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Agostino Valier and the Conceptual Basis of the Catholic Reformation*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
The influence of Agostino Valier on the theoretical formulations behind the Catholic Reformation and on its practical reforms is little known. There are reasons for this lack of recognition. Unlike Robert Bellarmine and Caesar Baronius, his illustrious contemporaries, he did not leave behind one or two great works on which the eyes of the Catholic and non-Catholic worlds were fixed. Unlike them, he was not in the center of major theological or historical controversies. From behind the scenes, he exerted a quiet, consistent influence on Catholic intellectual life and reforms over half a century. Much of his impact was the result of his personal contacts with his wide circle of friends, church leaders, and secular rulers of Europe, for whom individually he prepared short treatises concerning major issues confronting them. There were many such treatises. In 1719 Josephus Caminus listed one hundred twenty-eight such titles in his edition of Valier's book De cautione adhibenda in edendis libris which he published in Venice.
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References
1 Valier, Agostino, Augustini Valerii Patricti Veneti… De cautione adhibenda in edendis libris (Padua: Caminus, 1719) xxiii–xxviiiGoogle Scholar. This list was compiled with the help of Josephus Antonius Saxus, prefect of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. No distinction is made in the list between printed works and manuscripts or between works in Latin and works in the vernacular.
2 Valier, Agostino, Vita e morte di S. Carlo Borromeo… Commentarius de consolatione ecclesiae ad Ascanium Card. Columnam libri VI (Quos auspice Sanctissimo Domino Nostro Pio Papa Sexto ex ejusdem privatae Bibliotecae Apographo nunc primum edidit, et scholiis auxit Hyacinthus Ponzetti a Sacris Domus Pontificalis; Rome: apud Lazarinos, 1795).Google Scholar
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8 Council of Trent, Decretum de reformatione, canon 2.
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12 Carlo Borromeo's motion is reported in Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Miscell. Arm. XII 146, p. 149.
13 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Cons. Acta Miscell. 19, pp. 344—46.
14 In a letter to his priests in 1589, Valier explained how he imitated Giberti throughout his administration. See the appendix of Bellerini, P. in J. Matteo Giberti, Opera Omnia (Ostiglia: n.p., 1740) 153Google Scholar.
15 Valier's short handbook, Libeììus congregationum sacerdotum semel in mensefaciendarum, a copy of which can be found in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, was in fact a loosely constructed agenda for these monthly meetings.
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26 Ibid.
27 Tacchella and Tacchella cite (Ibid., 82-83) contemporary reports; for example, Archbishop Alberto Valier, nephew and successor of Agostino Valier, reported on the occasion of his ad limina visit to Rome in 1607 about the contentment of the Jews in their ghetto; Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Sac. Cong. Cone. Visile ad Limina, Alberto Valier, Verona, anno 1607.
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40 A good example of discussions concerning ecclesiastical administration is Valier's own daily after-dinner meetings with his diocesan staff in Verona (see above p. 315).
41 Valier, Agostino, De recta philosophandi ratione libri duo quos Augustinus Valerius episcopus Veronae scripsit, quo tempore venitius philosophiam profitebatur (Verona: apud Sebastianum et Joannem fratres a Domnis, 1577) 1.1.Google Scholar
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44 Ibid.
45 Agostino Valier, Praefatio to “Qua ratione versandum sit in Aristotele ad Leonardum Donatum,” in idem, De recta philosophandi, 2.58—62.
46 Agostino Valier, “Praefatio in libros de Coelo,” in idem, De recta philosophandi, 43-46.
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49 Agostino Valier, “Praefatio in Cebetis tabulam,” in idem, De recta philosophandi, 39-41.
50 Agostino Valier, “Praefatio habita secundo anno in libros de moribus Aristotelis,” in idem, De recta philosophandi, 36-39.
51 Agostino Valier, “Praefatio publice habita anno MCLIX,” in idem, De recta philosophandi, 35. Valier repeats the same theme in his Commentarius de consolatione ecclesiae (see n. 2 above) and in his unpublished work Philippus sive de Christiana laetitia dialogus (see n. 39 above).
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58 Agostino Valier, “Praefatio in libros de vita, ac moribus Aristotelis,” in Ibid., 26-33.
59 Ibid., 3.
60 Ibid., 7. “Matrem bene dictorum ac recte factorum, reginam liberalium omnium artium, quae complectitur cognitiones humanarum ac divinarum rerum.”
61 Ibid., 24.
62 Ibid., 17-18.
63 Ibid., 19.
64 Ibid., 22-23.
65 Ibid., 25-26.
66 Ibid., 35. Valier also repeats the same argument throughout his treatise, Commentarius de consolatione ecclesiae. See n. 51.
67 , Valier, Augustini Valerii Patricii Veneti, 5–7Google Scholar . “Vea philosophia est jucundissimum vitae solatium… et magistra bene vivendi; servit demum Theologiae, hoc est, magistrae humanae salutis.”
68 , Valier, “Praefatio publice habita anno MDLIX,” 35Google Scholar . “Veritas, modestia, mansuetudo, felicitas, humanitas, externarum rerum contemptus.” In elevating philosophy as the most important discipline, next only to theology, Valier differed significantly from the humanist view and even from the views of most Catholic and Protestant thinkers of the late sixteenth century. By the time of the publication of Magdeburg Centuries (the massive twelve-volume work which was published from Magdeburg by Flacius Illyricus and his colleagues between 1559 and 1574 to demonstrate that the Catholic Church had deviated fundamentally from the teachings of Christ and that Lutheranism represented the true church of Christ), both Catholic and Protestant scholars had determined that what would best serve religion, from their perspectives, was history. It was for this reason, as Eric Cochrane has shown, that sacred history, separated from profane history, obtained a dominant position in the ecclesiastical literature of the time. Valier, although he at one time put history at the top of the list of obligatory reading for Christians, along with the fathers of the church, remained almost alone among his contemporaries in upholding the position of philosophy as the chief handmaid of theology. It is in doing so that he became the unofficial philosopher of the Catholic Reformation. See Cochrane, Eric, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 231-32, 445–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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80 Agostino Valier, “Quibus in artibus adolescens Venetus debeat excellere ad Bernardum Zane,” in idem, De recta philosophandi, 69-74.
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82 Refrences to these can be found throughout Philippus sive de Christiana laeriria dialogus.
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