Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on Transcriptions
- Note on Money
- Introduction
- 1 Humanism and Honour in the Making of Alessandro Farnese
- 2 Pathways to Honour
- 3 Tradition and Reform
- 4 The Consilium and Reform Constrained
- 5 Pax et Concordia – Politics and Reform
- 6 The Ottoman Threat
- 7 The Council of Trent
- 8 Reform in the Twilight Years
- About the Author
- Index
3 - Tradition and Reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on Transcriptions
- Note on Money
- Introduction
- 1 Humanism and Honour in the Making of Alessandro Farnese
- 2 Pathways to Honour
- 3 Tradition and Reform
- 4 The Consilium and Reform Constrained
- 5 Pax et Concordia – Politics and Reform
- 6 The Ottoman Threat
- 7 The Council of Trent
- 8 Reform in the Twilight Years
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Tradition has been a central formative principle of the Church from its earliest years, continually orienting its theology, structure, and discipline to preservation of the past. Humanism gilded that orientation with its attachment to the classical world. The humanist preachers of Paul III's time framed the papal role in reform in terms of tradition. As a cardinal, Alessandro Farnese played a minimal role in reform but, as pope, papal honour moved him to commit to reform and the calling of a Council. His understandings of reform and those of the eminent men he called to Rome to frame a comprehensive reform program were guided by tradition and the maintenance of papal honour.
Keywords: apostolic succession; heresy; papal role; Lateran Council; curial culture
The Catholic Church has long moved forward by looking backwards. What was needed in the time of Paul III was a plan to reshape, by degrees, the administrative and financial structures of the Church and to reshape the cultural expectations that underpinned those structures. A plan with gradual pathways, starting with modest but symbolic change, would have avoided pulling the cultural and economic rug from under Roman society and endangering the safety of Rome. However, the sociology and theology of the Church, welded to the humanist intellectual framework, were severe constraints on such a plan emerging and then being accepted.
In a letter to Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, Jacopo Sadoleto, former curialist and now Bishop of Carpentras in southern France, responded to the news that Paul III was on the point of summoning him and a number of others to Rome to work with Contarini in a reform Commission. The pessimistic letter touches on a number of obstacles to reform and gives a perceptive summation of the course needed:
O most learned and excellent Contarini, if only your hopes would never deceive you. Your exceptional goodness, prudence and integrity give you confidence that what ought be a course of action for the best outcome is indeed already in train. Would that that were the case.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pope Paul III and the Cultural Politics of Reform1534–1549, pp. 85 - 102Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020