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The Communication of Friendship: Gasparo Contarini's Letters to Hermits at Camaldoli1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Constance Furey
Constance Furey
Affiliation:
Constance Furey is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University.
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Extract

The modern idea that to converse means to talk, to exchange ideas with another person, emerged between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Before that time, and throughout the Middle Ages, conversatio was a state of being or a way of life. To converse was to commune with God or other people, particularly in the context of religious communities. John Bossy says that this definitional shift from conduct to dialogue is one indication of how Christianity changed from a medieval system that promoted communal solidarity into a modern religion that emphasized morality and civility. John O'Malley similarly underscores the importance of the new meaning of conversation by pointing out that one of the Jesuit innovations was to make conversation a “ministry of the word” practiced in and through confession and spiritual exercises. But how did contemporaries experience the transformation of conversation from “togetherness” to “dialogue”? Apart from the Jesuit practices, do we have any way of discerning whether sixteenth-century Christians experienced conversation as a religious praxis?

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 71 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2003

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References

2. For uses of the Latin “conversatio” meaning “life” or “company” see Blaise, A., Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevi Praesertim ad Res Ecclesiasticas Investigandas Pertinens, Corpus Christianorum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 249–50Google Scholar. The Italian “conversazione” signified “custom” or “way of life” in the thirteenth century; by the fourteenth century it also connoted “familiarity” (Battisti, C. and Alessio, G., Dizionario etimologico italiano [Istituto di Glottologia, Università degli Studi, Florence, 1951], II, 1091, s.v.)Google Scholar. Rona Goffen helpfully discusses these definitions in the context of her study of sacra conversazione, a type of painting portraying the Madonna, Child, and Saints. Goffen argues that artistic representations shifted from the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century emphasis on mystical or supernatural union mediated by saints, Mary, and Christ, to the fifteenth-century emphasis on more mundane communions located in real-world contexts (“Nostra Conversation in Caelis Est: Observations on the Sacra Conversazione in the Trecento” The Art Bulletin “1979”: 198–221)Google Scholar. In literature, Stefano, Guazzo'sLa civil conversatione (In Brescia: appresso Tomaso Bozzola, 1574) was the first published work to use “conversation” in the title; it likewise reflects the shift in meaning because although Guazzo focused on social relations, he treated spoken dialogue as an important subset of the larger topic.Google Scholar

3. John, Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 168Google Scholar, referring to the English word. Peter, Burke discusses the etymology of related words in other European languages in more detail in The Art of Conversation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 95–120.Google Scholar

4. O'Malley, John W., The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 47, 111Google Scholar. On this point O'Malley cites one of the only sources that survey conversation in a context prior to the seventeenth century: Clancy, Thomas H., SJ, The Conversational Word of God: A Commentary on the Doctrine of St. Ignatius of Loyola Concerning Spiritual Conversation with Four Early Jesuit Texts (St Louis, Mo.: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978).Google Scholar

5. In her biography of Contarini, Elisabeth Gleason observes that since Jedin's publications, interpretation of the letters has become a “subtopic of sixteenth-century Italian religious history,” producing with widely varying theses (Gleason, Elisabeth G., Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993]).Google Scholar

6. The text of the letters is in Contarini und Camaldoli, ed. Hubert, Jedin (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1953)Google Scholar. All quotes from the letters are from this source, hereafter cited as Camaldoli, and all translations are my own. Jedin's, article and edited letters were republished in the Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà vol. 2 (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1959).Google Scholar

7. In monasticism as famously described by Jean Leclercq, talking was limited and spoken words were ideally used primarily in the course of meditative reading, prayer, and liturgy (Love of Learning and the Desire for God: a Study of Monastic Culture, 3rd ed., trans. Catharine, Misrahi “New York: Fordham University Press, 1982”)Google Scholar. For a survey of the role of friendship in monasticism and the Cistercian's appreciation of friendship, letters, and conversations in particular, see Brian, McGuire, Friendship and Community: the Monastic Experience 350–1250 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1988), esp. chapters 6–7.Google Scholar

8. Throughout the Middle Ages, the major classical theories of friendship from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (books 8 and 9) and Cicero's De amicitia were well known (Ullrich, Langer, Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille “Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1994”, 20–26)Google Scholar. The particular humanist tendency to celebrate the way friendship could be practiced in and through texts, however, was inspired more specifically by their interest in Latin authors, Cicero prime among them. In particular, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century discoveries of Cicero's different letter collections (Epistolae ad Atticum and Epistolae ad familiares) gave humanists a model for letters and letter collections as the basis for their “epistolary community” (Langer, 25). For a review of how humanists deployed classical models of letters and catalogues of letter collections in the Renaissance see Clough, Cecil H., “The Cult of Antiquity: Letters and Letter Collections” in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed Clough, Cecil H. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 33–67.Google Scholar

9. A lay patron of St. Catherine of Genoa founded the first Oratory in Genoa in 1497, but learned priests and laymen in Rome at the end of the Fifth Lateran Council founded the most famous in 1517. The significance of these kinds of groups is indicated by the recent observation that “no group of men better suggests the aims and character of a reforming movement that encompassed all of Europe” (Rice, Eugene F. Jr and Anthony, Grafton, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460–1559, 2nd ed. “New York: W. W. Norton, 1994, 150)Google Scholar. On Italy in particular, Eric, Cochrane observed that the proliferation of not just Oratories but other kinds of lay and clerical groups attests to the fact that Italians were responding to the social and ecclesial upheaval with an energetic mood of experimentation (Italy 1530–1630 “London: Longman, 1988”, 128)Google Scholar. See also the review article by John, Martin, “Recent Italian Scholarship on the Renaissance Aspect of Christianity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 48, no.3 (1995): 593–610Google Scholar and, for more detailed background, see Denys, Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 72–90.Google Scholar

10. Peter, Burke details these social catastrophes and argues that consequently a sense of crisis was the defining feature of the generation born in Italy between 1480 and 1510 (Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Italy: A Sociological Approach, rev. ed. [London: Fontana, 1974], chapter 9)Google Scholar

11. The document, Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, had little direct influence on the subsequent reforms promoted by the church hierarchy.

12. This work, like Contarini's other unofficial writings, circulated only amongst his friends until it was finally published as part of his collected works, long after his death, in 1571. It is comprehensively studied by Gigliola, Fragnito, “Cultura umanistica e riforma religiosa: il ‘De officio boni viri ac probi episcopi’ di Gasparo Contarini” in Gasparo Contarini: un magistrate veneziano al servizio della cristianità (Florence: Olschki, 1988)Google Scholar and translated in Olin, John C., The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola; Reform in the Church 1495–1540 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969; New York: Fordham University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

13. “Evangelicals” and “spirituali” were terms used by contemporaries, but specialists in the history of Christianity in particular areas of Europe, such as England, France, or Italy, have produced sustained critiques about their usefulness. On Italy see for example Rambaldi, Susanna Peyronel, “Ancora sull'evangelismo italiano: Categoria o invenzione storiografica?” Società e storia 18 (1982): 935–67Google Scholar. Many general histories or summaries of early modern Christianity nevertheless continue to invoke the terms because they are a good way to signal what seems in fact to have been a notable feature of the sixteenth-century European landscape. These terms also fill in for what is now often recognized as the anachronistic category, Christian humanism. On this latter point see John, D'Amico, “Humanism and pre-Reformation Theology” in Humanism and the Disciplines, vol. 3 of Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, ed. Albert, Rabil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).Google Scholar

14. Carlo, Dionisotti, for example, claims that elite men in Contarini's generation reacted to crisis by retreating to an “environment as narrow and closed as it was socially elevated” (“Chierici e laici nella cultura italiana del primo Cinquecento” in Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento [Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1960], 167–85, 176Google Scholar; reprinted in Geografia e storia delta letteratura italiana [Turin: Einaudi, 1967], 47–73)Google Scholar. This withdrawal has been blamed for failures ranging from the political shortcomings of Italian city-states to the impotency of the Catholic reform in the years preceding Luther: Fragnito, for example, concludes that Contarini's treatise on the formation of the ideal bishop “reflects the religious experience of a patrician assailed by individual soteriological problems and less influenced by a collective eschatology which made [his precepts] for the formation of the ideal bishop scarcely useful on a practical plane.” (“Cultural umanistica,” 18). For equivalent judgments about the political ineffectiveness of Contarini's generation see Lauro, Martines, “The Gentleman in Renaissance Italy: strains of isolation in the body politic” in The Darker Vision of the Renaissance, ed. Kinsman, R. S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 77–93Google Scholar, and, most recently, William, Bouwsma's survey of how anxiety permeated the outlook of literati in the sixteenth century (The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550–1640 “New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000”).Google Scholar

15. Innocenzo, Cervelli, “Storiografia e problemi intorno alia vita religiosa e spirituale a Venezia nella prima metà del 500,” Studi Veneziani 8 (1967).Google Scholar

16. A work that goes some way toward mitigating these difficulties through the examination of a wide variety of sources and a close analysis of public ritual is Trexler, Richard C., Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 131–58. He argues that vernacular letters exchanged among the artisan classes display the intertwining of interest in social ritual, utility, and coercion. Friendship, like every other kind of social relationship, was characterized by a dialectic of form and content, sentiment and society.Google Scholar

17. A representative example of a work by one of Contarini's cohorts is Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, a highly literary work presented as the collection of tales told by a group of travelers. This work, while ostensibly modeled on Boccachio's Decameron, is written by a woman who was at the center of a circle of évangelistes actively engaged in conversations and epistolary exchanges about theological and spiritual issues. See Carol, Thysell, The Pleasure of Discernment: Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). I am currently at work on a study that analyzes the role gender played in the relationships and writings of sixteenth-century evangelical humanists—who lived and worked in circles that included several prominent learned women like Marguerite de Navarre, and who produced several famous dialogues that featured conversations between men and women.Google Scholar

18. For a description of the letters, see Jedin.

19. Cécile, Caby, De 1'érémitisme rural au monachisme urbain: les camaldules en Italie à la fin du Moyen Age, (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1999)Google Scholar. On Giustiniani see Jean, LeclercqLe bienheureux Paul Giustiniani (1476–1528) un humaniste ermite, (Rome: Camaldoli, 1951)Google Scholar and Giuseppe, Alberigo “Vita attiva e vita contemplativa in un'esperienza cristiana del XVI secolo” Studi Veneziani 16 (1974): 177–225, esp. 182Google Scholar. Leclercq inventories Giustiniani's writings and analyzes Giustiniani's polemics about how the eremitic ideal had been corrupted. See also the English translation of Leclercq's less scholarly work about Giustiniani, entitled Alone with God (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961).Google Scholar

20. “Se sapesti el dolor che qualche volta di questa cosa me assalisse: la carità ve constrenzeria de desiderar di lassar per qualche hora la solitudine et esser con el vostro Gasparo” Camaldoli, no. 1, 11.

21. “Non dico però, aziò non ve inganate, de venir a farve compagnia: non è in mi sì boni pensieri” Camaldoli no. 1, 12. See below for a more extensive discussion of how Contarini views life in the world as a life of Christian service.

22. Camaldoli no. 3, 15.

23. Elizabeth Clark offers a succinct example of a parallel case in early Christianity. The patristic discussion of how friendships could be disturbed if either friend changes his way of life in order to concentrate more fully on God was borne out in the case of the conflict that emerged between Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzus (Clark, Elizabeth A., Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations [New York: The Edwin Mellen, 1979], 42).Google Scholar

24. Peter, Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 180Google Scholar, referring to the paradox that the author of the inward looking Confessions was in fact a man surrounded by friends. Speaking of the next stage of Augustine's life, Brown also makes the point that “the slow dissolution of the old group of intimate friends is one of the silent tragedies of Augustine's middle age” (202).

25. Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends, 41–44Google Scholar. Clark notes that pagan writings evinced some concern about the possible tension between “devotion to virtue and the demands of a friend,” but that these concerns remained largely implicit.

26. In addition to Clark, 85 note 63, see Burt, Donald X., Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine's Practical Philosophy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), 57–68.Google Scholar

27. Leclercq, , Love of Learning, 14. See also note 7, above.Google Scholar

28. “Se suol dire, et li più docti philosophi dicono, che la absentia de li amici è causa over di total oblivion de l'amore, over almeno è causa de intepidirlo. In voi vedo esser il contrario, imperochè, benchè sempre per la gentileza de l'animo vostro me haveti amato grandemente, me pare che adeso, luntano da la vostra conversation mia, più teneramente me amiate” Camaldoli no. 3, 15.

29. “Dil che altro causa non puol esser, se non che 1'amor vostro non è amor nè amicitia mondana fondata ne la delectatione di conversar et viver con li amici, la qual i philosophi hanno cognosciuta, ma è fondata ne la charità Christiana” Camaldoli, no. 3, 15. On the history of the distinction between caritas and amicitia or philia (as a purely human affection, often associated with pagan thinkers) see David, Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 156–65.Google Scholar

30. On Salutati and the influence of Cicero and Aristotle more generally see McClure, George W., Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991) 76–80, cf. 227 note 84.Google Scholar

31. On what little is known about Contarini's education, see Fragnito, 2–5. He was trained in a humanist curriculum at the school of San Marco before transferring in his teens to a school of “logic and philosophy” in Rialto, where he was trained in an atmosphere influenced more by an averroistic Aristotelianism than by humanism. There he studied logic, natural philosophy, theology, mathematics, and astronomy before continuing his studies of philosophy at the University of Padua.

32. Bynum, Caroline Walker, “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?” in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 82–109, esp. 108.Google Scholar

33. “Più sanamente considerava che a la utilità vostra tanta era etiam adiunta la mia utilitade non menor forse di quell ache; da la conversation vostra io prendeva, prima con haver davanti li ochi lo exemplo del Iustiniano et poi el vostro, mei amantissimi” Camaldoli, no. 10, 35.

34. William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu, trans. Theodore, Berkeley, Cistercian Fathers Series 12 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 77Google Scholar. Similarly, the monastic author Aelred of Rievaulx, who describes friendship as “a path to love and knowledge of God,” emphasizes the bond of love rather than the activities of friendship (Aelred of Rievaulx's Spiritual Friendship, trans. Williams, Mark F.. “Scranton, Penn.: University of Scranton Press, 1994”, 14–19)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the different ways monks and regular canons thought about imitation and the need to teach, see Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother, chapters 1 and 2.Google Scholar

35. “El qual discorso tute le reliquie de la tristitia schazò e adempiè el cor mio di molta alegreza. Et cusì, confirmato l'animo, più sanamente considerava che a la urilità vostra tanta era etiam adiunta la mia utilitade non menor forse di quella che da la conversation vostra io prendeva, prima con haver davanti li ochi lo exemplo del Iustiniano et poi el vostro, mei amantissimi, de li quali spesso l'amore mi fa pensare et ragionarne con altrui, e gran stimulo a l'animo mio in tute le sue operationi” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

36. The particular force of models or the ideal of imitatio in medieval Christianity was based on the importance of “likeness”—that is, the idea that by imitating saints and Christ one can become like Christ. The “inner” person—the realm of emotions and affect—was inextricable from external behavior or actions. As Bynum put it, sanctity “can be gained by imitation of the sanctity of others, which is accessible to us exactly because it is outer as well as inner” (“Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?” 102). It is this way of thinking that the Reformation historian Steven Ozment suggests is lost by the sixteenth century (“Luther and the Late Middle Ages: The Formation of Reformation Thought,” Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of European Renaissance and Reformation History, ed. Robert, Kingdon “Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1974”, 109–29)Google Scholar

37. “Veramente, Padre Frate Paulo, molto melgio di me quasi in uno instante comprendesti la qualità de l'animo mio, quando ne l'horto di Classes a Ravenna insieme ragionava con vui. Dopoi, ben lo intrinseco mio considerando, ho compreso esser il vero quello che vui dicevati” Camaldoli no. 20, 52.

38. “Ho scrito, mi vergogno de me medesmo … Questi sono li mei paroxismi: hora scaldarse un poccho, hora, disperando di pertingere a quel affecto di core che vorrei … Pur, con vui ragionando, mi pare ragionare con me medesimo, amandove io tanto et essendo tanto da vui amato” Camaldoli no. 20, 53.

39. Struever, , Theory as Practice, 3–34, 55Google Scholar: “Friendship replaces the academy as the domain where advances in theoretical practice are made; friendship is at once the most accessible and most difficult site of worthwhile investigation” (14). Struever's study of humanism is complemented by Alexander Murray's analysis of how formal institutional affiliations became less important for the status of learned men in the course of the Middle Ages, but Murray, does not analyze friendship (Reason and Society in the Middle Ages “Oxford: Clarendon, 1978”, 234–81).Google Scholar

40. For humanism as a textual community see, in addition to Struever, , Lorraine, Hutson, The Usurer's Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1994), 3, 6Google Scholar; Ullrich, Langer, Perfect Friendship (Geneva: Droz, 1994) 25Google Scholar; Quillen, Carol E., Rereading the Renaissance: Petrarch, Augustine, and the Language of Humanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar, note 28; and Mesnard, P., “Le commerce épistolaire, comme expression sociale de l'individualisme humaniste,” in Individu et société à la Renaissance, (Brussels: Presses universitaires de Bruxelles, 1967), 15–32: the humanist correspondence attempted “à constituer par leurs relations spontanées, entre pairs librement choisis, un troisième force culturelle, celle que l'on appallera bientot, à parler d'Érasme, la République des lettres” (17).Google Scholar

41. Augustine moved Christianity away from “the oral foundation of late antique culture” because he foregrounded the role of the text in contrast to his contemporaries who “thought of wisdom as something that was primarily transmitted and given expression not by books but by wise men, something to which one gained access not through solitary reading but through conversation” (Quillen, 38, cf. 35–63). On this point see also Brian, Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Marcia, Colish, Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), 74–81.Google Scholar

42. And Augustine's use of an uneducated woman as an illuminating dialogue partner further reinforces the point that he ascended not by talking to his (learned) friends but by reading the Word. There may be a sixteenth-century parallel to Augustine's presentation of Monica: Michel de Certeau has identified in sixteenth-century Spain a phenomenon of learned men seeking illiterate women as spiritual guides (Mystic Fable, vol. 1, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Smith, Michael B. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992]).Google Scholar

43. For Augustine, of course, it was crucial that the texts be interpreted in light of orthodoxy. Thus, influenced by his debates with heretical groups in On Christian Doctrine and The City of God, he emphasized the importance of rules of biblical interpretation.

44. Petrarch to Zanobi, 22 Febrary, Letters on Familiar Matters Books IX–XV, vol. 2, trans. Bernardo, Aldo S., (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), no. xv.3Google Scholar. On Petrarch's valorization of solitude see Brian, Stock, “Reading, Writing, and the Self: Petrarch and his Forerunners” New Literary History 26 (1995): 717–30.Google Scholar

45. Cf. note 13, above and the letter in which Petrarch explains “I wrote to [Cicero] as if he were a friend living in my time with an intimacy that I consider proper because of my deep and immediate acquaintance with his thought. I thus reminded him of those things he had written that had offended me, forgetting, as it were, the gap of time” (Petrarch, , Rerum Familiarium libri I–VIII, vol. 1, trans. Bernardo, Aldo S. “Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975”, bk. i.1, p. 13). In contrast, the actual presence of contemporary friends could be the source of anxiety. Petrarch concedes that it is “most pleasant to have friends present,” (bk. ii.6, p. 91) but it cannot be denied “that often their presence is sweeter in memory than in actuality,” (bk. vi.3, p. 312). Friends are bound not by presence but by their presence on a written page and their place in their friend's memories: “Countless causes might separate friends, but none separates true friendship…. The more the distance between places separates us from the conversations of friends, by that much do we overcome the woe of absence through continuous recollection,” (bk. ii.6, pp. 89–90). Friends, he insists, can become present “by the frequent interchange of letters,” (bk. ii.6, p. 91).Google Scholar

46. Lisa, Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton, N.J,: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. See also Struever, 44–55 and, for Erasmus' attention to the nature of the genre, Henderson, Judith, “Erasmus on the Art of Letter Writing,” in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. Murphy, J. J. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 331–55. The attention Erasmus devoted to explicating the nature of letters is a more formal counterpart to the kind of interest I am arguing Contarini expended on understanding conversation.Google Scholar

47. As Struever observes, for Erasmus “the dominant type of letter is that which engages in the commerce of study, and deals in the exchange of attitudes about knowledge and modes of inquiry.” She argues that in contrast with Petrarch, Erasmus consequently “overextends the construct amicitia as a model for intellectual community” (46–49). This observation points to the kind of cultural tensions that are evident in Contarini's sense that the humanist investment in letters is inadequate and needs to be supplemented by (a new vision of) conversation.

48. Mary, Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 13–14.Google Scholar

49. “Dopoi, ritornato in villa a li studii et a la quiete, molto mi ritrovai satisfacto, considerando quanto era il melgio nel suo studio ragionare con Platone, con la Biblia o simili auctori che studiare processi de ladri” Camaldoli, no. 22, 56.

50. “Quante volte credete vui,… che, retrovandome in grandissima perturbation di mente, il vegnir a star con vui et ragionar con vui me rendesse un animo quietissimo, de perturbatissimo?” Camaldoli no. 5, 20.

51. As Nancy Struever puts it in her subtle study of the ethics of humanist practices: “Petrarch's discipline … is a discipline of discursive exchange and concession, riposte and agreement. There is a very strictly defined intimacy which insists on sociability; recall Petrarch's figure of books as an extended acquaintance, creating familiarity” (32–33, citing Rerum novarum III, 18).

52. Contarini was in a sense trying to double back on the evolution of medieval assumptions about letter writing. On this history see Giles, Constable, Letters and Letter Collections, Typologie des sources du moyen age occidental 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976). Letters, which originated as oral messages, were initially seen as a simple substitute for spoken words, and the personal and self-revelatory letters that emerged by the eleventh century were caught up with the developing cult of friendship (14). In the thirteenth century, letter collections declined, in part because of a renewed conviction among monks that letters were dangerous and threatened seclusion (37). In the fourteenth century, Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters coincided with the introduction of a new genre of vernacular letters of spiritual advice—a genre notably practiced not only by men but also by women such as Catherine of Siena. Contarini clearly sought out and prioritized spiritual advice, but because he saw his close circle of friends as the primary source of this kind of nourishment, he was initially frustrated by the idea that this advice was transmitted by letter rather than in person. Moreoever, although Contarini could draw on the humanist idea that letters should be written in a style that resembles speech, Contarini differed from the humanists because he was less concerned about the style of the language than about the form—and effect—of the interaction.Google Scholar

53. “Me saria etiam gratissimo, quando qualche volta ve avanza tempo, me scrivessati qualche paroleta, aziò potesse almen a questo modo ragionar con vui” Camaldoli no. 1, 12.

54. “Non serò adonque privo del conversar con vui come io me pensava” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

55. “Per tanto, Messer Vincentio mio, me rendo certissimo che non vi serà noia un poccho de ora del giorno spender in scriverne, aziò poi, in capo de alquanti giorni, possiamo longamente ragionar con vui, il che suplirà a tuti li ragionamenti che in molti giorni qui in Venetia solevamo far insieme” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

56. “deliberai di scriverve, aziò con questo mezzo potesse nutrir quel desiderio de la iucundissima conversation vostra” Camaldoli no. 13, 41.

57. Contarini's works are collected in Gasparis Contareni Cardinalis Opera (Paris: Apud Sebastianum Nivellium, 1571)Google Scholar. For an analysis of this edition see Gigliola, Fragnito, “Aspetti della censura ecclesiastica nell'Europa della Controriforma: l'edizione parigina delle opere di Gasparo Contarini,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 21 (1985): 3–48Google Scholar. For description, dates, and further bibliography see Gleason, 75–90. Contarini's works include a response to On the Immortality of the Soul by his teacher Pietro Pomponazzi; a treatise on bishops, now entitled De officio episcopi, written in 1517; and philosophical works including the Compendium primae philosophiae; and De elementis et eorum mixtionibus libri V. His short treatises on the will can be found in Quattro lettere di monsignor Gasparo Contarino (Florence: Appresso Lorenzo Torrentino, 1558) 9–20.Google Scholar

58. For a brief overview of this late-medieval transformation, see Jonathan, Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), 299–302Google Scholar, and for a contemporary example see Karl Rahner's discussion of Ignatius of Loyola's spiritual quest as a pilgrimage: The Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola: An Account of its Historical Development, trans. Smith, Francis John (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1953), 22–35.Google Scholar

59. “After living a life so austere, you still fear that the sins you committed in the past are such that you would not be able to do suitable penance for them during the remainder of your life” (“Tamen, da l'altra parte vedendo quel che vui ditte di buon core, che, dapoi lassato tuto el mondo per amor di Christo, et dapoi fati una vita così austera, non restati però di temer che i peccati vostri commessi per il passato non siano di tal sorte che non siati per farze conveniente penitentia in questo avanzo di la vostra vita, in el qual pensier et in el qual timor ve vedo assai continuato” [Camaldoli no. 2, 13]). Gleason discusses the debate about whether this conversion was prompted by Contarini's crisis about whether to join a monastery (14–18).

60. “Chè quanto a la satisfaction di i peccati fati et in i quali la fragilità humana casca, la passion sua è stà sufficiente et più che bastante” (Camaldoli no. 2, 14)

61. Gleason provides an overview of the scholarship, 14–18.

62. Heiko, Oberman, “Wir sein pettier. Hoc est verum. Covenant and Grace in the Theology of the Middle Ages” in The Reformation, trans. Andrew, Gow (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 94.Google Scholar

63. She points out that “all explicit ‘moments’ of conversion in the Confessions are described in relation to the texts that triggered the change”—a dynamic which Petrarch reenacts (Quillen, 46).

64. “Poi el Sabato Sancto andato a riconciliarme a San Sebastiano, parlai un bon pezo con un Padre religioso pieno di sanctità, el qual infra vari ragionamenti, quasi se havesse saputo la mia molestia, me cominciò a ragionar che la via de la salute era più ampia di quel che molti se persuadeno. Et qui, non me cognoscendo altrimente, me disse molte parole” Camaldoli, no. 2, 14. On the practice of confession in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century see Roberto, Rusconi, “Dal pulpito all confessione: Modelli di comportamento religioso in Italia tra 1470 circa e 1520 circa,” in Strutture ecclesiastiche in Italia e in Germania prima della Riforma, ed. Paolo, Prodi and Peter, Johanke (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 1984), 259–315. Ignatius Loyola's Autobiography begins with a similar account of a conversation in a garden where it seems, like Contarini's description of his conversion, to foreshadow a confessional model that, as John W. O'Malley has shown, the Jesuits popularized: the confession as general review and an aid to spiritual growth rather than a specific means of absolution (First Jesuits, 137–39).Google Scholar

65. Petrarca, , Rerum familiarium, ltr. iv.1 176–77.Google Scholar

66. For this reading of Petrarch, see Quillen: “From this perspective, the letter on the ascent of Mont Ventoux questions the possibility of resuscitating the ancients, of making their words speak to contemporary experience. The letter thus stands out as a critique of the assumptions that support the very humanist practices underwritten by the bulk of Petrarch's correspondence” (147). Cf. Petrarch Rerum Familiarium iii.15.18 and his discussion of books as agents of transformation.

67. Brian, Stock, “Reading, Writing, and the Self: Petrarch and his Forerunners” New Literary History 26 (1995): 717–30, 722.Google Scholar

68. In comparing Petrarch and Augustine, Brian Stock suggests that while Petrarch “more readily assumes that reading and spiritual progress belong together” Petrarch also views the textual record as an end in itself rather than a tool for interior discernment. Stock concludes that Petrarch, who thinks of the self as a kind of book, becomes interested in the interior meaning of the text as Augustine was interested in the inferiority of the mind. Thus Petrarch has both more and less invested in texts: he does not necessarily see them as signifiers of the Divine Word but rather as the locus for self-understanding (self-reading) (Stock, , “Reading, Writing, and the Self: Petrarch and his Forerunners,” New Literary History 26 “1995”: 717–30,722). Contarini, as we will see, is caught in yet another hermeneutic cycle. He tries to read in order to seek God, but finds in texts neither the Divine Word nor self-knowledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. “Sapeti ambedui come io questi fre anni adrieto, dapoi che per le guerre me transferì dal studio patavino a Venetia, et con vui presi più strecta amicitia che per lo adietro havevo, sempre hebbi questo pensiero di fornir quelli studii de philosophia humana a li quali havevo ià data bona opera, et poi trasferirme a la doctrina Christiana et in quella con quiete passar in timor de Dio li mei anni” Camaldoli no. 11, 37.

70. On his desperation, see also Camaldoli no. 2, 12–15.

71. “Vero è, per confessarvi in tuto el vero, che el mezzo de inalzarme a questo bene che vui charitevolmente mi aricordate, a la bassezza mia sento chiaramente essere improportionato. Non dico solum nel seguir la vita monasticha ma etiam nel versar molto ne la Scriptura Sacra. Quella prima et summa verità molto bene cognosce et sa quante volte mi son messo a quella impressa, et quante volte di core io l'ho pregata che me concedi gratia che in quello giardino pasca lo intellecto mio. Ma sempre sempre, che a tal impresa son messo, et indispositione grande nel corpo per questo humore melancholico et perturbation grande ne l'animo mi è risultata. Et pure ultimamente, dopoi che la febre quartana non mi dava più noia, mi havevo messo a leggere lo Evangelio di san Matheo et qualche cosa di sancto Gregorio et sancto Agustino, quando, oltre la indispositione del corpo, mi sentiva nascere per quelle lectione alguni timori ne l'animo, vani et pazzi però; pure, benchè li cognoscessi essere vani, mi davano grandissima perturbatione” Camaldoli no. 8, 27.

72. “Quelle altre cose de li theologi più vechi, li quali sempre in interpretatione mystice de la Scriptura over in admonitione di uno modo di vivere et di uno affecto di animo, al qual non posso inalzarme, la debellezza mia non sostene, immo, se io in quelle cose verso, di timore in discontento et di discontento in timore ritorno” Camaldoli, no. 8, 28.

73. “Et a l'ultimo mi pare che, come non degno di tanta altezza, mi habbi posto una inclinatione in el animo che discenda, et che per adeso di quella moralità, la qual li philosophi hanno vista con el lume naturale, el qual è etiam dono grande di Dio, mi debba contentare, et in quelle speculatione basse de philosophi et theologi, che solum insegnano, zioè di sancto Thomaso, mi debba contentare” Camaldoli no. 8, 27.

74. “Hora fornito el studio da me proposto et venuto el desiderata tempo, credo per la anxietà usata questo passato anno in quelli predicti studii, son incorso in quella disposition melancholica che ià sapeti che io pati grandissima. La qual, benchè non sia cusi intensa come fo quella, pur mi molesta con sì tristi et turbidi pensieri, con tal imagination paurose (paurose, dico, di cose che la ragion discorre esser quasi impossibile) che pocchi, credo, se trovi al mondo con l'animo più inquieto di me. Me son venuti in odio li studii, et quella sol cosa che a l'altra volta mi ralegrava, cioè la lection de la Scriptura Sacra, hora me da grande molestia” Camaldoli no. 11, 37.

75. See Adrian, Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) for a discussion of how, in a slightly later time period, there was a growing awareness that reading, which involved the passions, was a potential source of extreme harm and should not be done without the proper habituation, or by the wrong people, such as women (cf. 387, 408, 427–28).Google Scholar

76. On the tradition of “reading” the heart see Eric, Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).Google Scholar

77. “Et cusì, onde che per quella doctrina penso liberarmi l'animo da perturbatione, mi sento di continuo in maggio perturbatione, et a poccho a poccho descendere poi ad algune superstitione et algune credulità paze, de le quali tute è causa la pusillanimitade di animo che tale lectione me genera” Camaldoli, no. 8, 28.

78. “Pur el corpo da una parte da l'altra questi foschi pensieri mi molestano, et tanto più, che quel solo refrigerio che me haveva proposto, contra ogni colpo de fortuna, cioè le Sacre lettere, hora non me danno alguna consolation, et dubito che mai non vegnirà quel tempo che le mi diletano” Camaldoli no. 11, 37.

79. “Fo leto una vostra lettera piena de tanto affecto, di tanta chiareza che cusì manifestamentre dimonstrava el vero et confutava quelle frivole rason, le qual ne retiene (et mi piì de tuti li altri) che, benchè sempre habbi cognosciuto l'animo vostro affectuosissimo et la dextreza vostra nel scriver vostri concepti, non di meno non posso far altro iudicio che non vui ma el spirito che in vui era per vostra man havesse cusì ditato” Camaldoli no. 1, 11.

80. “Et quel tuto che altre volte, mi ricordo, di questa cosa havete lecto in molti auctori phylosophi et christiani, vedo da vui con tanta elevazione de intellecto esser gustata, che anchora in me, leggendo quella parte, ne risultava uno poccho di gusto” Camaldoli no. 8, 27.

81. “Ià alquanti giorni me fu ressa una vostra lettera piena di quella charità che in voi redundando empie etiam ogni vostra opera, ogni vostra parola” Camaldoli no. 3, 15.

82. “Le cose vostre che mandasti a Messer Vincentio me son state di tanta satisfaction et consolation quanto cose altre che mai habbia letto. Et voria volentiera haverle habute apreso de mi over che almen le fosse ristate in questa terra, aziò qualche volta havesse potuto ragionar con vui in quelle scriture et excitar questo mio adormentato animo” Camaldoli no. 4, 18.

83. This is Jedin's spelling of the last name although Contarini uses “Galiano” and “Galgiano.” Galliano was a follower of Savonarola. In a treatise he wrote about Savonarola, Contarini invoked the same terms he used for Galliano when he said that Savonarola should be found innocent of charges of heresy “in view of his vast learning and saintly life.” For the treatise see Felix, Gilbert “Contarini on Savonarola: An Unknown Document of 1516” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 59 (1968): 145–50.Google Scholar

84. “Sempre me si rapresenta a la mente … sopra tuti il gentilissimo Galiano, el quale fin che vivo amerò forse quanto me medesimo. Al quale ho scrito più fiate, et hora scrivo, perchè, dapoichè altrimente per hora non posso conversar con lui, ogni sabato son per scriverli et consumare un'hora ragionando con lui a quel modo che mi è concesso. In tuta la septimana non credo sia per spendere una hora con tanto mio piacere quanto quella” Camaldoli no. 19, 51.

85. “Son molto spesso con el nostro Messer Triphon Gabriel, da la conversation del qual prendo grandissimo piacer et ricevo grande fruto, perchè in vero è homo de animo compositissimo et di grandissimo iudicio in ogni sorte di lettere” Camaldoli no.13, 42.

86. “Io de qui, honorandissimi mei Padri, vivo con li nostri amici in li studi” Camaldoli no.13, 42. Contarini goes on to say that he is reading both Plato and Augustine. For a discussion of this passage, which construes Contarini's crises as one that he resolves when he finds a way to integrate classical and Christian studies, see Fragnito, 118–20, and Cessi, “Paolinismo preluterano” 8. This emphasis on the content of Contarini's studies, while straightforward, can obscure the significance of Contarini's repeated claims that he has been frustrated by both philosophical and Christian texts and the important role friends played as he found himself entrenched in a melancholy engendered (he says) by his studies.

87. “niuno è più vero tempio de Dio de l'intellecto humano, et nel qual esser a lui renduto el debito culto più volentieri cerchi” Camaldoli no. 9, 33.

88. Contrast this with the the assumption of mutual obligation vis-à-vis letters and scholarly services in the later Republic of Letters (Anne, Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 “New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995”, 12–53).Google Scholar

89. “Non ve sia grave, etiam ogni giorno, dispensar un poccho de hora ragionando con nui ne le vostre suavissime lettere di quelle cose di che havete el cor pieno. Fareti a nui cosa tanto grata quanto nulla piu. A Iesu Christo benedeto fareti molto più grata cosa che a nui” Camaldoli no. 9, 33.

90. This description of the significance of the new religious movements such as the friars has become a commonplace. For an overview and bibliography of studies that contributed to this interpretation see Caroline, Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 9–21.Google Scholar

91. The literature on this feature of humanism is vast. For a concise summary of the debate about the active versus the contemplative life see Alberigo, , “Vita attiva” and Giles Constable “The interpretation of Mary and Martha” in Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

92. See Gilbert, , “Religion and Politics” 94, and Fragnito, 106–14.Google Scholar

93. Ross eloquently explains how Aristotelian assumptions about friendship permeate Contarini's letters without addressing the question of how friends fulfill this (Aristotelian and Christian) virtue of serving one another (Ross, J. B., “Contarini and His Friends” Studies in the Renaissance 17 “1970”: 192–232). On Contarini's education, his grammar school training in humanism, and his subsequent work on Aristotle and classical philosophy, see Gleason, 8–9 and note 31 above.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94. “Ben sapeti melgio di me che, benchè la vita contemplativa sia più nobile de la activa, pur la vita activa, la qual versa ne l'adiuvar el proximo ne la vita spiritual, è più meritoria della contemplativa” Camaldoli no. 4, 19.

95. This perfection is for most unobtainable: “Perchè, Messer Vincentio charissimo, ben sappeti che il viver solitario non è natural a l'homo, el qual la narura ha fato animal sociabile, ma besogna che colui che vuol metersi a tal vita sia de una perfection excendente quasi la condition humana, tal che non cun li sensi ma solum cun lo intellecto viva. A la qual perfection rarissimi homeni pervengono” Camaldoli no. 7, 23. Contarini, a student of the Aristotelian philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi, had studied Aristotle extensively while at Padua. Contarini most likely relied primarily on Latin translations of Aristotle's work: he studied Greek at Padua, but there is no evidence that he was unusually proficient, and if he was trained like his contemporaries, he was accustomed to read Greek texts alongside a Latin translation. Deno, Geanakoplos, Byzantium and the Renaissance: Greek scholars in Venice; Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1973 “c 1962”), 135–39.Google Scholar

96. “È tropo gran difficultà che uno homo di carne vestito versi in contemplation de Dio separandosi de le cose sensibile. Et però, non potendo la imperfection de la natura nostra che sempre versemo contemplando et amando Dio in sé, devemo, come dice Augusrino, colere et amare Deum in proximo nostro, giovando al proximo nostro et ne le cose spiritual et ne le necessità corporal per l'amor de Dio” Camaldoli no. 7, 23.

97. “Se Aristotle, privo del lume vero e di quella charitate, la qual sola Iesu Christo ha lassato per precepto a tuti nui, dice nel nono Libro de la Hetica sua che, essendo officio de ogni amico subvegnir a ramico suo ne li besogni sui circa le cose pertinente al corpo et a la forruna, molto più debbe esser officio de l'amico subvegnire l'altro amico ne li deffecti sui circa li beni de l'animo, li quali veramente son beni et veramente sonno nostril” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

98. “Questi erano certi inditii che non era voluntà de la sua Maiestà nè el ben vostro restar in quelle parte et viver in solitudine, lassando privi molti amici vostri et innumere altre persone di grande utihta, la qual prendevano per la conversahon vostra” Camaldoli no. 5, 20.

99. “Quante volte credete vui, Messer Vincentio mio, che, retrovandome in grandissima perturbation di mente, il vegnir a star con vui et ragionar con vui me rendesse un animo quietissimo, de perturbatissimo? Et quante volte, dapoi che seti partito, credete vui che io in simel occorentie ve habbi desiderata et hora vi desideri?” Camaldoli no. 5, 20.

100. “Per tanto, Messer Vincentio mio, me rendo certissimo che non vi serà noia un poccho de hora del giorno spender in scriverne” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

101. “Dapoi, essendo vui ne l'Heremo, so che non vi serà grave un poccho di hora del giorno spendere in ragionar meco di quelle cosa da le quale le citade son molto lontane et, per l'incontra, lo Heremo da ogni parte scaturisse” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

102. “non vi serà noia un poccho de hora del giorno spender in scriverne, aziò poi, in capo de alquanti giorni, possiamo longamente ragionar con vui, il che suplirà a tuti li ragionamenti che in molti giorni qui in Venetia solevamo far insieme” Camaldoli no. 10, 35.

103. “Non potresti creder quanta fidanza sia nel cor mio di non perderve, et che la voluntà de Christo non sia che li serviate separata dal consortio nostro, ma che el volgi che noi laudiamo la Maiestà sua ne la conversation vostra” Camaldoli no. 7, 25.

104. This emphasis on the secularization of academic culture has encouraged scholars to study conversation, too, as a secular phenomenon. Thus, most of the numerous works on conversation are implicitly or explicitly analyzing it in light of the emergence of secular, civil culture. On Guazzo's widely translated, popular work, La civil conversatione, see Lievesay, John Leon, Stefano Guazzo and the English Renaissance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press., 1961)Google Scholar and Giorgio, Patrizi, “Una retorica del molteplice: forme di vita e forme del sapere nella ‘civil conversatione,’” in Stefano Guazzo e la Civile Conversatione, ed. Giorgio, Patrizi (Rome: Bulzoni editore, 1990), 52–53Google Scholar. On conversation in the Republic of Letters see Marc Fumaroli, “La République des Lettres (III): Conversation et sociétés de conversation à Paris au XVI siècle,” in Rhétorique et sociétée en Europe (XVI–XVII siècles), Annuaire de la Collège de France (1989–90), 461–77; and Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., “Exclusive Conversations”: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Anna, Bryson (From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England “New York: Clarendon, 1998”, 54–57, 151–92)Google Scholar surveys conduct books and explains the connection between conversation and civility. For a strong thesis, which both critiques and extends Habermas's claims about the unique significance of conversation in supporting the formation of civil society, see Miller, Peter N., “Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-century Venice” Journal of Modern History 73 (03 2001): 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

105. Nancy Struever has astutely noted that privacy is a sixteenth-century crux (144–46). But privacy at this time was not necessarily (or usually) solitude. Contarini and his friends may have been withdrawn, but they were not alone. For a helpful analysis of the cultural significance of solitude—and how claims to solitude emerged from studies and laboratories crowded with people—see Shapin, , “The Mind is its own place: Science and solitude in seventeenth-century England” Science in Context 4, 1 (1990): 191–218.Google Scholar