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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2009
Luigi Lippomano was a deeply worried man. He had heard that Lutheran ideas were being debated openly in Verona—even in such inappropriate places as “the piazzas, the workshops, the taverns, and even the women's washrooms.” As bishop of Verona, responsible for the city's spiritual health, he feared that he would see the city reduced to outright heresy. He felt increasingly stymied, watching his flock “become more corrupted every day” from inappropriate books and conversation, the “idle chatter of a few gossips.” And so, at a certain point, he had had enough. “How can I … stay silent,” he asked, “cross my hands, close my eyes, shut my ears, and act like a mute dog that cannot growl?” The result of his frustration and fury was a series of publications seeking to block the perceived threat of Protestant infiltration.
2 Quotations in this paragraph come from the unpaginated dedicatory letter in Luigi Lippomano's Confirmatione et stabilimento di tutti li dogmi catholici, con la subversione di tutti i fondamenti, motivi, & ragioni delli moderni heretici fino al numero 482 (Venice, 1554). All translations by the author, unless otherwise indicated.
3 Girolamo Seripando also uses this expression in the Istruzione he presented, unsuccessfully, to the Council of Trent in 1546. See Marranzini, Alfredo, Ministero episcopale del Cardinale Girolamo Seripando nell’ arcidiocesi di Salerno (1554–1563) (Salerno: Elea, 1993)Google Scholar.
4 Ditchfield, Simon, “In Search of Local Knowledge: Rewriting Early Modern Italian Religious History,” Cristianesimo nella storia 19:2 (1998)Google Scholar.
5 This was especially pronounced in Italy, where vernacular Bible translations were forbidden. See Fragnito, Gigliola, La Bibbia al rogo: La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scritura, 1471–1605 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997)Google Scholar, and Proibito capire: La Chiesa e il volgare nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005).
6 Roberto Rusconi writes, for example, “nel lungo arco di tempo che separava i due decreti conciliari molte cose erano cambiate nelle correnti riformatrici: erano mutati i protagonisti, erano scoparsi i rappresentanti dell'evangelismo e dell'umanesimo cristiano, che insistevano per promuovere una predicazione realmente fondata sull'esposizione della Scrittura e in particulare del Vangelo”: Rusconi, Roberto, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix–xviii),” in Storia d’Italia, Annali (Torino: 1981), 1000Google Scholar.
7 For the sake of convenience, I will refer to “dioceses” and “parishioners.” Dioceses could include wealthy areas and educated, elite laymen, but this study will focus on the attention given to the uneducated laity through preaching.
8 For issues of rhetoric in Italian preaching in Latin, see O'Malley, John, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, and McGinness, Frederick, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For rhetorical styles in Italian, see Bolzoni, Lina, “Oratoria e prediche,” in Letteratura Italiana, ed. Rosa, Alberto Asor (Torino: Einaudi, 1984)Google Scholar, Delcorno, Carlo, “Forme della predicazione cattolica fra cinque e seicento,” in Cultura d’ élite e cultura popolare nell’ arco alpino fra cinque e seicento, ed. Besomi, Ottavio and Caruso, Carlo (Boston: Mirkhaeuser Verlag, 1995)Google Scholar, and Giombi, Samuele, “Dinamiche della predicazione cinquecentesca tra forma retorica e normativa religiosa: Le istruzioni episcopali ai predicatori,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 13:1 (1992)Google Scholar. Important English-language studies include McManamon, John, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and the collected articles in O'Malley, John, Religious Culture in the Sixteenth Century, Collected Studies Series (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1993)Google Scholar. For Catholic preaching during the early modern period, see Worcester, Thomas, “The Catholic Sermon,” in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Taylor, Larissa Juliet (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 3–34Google Scholar, and, in the same volume, Corrie Norman, “The Social History of Preaching,” 125–191.
9 Lettera, unpaginated, preceding Book II, Espositioni Volgare del Reverendissimo Monsignor Luigi Lippomano vescovo di Modone, et Coadiutore di Bergamo. Opera catholica & utilissima ad ogni Christiano (Venice, 1541).
10 In 1538 Lippomano was named coadjutor of Bergamo with the right of succession to his cousin, Pietro Lippomano. At the same time, he was also named titular bishop of Methone, in Greece, then under Turkish control. When Pietro was transferred to the episcopate of Verona in 1544, following the death of Gian Matteo Giberti, Luigi followed him. Five years later he succeeded his cousin as bishop. He held that position until 1558, when Paul IV transferred him back to Bergamo. For more information, see Alberigo, Giuseppe, I vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento (Florence: 1959)Google Scholar, and Jedin, Hubert, Il Geschichte Des Konzils Von Trient, trans. Graf, Ernest, 2 vols. (St. Louis: B. Herner, 1957)Google Scholar. Alberigo's information is updated and revised in Tachella, Lorenzo, Il processo agli eretici veronesi nel 1550: S. Ignazio di Loyola e Luigi Lippomano (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979)Google Scholar. Tachella also reprints much of the original documentation for Lippomano's biography and much of Lippomano's correspondence. For a more recent biographical profile of Lippomano, see Simoni, Pino, Luigi Lippomano, vescovo e nunzio apostolico del cinquecento: Profilo bio-biografico (Verona: Archivio Storico Curia Diocesana, 1993)Google Scholar. For his theological development, see Logan, Oliver, The Venetian Upper Clergy in the 16th and Early 17th Centuries: A Study in Religious Culture (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1996)Google Scholar. Both Alberigo and Tachella emphasize that Lippomano's direct experience with heresy strongly influenced his pastoral work.
11 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, A.A. Arm. I–xVIII, vol. 6527, f. 91, quoted in Tachella, Il processo agli eretici veronesi nel 1550: S. Ignazio di Loyola e Luigi Lippomano, 15.
12 For a detailed account of the trip to Germany, see Jedin, Il Geschichte Des Konzils Von Trient. In 1555 Julius III sent Lippomano to Poland, where again Lippomano despaired at the growth of heresy and at the internal divisions plaguing the Catholic Church. For documents relating to his time in Poland, see Wojtyska, H. D., ed., Aloisius Lippomanus (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum, Fundatio Lanckoronski, 1993)Google Scholar.
13 This binary thesis is most closely associated with Massimo Firpo. See, for example, Firpo, Massimo, Inquisizione romana e controriforma: Studi sul Cardinal Giovanni Morone e il suo processo d’ eresia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992)Google Scholar. For other examples, see Prosperi, Adriano, Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G. M. Giberti (1495–1543) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969)Google Scholar or Coletti, Vittorio, Parole dal pulpito: Chiesa e movimenti religiosi tra latino e volgare nell’ Italia del medioevo e del rinascimento (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983)Google Scholar.
14 William Hudon describes the persistence of this model in late twentieth-century scholarship. See Hudon, William, “The Papacy in the Age of Reform, 1513–1644,” in Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O'Malley, S.J., ed. Comerford, Kathleen M. and Pabel, Hilmar M. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Bowd, Stephen, Reform before the Reformation: Vicenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar, and, for the period before 1550 especially, Overell, Anne, Italian Reform and English Reformations, c. 1535–c. 1585 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar.
15 Prosperi, Tra Evangelismo, Logan, The Venetian Upper Clergy. These positions may all derive from Giuseppe Alberigo's assessment of Lippomano in I Vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento, 84–88.
16 Giberti's works are best known through Adriano Prosperi's analyses. Prosperi sees Giberti as an example of what the church should have done—emphasized a message of love and positive reinforcement of Catholic behavior—and contrasts Giberti with later reformers whose approach he deems repressive and defensively anti-heretical. In addition to the biography cited above, see also Prosperi, Adriano, “Di alcuni testi per il clero nell'Italia del primo cinquecento,” Critica Storica 7:2 (1968)Google Scholar.
17 Tachella, Il Processo Agli Eretici Veronesi Nel 1550.
18 Ibid.
19 Aleni, Paolo, Argomenti che debbono essere predicati da tutti i predicatori della parola divina nella prossima Quaresima in tutta la città e diocesi di Verona, reprinted in Guerrini, Paolo, “L'opera Riformatrice di un vicario generale di Verona nel biennio 1552–53,” Il Concilio di Trento: Rivista commemorativa del IV centinario 2 (1942): 199Google Scholar, and translated in Rusconi, Roberto, ed., Predicazione e vita religiosa nella società religiosa (Torino: Loescher, 1981), 309–312Google Scholar.
20 Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix–xviii),” 997–998; Prosperi, “Di alcuni testi per il clero nell'Italia del primo cinquecento,” 158.
21 In the same year that Aleni wrote his treatise, Lippomano wrote him a letter from Trent regarding that year's Lenten preaching. “I am very relieved to hear that the preachers did not misbehave,” he said, “but if they all behaved well, why should we be content that they did not say anything bad, if they said nothing good?”: Guerrini, “L'opera riformatrice,” 195. He tells Aleni to start keeping track of local Lutherans. Lippomano's guiding hand reveals itself in Aleni's interest in heresy.
22 Aleni, Argomenti, in Rusconi, Predicazione e vita religiosa nella società religiosa, 312.
23 “Praeter ea etiam quae a sacris Bibliorum litteris continentur milta a Christo et Apostolis tradita esse ostendant et ad nos per manus Episcoporum et aliorum recipienda quam quae ipsis sacris litteris expressa videmus”: Guerrini, “L'opera Riformatrice,” 199. The argument that Church traditions predated or were of equal weight with scripture was held for centuries but became newly relevant in the face of sixteenth-century Protestant challenges.
24 For more information on all three of these men in a Veronese context, see Pighi, G. B., Cenni storici sulla chiesa veronese (Verona: Archivio storico Curio Vescovele, 1987), II:198–218Google Scholar and III; Appendice, 18–17); Federici, Luigi, Elogi istorici dei piu illiustri ecclesiastici veronesi (Verona: Tipografia Romanzini, 1818), II:23–50Google Scholar; Cartolari, Antonio, Cenni sopra varie famiglie illustri di Verona (Verona: I Vicentii e Franchini, 1855); 1–6Google Scholar; Maffei, Scipione, Verona illustrata (Milan: Società Tipografica de Classici Italiani, 1825), 397Google Scholar.
25 Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p. Unless otherwise specified, dedicatory letters are written by the book's author.
26 Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 65, 243–246.
27 Between mid-century and the end of the council of Trent, at least four other preachers produced similar vernacular theological treatises, none as popular as Lippomano's. They form a subset within Italian vernacular religious literature and polemical works against Protestants (in Latin or Italian). These fields are too vast to be discussed here, but, for an introduction, see Schutte, Anne Jacobson, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465–1550: A Finding List, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance 194 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1983)Google Scholar, as well as Wicks, Jared, “Roman Reactions to Luther: The First Year (1518),” Catholic Historical Review 69 (October 1983)Google Scholar; Bagchi, David V. N., Luther's Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–1525 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991)Google Scholar; and Delph, Ronald K., “From Venetian Visitor to Curial Humanist: The Development of Agostino Steuco's ‘Counter’-Reformation Thought,” Renaissance Quarterly 47:1 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 The teaching of controversial “difficilia fidei”—in particular, justification, free will, grace, and predestination—were hotly debated. Gasparo Contarini, who wrote two treatises on preaching, and Tommaso Badia, master of the Sacred Palace and the overseer of all sermons delivered to the pope, wanted to restrict their teaching to learned audiences. Others, such as Gian Matteo Giberti and the preacher Agostino Museo, argued that laypeople could be taught correct doctrine based on scripture. Contarini criticized Museo for having discussed predestination in a public sermon in 1537. See Giombi, “Dinamiche della predicazione.” The standard medieval position on this issue can be found in ST, 2a.2ae, qu. 10, ar. 7, where Aquinas explains that heresy should be discussed publicly only if it had already been introduced into a population or parish.
29 Lippomano's book bears some debt to Latin treatises against heresy. While it does not follow the structure of early polemical works such as those of Irenaeus and Tertullian, it resembles more recent works of Catholic polemic. Alfonso de Castro's Adversus omnes haereses [1539] also begins with broad definitions and descriptions of heresy in the first of its 14 books, emphasizing the misinterpretation of scripture, but treats its subjects alphabetically rather than thematically. It appeared in four Italian editions between 1545 and 1555.
30 Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p.
31 The development of Italic type, intended to emulate Italian vernacular handwriting, was originally used independently of Roman type. Only in the second quarter of the century did printers adopt it to create distinctions within a text: Chappell, Warren, A Short History of the Printed Word (Vancouver: Harley & Marks, 1999)Google Scholar; Twyman, , The British Library Guide to Printing History and Techniques (London: The British Library, 1998)Google Scholar. The only other Catholic author from this period to take this risk was the Englishman John Gwynneth, whose treatise from the same year, “A declaracion [sic] of the state wherin all heretics do lead their lives,” was set up as a Catholic-Protestant dialogue, with the speakers marked “Catholic” and “Heretic.” Yet even Gwynneth's work did not separate the opinions by paragraph, as Lippomano does, or by typeface; Gwynneth used the same gothic typeface for his whole work: Gwynneth, John, A Declaration of the State wherein all Heretics Do Lead their Lives, London, 1554Google Scholar.
32 Other theologians—Ambrogio Catarino Politi, for example—employed a “state-and-refute” approach, but never for a genre that claims to appeal to the laity and the ignorant: See Compedio d'errori et inganni luterani (1564).
33 Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p.
34 Lippomano, like many Catholics, feared that Protestant ideas were spreading through books and must therefore be refuted by them. Such an attitude reflects a shift from the earliest Catholic assumption that sermons were the primary vehicle of new doctrine. In a sermon from 1539, Cornelio Musso laments the spread of heresy through preaching: “pur è nel mondo, ove si nomina Christo, che quasi per tutto si predicano l'heresie, che in vece di grano si semina loglio: che molti falsi predicatori homai communemente son fatti seduttori”: Cornelio Musso, I tre libri delle prediche II:3, 121–122. Modern scholars confirm this assessment; see Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix–xviii),” 987–988.
35 Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p.
36 Confirmatione et stabilimento, 46r.
37 Confirmatione et stabilimento, 46v.
38 Such views on vernacular translations predate the Protestant threat; arguments about the difficulty of scripture derive from Augustine, and also appeared in the sermons of elite mendicant preachers of the era.
39 Confirmatione et stabilimento, 49.
40 Confirmatione et stabilimento, 48v, 50v.
41 Waterworth, J., trans. and ed., The Council of Trent: The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent (London: Dolman, 1848)Google Scholar.
42 Sermoni overo homelie devote del Reverendo M. Giovanni del Bene veronese sopra gli Evangelii di tutto l'anno, secondo l'ordine della Santa Madre Chiesa, utili ad ogni fedel Christiano (Venice, 1562).
43 For an overview of the model sermon genre between 1470 and 1520, see Thayer, Anne T., Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)Google Scholar.
44 Dedicatory letter by Nicolo del Bene, unpaginated, Sermoni overo Homelie Devote del Reverendo M. Giovanni del Bene Veronese sopra gli Evangelii di tutto l'anno, secondo l'ordine della Santa Madre Chiesa, utili ad ogni fedel Christiano (Venice, 1562).
45 Del Bene also includes sermons for special Masses, such as church dedications, feast days, or the office of the dead. If a feast day is missing, he sends the reader to another as a substitute.
46 Long before and long after the Reformation, the Catholic Church produced standard lectionaries with scriptural selections for preaching, in the vernacular, organized according to the liturgical year, usually called Epistole et Evangelii in Italian. Del Bene's sermons include much more rudimentary explanation than is typical for the genre. Remigio Fiorentino's 1567 edition of the Epistole et Evangelii, for example, includes personal annotations on each sermon but does not provide basic definitions, as does, Del Bene. Epistolae et Evagelii [sic] che si leggono tutto l'anno alla Messa, secondo l'uso della Santa Romana Chiesa, nuovamente tradotti in lingua toscana dal R.P.M.R. Remigio Fiornetino (Venice, 1567)Google Scholar.
47 Sermoni, 263r.
48 See Westervelt, Benjamin Wood, “The Prodigal Son at Santa Justina: The Homily in the Borromean Reform of Pastoral Preaching,” Sixteenth Century Journal 32:1 (Spring 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Sermoni, 1r.
50 Sermoni, 10r.
51 Sermoni, 171r–v. This style of verse-by-verse would be adopted in a more widespread way because of the lectureships in scripture instituted by the council of Trent.
52 Sermoni, 60v–61r.
53 Biblical translations were illegal in Italy and suggesting them was increasingly dangerous, especially after the establishment of the Roman Inquisition.
54 Dedicatory letter, Sermoni ovvero Homelie.
55 Sermoni del Reverendo Luigi Lippomano coadiutore di Bergamo sopra tutte le principali feste dell'anno (Rome, 1541).
56 Espositioni Volgare del Reveren. M. Luigi Lippomano … Sopra il Simbolo Apostolico cioè il credo, sopra il Pater nostro, e sopra i dua precetti della charita, etc. (Venice, 1541). The work was republished five more times over the next thirty years. It employs an exegetical format, devoting each espositione to the explanation of a particular phrase, but substitutes the texts of the prayers for the texts of scripture. Roberto Rusconi identifies this development in more elite sermons later in the century: see Rusconi, ed., Predicazione e vita religiosa nella società religiosa. The Franciscan preacher Franceschino Visdomini published a similar volume of devotional readings for nuns 25 years later that corroborates Lippomano's approach. Although his Discorsi follow the gospel texts of the liturgical year, they too emphasize devotion over the teaching of scripture. Visdomini uses far fewer references to scripture than Lippomano does. Echoing Lippomano's prayer-centered approach, Visdomini only engages in line-by-line exegesis once, explicating a prayer that the nuns would have recited for that feast day: Discorsi Morali sopra gli evangelii correnti (Venice, 1566).
57 Sermoni, 95.
58 Sermoni, 96. For changes in preaching styles from the fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, see Delcorno, “Dal ‘Sermo Modernus’ alla retorica ‘Borromea’”: Delcorno, Carlo, “Rassegna di studi sulla predicazione medievale e umanistica,” Lettere italiane 33 (1981)Google Scholar; Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix–xviii)”; and Bolzoni, “Oratoria e prediche.”
59 Respectively, that prayer is unnecessary and that the soul flies directly to heaven; he does not associate these positions with Protestant thought.
60 “Ognuno che non ha lettere, et anchora chi ne ha, ma non vuole fatica, o non degna leggere i libri sacri”: Espositioni, 3r.
61 Espositioni, 121r.
62 “Ricordati di far (p.ma futura) tutto quelle (prediche), cioe dodici prediche sopra i 12 articoli … sette sopra i setti sacramentiti … dieci sopra i divini comandamenti della legge, duo sopra l'amor e charita di dio”: These notes appear in the edition possessed by the Library of Congress Rare Book Room (BT70.L57 1541).
63 For the clergy, Lippomano published his Greek and Latin biblical commentaries and a collection of saints' lives. As Lippomano points out in his introduction to his Genesis commentary, clergy were supposed to study scripture and to own at least one devout book. In these works, Lippomano pays attention to all four forms of biblical interpretation, shows a marked preference for allegory, and freely discusses Hebrew etymology in his own commentaries. (See his Catena in Genesim ex authoribus ecclesiasticis plus minus sexaginta, iisque partim Graecis, partim Latinis, connexa [Paris, 1546].) Oliver Logan mentions that Lippomano's efforts to help the clergy were probably unsuccessful; with 24 commentaries (including his own), they were too dense and unwieldy for any printing press in Italy, and would have been an intellectual and financial burden for many: Logan, The Venetian Upper Clergy, 184–185 and 204 n. 36.