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Paolo Sarpi, Caesar Baronius, and the Political Possibilities of Ecclesiastical History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2015

Charles Keenan
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Abstract

Two of the most famous Catholic histories written during the early modern period were the Annales ecclesiastici of Caesar Baronius (d. 1607), a year-by-year chronicle of the Catholic Church from the birth of Christ to the twelfth century, and the Istoria del concilio tridentino of Paolo Sarpi (d. 1623), a scathing critique of the Council of Trent that argued the famous council had only made religious problems worse. Rather than comparing either of these works with similar histories written by protestants—thereby investigating inter-confessional Reformation debates—this article sets Baronius's Annales and Sarpi's Istoria side by side to explore disputes within Catholicism itself. By analyzing how the authors examine four topics in their histories (Peter and the papal primacy, the relationship between the local and universal church, the history of ecumenical councils, and the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities), as well as considering both historians' actions during the Venetian interdict crisis of 1606, this essay argues that Sarpi and Baronius fundamentally disagreed about the origins and exercise of both secular and ecclesiastical authority. These two modes of Catholic history-writing reveal how Sarpi and Baronius drew from contemporary political models, such that “ecclesiastical history” could have significant political ramifications.

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Church History , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 746 - 767
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2015 

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References

1 The motivation to consider either Sarpi or Baronius in relation to their contemporaries has led to many fascinating articles, but with the exception of recent work by Stefano Andretta, no one has set the two men next to each other and systematically analyzed their histories. Stefano Andretta, “Cesare Baronio e Venezia,” in Cesare Baronio tra santità e scrittura storica, ed. Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, Raimondo Michetti, and Francesco Scorza Barcellona (Roma: Viella, 2012), 249–279; Andretta, “Sarpi e Roma,” in Paolo Sarpi: Politique et religion en Europe, ed. Marie Viallon (Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010), 139–162; Andretta, “Paolo V e l'interdetto,” in Lo Stato Marciano durante l'interdetto 1606–1607, ed. Gino Benzoni (Rovigo: Minelliana, 2008), 35–50. There is also a brief mention of the two in Giuseppe Ricuperati, “Cesare Baronio, la storia ecclesiastica, la storia ‘civile’ e gli scrittori giurisdizionali della prima metà del XVIII secolo,” in Baronio storico e la Controriforma: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Sora 6–10 ottobre 1979, ed. Romeo De Maio et al. (Sora: Centro di Studi Sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca,” 1982), 760–767. William J. Bouwsma does discuss both authors but dismisses the writings of Baronius—along with those of Bellarmine and others—as “often tedious, repetitious, quite without intellectual distinction, and frequently merely hortatory or vituperative.” Bouwsma, “The Venetian Interdict and the Problem of Order,” in A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), 98.

Among the essays that have considered Sarpi or Baronius in relation to other early modern thinkers are the following: Eleonora Belligni, “Marcantonio De Dominis, Paolo Sarpi, Roberto Bellarmino e il problema dell'autorità dopo il concilio tridentino,” in Paolo Sarpi, ed. Viallon, 257–307; Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, “Romanité et universalité de la communauté ecclésiale: Le débat catholique sur les caractères de la véritable Église au temps de Paolo Sarpi,” in ibid., 105–138; Jaska Kainulainen, Paolo Sarpi: A Servant of God and State (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Agostino Lauro, “Baronio, De Luca e il potere temporale della Chiesa,” in Baronio storico e la Controriforma, 361–403; Oakley, Francis, “Complexities of Context: Gerson, Bellarmine, Sarpi, Richer, and the Venetian Interdict of 1607–1607,” The Catholic Historical Review 82, no. 3 (July 1996): 369–396CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 As an introduction, see Lyon, Gregory B., “Baudouin, Flacius, and the Plan for the Magdeburg Centuries,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 2 (April 2003): 253–272CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Norelli, “L'autorità della chiesa antica nelle Centurie di Magdeburgo e negli Annales del Baronio,” in Baronio storico, 259; Giuseppe Finocchiaro, Cesare Baronio e la tipografia dell'Oratorio: impresa e ideologia (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2005), 15; Sergio Bertelli, Ribelli, libertini e ortodossi nella storiografia barocca (Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1973), 66–67.

4 Neri asked Baronius to give lectures on church history to the Oratory beginning in 1558, and, according to some of Baronius's biographers, it was in this pastoral context where the Annales were first conceived. A more direct, if less successful, answer to the protestants appeared in Onofrio Panvinio's history, which he explicitly directed against the Centuries. Still, the inadequacy of Panvinio's history led the pope to form a commission of cardinals in 1570 whom he charged to find a solution to the matter. Stefano Zen, Baronio storico: Controriforma e crisi del metodo umanistico (Napoli: Vivarium, 1994), 17, 19; Hubert Jedin, Il Cardinale Cesare Baronio: l'inizio della storiografia ecclesiastica cattolica nel sedicesimo secolo, trans. Giulio Colombi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1982), 22–23, 39–40; Cyriac K. Pullapilly, Caesar Baronius: Counter-Reformation Historian (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University, 1975), 14–15, 26; Georgiana Davidson, “Caesar Baronius and the Catholic Renewal: History and Piety in the Post-Tridentine Era” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981), 38–39.

5 Ditchfield, Simon, “Of Dancing Cardinals and Mestizo Madonnas: Reconfiguring the History of Roman Catholicism in the Early Modern Period,” Journal of Early Modern History 8, nos. 3–4 (2004): 407–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ditchfield, “In Sarpi's Shadow: Coping with Trent the Italian Way,” in Studi in memoria di Cesare Mozzarelli (Milano: V&P, 2008), 587. For a recent collection of essays exploring the genre of historia sacra in early modern Europe, see Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, ed. Katherine van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (New York: Oxford University, 2012).

6 Stefania Tutino, Empire of Souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth (Oxford: Oxford University, 2010), 5.

7 “Ecclesiam . . . esse omnium plane antiquissimum.” Caesar Baronius, Annales ecclesiastici auctore Caesare Baronio sorano ex Congregat: incipiens ab adventu Domini N. Iesu Christi, perducitur usque ad traiani imperatoris exordium: com lectitur annos centum: permissu auctoris editio novissima ab ipsomet ante abitum aucta & recognita, vol. I (Coloniae Agrippinae: Sumptibus Ioannis Gymnici & Antonii Hierati, 1609), “Apparatus ad Annales Ecclesiasticos: De adventu filii Dei,” col. 1. All of the volume and column numbers cited (col.) refer to this 1609 edition, but for ease of consultation, I will also list the year (anno) and section number (no.) whenever possible, which are more standard across different editions.

8 Ibid., vol. I, “Praefatio in Annales Ecclesiasticos ad lectorem.” See also col. 150 (anno 33, no. XX): “Deus omnipotens . . . ipse sit auctor Ecclesiae, protector, ac moderator; tamen principatum quendam in ea esse voluit, ac monarchiam, quam Petro contulit, ac in eius successores propagavit.”

9 Ibid., cols. 110 (anno 31, no. XXIV), 152 quoting Augustine (anno 33, no. XXV), 160 (anno 33, no. XLVI).

10 Ibid., vol. XI, col. 244 (anno 1052, no. XVIII).

11 Ibid., vol. I, “Sanctissimo ac Beatissimo Patri et D. N. Sixto Quinto Pontifici Maximo.”

12 Ibid., vol. I, cols. 109–110 (anno 31, no. XXIII).

13 “Cur itaque Petro, & non Ioanni inter Apostolos primatus delatus est?” Ibid., vol. I, col. 133 (anno 32, no. VI).

14 Ibid., vol. XI, col. 244 (anno 1052, no. XVIII).

15 See also Davidson, 117.

16 Baronius, Annales, vol. I, col. 235 (anno 34, no. CCV).

17 Ibid., vol. I, col. 376 (anno 45, no. VI). Cf. col. 377 (anno 45, no. VII).

18 Boris Ulianich also analyzes Sarpi's conception of the papacy, but largely based on Sarpi's private correspondence. Ulianich, “Considerazioni e documenti per una ecclesiologia di Paolo Sarpi,” in Festgabe Joseph Lortz, ed. Erwin Iserloh and Peter Manns, vol. II: Glaube und Geschichte (Baden-Baden: Erschienen bei Bruno Grimm, 1958), 400–429.

19 Paolo Sarpi, Istoria del concilio tridentino, ed. Giovanni Gambarin, vol. I (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1935), 7.

20 Ibid., 14.

21 Ibid., 16–17.

22 Ibid., 144–145.

23 Ibid., 14, 50, 142, 414.

24 Ibid., 410.

25 “Prima, perché è così annessa alle ossa del pontificato che non può essere concessa ad altra persona, poi ancora perché non si trovano parole né clausule con le quali si possi comunicare dal pontefice l'autorità di determinare le cose controverse della fede, essendo il privilegio di non poter fallare donato alla sola persona del pontefice in quelle parole: Ego rogavi pro te, Petre.” Ibid., 151.

26 Zen, 128; William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California, 1968), 309–310.

27 Baronius, vol. I, col. 375 (anno 45, nos. II–III).

28 “antequam idem S. Marcus Alexandriam mitteretur a Petro.” Ibid., vol. IX, col. 851 (anno 820, no. XXI); “Secunda autem sedes apud Alexandriam beati Petri nomine a Marco eius discipulo atque Evangelista consecrata est: ipseque in Aegyptum directus a Petro Apostolo.” Ibid., vol. IV, col. 495 (anno 382, no. XIX).

29 Ibid., vol. IV, col. 495 (anno 382, no. XIX).

30 Ibid., vol. VI, col. 758 (anno 517, no. XLIII).

31 Ibid., vol. XI, cols. 885–886 (anno 1097, nos. XXIX–XXX).

32 Ibid., vol. I, col. 378 (anno 45, no. X). See also Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli's analysis of how Baronius retrojects the adjective Romanus into the history of the early church, “Cesare Baronio and the Roman Catholic Version of the Early Church,” in Sacred History, 60–66.

33 On the Oratory and Baronius, see Jedin, 7, 69; and Pullapilly, passim. On the Bible as a historical as well as a theological source for Baronius: Giuseppe Finocchiaro, Cesare Baronio e la tipografia dell'Oratorio: impresa e ideologia (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2005), 18.

34 “Traditionem itaque Apostolorum in toto mundo manifestam in Ecclesia adest perspicere omnibus qui vera velint audire: & habemus adnumerare eos qui ab Apostolis instituti sint Episcopi in Ecclesiis . . . Sed quoniam valde longum est in hoc tali volumine omnium Ecclesiarum enumerare successiones: maximae & antiquissimae & omnibus cognitae, a gloriosissimis duobus Apostolis Petro & Paulo Romae fundatae & constitutae, Ecclesiae, eam quam habet ab Apostolis traditionem, & annunciatam hominibus fidem, per successiones Episcoporum pervenientem usque ad nos.” Baronius, vol. I, col. 456 (anno 53, no. XVII).

35 Bouwsma sees Sarpi's “renunciation of the general in favor of the particular” as a characteristic trait of the Renaissance. Bouwsma, “Venice, Spain, and the Papacy: Paolo Sarpi and the Renaissance Tradition,” in idem, A Usable Past, 257.

36 De Franceschi, 126; Ulianich, 367.

37 Sarpi, I, 225.

38 Ibid., 137–138.

39 Sarpi, Istoria, vol. III, 138.

40 Andretta, “Sarpi e Roma,” 159–160; Ulianich, “Considerazioni,” 391, 403.

41 Sarpi, Istoria, vol. I, 155. On this, see also Ulianich, 377.

42 William J. Bouwsma, “Gallicanism and the Nature of Christendom,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University, 1971), 809–830. For an alternative overview to Gallicanism, see J. H. M. Salmon, “Catholic Resistance Theory, Ultramontanism, and the Royalist Response, 1580–1620,” in The Cambridge History of Political thought, 1450–1700, ed. J. H. Burns with Mark Goldie (New York: Cambridge University, 1991), 231–233.

43 Bouwsma, “Gallicanism,” 824n45; cf. 828–829, where he discusses the Gallican tradition in Venice.

44 Ulianich, 400.

45 The best discussion of this point is in Federico Chabod, La Politica di Paolo Sarpi (Venezia: Istituto per la collaborazione cultura, 1968), especially 73 and 103. Chabod points out the similarities between Sarpi and Bodin, where if absolutism for the latter is best expressed through monarchy, Sarpi prefers its implementation through oligarchy. Similar interpretations of Sarpi appear in Kainulainen, passim; David Wootton, Paolo Sarpi: between Renaissance and Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University, 1983), 5; and J. P. Sommerville, “Absolutism and Royalism,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 349.

46 Baronius, vol. I, col. 618 (anno 58, no. CXIX).

47 Ibid., vol. IV, col. 457 (anno 381, no. XX).

48 Norelli, “L'autorità,” 297–298. See also Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 335.

49 Sarpi repeats this excursus later in a more abbreviated form: 214–218. On Sarpi and conciliarism in general, see Kainulainen, 169–176.

50 Sarpi, 14–15, 209.

51 Ibid., 147.

52 Ibid., 21. Cf. p. 28, “ognuno” and “questa fu desiderata da ogni sorte di persone come remedio salutare ed unico.”

53 Ibid., 28–30; Ulianich, “Il significato politico della Istoria del Concilio Tridentino di Paolo Sarpi,” in Il Concilio di Trento come crocevia della politica europea, ed. Hubert Jedin and Paolo Prodi (Bologna: il Mulino, 1979), 194.

54 Sarpi, 29.

55 Ibid., 67. For other instances on Clement's fear of a council, see also 55, 59.

56 Ibid., 415–416.

57 Ibid., 206–207, 225, 227.

58 “Il pontefice, giongendo novi avvisi giornalmente, e sempre peggiori, sì come anco ogni giorno succedeva novità in Trento (oltre li accidenti che in Germania e in Francia occorrevano, contrari alle cose sue), sentiva maggior disgusti.” Sarpi, Istoria II, 400.

59 Ibid., 402–403.

60 Ibid., I, 58, 64–66.

61 Peter Burke, applying the concepts of Hayden White's Metahistory, suggests that Sarpi's Istoria can either be seen as tragedy or satire. “Sarpi storico,” in Ripensando Paolo Sarpi: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi nel 450° anniversario della nascità di Paolo Sarpi, ed. Corrado Pin (Venezia: Ateneo Veneto, 2006), 105–106.

62 Sarpi, I, 4.

63 Baronius, Annales, vol. IX, col. 612 (anno 800, no. IX).

64 “nonnisi divino consilio factum esse, vel fieri potuisse.” Ibid, vol. IX, col. 613 (anno 800, no. IX).

65 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, 314.

66 Baronius, Annales, vol. IX, col. 615 (anno 800, no. XV). Significantly, Baronius seems to elide the authority of the pope and that of God during his discussion on this topic, thus reinforcing the notion that secular authority is completely derivative of whatever is awarded by the pope and God—e.g., “Cum igitur Dei & Apostolicae Sedis gratia totum” and “par est utrisque Deo atque Apostolicae Sedi gratos esse.” Ibid., vol. IX, col. 616 (anno 800, no. XX).

67 Ibid., vol. XI, cols. 885–886 (anno 1097, nos. XXIX–XXX).

68 Kainulainen, 179–188; Vittorio Frajese, Sarpi scettico: Stato e Chiesa a Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento (Bologna: il Mulino, 1994), especially 381–405.

69 Sarpi, 111–112. Cf. the struggle between Clement VII and the Holy Roman Empire, 61–65.

70 Ibid., 66.

71 Ulianich and Wootton both argue that this refusal to consider the metaphysical is essential to Sarpi's method of writing history. Ulianich, “Il significato politico,” 186, 188–189; Wootton, 1, 18. For Kainulainen, Sarpi's distancing of the worldly from the divine is a consequence of his low view of mankind after the Fall, when humanity had limited sense perception and as a result could not penetrate divine matters. Kainulainen, 64–84, 258–259.

72 Sarpi, I, 58, 96–97, 153.

73 Ibid., 6.

74 The clearest example of his view that the Sacred College should be an advisory body appears in his Istoria dell'Interdetto, ed. M. D. Busnelli and G. Gambarin, vol. I (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1940), 17. On prelates going to Venice during Trent and the papal nuncio there ordering them to return to the council, Sarpi, Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, I, 410–411.

75 “Romana ecclesia nunquam erravit nec errare potest,” Baronius, vol. IX, cols. 842–843 (anno 819, no. XXVI). Here I concur with Simon Ditchfield's assessment that Baronius saw historia sacra as having an active function in minimizing distinctions between the Christian past and the present. Ditchfield, “Baronio storico nel suo tempo,” in Cesare Baronio tra santità e scrittura storica, 9–10. See also Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (New York: Cambridge University, 1995), 283–84.

76 “Vides igitur ex his in primis, lector, . . .”; “Intellegis, lector . . .”; “Videsne tu lector (appello te) . . .” Baronius, vol. VI, cols. 134 (anno 450, no. XXVII), 758 (anno 517, no. XLIII) and 604–605 (anno 502, no. VI). For other examples (though there are many), see vol. IV, col. 379 (anno 373, no. XXI), cols. 546–547 (anno 385, no. IX); vol. XI, cols. 336 (anno 1059, no. XXXII), 885 (anno 1097, no. XXIX).

77 Chabod, 26; Bertelli, 93.

78 Sarpi, Istoria del concilio tridentino, I, 3. Ulianich has also noted this goal: “Il significato politico,” 181.

79 For another analysis of Sarpi's rhetoric in the Istoria, see Sheila Marie Das, “Rhetoric and History: Paolo Sarpi's Istoria del Concilio Tridentino” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2003). On Sarpi's methods as a theologian, Ulianich, “Le Epistole paoline nel pensiero e nelle opere di fra Paolo Sarpi,” in Ripensando Paolo Sarpi, 76; and idem, “Paolo Sarpi ‘riformatore,’ ‘irenico’? Note sulla sua ecclesiologia, sulla sua teologia, sulla sua religione,” in Atti del Convegno di Studio. Fra Paolo Sarpi dei Servi di Maria. Venezia, 28-29-30 ottobre 1983, ed. Pacifico Branchesi and Corrado Pin (Venezia: Comune di Venezia, 1986), 57.

80 Andretta, “Sarpi e Roma,” 146–9; Wootton, 9; Zen, 176; Pacifico M. Branchesi, “Fra Paolo Sarpi prima della vita pubblica (1552–1605). Appunti di ricerca,” in Ripensando Paolo Sarpi, 64.

81 Zen, 289.

82 Gaetano Cozzi, “La formazione culturale e religiosa (1552–1605), nota introduttiva,” in Paolo Sarpi, Opere, ed. Gaetano and Luisa Cozzi (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1969), 19; quoted in Andretta, “Sarpi e Roma,” 141.

83 Andretta, “Sarpi e Roma,” 152–154.

84 Jedin, 37 n51.

85 “cosicché ciò che vale oggi sia valso sempre.” Quoted in ibid., 62. Among the historians who have agreed with this assessment of Baronius's methodology, see Zen, 177; and Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, 309.

86 Zen, 229; Andretta, “Cesare Baronio e Venezia,” 263.

87 Zen, 133, 178. See also Sarpi's acerbic description of Baronius in a 1612 letter to Isaac Casaubon: “Ego illum Romae novi . . . Nunquam hominem vidi simpliciorem, quem unico verbo tibi exprimam. Nullas habebat opiniones proprias, sed eas e conversantibus sine delectu sumebat, quas tamen quasi proprias et bene perfectas pertinaciter defendebat, donec alias iussus potius fuisset, quam edoctus.” Sarpi to Casaubon, Venice, June 8, 1612: Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, ed. Manlio Duilio Busnelli (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1931), II, 220.

88 On this pamphlet war, generally, see Filippo De Vivo, “La guerra delle scritture: Stampa e potere durante l'interdetto,” in Lo Stato Marciano, 131–148; Paul F. Grendler, “Books for Sarpi: The Smuggling of Prohibited Books into Venice during the Interdict of 1606–1607,” in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, vol. I: History (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978), 105–114. On the specific relationships between certain authors, see the following. On the writings of Bellarmine, Fisher, and Sarpi, see Oakley, “Complexities of Context.” On Bellarmine and Sarpi, see Tutino, 88–101; and Wootton, 51, 55–59. On Pallavicino and his response to Sarpi, see Bertelli, 109–116.

89 Caesar Baronius, Paraenesis ad Rempublicam Venetam (Augustae Vindelicorum, 1606).

90 Tutino, 90–93; Chabod, 70–71; Oakley, “Complexities of Context.” For Sarpi's consulti during this period, see Sarpi, Consulti, 1: I consulti dell'interdetto, 1606–1607, ed. Corrado Pin (Roma: Istituti editoriali e poligrafi internazionali, 2001).

91 Giuseppe Trebbi has perhaps said it best: “If on the one side there is no doubt of Sarpi's total aversion to the Roman papacy, nevertheless one cannot rule out a secret consistency in Fra Paolo's decision to continue to wear the habit of a Servite.” Ulianich has demonstrated how Sarpi's theology is frequently at odds with that of the reformers, and even Manlio Busnelli, who concluded that Sarpi was undoubtedly heterodox, argued the Servite never aligned himself with any protestant denomination. More recently, Jaska Kainulainen has also reaffirmed Sarpi's religiosity, arguing that while he was committed to church reform and sympathized with Protestant reformers, Sarpi himself never became a Protestant. David Wootton's claim that Sarpi was the first atheist is debatable, being based on a reading of Sarpi's pensieri, the private notebooks no one ever saw while Sarpi was alive. Trebbi, “Paolo Sarpi in alcune recenti interpretazioni,” in Ripensando Paolo Sarpi, 659; Ulianich, “Le Epistole paoline,” 91; Manlio Dulio Busnelli, “Eterodossia e antiromanità di Fra Paolo Sarpi,” in Études sur Fra Paolo Sarpi: et autres essais italiens et français (Geneva: Editions Slatkine, 1986), 198–199; Kainulainen, 126–163; and Wootton, 3, 120ff.