CHAPTER VIII. The Counter-Reformation

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

SECTION 1. ITALY

It is sometimes so easy to see, after the event, why things should have taken just the course they did take, that it may seem remarkable that political foresight is so rare. It is probable, however, that the study of history not only illumines many things, and places them in their true perspective, but also tends to simplify too much, overemphasizing, to our minds, the elements that finally triumphed and casting those that succumbed into the shadow.

However this may be, Italy of the sixteenth century appears to offer an unusually clear case of a logical sequence of effects due to previously ascertainable causes. That Italy should toy with the Reformation without accepting it, that she should finally suppress it and along with it much of her own spiritual life, seems to be entirely due to her geographical, political and cultural condition at the time when she felt the impact of the new ideas.

In all these respects, indeed, there was something that might at first blush have seemed favorable to the Lutheran revolt. Few lands were more open to German and Swiss influences than was their transalpine neighbor. Commercially, Italy and Germany were united by a thousand bonds, and a constant influx of northern travellers, students, artists, officials and soldiers, might be supposed to carry with them the contagion of the new ideas. Again, the lack of political unity might be supposed, as in Germany, so in Italy, {372} to facilitate sectional reformation. Finally, the Renaissance, with its unparalleled freedom of thought and its strong anti-clerical bias, would at least insure a fair hearing for innovations in doctrine and ecclesiastical ideals.

And yet, as even contemporaries saw, there were some things which weighed far more heavily in the scale of Catholicism than did those just mentioned in the scale of Protestantism. In the first place the autonomy of the political divisions was more apparent than real. Too weak and too disunited to offer resistance to any strong foreign power, contended for by the three greatest, Italy became gradually more and more a Spanish dependency. After Pavia [Sidenote: 1525] and the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis [Sidenote: 1529] French influence was reduced to a threat rather than a reality. Naples had long been an appendage of the Spanish crown; Milan was now wrested from the French, and one after another most of the smaller states passed into Spain's "sphere of influence." The strongest of all the states, the papal dominions, became in reality, if not nominally, a dependency of the emperor after the sack of Rome. [Sidenote: 1527] Tuscany, Savoy and Venetia maintained a semblance of independence, but Savoy was at that time hardly Italian. Venice had passed the zenith of her power, and Florence, even under her brilliant Duke Cosimo de' Medici [Sidenote: Cosimo de' Medici, 1537-1574] was amenable to the pressure of the Spanish soldier and the Spanish priest.

Enormous odds were thrown against the Reformers because Italy was the seat of the papacy. In spite of all hatred of Roman morals and in spite of all distrust of Roman doctrine, this was a source of pride and of advantage of the whole country. As long as tribute flowed from all Western Europe, as long as kings and emperors kissed the pontiff's toe, Rome was still in a sense the capital of Christendom. An example of how {373} the papacy was both served and despised has been left us by the Florentine statesman and historian [Sidenote: Guiccidardini, 1483-1540] Guiccidardini: "So much evil cannot be said of the Roman curia," he wrote, "that more does not deserve to be said of it, for it is an infamy, an example of all the shame and wickedness of the world." He might have been supposed to be ready to support any enemy of such an institution, but what does he say?

No man dislikes more than do I the ambition, avarice and effeminacy of the priests, not only because these vices are hateful in themselves but because they are especially unbecoming to men who have vowed a life dependent upon God. . . . Nevertheless, my employment with several popes has forced me to desire their greatness for my own advantage. But for this consideration I should have loved Luther like myself, not to free myself from the silly laws of Christianity as commonly understood, but to put this gang of criminals under restraint, so that they might live either without vices or without power.

From this precious text we learn much of the inner history of contemporary Italy. As far as the Italian mind was liberated in religion it was atheistic, as far as it was reforming it went no further than rejection of the hierarchy. The enemies to be dreaded by Rome were, as the poet Luigi Alamanni wrote, [Sidenote: Alamanni, 1495-1556] not Luther and Germany, but her own sloth, drunkenness, avarice, ambition, sensuality and gluttony.

The great spiritual factor that defeated Protestantism in Italy was not Catholicism but the Renaissance. [Sidenote: Renaissance vs. Reformation] Deeply imbued with the tincture of classical learning, naturally speculative and tolerant, the Italian mind had already advanced, in its best representatives, far beyond the intellectual stage of the Reformers. The hostility of the Renaissance to the Reformation was a deep and subtle antithesis of the interests of this world {374} and of the next. It is notable that whereas some philosophical minds, like that of the brilliant Olympia Morata, who had once been completely skeptical, later came under the influence of Luther, there was not one artist of the first rank, not one of the greatest poets, that seems to have been in the least attracted by him. A few minor poets, like Folengo, [Sidenote: Folengo, 1491-1544] showed traces of his influence, but Ariosto and Tasso were bitterly hostile. [Sidenote: Ariosto, 1531] The former cared only for his fantastic world of chivalry and faery, and when he did mention, in a satire dedicated to Bembo, that Friar Martin had become a heretic as Nicoletto had become an infidel, the reason in both cases is that they had overstrained their intellects in the study of metaphysical theology, "because when the mind soars up to see God it is no wonder that, it falls down sometimes blind and confused." Heresy he elsewhere pictures as a devastating monster.

{375} But there was a third reason why the Reformation could not succeed in Italy, and that was that it could not catch the ear of the common people. If for the churchman it was a heresy, and for the free-thinker a superstition, for the "general public" of ordinarily educated persons it was an aristocratic fad. Those who did embrace its doctrines and read its books, and they were not a few of the second-rate humanists, cherished it as their fathers had cherished the neo-Platonism of Pico della Mirandola, as an esoteric philosophy. So little inclined were they to bring their faith to the people that they preferred to translate the Bible into better Greek or classical Latin rather than into the vulgar Tuscan. And just at the moment when it seemed as if a popular movement of some sort might result from the efforts of the Reformers, or in spite of them, came the Roman Inquisition and nipped the budding plant.

But between the levels of the greatest intellectual leaders and that of the illiterate masses, there was a surprising number of groups of men and women more or less tinctured with the doctrines of the north. And yet, even here, one must add that their religion was seldom pure Lutheranism or Calvinism; it was Christianized humanism. There was the brilliant woman Vittoria Colonna, who read with rapture the doctrine of justification by faith, but who remained a conforming Catholic all her life. There was Ochino, the general of the Capuchins, whose defection caused a panic at Rome but who remained, nevertheless, an independent rather than an orthodox Protestant. Of like quality were Peter Martyr Vermigli, an exile for his faith, and Jerome Bolsec, a native of France but an inhabitant of Ferrara, whence he took to Geneva an eccentric doctrine that caused much trouble to Calvin. Finally, it was perfectly in accordance with the Italian genius that the most radical of Protestant dissenters, the unitarians Lelio and Fausto Sozzini, should have been born in Siena.

Among the little nests of Lutherans or Christian mystics the most important were at Venice, Ferrara and Naples. As early as 1519 Luther's books found their way to Venice, and in 1525 one of the leading canon lawyers in the city wrote an elaborate refutation of them, together with a letter to the Reformer himself, informing him that his act of burning the papal decretals was worse than that of Judas in betraying, or of Pilate in crucifying, Christ. The first sufferer for the new religion was Jerome Galateo. [Sidenote: 1530] Nevertheless, the new church waxed strong, and many were executed for their opinions. A correspondence of the brethren with Bucer and Luther has been preserved. In one letter they deeply deplore the schisms on the doctrine of the eucharist as hurtful to their cause. The {376} famous artist Lorenzo Lotto [Sidenote: 1540] was employed to paint pictures of Luther and his wife, probably copies of Cranach. The appearance of the Socinians about 1550, and the mutual animosity of the several sects, including the Anabaptist, was destructive. Probably more fatal was the disaster of the Schmalkaldic war and the complete triumph of the emperor. The Inquisition finished the work of crushing out what remained of the new doctrines.

That Naples became a focus of Protestantism was due mainly to John de Valdes, a deeply religious Spaniard. From his circle went out a treatise on justification entitled The Benefit of Christ's Death, by Benedict of Mantua, of which no less than 40,000 copies were sold, for it was the one reforming work to enjoy popularity rivalling that of Luther and Erasmus. Influenced by Valdes, also, Bartholomew Forzio translated Luther's Address to the German Nobility into Italian.

At the court of Ferrara the duchess, Renee de France, gathered a little circle of Protestants. Calvin himself spent some time here, and his influence, together with the high protection of his patroness, made the place a fulcrum against Rome. Isabella d'Este, originally of Ferrara and later Marchioness of Mantua, one of the brilliant women of the Renaissance, for a while toyed with the fashionable theology. Cardinal Bembo saw at her castle at Mantua paintings of Erasmus and Luther. [Sidenote: 1537] One of the courtly poets of Northern Italy, Francis Berni, bears witness to the good repute of the Protestants. In his Rifacimento of Boiardo's Orlando Inamorato, he wrote: "Some rascal hypocrites snarl between their teeth, 'Freethinker! Lutheran!' but Lutheran means, you know, good Christian."

The most significant sign of the times, and the most ominous for the papacy, was that among those affected by the leaven of Lutheranism were many of the leading {377} luminaries in the bosom of the church. That the Florentine chronicler Bartholomew Cerratani expressed his hope that Luther's distinguished morals, piety and learning should reform the curia was bad enough; that the papal nuncio Vergerio, after being sent on a mission to Wittenberg, should go over to the enemy, was worse; that cardinals like Contarini and Pole should preach justification by faith and concede much that the Protestants asked, was worst of all. "No one now passes at Rome," wrote Peter Anthony Bandini about 1540, "as a cultivated man or a good courtier who does not harbor some heretical opinions." Paul Sarpi, the eminent historian of Trent, reports that Luther's arguments were held to be unanswerable at Rome, but that he was resisted in order that authority might be uphold. For this statement he appeals to a diary of Francis Chieregato, an eminent ecclesiastic who died on December 6, 1539. As the diary has not been found, Lord Acton rejects the assertion, believing that Sarpi's word cannot be taken unsupported. But a curious confirmation of Sarpi's assertion, [Sidenote: Sarpi's assertion] and one that renders it acceptable, is found in Luther's table talk. Speaking on February 22, 1538, he says that he has heard from Rome that it was there believed to be impossible to refute him until St. Paul had been deposed. Ho regarded this as a signal testimony to the truth of his doctrines; to us it is valuable only as an evidence of Roman opinion. It is not too much to say that at about that time the most distinguished Italian prelates were steering for Wittenberg and threatened to take Rome with them. How they failed is the history of the Counter-reformation.