reginald Pole = Paolo Simoncelli, Il caso Reginald Pole. Eresia e santità nelle polemiche religiose del Cinquecento (Roma: Edizoni di Storia e Letteratura, 1977). Simoncelli, Inquisizione romana = Paolo Simoncelli, Inquisizione romana e Riforma in Italia, Rivista storica italiana, 100 (1988), pp. 5–125. Simoncelli, La crisi religiosa = Paolo Simoncelli, La crisi religiosa del Cinquecento in Italia, in Nicola Tranfaglia e Massimo Firpo (eds.), La Storia. I grandi problemi dal Medioevo all’Età contemporanea (10 vols, Torino: Utet, 1986–88), 4, 251–81. Simoncelli, Nuove ipotesi = Paolo Simoncelli, Nuove ipotesi e studi sul “Beneficio di Cristo”, Critica storica, 12 (1975), pp. 320–88. Simoncelli, Pietro Bembo = Paolo Simoncelli, Pietro Bembo e l’evangelismo italiano, Critica storica, 15 (1978), pp. 1–63. Solmi, La fuga di Bernardino Ochino = Edmondo Solmi, La fuga di Bernardino Ochino secondo i documenti dell’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, Bullettino senese di storia patria, 15 (1908), pp. 23–98. Sozzini, Opere = Lelio Sozzini, Opere, ed. Antonio Rotondò (Firenze: Olschki, 1986). Sperone Speroni = Sperone Speroni, Filologia veneta, 2 (1989). Spini, Di Nicola Gallo = Giorgio Spini, Di Nicola Gallo e di alcune infiltrazioni in Sardegna della Riforma protestante, Rinascimento, n.s., 2 (1951), pp. 145–78. Spini, Tra Rinascimento e Riforma = Giorgio Spini, Tra Rinascimento e Riforma. Antonio Brucioli (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1940). Spivakovski, Son of the Alhambra = Erika Spivakovski, Son of the Alhambra: Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1504–1575) (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970). Staphileus, Oratio = Ioannes Staphileus, Oratio … die Veneris 15 Maii anno 1528 habita, lectorem candidum haud dubie docens priscos prophetas teterrimam ac lachrymabilem Urbis direptionem signanter sub nomine Babylonis vaticinatos fuisse ([Roma: 1528]). Staring, Giambattista Pallavicini = Adrianus Staring, Giambattista Pallavicini, O. Carm., e la eterodossia italiana nel Cinquecento, Carmelus, 14 (1967), pp. 142–83. Stella, Anabattismo = Aldo Stella, Anabattismo e antitrinitarismo in Italia nel XVI secolo. Nuove ricerche storiche (Padova: Liviana, 1969).

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Stella, Dall’anabattismo = Aldo Stella, Dall’anabattismo al socinianesimo nel Cinquecento veneto. Ricerche storiche (Padova: Liviana, 1967). Stella, L’orazione di Pier Paolo Vergerio = Aldo Stella, L’orazione di Pier Paolo Vergerio al doge Francesco Donà sulla riforma della Chiesa, Atti dell’Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 128 (1969–70), pp. 1–39. Stella, Utopie = Aldo Stella, Utopie e velleità insurrezionali dei filoprotestanti italiani (1545–1547), Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 27 (1965), pp. 133–82. Tacchella, Il processo = Lorenzo Tacchella, Il processo agli eretici veronesi nel 1550 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979). Tacchi Venturi, Storia = Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia (2 vols, Roma: La civiltà cattolica, 1950–1951; 2nd edition). Tedeschi, The Cultural Contributions = John A. Tedeschi, The Cultural Contributions of Italian Protestant Reformers in the late Renaissance, Schifanoia, 1 (1985), pp. 121–51. Tedeschi (ed.), The Italian Reformation = John Tedeschi (ed. in association with James M. Lattis), The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture. A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature (Ca. 1750 – 1996) (Modena: Panini, 1998). Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso y el arzobispo Carranza. Un veronés introductor del protestantismo en España (1559), in Tellechea Idígoras, Tiempos recios, pp. 53–110. Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso. Bienes y biblioteca = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso. Bienes y biblioteca confiscados por la Inquisición (1559), Revista española de teología, 43 (1983), pp. 193–7. Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso, luterano = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Don Carlos de Seso, luterano en Castilla. Sentencia inédita de su proceso inquisitorial, in Homenaje a Pedro Sainz Rodriguez (4 vols, Madrid: Fundación universitaria española, 1986,) 1, pp. 295–307. Tellechea Idígoras, El arzobispo Carranza = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, El arzobispo Carranza y su tiempo (2 vols, Madrid: Guadarrama, 1968). Tellechea Idígoras (ed.), Fray Bartolomé Carranza. Documentos = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras (ed.), Fray Bartolomé Carranza. Documentos historicos (7 vols, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1962–1994). Tellechea Idígoras, Fray Domingo de Rojas = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Fray Domingo de Rojas, O.P., y el auto de fe de Valladolid (1559). Una reconversión de última hora, in Tellechea Idígoras, Tiempos recios, pp. 238–64.

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Tellechea Idígoras, Fray Luis de la Cruz = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Fray Luis de la Cruz O.P. y los protestantes de Valladolid (1559). La difusión de una “Consideración” de Juan de Valdés, in Tellechea Idígoras, Tiempos recios, pp. 157–93. Tellechea Idígoras, Textos inéditos = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Textos inéditos sobre el fenómeno de los alumbrados, Ephemerides carmeliticae, 13 (1962), pp. 768–74. Tellechea Idígoras, Tiempos recios = José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Tiempos recios. Inquisición y heterodoxías (Salamanca: Sígueme, 1977). The Arminian Nunnery = The Arminian Nunnery: or, a Briefe Description and Relation of the Late Erected Monastical Place called the Arminan Nunnery at Little Gidding in Huntington-Shire. Humbly recommended to the Wise Consideration of this Present Parliament. The Foundation is by a Company of Ferrars at Gidding ([London]: printed for Thomas Underhill, 1641). Valdés, Alfabeto = Juan de Valdés, Alfabeto cristiano, Domande e risposte, Della predestinazione, Catechismo per i fanciulli, ed. Massimo Firpo (Torino: Einaudi, 1994). Valdés, Alfabeto (ed. Croce) = Giovanni di Valdés, Alfabeto cristiano. Dialogo con Giulia Gonzaga, ed. Benedetto Croce (Bari: Laterza, 1938). Valdés, Alfabeto (ed. Prosperi) = Juan de Valdés, Alfabeto cristiano, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Roma: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1988). Valdés, Catechism = Juan de Valdés, Qual maniera si devrebbe tenere a informare insino dalla fanciullezza i figliuoli de christiani delle cose della religione, in Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 251–67. Valdés, Consideraciones = Juan de Valdés, Las ciento diez divinas consideraciones. Recensión inédita del manuscrito de Juan Sánchez (1558), ed. José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1975). Valdés, Considerations (engl. 1) = The Hundred and Ten Considerations of Signior Iohn Valdesso, Treating of those Things which are most Profitable, most Necessary and most Perfect in our Christian Profession. Written in Spanish, brought out of Italy by Vergerius, and first set forth in Italian at Basil by Coelius Secundus Curio anno 1550. Afterward translated into French and printed at Lions 1563, and again in Paris 1565. And now translated out of the Italian Copy into English with Notes (Oxford: printed by Leonard Lichfield, Printer to the University, 1638; 2nd edition John Valdesso, The Divine Considerations, ed. by Frederic Chapman (London: John Lane, [1905]).

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Valdés, Considerations (engl. 2) = John Valdesso, Divine Considerations, Treating of Those Things which are most Profitable, most Necessary and Most Perfect in our Christian Profession (Cambridge: printed for E.D. by Roger Daniel, Printer to the University, 1646). Valdés, Considerations (fr. 2) = Les divines considerations et sainctes meditations de Jean de Val d’Esso gentil-homme espagnol, touchant tout ce qui est necessaire pour la perfection de la vie chrestienne, traduittes par C[laude] K[erquefinen] P[arisien], reveues de nouveau et rapportées fidélement à l’exemplaire espaignol et amplifiées de la table des principales matières traictées par l’aucteur (à Lyon: par Pierre Picard, 1601). Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Boehmer) = Giovanni Valdesso, Le cento e dieci divine considerazioni, ed. Eduard Boehmer (Halle in Sassonia: E. Anton, 1860). Valdés, Considerazioni (ed. Cione) = Juan de Valdés, Le cento e dieci divine considerazioni, ed. Edmondo Cione (Milano: Fratelli Bocca, 1944). Valdés, Consyderations (fr. 1) = Cent et dix consyderations divines par Ian de Val D’Esso, traduites premièrement d’Espainol en langue Italienne, et de nouveau mises en Français par C[laude] K[erquefinen] P[arisien] (à Lyon: par Claude Senneton, 1563). Valdés, I Corintios = Juan de Valdés, La epístola de san Pablo, pp. XIX–317. Valdés, Diálogo = Juan de Valdés, Diálogo de doctrina cristiana, in Valdés, Two Catechisms, pp. 131–249. Valdés, Diálogo (ed. Bataillon) = Juan de Valdés, Diálogo de doctrina cristiana, reproducido en fac-similé de l’exemplaire de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Lisbonne (edition d’Alcalá de Henares de 1529) avec une introduction et des notes par Marcel Bataillon (Coimbra: Imprensa de Universidade, 1925). Valdés, Diálogo de la lengua = Juan de Valdés, Diálogo de la lengua, ed. José F. Montesinos (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976; 6th edition). Valdés, Diálogo de las cosas = Alfonso de Valdés, Diálogo de las cosas occurridas en Roma, ed. José F. Montesinos (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1928). Valdés, Dimande = Juan de Valdés, Dimande et risposte, in Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 115–69. Valdés, Due dialoghi = Alfonso de Valdés, Due dialoghi. Traduzione italiana del sec. XVI, ed. Giuseppe De Gennaro (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1968). Valdés, La epístola de san Pablo = Juan de Valdés, La epístola de san Pablo a los Romanos i la I. a los Corintios. Ambas traducidas i comentadas por Juan de Valdés [ed. Luis Usoz y Río (Madrid]: 1856).

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Valdés, Lettera = Juan de Valdés, Lettera sopra i movimenti dello spirito, in Marchetti, Un’epistola inedita, pp. 513–18. Valdés, Matteo = Juan de Valdés, Lo evangelio di san Matteo, ed. Carlo Ossola, testo critico di Anna Maria Cavallarin (Roma: Bulzoni, 1985). Valdés, Predestinazione = Juan de Valdés, Della predestinatione, della gratia et libero arbitrio, della fede et de l’opere, in Valdés, Alfabeto, pp. 173–82. Valdés, Romanos = Juan de Valdés, La epístola de san Pablo, pp. XXX–305. Valdés, Salmos = Juan de Valdés, Comentario a los Salmos, ed. Manuel Carrasco (Madrid: Librería nacional y extranjera, 1885). Valdés, Salterio = Juan de Valdés, Diálogo de doctrina cristiana y el Salterio traducido del hebreo en romance castellano, ed. Domingo Ricart (México: Universidad nacional autónoma de México, 1964), pp. 131–364. Valdés, Trataditos = Juan de Valdés, Trataditos, ed. Eduard Boehmer (Bonn: Imprenta de Carlos Georgi, 1880). Valdés, Trattatelli = Juan de Valdés, Sul principio della dottrina cristiana. Cinque trattatelli evangelici, ed. Eduard Boehemer (Halle sulla Sala: Georg Schwabe, 1870). Valdés, Two Catechisms = Juan de Valdés, Two Catechisms: The “Dialogue on Christian Doctrine” and the “Christian Instruction for Children”, ed. by José C. Nieto. Translated by William B. and Carol D. Jones, ([Lawrence, KS]: Coronado Press, 1981). Valentini, Il principe fanciullo = Filippo Valentini, Il principe fanciullo. Trattato inedito dedicato a Renata ed Ercole II d’Este, ed. Lucia Felici (Firenze: Olshki, 2000). Vanni, “Fare diligente inquisitione” = Andrea Vanni, “Fare diligente inquisitione”. Gian Pietro Carafa e le origini dei chierici regolari teatini (Roma: Viella, 2010). Varchi, Opere = Benedetto Varchi, Opere, ed. Antonio Racheli (2 vols, Trieste-Milano: Lloyd Austriaco-E. Treves editore, 1858–1859). Varchi, Storia fiorentina = Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina (Colonia [Florence]: Pietro Martello, 1721). Vasoli, Il processo per eresia = Cesare Vasoli, Il processo per eresia di Oddo Quarto da Monopoli, in Domenico Cofano (ed.), Monopoli nell’età del Rinascimento (Monopoli: 1988), pp. 569–624. [Vergerio], Giudicio = [Pier Paolo Vergerio], Giudicio sopra le lettere di tredeci huomini illustri pubblicate da M. Dionigi Atanagi et stampate in Venetia nell’anno 1554 (s.l.: 1555). [Vergerio], Il catalogo de’ libri = [Pier Paolo Vergerio], Il catalogo de’ libri li quali nuovamente nel mese di maggio nell’anno presente 1549 sono stati condannati et scomunicati per heretici da M. Giovan Della

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Casa, legato di Vinetia, et d’alcuni frati. È aggiunto sopra il medesimo catalogo un iudicio et discorso del Vergerio (s.l.: [1549]). Vettori, Sommario = Alfredo Reumont (ed.), Sommario della storia d’Italia dal 1511 al 1527 composto da Francesco Vettori, Archivio storico italiano, 6 (1848), pp. 261–387. Vianello, Il letterato = Valerio Vianello, Il letterato, l’Accademia, il libro. Contributi sulla cultura veneta del Cinquecento (Padova: Antenore, 1988). Wagner, Constantino Ponce de la Fuente = Klaus Wagner, Constantino Ponce de la Fuente. El hombre y su biblioteca (Sevilla: Diputación provincial, 1979). Welti, Breve storia = Manfred Welti, Breve storia della Riforma italiana (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1985). Wiffen, The Life = Benjamin B. Wiffen, The Life and Writings of Juan de Valdés, otherwise Valdesso, Spanish Reformer in the Sixteenth Century. With a Translation from the Italian of his Hundred and Ten Considerations (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1865). Zaggia, Tra Mantova e la Sicilia = Massimo Zaggia, Tra Mantova e la Sicilia nel Cinquecento (3 vols, Firenze: Olschki, 2003). Zarri, Caterina Cibo = Gabriella Zarri, Caterina Cibo duchessa di Camerino, in Letizia Arcangeli, Susanna Peyronel (eds.), Donne di potere nel Rinascimento (Roma: Viella, 2008, pp. 535–74. Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella = Ester Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella nel Cinquecento (Padova: Rebellato, 1971). Zonta, Francesco Negri = Giuseppe Zonta, Francesco Negri l’eretico e la sua tragedia “Il libero arbitrio”, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 34 (1916), nn. 200–201, pp. 265–324; nn. 202–203, pp. 108– 60.

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Index Abellán, José Luis 13 Abenante, Ottavio 38, 117 Abenante, Pierantonio 38 Abraham 57 Accolti, Benedetto, Cardinal 28, 31, 33–4 Adam 43, 57, 196 Addante, Luca xiii, 41, 66, 90, 110, 118, 139–40, 178, 180–5, 187–91 Adorni Braccesi, Simonetta 88, 139 Aconcio, Giacomo 191 Alba, Pedro de 17, 22 Albéri, Eugenio 79, 168 Alcaraz, Pedro see Ruiz de Alcaraz, Pedro Alciati, Gian Paolo 79, 192 Alcor, Archdeacon of see Fernández, Alfonso Aleandro, Girolamo, Cardinal 68–9, 77, 108, 127, 166 Alessandria, Nicola d’ 181–2, 187 Alessio, Antonio d’ 80 Alexander VI, Pope 86 Algieri, Pomponio 73 Alighieri, Dante 35 Alitto, Giovanni de 110 Al Kalak, Matteo 98, 100–101, 103 Alois, Giovan Francesco 38, 131–2, 138 Alonge, Guillaume, 127 Altieri, Baldassarre 76, 159 Álvarez de Toledo, Juan, Cardinal 92 Álvarez de Toledo, Pedro, Viceroy of Naples 30–31 Amabile, Luigi 90, 178 Amante, Bruto 36 Amaseo, Romolo 70 Ambrosini, Francesca 68, 71–3 Amsdorf, Nikolaus von 67 Andrea da Volterra see Ghetti Andrea Andreasi, Marsilio 70

Andrés Martín, Melquíades 10–13, 16, 18, 37 Angelo da Crema 160 Anghiera, Pietro Martire d’ 8 Anisio, Giano 137 Antonio da Bozzolo, 110 Antonio de Guevara 200 Aragón, Isabel de 37 Arborio da Gattinara, Mercurino, Cardinal 6–7 Aretino, Pietro 126 Aretius Felinus see Bucer, Martin Ariosto, Ludovico 36, 60 Armand Hugon, Augusto 105 Arnolfini, family 89 Arnolfini, Niccolò 89 Arquer, Sigismondo 91 Asensio, Eugenio 12 Aspe Ansa, María Paz 21 Asperti, Omobono 160 Aubert, Alberto 2, 138 Augustine, Saint 60, 115, 136, 148 Avalos, Alfonso d’ 109, 147 Avalos Piccolomini, Costanza 37 Avilés, Fernández Miguel 7 Bacon, Robert 205–6 Badia, Tommaso, Cardinal 2, 44, 62, 128, 144–6, 151 Bagnatori, Giuseppe 28–9 Bainton, Roland 109 Bakhuizen van den Brink, Jan N. 199–203 Balbani, Niccolò 38, 89, 184, 199 Bargellesi, Niccolò 150 Baridon, Silvio F. 200 Baronio, Cesare, Cardinal 176 Barracco, Alfonso 38 Barracco, Mario 38 Barrera, Fernando de la 5 Barsanti, Paolo 139 Bartoccio, Bartolomeo 79

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Bartoli, Bernardo 99, 148, 152–3 Bartoli, Cosimo 86 Bartolomé de Miranda see Carranza, Bartolomè Bartolomeo della Pergola 99, 102, 107 Basalù, Giulio 177, 181, 188 Bataillon, Marcel 6–7, 1–12, 17–19, 21–3, 25–6, 29–30, 32, 51, 141, 199 Bates, Richard xiii Báthory, Stephen, see Stephen Báthory, King of Transylvania (later of Poland) Bavella, Tommaso 113 Beccadelli Ludovico 77, 166 Bedoya, Gaspar de 10, 13–14, 20, 28 Belial 171 Belladonna, Rita 66 Bellarmino, Roberto, Cardinal see Robert Bellarmino, Saint Belligni, Eleonora 83, 112 Bellinchetti, Francesco 162 Bembo, family 71 Bembo, Pietro, Cardinal 2, 35, 64, 70, 74, 109, 127, 137, 157 Benedetto del Borgo see Borgo, Benedetto del Benedetto da Mantova see Fontanini Benedetto Benrath, Karl 132, 147 Berengo, Marino 88–9, 139 Bergomozzi, Giovanni 99, 103, 113 Bernardino da Siena see Ochino, Bernardino Bernaudo, Consalvo 38, 179–80 Berni, Francesco 128 Bertano, Pietro, Cardinal 166 Bertari, Giovanni 95–6 Bertazzi Nizzola, Laura 81 Berti, Domenico 137, 177, 179 Beteta, Luis de 13, 20, 27 Bèze, Théodore de 200–203 Biagetti, Stefania viii Bianchi, Tommasino de’ (Lancillotti) 94, 98, 117, 125 Bianco, Cesare 98, 100–101, 103 Bianco, Giovanni Tommaso 179

Biancolini, Giovanni 103 Biandrata, Giorgio 79, 187, 192, 203 Bietenholz, Peter G. 65 Biferali, Fabrizio 82, 123, 172 Bindoni, Bernardino de’ 148 Biondi, Albano 51, 142 Bivar, Rodrigo de 14–15, 20, 27–8, 37 Black, Christopher ix Bobadilla, Nicolás Alfonso xi, 138 Boccaccio, Giovanni 35 Bodin, Jean 78 Boeglin, Michel 21 Bohemer, Eduard 31, 197 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 128 Boillet, Élise 67 Bonamico, Lazzaro 70 Bonfadio, Iacopo 38–9, 58, 137, 141 Bonifacio, Giovanni Bernardino 38, 177, 191 Bonnet, Jules vii Bonomo, Pietro 75 Borgo, Benedetto del 181–2, 187 Borromeo, Carlo, Cardinal see Charles Borromeo, Saint Bozza, Tommaso 42, 50, 119, 147 Braida, Ludovica 64 Bramante, Donato 60 Brancaccio, Ferrante 38 Bravi, Giulio Orazio 75 Brenz, Johannes 159 Bresciani, Pietro 81, 191, 195 Breseño, Isabella 177, 179 Briçonnet, Guillaume 127 Briesemeister, Dietrich 28 Brigantino, Giuliano 106 Britannico, family 74 Bronzino, Agnolo 87 Brown, George K. 70, 80 Brucioli, Antonio viii, 64, 66, 69, 82, 85, 148, 164 Brunelli, Giampiero, 172 Bruno, Giordano 78, 176 Buccella, Niccolò 191 Bucer, Martin 61, 76, 83–4, 86, 99, 108, 114, 117, 143, 159, 203 Bugenhagen, Johannes 18 Bullinger, Heinrich 106, 203

IndeX

Bunes Ibarra, Miguel Ángel de 10 Buonagrazia, Girolamo 85 Buonarroti, Michelangelo 172 Burlamacchi, family 89 Busale, Bruno 181, 197 Busale, Girolamo 179–81, 183–5, 187, 189–90, 197, 201, 203 Busale, Matteo 181, 197 Buschbell, Gottfried 71, 76–7, 82, 92, 103, 129, 172 Buzio, Giovanni 83 Caballero, Fermín 6–9, 12, 15–16, 30–31 Cabianca, Domenico 62 Caccamo, Domenico 63, 189 Cairns, Christopher 64 Calandra, Endimio xi, 32, 81, 92, 140 Calandrini, family 89 Calvin, John 60–61, 82, 87, 91, 93, 99, 106, 119–20, 140, 142, 170, 178, 190, 192–3, 195, 197, 200, 202–203 Calvini, Crisostomo 194, Cameron, Euan 155 Camillo Renato see Renato, Camillo Camogli, Niccolò 191 Camorana, Francesco 99 Campanella, Tommaso 176 Campeggi, Lorenzo, Cardinal 166 Campi, Emidio 110 Canal, Marcantonio da 72 Cano, Melchor 15–16 Canossa, Ludovico 127–8 Cantimori, Delio ix–x, 62, 116, 140, 171, 173, 189, 194–5 Capece, Girolamo 180 Capece, Scipione 38, 180 Capodistria, Bishop of see Vergerio, Pier Paolo Caponetto, Salvatore vii, 39, 65, 67, 69, 76, 82, 86, 90, 92, 112, 129, 139 Caracciolo, Galeazzo 38, 144, 177, 180, 184, 199, 202 Caracciolo, Nicola Maria 138 Carafa, family 38

251

Carafa, Gian Pietro, Cardinal see Paul IV, Pope Caravale, Giorgio xiii, 2, 66, 74, 110 Cardenas, Leonardo de 38 Carduino, Cesare 38, 177, 179 Carli Piccolomini, Bartolomeo 65–6, 248 Carnesecchi, Pietro xi, 32, 38, 58, 86, 120, 131–6, 138–9, 141–2, 143, 145, 148–9, 151, 155, 159, 172–3, 175, 177–8, 198, 100, 107 Carranza, Bartolomé 15, 120–21, 140, 198–9 Carranza, Sancho 26, 140 Carrete Parondo, José Manuel 13–15, 19–20, 27, 29 Casadei, Alfredo 179 Caserta (il), see Alois, Giovan Francesco Caserta, Nello 137 Castellán, Ángel 137, 140 Castellio, Sebastian 184, 190, 201 Castelvetro, Ludovico 67, 95, 100– 101, 103, 157 Castiglione, Baldassarre 7, 9 Castignoli, Pietro 80 Castillo, Diego del 18, 20 Castillo, Juan del 13, 18, 20, 27, 29 Catarino, Ambrogio see Politi, Ambrogio Catarino Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France see Medici Valois, Catherine de’ Caula, Marco 99 Cavalli, Ambrogio 72, 82, 105–106 Cavazza, Silvano 63, 75, 142, 148, 197 Cavazzuti, Giuseppe 94 Cazalla, Juan de 11, 14, 28 Cazalla, María de 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 25, 27–8, 37 Celsi, Mino viii, 65, 191 Cerretani, Bartolomeo 85 Cervini, Marcello, Cardinal see Marcellus II, Pope Chabod, Federico 60–61, 80, 91, 106, 109, 183

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Charles Borromeo, Saint 103, 120, 129, 165, 176 Charles V of Hapsburg, Emperor 6–7, 9–10, 28–35, 93, 109, 143, 165–8 Charles I Stuart, King of England 205 Chastel, André 123 Chiari, Isidoro (da) see Cucchi, Isidoro Chizzola, Ippolito 74, 110 Church, Frederic Cross viii Cibo Varano, Caterina, Duchess of Camerino 31, 87, 139 Cingano, Giuseppe 182 Cione, Edmondo 42–51, 53–55, 196, 200 Cioni, Fabio 87 Cisneros, Francisco Ximénez de see Ximénez de Cisneros, Francisco, Cardinal Citarella, Tobia 181 Citolini, Alessandro 64 Civa, Pellegrino 100 Clario, Giovanni Antonio 9 Clement VII, Pope 9, 28, 30–31, 70, 77, 86, 104, 123, 127–8, 131, 166 Cobos, Francisco de los 30, 32, 34 Cogelius Coricius see Zwingli, Huldreych Collett, Barry 110, 195 Colonna, family 82 Colonna, Ascanio 38, 169 Colonna, Vespasiano 33 Colonna d’Avalos, Vittoria 37–38, 109, 144, 152, 155, 169, 174, 199 Colti, Alvise de’ 182 Comba, Emilio vii Comin da Trino 148 Comparato, Vittor Ivo 106 Contarini, Francesco 71 Contarini, Gasparo, Cardinal 2–3, 62, 78, 97–9, 127, 130–31, 143, 144, 146–7, 149–51, 154, 166, 174 Corner, Carlo 72 Corro, Antonio del 203

Cortese, Gregorio, Cardinal 2, 71, 97, 127–8, 146, 148 Cortini, Gian Franco 84 Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence (later Grand Duke of Tuscany) 86, 167 Costantini, Enea 28 Cota, Martín 13 Cozzi, Gaetano 68, 78 Crell, Jan 206 Crews, Daniel A. 6, 31–2, 34, 137 Crispoldi, Tullio 128–30 Croce, Benedetto 31, 34, 141 Cruz, Isabel de la 10–16, 18, 20, 26–8, 37, 44 Cucchi, Isidoro 194–5 Curione, Celio Secondo 37, 76, 78, 84, 89, 99, 104, 112, 142, 147, 149, 177–8, 184, 191, 193, 198, 200–202, 207 Curioni, Pietro 99 Cynarski, Stanisław 186 Dal Fosso, Gaspare 110 Dall’Olio, Guido 83–4 Dantiscus, Johannes 31 Da Passano, Giovanni Gioacchino 73 Da Passano della Frattina, Isabella 73 Da Ponte, Andrea 72 Da Ponte, Niccolò 72 David, King of Israel 39 De Frede, Carlo 61, 73, 90, 108, 136, 148 Degli Ottoni, Luciano 110, 194 Del Caccia, Alessandro 86 Del Col, Andrea 67–8 Del Monte, Giovanni Maria, Cardinal see Julius III, Pope Della Casa, Giovanni 77, 150 Della Giustina, Lisa 64 Della Rovere, Giulio 71, 83, 105, 159, 195 Della Sega, Francesco 188–9 Della Torre, Francesco 128 Della Torre, Girolamo 128 Delph, Ronald K. 61 Di Brazzano, Stefano 75

IndeX

Di Capua, Pietro Antonio 38, 138, 142, 166–7 Di Filippo Bareggi, Claudia 64 Diodati, Giovanni 89 Dionisotti, Carlo 63 Dolce, Ludovico 64 Domandi, Mario 59 Domenichi, Ludovico 64, 86 Domingo de Santa Teresa 30, 41, 141, 199 Dominic, Saint 103 Donà, Francesco 76 Doni, Agostino 190 Doni, Anton Francesco 64, 86 Donald, Dorothy 6–8, 29, 31 Dueñas Martínez, Antonio 204 Duncan, Edmund 205 Eguía, Diego de 28 Eguía, Miguel de 14, 20–22, 27–8 Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy 79 Emo, Francesco 72 England, Cardinal of see Pole, Reginald Enríquez, Fadrique, Admiral of Castile 20, 37 Enzinas, Diego de 92 Enzinas, Francisco de 9, 17 Erasmus, Desiderius 5, 7–10, 12, 17–19, 22–6, 29–30, 35, 39, 49, 51, 60–61, 63, 65, 67, 70, 73–4, 83, 85, 87, 93, 99, 106, 112, 115–6, 126, 148, 178, 180, 191, 199, 203 Este, family 82–3 Este, Duke of see Hercules II, Duke of Este Eusebio Renato 83 Eve, 186 Faceti, Gian Pietro 160 Falloppia, Gabriele 95, 113 Fanini, Fanino 85 Farnese, Alessandro, Cardinal 112 Farnese, Pier Luigi see Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza

253

Felici, Lucia 91, 112 Fenlon, Dermot 142, 155 Ferdinand I of Hapsburg, Emperor 166, 168 Ferigo, Giorgio 75 Ferlin Malavasi, Stefania 66 Ferlito, Girolamo 91 Fermo, Saint 161 Fernández, Alfonso 7, 35 Fernández, Luis 13, 21 Fernández Álvarez, Manuel 167 Ferrar, Nicholas 203–205 Ferrara, Duchess of see Valois d’Este, Renée Ferrara, Duke of see Hercules II of Este Fieschi, Giacomo 79 Filalete, Giorgio see Giorgio Filalete Fileno, Lisia see Renato, Camillo Finucci, Girolamo 161 Firpo, Massimo ix, xi, 40, 60, 63–3, 68–9, 75, 82, 87, 91, 95, 99–101, 119, 123–5, 132, 134, 138, 141–5, 148, 154, 162–3, 172, 174–5, 190, 197, 199, 201, 204 Firpo, Paolo 159 Fita, Fidel 21 Flacius Illyricus, Matthias see Matthias Flacius Illyricus Flaminio, Cesare 159 Flaminio, Marcantonio 3–5, 58, 70, 120, 128, 130–37, 139, 141–4, 146–54, 158–9, 169–71, 178, 195, 198 Florimonte, Galeazzo 128 Florio, Michelangelo 90 Fonseca, Alfonso de 26 Fontaine, Michelle M. 61, 100 Fontana, Bartolommeo 28, 30, 61, 67, 72, 75, 77, 82–3, 98 Fontanini, Benedetto 4–5, 91, 110, 118–20, 139, 149–51, 194 Fonzio, Bartolomeo 70, 99, 102, 107–108, 113, 193 Foscarari, Egidio 100 Foscarini, family 71

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JUan de ValdÉs and the Italian Reformation

Fournel, Jean–Louis 65 Fracastoro, Girolamo 128 Fragnito, Gigliola 64, 66, 86, 127, 142, 147 Franceschina, Venetian woman 68 Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan 80 Franchino, Carlo 159 Francis of Paola, Saint 110 Francis de Sales, Saint 205 Francis I of Valois, King of France 9, 33, 66 Franco, Niccolò 64 Frattina, Isabella see Da Passano della Frattina, Isabella Fregoso, Federico, Cardinal 2, 61, 82, 127–8, 148, 151, 199 Fregoso, Ottaviano 127 Freschi, Renato 70–71 Froben, Johannes 61 Fumano, Adamo 128 Gabriele, Trifone 70 Gadaldino, Antonio 94, 101, 113, 153 Gaeta, Franco 68–9, 75 Gaismayr, Michael 181 Galateo, Girolamo 70–71, 76, 84, 107 Galeota, Mario 38, 136–8, 144 Gallo, Nicola 91 Gandolfi, Emiliano 89 Garapina see Pellotti, Bernardino García Pinilla, Ignacio 21 Gardi, Andrea 138 Gastaldi, Ugo 182, 185 Gattinara, Mercurino da see Arborio da Gattinara, Mercurino, Cardinal Gentile, Valentino x, 91, 139, 177, 190, 192, 203, 206 Gerdes, Daniel vii Gheri, Cosimo 70 Gherlandi, Giulio 188 Ghetti, Andrea 106–107 Ghislieri Michele, Cardinal see Pius V, Pope, Saint Giacometto “stringaro”, anabaptist 182 Giannetti, Guido 76, 157

Giberti, Gian Matteo 72, 128–9, 141, 147, 154, 158, 164 Gilly, Carlos 23, 25, 197 Giner, Severino 27 Ginzburg, Carlo xi, xii, 51, 64, 83, 114, 182–5, 194–5 Giombi, Samuele 62 Giorgio Filalete 18 Giorgio Siculo see Siculo, Giorgio Giovanni da Fano see Pili, Giovanni Giovan Francesco da Asola 160 Giovan Francesco da Bagnacavallo see Vacca, Giovan Francesco Giovan Francesco da Pontremoli 100 Giovio, Paolo 123, 126 Girardi, Giovanni (Jean Girard) 79 Girardi, Maria Teresa 64 Girolamo da Milano 191 Giulio da Milano see Della Rovere, Giulio Gleason, Elisabeth G. 127 Godman, Peter ix Goñi Gaztambide, José 20, 22, 27 Gonzaga, Ercole, Cardinal 31–6, 59, 74, 76, 81, 91, 106–107, 147, 149, 166–7, 175, 194 Gonzaga, Ferrante 81, 90, 138, 143 Gonzaga Guglielmo see Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua Gonzaga Colonna, Giulia 33–6, 39– 40, 43, 46, 51, 81, 131, 133, 136–8, 141, 143–4, 174, 187 Gonzaga Della Rovere, Eleonora 82 González Novalín, José Luis 11, 18, 21, 26 González Palencia, Ángel 10 Gorin, Adrien 201–203, 206–207 Gracián de Alderete, Diego 18, 22, 26 Granada, Luis de see Luis de Granada Grataroli, Guglielmo 162 Graziani, Giacomo 99, 103 Grechetto (il) see Zannettini, Dionigi Greco, Francesco see Porto, Francesco Grendler, Paul F. 64 Gribaldi, Matteo 183, 191, 193, 203 Grillenzoni, Giovanni 95 Grimani, Giovanni 72, 167, 173

IndeX

Grisonio, Annibale 76, 157 Gropper, Johann, Cardinal 164 Guevara, Antonio de see Antonio de Guevara Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua 175 Guicciardini, Francesco 59, 77, 85 Guicciardini, Ludovico 124 Guidiccioni, Bartolomeo, Cardinal 88 Guidiccioni, Giovanni 88 Guidubaldo II Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino 82 Hamilton, Alastair 11–15, 18, 20, 26–7, 44, 201, 206–207 Hapsburg, family 167 Hapsburg Farnese, Margaret see Margaret of Austria (Parma) Headley, John M. 6 Herbert of Cherbury, Edward 204 Herbert, George 204–205 Hercules II of Este, Duke of Ferrara 66, 82, 98, 101, 105, 113, 194 Henry VIII Tudor, King of England 104, 128 Henry IV of Valois, King of France 200 Hernández, Diego 28 Hernández, Francisca 10, 15, 19–20, 26–7, 37 Hesse, Landgrave of, see Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse Hoffman, Melchior 206 Homza, Lu Ann 11, 14, 16 Hudon, William V. 156 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego 10, 37 Ignatius of Loyola, Saint 21, 96, 203 Infantado, Duke of see López de Mendoza y Pimentel, Iñigo Ingoni, Bartolomeo 99 Ippofilo da Terranegra see Melanchthon, Philip Isabel I of Castile, Queen of Spain 6 Italiano, Gianmario 156

Jacobson Schutte, Anne 64, 67, 75, 149, 156 Jalla, Giovanni 78–9 Jamet, Lyon 82 Jedin, Hubert 156 Jerome, Saint 20 Jezabel 92 Jiménez Monteserín, Miguel 6 John, Evangelist 36, 190 John of Leiden 206 Joris, David 184, 201, 206 Joseph, Saint 185–6 Juan de Villafranca see Villafranca, Juan de Julius III, Pope 4, 142, 163, 174 Kampen, Johann van 128 Kerquefinen, Claude de 200 Kinder, Gordon A. 6, 198 Knox, John 203 Kosuta, Léo 65 Kutter, Markus 112 Laínez, Diego 96 Lampridio, Benedetto 70 Lancillotti, Tommasino see Bianchi Tommasino de’ Lando, Ortensio 36, 64, 129 Lang, Matthäus, Cardinal 31 Lanzoni, Francesco 84 Laud, William 205 Laureto, Giovanni 179–80, 187 Lázaro, Elena 6–8, 29, 31 Lazise, Paolo 89 Lazzerini, Luigi 60 Lefèvre d’Etaples, Jacques 20 Leo X, Pope 35, 128 Leonardo da Vinci 60 Lerma, Pedro de 27 Lino, Alberto 128 Lippomano, Alvise 62, 72, 77, 103 Lisia Fileno see Renato, Camillo Llorca, Bernardino 12 Llorente, Juan Antonio 29 Locke, John 192

255

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JUan de ValdÉs and the Italian Reformation

Longhurst, John E. 6, 8–9, 11–12, 14–15, 18–21, 25–7, 28–30, 32, 124 Lopez, Pasquale xi, 90, 136, 138–9, 143–4, 180 López de Celaín, Juan 18, 20, 27–8, 37 López de Husillos, Diego 18, 20, 27 López de Mendoza y Pimentel, Iñigo, Duke of the Infantado 28, 37 López Muñoz, Tomás 19 López Pacheco, Diego, Marquis of Villena 10, 17, 24, 27 Loyola, Ignatius of see Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Loredan, Antonio 72 Lorenzi, Roberto Andrea 74 Lotto, Lorenzo 69, 172 Lucena, Gaspar de 27–8 Lucena, Petronila de 27–8 Luis de Granada 200 Lunardi, Fileno 83 Lupetino, Baldo 75 Luther, Martin vii, 4, 8, 11–12, 16–20, 22–3, 25, 27, 43, 49, 59–61, 63, 67–9, 76–80, 84–6, 89, 92– 3, 104–105, 108, 111, 114–8, 123, 125, 127, 133, 135, 140, 143, 159, 168, 178, 203 Luzio, Alessandro 126, 147 McClung Hallman, Barbara ix McCrie, Thomas vii Machella, Niccolò 95 Machiavelli, Niccolò 59 McNair, Philip 110, 139 Madonia, Claudio 194 Madruzzo, Cristoforo, Cardinal 105–106, 148, 166, 194 Maggi, Vincenzo 74 Mai, Miguel 30 Mainardi, Agostino 99, 104–105 Maldonado, Juan 7, 12 Malipiero, Alvise 72 Malipiero, Giacomo, 72 Maluenda, Luis 12 Mancino, Michele ix, 165

Manelfi, Pietro 110, 182–5, 187–8, 191 Manna, Ludovico 91, 177 Manrique, García 179 Manrique de Lara, Alfonso, Cardinal 7, 11, 20, 26–7 Manrique de Lara, Antonio, Duke of Nájera 37 Manrique de Lara, Juan 37 Mantua, Cardinal of see Gonzaga Ercole Mantua, Duke of see Guglielmo Gonzaga Maranello (il) see Tagliadi, Giovanni Maria Marcatto, Dario 134, 138, 143–4, 172 Marcello, family 71 Marcellus II, Pope 2, 4, 82, 119, 156, 167 Marchesi, Vincenzo 162 Marchetti, Valerio 65, 87–8 Margaret of Austria (Parma), Duchess of Parma and Piacenza 104 Margaret of Valois see Valois Margaret of, Duchess of Savoy Márquez, Antonio 11–17, 41, 51, 197 Marot, Clement 82 Martelli, Braccio 156 Martin, John Jeffries 61, 68 Martinengo, Celso Massimiliano 74, 110 Martínez de Bujanda, Jesus 30, 150, 199 Mary, mother of Jesus Christ 177, 179, 181, 185, 194 Mary Tudor, Queen of England x, 174 Maselli, Domenico 195 Massimi, Massimo 69 Matteo d’Aversa 180 Matthew, Evangelist 40, 94, 143 Matthias Flacius Illyricus 78 Maturo, Bartolomeo 80 Maximilian II of Hapsburg, Emperor 166 Maycock, Alan L. 203, 205 Mayer, Thomas F. 143, 155–6, Mazzacurati, Giancarlo 65

IndeX

Mazzarelli, Domenico 73 Medici, family 85, 87–8, 123 Medici, Cosimo I de’ see Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence Medici, Giulio de’, Cardinal see Clement VII, Pope Medici Valois, Catherine de’, Queen of France 198 Medrano, Antonio de 13, 21, 28, 37 Melanchthon, Philip 4, 22, 61, 67–8, 78–9, 84, 92, 95, 99, 106, 114, 159, 203 Mele, Eugenio 10 Mendoza, Brianda de 37 Menegazzo, Emilio 139, 141 Menniti Ippolito, Antonio ix Mercurino da Gattinara, Cardinal see Arborio da Gattinara, Mercurino Merenda, Apollonio 138, 141, 143, 149, 151, 177 Meseguer Fernández, Juan 28, 31 Miccoli, Giovanni 78, 156, 172–3 Michelangelo see Buonarroti, Michelangelo Micheli, family 89 Miele, Michele 139 Mignanelli, Fabio, Cardinal 71, 148 Minadois, Germano 31 Minadois, Giovanni Tommaso 31, 141 Minutoli, family 89 Mocenigo, family 71 Mocenigo, Alvise 72 Molza, family 95 Mongini, Guido 101 Montesinos, José F. 31, 33–4, 36 Monti, Pompeo delli 38 Morandi, Giambattista 166 Morato, Fulvio Pellegrino 64, 82 Morato, Olimpia 82 More, Thomas see Thomas More, Saint Moriconi, Pierluigi 139 Morillo, Juan 155, 198 Morón Arroyo, Ciriaco 13 Morone, Giovanni, Cardinal xi, 2–3, 92, 94–5, 97, 99, 102, 112,

257

120, 141–2, 145–7, 151–4, 156, 165–7, 169, 171, 174–5, 179, 207 Morreale, Margherita 22 Moses186 Mozzato, Pietro 156 Münster, Sebastian 178 Müntzer, Thomas 206 Muhammad 60 Murphy, Paul V. 81 Museo, Agostino 87 Nacchianti, Iacopo 72, 156 Nájera, Duke of see Manrique de Lara, Antonio Narno, Saint 161 Navagero, Bernardo, Cardinal 168, 175 Negri, Francesco 1, 72, 85, 110, 155, 169, 171, 173, 178, 195 Nerli, Reginaldo 128, 154 Newton, Isaac 192 Niclaes, Hendrik 201, 206 Nicola d’Alessandria see Alessandria, Nicola d’ Niccoli, Ottavia 61, 129 Niccolò da Verona 105 Nicolini, Benedetto 136, 141 Nieto, José C. 6, 11–12, 18, 21, 25, 41, 140, 143, 197 Noah 57 Ocaña, Francisco de 10 Ochino, Bernardino x, 1, 3, 34, 58, 62, 64, 71, 87, 90, 92, 96, 99, 109, 111, 129, 131–3, 137–9, 141, 146–8, 151, 159, 177, 180, 190, 199, 201–203, 206 Oddoni, Giovan Angelo 83 Oecolampadius, Johannes 18, 22, 61, 86 Oldenburg, Anne of 202 Olivari, Michele 11–12 Olivieri, Achille 64, 69, 73, 107, 110, 183 Olmillos, Juan de 10 O’Malley, John ix, 92

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JUan de ValdÉs and the Italian Reformation

Omobono da Cremona see Asperti, Omobono Ormanetto, Niccolò 128 Orsini, family 92 Orsini, Camillo 38, 74, 169, 172–3, 195 Ortega Costa, Milagros 11–15, 17, 21, 25, 27, 53 Ortiz, Francesco 10, 13, 21, 27, 28, 37 Ortolani, Ottone 132 Ossola, Carlo 23 Osuna, Francisco de 10 Ottoni, Luciano degli see Degli Ottoni, Luciano Pagano, Sergio xi, 32, 69, 81, 92, 102–103, 140, 147, 175 Paleario, Aonio 65, 70, 87–8 Pallavicino, Giambattista 104 Panciatichi, Bartolomeo 86 Panfilo, Pietro 82 Paolin, Giovanna 189 Paolo da Campogalliano 100 Parisotto see Faceti Gian Pietro Paruta, Niccolò 190 Pascal, Arturo 78 Pascali, Giulio Cesare 91 Paschini, Pio 64, 69, 141, 183 Pascual, Mateo 27, 29, 32 Pasino da Carpenedolo 159 Pasqualigo, Andrea 71 Pasquino 126 Pastore, Alessandro 3, 82, 142, 143 Pastore, Stefania xiii, 10–11, 20–22, 29 Patrizi, Gian Giorgio 188, 191 Paul, Saint 11, 18, 39, 49–50, 56, 60, 61, 69, 72, 111, 115–16, 128, 131, 137, 143, 147, 155, 173, 184, 186, 199 Paul III, Pope 2–3, 32–3, 92, 127, 146, 167 Paul IV, Pope 2, 59, 70, 101, 107, 126–7, 129, 142, 146, 156, 163, 165, 167–8, 174–5, 200 Paul V, Pope 66 Paz y Mélia, Antonio 18

Pedro de Toledo see Álvarez de Toledo, Pedro Pellegrini, Iacopo 154 Pellikan, Konrad 106 Pellizzari, family 73 Pellotti, Bernardino 99 Pérez, Joseph 12 Pérez de Pineda, Juan 38, 155, 198, 207 Pérez Escohotado, Javier 13–14 Pergola, Bartolomeo della see Bartolomeo della Pergola Perna, Pietro 159, 191 Pesaro, Bernardo 71 Peter, Saint 129, 141 Peyronel Rambaldi, Susanna viii, 36, 61, 66, 91, 95–6, 100–101, 105–106, 115 Petrarca, Francesco 35 Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse 94 Philip II of Hapsburg, King of Spain 21, 167–8, 174, 199 Piccolomini, Paolo 71 Pico Rangoni, Lucrezia 95 Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza 104 Pierce, Robert A. 75 Pietro Martire d’Anghiera see Anghiera, Pietro Martire d’ Pigafetta, family 73 Pili, Giovanni 63, 83 Pirri, Pietro 86 Pius IV, Pope 120, 175 Pius V, Pope, Saint 110, 165, 175 Pole, Reginald, Cardinal x–xi, 2–4, 70, 120–21, 128, 141–7, 149–52, 154–6, 158, 165–9, 171–74, 194–5, 198–9, 207 Politi, Ambrogio Catarino 1–4, 63, 87, 100, 107, 118–20, 154 Pommier, Edouard 68, 179, 181, 187–8 Ponce de la Fuente, Constantino 20–21 Pontormo, Iacopo 87, 172, 197 Porta, Egidio della 80 Porto, family 73 Porto Francesco 95, 98, 112–13

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Pozzo, Ambrogio da 181 Prelowski, Ruth 4 Priego, Count of see Suárez de Figueroa, Lorenzo Priuli, Alvise 70, 133, 141, 144, 150, 152, 169, 198 Prodi, Paolo viii Prosperi, Adriano ix, xi–xii, 40, 62–4, 67, 91, 110, 128–9, 147, 149, 192–3, 195 Pucci, Francesco 176, 191 Quarto, Oddo 74 Quistelli, Ambrogio 72 Quiñones, Francisco de, Cardinal 37 Ragnoni, Lattanzio 65, 137, 141, 177 Rangoni, family 95 Rangoni, Fulvio 95 Rangoni, Giovanni 102–103 Rangoni, Lucrezia see Pico Rangoni, Lucrezia Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) 60, 123 Ravenna, cardinal of see Accolti, Benedetto Redondo, Augustín 18 Reeves, Marjorie 124 Renato, Camillo viii, x, 95, 183, 191–2 Renato, Eusebio see Eusebio Renato Renato, Francesco 180, 191 Renda, Francesco 90 Renée of France see Valois d’Este, Renée Revuelta Sanudo, Manuel 13 Reynolds, Barbara 36 Rhegius, Urbanus 105, 142 Rheo, Reprigone see Castelvetro, Ludovico Ribera Perafán (Pedro Afán) de, Viceroy of Naples 138 Ricart, Domingo 41, 197, 199, 201, 203–204, 206–207 Ricasoli, Bernardo 87 Ricci, Paolo see Renato Camillo Ricciardi, Annalisa 9 Riccio, Pier Francesco 86, 151

259

Ridolfi, Niccolò, Cardinal 141 Righi, Roberto 64 Rioli, Giorgio see Siculo, Giorgio Rizzetto, Antonio 188 Robert Bellarmino, Saint 92, 176 Rocca, Domenico 113–14 Rogers, Daniel 203 Romano, Lorenzo 90, 138 Romeo, Giovanni ix, 136, 139, 165 Rosa, Mario ix Rosello, Lucio Paolo 68 Rosi, Michele 79 Rotondò, Antonio x, 51, 135, 192 Rozzo, Ugo 105–106 Rufino, capuchin friar 159 Ruiz de Alcaraz, Pedro 1–11, 13, 15–16, 18, 20, 24–8, 37, 44, 53 Ruiz Sánchez, Brianda 179 Rullo, Donato 58, 137, 141–2 Russell, Camilla 36 Rustico, Saint 161 Rutherford, Samuel 206 Sadoleto, family 95 Sadoleto, Giulio 103 Sadoleto Iacopo, Cardinal 2, 127, 151 Saldaña, Countess of 37 Salmerón, Alfonso 99 Salvo, Carmen 139 Samuels, Richard S. 65 Sánchez, Juan 199 Sandonnini, Ludovico 94 Sanfelice, Giovanni Tommaso 156 Sangro, Placido de 38 Sanseverino, family 138 Sanseverino, Ferrante 38, 131 Santoro, Leonardo 125 Santosuosso, Antonio 142 Sanudo, Marino 61 Sarpi, Paolo 78 Sassi, Panfilo 66 Sauli Da Passano, Caterina 73 Savonarola, Girolamo 1, 39, 60 Scaramella, Pierroberto 90, 110, 131, 139 Schäfer, Ernst 199 Schwenckfeldt, Kaspar 190, 206

260

JUan de ValdÉs and the Italian Reformation

Scotti, Giovan Battista 113–15, 148, 151, 154, 157 Scudieri, Francesco 74 Segre, Arturo 33–4 Seidel Menchi, Silvana ix, 23, 39, 67–8, 71, 83, 85, 108, 115–17 Selke, Angela 12–13, 15, 20, 27, 44, 51 Senneton, Claude 200 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de 30 Seripando, Girolamo, Cardinal 92, 105–107, 130–31, 145, 175 Serrano y Sanz, Manuel 10, 14–15, 17, 19–20, 26, 32 Servet, Miguel ix, 183, 190–91, 203 Sesso, Carlo di 199 Sforza, Francesco see Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan Sforza, Giovanni 77 Siculo, Giorgio 91, 110, 192–5, 199 Sighizzi, Francesco 96 Sigibaldi, Giovanni Domenico 94–96 Simler, Josias 38, 199 Simoncelli, Paolo 60, 62, 64–5, 67, 78, 84, 109, 142–3, 171, 175 Simons, Menno 206 Solmi, Edmondo 89, 147, 149 Soranzo, Vittore 32, 58, 72, 74, 135, 137, 141, 143–5, 156–65, 171, 173 Sozzini, Fausto 88, 186, 190 Sozzini, Lelio x, 87, 170, 190, 203, 206 Sozzini, Mariano 87 Spadafora, Bartolomeo 90, 139 Spalatin, Georg 67 Speciale, Pietro 73 Spender, Barbara xiii Spiera, Francesco 73, 192–3 Spinazzola, Girolamo 111 Spini, Giorgio 67, 85, 91 Spivakovski, Erika 10 Stafileo, Giovanni 124 Staring, Adrianus 104 Stephen Báthory, King of Transylvania (later of Poland) 191

Stella, Aldo 73, 76, 149, 178–81, 183, 187–9, 191 Strozzi, Francesco, apostate friar 142 Suárez de Figueroa, Lorenzo, Count of Priego 10 Tacchella, Lorenzo 105 Tacchi Venturi, Pietro 71, 74, 84, 92, 104, 106, 109 Tagliadi, Giovanni Maria 99 Talavera, Hernando de 22 Tedeschi, John A. viii, x Teggia, Girolamo 95 Tegli, Silvestro 191 Telesio, Bernardino 38 Telesio, Valerio 38 Tellechea Idígoras, José Ignacio 15, 119, 140, 142, 198–9 Terrazzano, Giovanni 100 Thiene, family 73 Thiene, Giulio 73 Thiene, Odoardo 182 Tiepolo, family 71 Thomas More, Saint 32 Tiziano, anabaptist 181–2, 185, 187 Tizzano, Lorenzo 137, 177, 179–80, 184, 187–8 Tolomei, Lattanzio 130 Tomitano, Bernardino 65 Tommaso da Carpenedolo 160 Torelli, Lelio 86 Torrentino, Lorenzo 86 Tovar, Bernardino de 13–14, 17–19, 21, 25, 27–9 Tremelli, Emanuele 89 Trissino, family 73 Trissino, Alessandro 73 Trissino, Giangiorgio 64 Trissino, Giulio 64 Turchetto (il) see Giorgio Filalete Turrettini, family 89 Turriani, Girolamo 191 Uceda, Diego de 26 Ugoni, Andrea 74 Usoz y Río, Luis 207

IndeX

Vacca, Giovan Francesco 100, 107, 191 Valdés, Alfonso de 6–10, 25–6, 28–31, 124, 148, 167 Valdés, Andrés de 5–6 Valdés, Diego de 9, 31 Valdés, Fernando de 5, 199 Valentini, Bonifacio 95–96, 101 Valentini, Filippo 94–5, 98, 100–101, 103, 171 Valois d’Este, Renée, Duchess of Ferrara 82–3, 85, 98, 105, 107, 112 Valois Margaret of, Duchess of Savoy 79 Vanni, Andrea 127, 146 Varchi, Benedetto 65, 86–7, 124 Varotta, Marcantonio 189 Vasoli, Cesare 74 Vasto, Marquis of see Avalos Alfonso d’ Verdura, Giovan Francesco 138 Vergerio, Pier Paolo 62, 72, 75–6, 81, 147, 149, 155–6, 159, 169, 171, 174, 193, 198 Vermigli, Pier Martire 86, 89, 109, 131, 133, 146–7, 149, 151, 177, 199, 202–203

261

Vettori, Francesco 124 Villafranca, Juan de 178–81, 184, 188, 190, 197 Vianello, Valerio 65 Villamarina, Marcantonio 141, 179–80 Villena, Marquis of see López Pacheco, Diego, Marquis of Villena Voltaire, François–Marie Arouet 192 Wagner, Klaus 21 Welti, Manfred 90 Wiffen, Benjamin B. 207 Ximénez de Cisneros, Francisco, Cardinal 6, 11–12 Zaccaria da Fivizzano 69 Zaggia, Massimo 90 Zanchi, Girolamo 75 Zannettini, Dionigi 103, 129, 156, 172 Zantani, Andrea 72, 105 Zarri, Gabriella 139 Zille, Ester 73, 78, 107 Zonta, Giuseppe 67, 110 Zorrilla, Alfonso 92 Zwingli, Huldreych 61, 78, 80, 84, 112, 114, 179, 203