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The Lettere Volgari and the Crisis of Evangelism in Italy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Anne Jacobson Schutte
Anne Jacobson Schutte*
Affiliation:
Lawrence University
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Extract

On September 27, 1540, Paul III issued the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae, formally recognizing the foundation of the Society of Jesus. The following May participants in the Regensburg Colloquy, a final effort at confessional reunion sponsored by Charles V, acknowledged their failure to agree on the definition of the Eucharist, and the compromises previously reached on other doctrinal issues were quickly disavowed in Rome, Wittenberg, and elsewhere. Six weeks later, in mid-July 1541, Juan de Valdés, the expatriate Spanish master of semimystical spirituality, died in Naples. On May 22, 1542, Initio nostri huius pontificatus, the bull convoking an ecumenical council at Trent, was read in the papal consistory. The reconstitution of the Roman Inquisition was officially announced in the promulgation of Licet ah initio on July 21 in the same year.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Winter 1975 , pp. 639 - 688
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1975

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Footnotes

*

Research for this paper (an earlier version of which was presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, St. Louis, October 28, 1972) was conducted at The Newberry Library. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance given me by two members of the Newberry staff, John Tedeschi and John Aubrey.

The following abbreviations are used in footnotes below:

Atan. Dionigi Atanagi, ed. De le lettere di tredici huomini illustri libri tredici. Venice: [Vincenzo Valgrisi], 1554.

Brun. Orazio Brunetto. Lettere di Meesser Horatio Brunetto. Venice: [Andrea Arrivabene], 1548.

Dol. Lodovico Dolce, ed. Lettere di diversi eccellentiss. huomini, raccolte da diversi libri: tra leauali se ne leggono molte, non piu stampate. Con gli argomenti per ciascuna delle materie di che elle trattano, e nel fine annotationi e tavole delle cose piu notabili, a utile de gli studiosi. Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari et fratelli, 1554-1555.

Fran. Nicolò Franco. Le pistole volgari di M. Nicolò Franco. Venice: Antonio Gardane, 1539.

Gher. Paolo Gherardo, ed. Nuovo libro di lettere de i piu rari auttori della lingua volgare italiana, di nuovo, et con nuova additione ristampato. Venice: Comin da Trino di Monferrato for Paolo Gherardo, 1545.

LV I Paolo Manuzio, ed. Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini, et eccellentissimi ingegni, scritte in diverse materie. Libro prime Venice: Figliuoli di Aldo, 1542.

LV II Antonio Manuzio, ed. Lettere volgari di diversi eccellentissimi huomini, in diverse materie. Libro secondo. Venice: Figliuoli di Aldo, 1545.

Mart. Nicolò Martelli. Il primo libro delle lettere di Nicolò Martelli. Florence: [Anton Francesco Doni] for the author, 1546.

Tas. Bernardo Tasso. Le lettere di M. Bernardo Tasso. Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1549.

Tol. Claudio Tolomei. De le lettere di M. Claudio Tolomei libri sette. Con una breve dichiarazione in fine di tutto l'ordin de l'ortografia di questa opera. Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1547.

Letters used in this study are numbered in the Appendix.

References

1 See, for example, Jedin, Hubert, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. Ernest Graf, O.S.B., I (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1957), 390–391.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, McNair, Philip, Peter Martyr in Italy: An Anatomy of Apostasy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), p. 289 Google Scholar; Cervelli, Innocenzo, ‘Storiografia e problemi intorno alia vita religiosa e spirituale a Venezia nella prima metà del ‘500,’ Studi veneziani, 8 (1966), 476.Google Scholar

3 The original Nicodemus, of course, later acknowledged publicly his sympathy with Jesus (John 7:50-52, 19:39); Calvin argued that modern dissimulators should do the same. Excuse de Jehan Calvin a Messieurs les Nicodemites, sur la complaincte qu'ilz font de sa trop grand ‘rigueur (1544), in Calvin, John, Three French Treatises, ed. Higman, Francis M. (London: Athlone Press of the University of London, 1970), pp. 147–148.Google Scholar Nicodemism in theory and practice was analyzed by Delio Cantimori in several studies. See especially ‘ “Nicodemism” and the Expectations of a Conciliar Solution to the Religious Question,’ trans. Cochrane, Eric, in The Late Italian Renaissance, ed. Cochrane, Eric (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 244–265.Google Scholar This article originally appeared in Contributi alla storia del Concilio di Trento e della Controriforma, Quaderni di Belfagor, 1 (Florence: Vallecchi, 1948); reprinted in Cantimori, Delio, Studi di storia (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1959), pp. 518–536.Google Scholar Among the students of Cantimori who have concentrated on ways and means of Nicodemite dissimulation is Rotondò, Antonio, ‘Atteggiamenti della vita morale italiana del Cinquecento: la pratica nicodemitica,’ Rivista storica italiana, 79 (1967), 991–1030.Google Scholar Carlo Ginzburg has produced a full-length study of Nicodemite theory: Il nicodemismo: simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell'Europa del ‘500 (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970). A somewhat different evaluation of Italian religious attitudes at this time is to be found in an article by Pommier, Edouard, ‘La société venitienne et la réforme protestante au XVI siècle,’ Bollettino della società e dello stato veneziano, 1 (1959), 3–26.Google Scholar

4 Although, as I have noted, ‘Evangelism’ is a potentially misleading term, it is so widely used that I shall employ it here in preference to Evangelicism,’ ‘Evangelicalism,’ or some even more cumbersome word. However, the suggestion recently made by Dermot Fenlon that we call the Evangelicals what they called themselves, spirituali, is worthy of consideration. Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 21-22.

5 Williams, George Huntston, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), p. 2.Google Scholar

6 Les origines de la réforme, III: L'évangélisme: 1521-1538 (Paris: Hachette, 1914).

7 Jedin, 1, 364-370. The original German edition of Jedin's first volume was published in 1949.

8 ‘On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth-Century Italy,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 14 (1953), 511-527.

9 An incisive historiographical study of Evangelism is being prepared by Elisabeth G. Gleason. She has kindly allowed me to see a draft of her essay, and I have made considerable use of it in the present study.

10 McNair, , Peter Martyr, pp. 4–10.Google Scholar

11 McNair is not totally immune to the prejudices of which he accuses Jung, Jedin, and Cantimori. At least twice (pp. l, 293) he refers to a Rome-imposed Iron Curtain descending upon the Alps. This metaphor and other instances of highly emotional language suggest that he may have allowed a Cold War mentality to penetrate his work to some degree.

12 On the early appearance of Protestant works in Italy, see De Frede, Carlo, ‘Per la storia della stampa nel Cinquecento in rapporto con la diffusione della Riforma in Italia,’ Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 39 (1964), 175–179.Google Scholar On Contarini's theological education, see Ross, James Bruce, ‘Gasparo Contarini and His Friends,’ Studies in the Renaissance, 17 (1970), 192–232 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The Emergence of Gasparo Contarini: A Bibliographical Essay,’ Church History, 41 (1972), 22-45.

13 The main reason for the difficulty is that much of the evidence comes from records of Inquisition trials. Testimony taken and physical evidence gathered during Pietro Carnesccchi's trial in 1566 constitute a major source for the study of Evangelism. See Manzoni, Giacomo, ed., ‘Estratto del processo di Mons. Pietro Carnesecchi,’ Miscellanea di storia italiana, 10 (1870), 187–573.Google Scholar Information supplied under psychological if not physical duress, sometimes many years after the events in question, cannot be taken at face value as completely reliable. As an example of this problem, see my review of I costituti di don Pietro Manelfi, ed. Carlo Ginzburg, Renaissance Quarterly, 25 (1972), 364- 366. The most thoroughgoing attempt to trace Northern Protestant influences on Italian Evangelism is a series of studies by Tommaso Bozza dealing with the use of Calvin's Institutes by the authors of the Beneficio di Cristo. Since much of Bozza's work, published privately, is not generally accessible, see the summary by Vinay, Valdo, ‘Il Beneficio di Cristo chrito e la riforma cattolica,’ Protestantisimo, 28, no. 1 (1973), 15–35.Google Scholar Our understanding of the Beneficio is put on an entirely new footing by Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi, ‘Le due redazioni del “Beneficio di Cristo,” ‘ in Eresia e riforma in Italia, Miscellanea I del Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press; and Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1974), pp. 135-204.

14 Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G. M. Giberti (1495-1543), Uomini e dottrine, 16 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969).

15 In a forthcoming study of Pier Paolo Vergerio, I shall show that he and his brother Giovanni Battista worked assiduously as propagators of Evangelism in their dioceses of Capodistria and Pola on the Istrian peninsula. For the time being, see my unpublished doctoral dissertation, ‘Pier Paolo Vergerio: The making of an Italian Reformer’ (Stanford University, 1969).

16 On Brucioli, see W. Theodor Elwert, ‘Un umanista dimenticato: Antonio Brucioli, veneziano d'elezione,’ in Rinascimento europeo e rinascimento veneziano, ed. Vittore Branca, Civiltà europea e civiltà veneziana: aspetti e problemi, 3 [Fondazione Giorgio Cini] (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1967), pp. 75-96. The fullest modern study of Ochino is Bainton, Roland H., Bernardino Ochino, esule e riformatore senese del Cinquecento, 1487-1563, trans. Gianturco, Elio (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1940).Google Scholar See also Nicolini, Benedetto, ‘Bernardino Ochino: saggio biografico,’ Biblion, 1 (1959), 5–25, 90-114.Google Scholar Philip McNair and John A. Tedeschi have analyzed a recently discovered edition containing previously unknown sermons by Ochino: ‘New Light on Ochino,’ Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance, 35 (1973), 289-301. The wide diffusion of the Beneficio is discussed by Salvatore Caponetto, ed., Il Beneficio di Cristo, Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press; and Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1972), pp. 497-498.

17 Here again the main sources of information are Inquisition processi; see footnote 13 above.

18 Paul F. Grendler's forthcoming study of the Inquisition and the press in Venice will shed a great deal of light on this subject. A preliminary survey of his findings was presented as a paper at the American Historical Association annual meeting, New Orleans, December 1972.

19 See footnote 9 above.

20 Prospettive di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento (Bari: Laterza, 1960) and ‘Nico; demism’ (cited in footnote 3 ). The quoted passage is from ‘Nicodemism,’ pp. 259-260, the bracketed definitions of'affirmative’ and ‘negative’ arguments are taken from pp. 249-250 of the same article. Pommier (see footnote 3) also points toward a new periodization as does, more explicitly, Logan, O. T. M., ‘Grace and Justification: Some Italian Views of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20 (1969), 67–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Cantimori, ‘Nicodemism,’ p. 261.

22 For the general problem of how the last three-quarters of the sixteenth century in Italy can be fitted into periodization schemes for Italian and European history, see Eric Cochrane's introduction to The Late Italian Renaissance and several of the essays in that volume, particularly Croce, Benedetto, ‘A Working Hypothesis: The Crisis of Italy in the Cinquecento and the Bond between the Renaissance and the Risorgimento,’ trans. Cochrane, Eric, pp. 23–42.Google Scholar This essay originally appeared in La critica: Rivista di letteratura, storia e filosofia, 37 (1939), 401-411; it was reprinted by Armando Saitta in Antologia di critica storica, 3rd ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1959), pp. 494-508.

23 Il manierismo nella letteratura del Cinquecento (Padua: Liviana, 1959), p. 5.

24 Critics of the Italian World, 1530-1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco, and Ortensio Lando (Madison, Milwaukee, and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), especially Chapter I.

25 Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy, 1420-1540 (London: B.T. Batsford, Ltd., 1972), pp. 275-277.

26 “La letteratura italiana nell'età del Concilio,” in Il Concilio di Trento e la riforma tridentina. Atti del Convegno storico internazionale, Trento, 2-6 settembre 1963, 2 vols. (Rome, Freiburg i. Br., Basel: Herder, 1965), 1, 317-343. This study has been reprinted in Dionisotti, Carlo, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, Giulio, 1967), pp. 183–204.Google Scholar Citations given here are to the 1965 publication.

27 Dionisotti has maintained elsewhere that beginning around 1525 (the year of the publication of his seminal Prose della volgar lingua) Bembo made a deliberate effort to influence talented younger men to focus on the cultivation of the Italian language. See especially his article on Bembo in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, viii (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966), 142. Contemporary confirmation of Dionisotti's contention is provided by Pier Paolo Vergerio's dialogue De republica Veneta liber primus (1526), of which I am preparing an edition. Important studies of this period of Bembo's life include Cian, Vittorio, Un decennio della vita di M. Pietro Bembo (1521-1531) (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1885)Google Scholar; and Elwert, W. Theodor, ‘Pietro Bembo e la vita letteraria del suo tempo,’ in La civiltà veneziana del Rinascimento, Storia della civiltà veneziana, 4 (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1958), pp. 125–176.Google Scholar

28 Dionisotti cites as an example the Aldine Press: until 1536 the heirs of Aldo tried to maintain his scholarly orientation, but a few years after his son Paolo took over, approximately one-half of the books on the Aldine list were in Italian. ‘Letteratura … Concilio,’ P. 330.

29 Apparently straining at one point to fit his subject to the theme of the conference at which his paper was delivered, Dionisotti suggested that the literary academies fore-shadowed the conciliar gathering at Trent. Such a notion seems farfetched, especially since it is immediately preceded by this statement: ‘In short, I believe that in Italian literature around 1545 one cannot recognize any predisposition or tendency to adopt [the perception of] religious and political needs implicit in the convocation of the Council of Trent.’ ‘Letteratura … Concilio,’ p. 325.

30 ‘Letteratura … Concilio,’ p. 321. On the Marchesa di Pescara, see Jung, Eva-Maria, ‘Vittoria Colonna: Between Renaissance and Counter-Reformation,’ Review of Religion, 15 (1951). 144–l59 Google Scholar; and Benedetto Nicolini, ‘Sulla religiosità di Vittoria Colonna,’ Studi cinquecenteschi, 1: Ideali e passioni nell'Italia religiosa (Bologna: Tamari, 1968), pp. 35-63

31 Additional light is shed on this point, from a somewhat different perspective, by Ettore Mazzali in his discussion of Torquato Tasso's cultural ambiance: ‘Torquato Tasso: An Introduction,’ trans. Cochrane, Eric, in The Late Italian Renaissance, ed. Cochrane, Eric, p. 135 Google Scholar, This essay was excerpted from the introduction to Tasso's Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959).

32 Dionisotti has noted that the Italian letters of St. Catherine of Siena were issued by Aldo Manuzio in 1500. However, he considers this publication—as Aldo undoubtedly did—to be merely one item in the flood of religious literature in the vernacular put out by publishers in every country, rather than as a major event in the history of the Italian language. Gli umanisti e il volgare fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1968), pp. 3-4.

33 Some recent authorities state incorrectly that the first publication of Book I was in 1538. The fullest bibliographical discussion of all of Aretino's letters is still Fontanini, Giusto, Biblioteca dell'eloquenza italiana con le annotazioni del signor Apostolo Zeno, ed. Forcellini, Marco (Venice: Pasquali, 1753), I, 205–227.Google Scholar On Books I and II, see the modern editions prepared by Nicolini, Fausto: Il primo lihro delle lettere (Bari: Laterza, 1913), pp. 409–431 Google Scholar; Il secondo libra delle lettere (Bari: Laterza, 1916), pp. 271-279.

34 In 1543, 1544, 1545, 1546, 1548, 1549, 1550, 1551, 1553, 1554, 1560, 1564, and 1567. Fontanini, I, 166; Renouard, Antoine Augustin, Annales de l'imprimerie des Alde, 3rd ed. (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1834), p. 127.Google Scholar It is possible that Fontanini and his editors or Renouard missed multiple reprints in a single year.

Paolo conceived the project no later than 1541. His experience in Rome during the mid-1530's when he met many of the literary figures around the papal court, may have given him the idea. Menghini, Mario, ed., Lettere familiari di Annibal Caro (1920; repr. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1957), pp. iii–vi.Google Scholar Aretino's reaction to Manuzio's venture was characteristically biting: ‘I seem to hear a thunder of epistles all around me, and methinks I see a troup of well-armed captains marching against one soldier. Yet inventors deserve some praise. The Aldine type is a fair thing, but who would not have preferred to invent printing itself?’ Quoted by Butler, K. T., ed., ‘The Gentlest Art’ in Renaissance Italy: An Anthology of Italian Letters, 1459-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 20.Google Scholar This passage (the source of which Butler does not provide) is in a letter from Arctino to Nicolo Martelli, August 22, 1542, in Mart., fols. 28v-29.

35 Novo lihro di lettere scritte da i piu vari auttori professori delta lingua volgare italiana (Venice, 1544). Menghini, pp. vii-viii. Since no extant copy of this edition is known to me, I used the second edition of 1545. Full titles of this and other letter collections are to be found in the list of titles and abbreviations above. Gherardo, active between 1543 and 1560, was responsible for the publication of twenty-four books. Ester Pastorello, Tipografi, editori, librai a Venezia net XVI secolo (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1924), p. 41.

36 This anthology was also reprinted several times, usually together with LV I: 1545 (twice), 1546, 1548, 1549, 1550, 1551, 1553, 1554, 1560, 1564, 1567. Fontanini, 1, 167-168; Renouard, p. 127.

37 Nicolò Franco is believed to have collaborated on this edition. Menghini, p. viii; Grendler, p. 217. In the 1530's Ruffinelli was associated with Giovanni Padovano in a printing business in Venice. He moved to Mantua around 1545 and operated a press there until his death in 1558. Fernanda Ascarelli, La tipografia cinquecentina italiana, Biblioteca bibliografica italiana, 1 (Florence: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1953), pp. 88, 188.

38 Reprinted by the same publisher in 1542. Almost all of the other known publications by the Frenchman Gardane are musical texts and treatises. Ascarelli, p. 192. Franco, a native of Benevento, had previously served as Aretino's secretary, and his decision to publish his own letters was unquestionably inspired by the success achieved by Aretino's. Grendler, pp. 40, 109-113, 215-216.

39 Lettera [sic] di M. Antonfrancesco Doni fiorentino (Piacenza: for S. Barbassoro by Giovanni Maria Cremonese, 1543) comprised twelve letters. It was followed by a much more extensive collection: Lettere d'Antonfrancesco Doni (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1544). This first book was reissued in 1545 by Scotto and in 1546 in Florence by Doni himself; Doni published a second book in 1547; and an edition containing three books appeared in 1552 (Venice: Francesco Marcolini). Grendler, pp. 245-246. Doni has been treated bibliographically by Cecilia Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni, scrittore e stampatore, Biblioteca bibliografica italiana, 21 (Florence: Sansoni Antiquariato, i960).

40 Martelli, whose letters were published in 1546, was a Florentine merchant who published two volumes of indifferent poetry and helped to found the Accademia degli Umidi. Mario Pelaez, ‘Nicolò Martelli,’ Enciclopedia Italiana, xxii (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1934), 431.

41 Tolomei's letters, originally published in 1547, were reissued by Giolito in 1549, 1550, 1553, 1554, 1557, 1558, 1565, and 1566, and three times by other Venetian printers after Giolito's privilege expired. The first edition was allegedly put out without the author's knowledge, by Fabio Benvoglienti, but in fact Tolomei had been planning a seven-part collection of his letters since 1542. Bongi, Salvatore, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari da Trino di Monferrato stampatore in Venezia, 1 (Rome: Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, 1890), 201–202, 239-240, 303, 379, 444-445Google Scholar; Croce, Benedetto, Poeti e scrittori del pieno e tardo Rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1958), 11, 65–73.Google Scholar Tolomei's spelling innovations were abandoned by Giolito after the first printing. Fontanini, I, 194. Because of its apologetic tone, the modern biography of Tolomei is less than satisfactory: Sbaragli, Luigi, Claudio Tolomei, umanista senese del Cinquecento: la vita e le opere (Siena: Accademia per le arte a per le lettere, 1939).Google Scholar

42 Through Leandro Zarotto of Capodistria, a fellow physician, Brunetto became acquainted with the ideas of Evangelism propagated by Vergerio. Liruti, Giovanni Giuseppe, Notizie delle vite ed opere scritti da’ letterati del Friuli, 4 vols. (Venice: M. Fenzo, and Udine: Fratelli Gallici, 1760-1780), iv, 353–354.Google Scholar

43 Tasso's letters, first issued in 1549, were reprinted in 1551 by Valgrisi; a second book, published by Giolito in 1560, was reissued in 1562 and 1574-1575. Fontanini, I, 185-186. On Tasso, courtier, poet, and father of Torquato Tasso, see Williamson, Edward, Bernardo Tasso (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1951).Google Scholar

44 Pietro Bembo's Italian letters belong in a different category because they were published posthumously (albeit at his request) by his executor, Carlo Gualteruzzi, beginning in 1548. Fontanini, 1, 176-185; Dionisotti, , ‘Pietro Bembo’ (DBI), p. 149.Google Scholar

45 Atanagi's anthology was first published in Rome by Valerio Dorico e Luigi fratelli in 1554; it was reprinted in 1554, 1560, and several times thereafter by various publishers. Fontanini, 1, 168-169; Menghini, pp. xi-xiv. I use the Venetian imprint of 1554 (issued, according to a penciled note in the Newberry Library copy, by Valgrisi.) Atanagi, a native of Cagli, served as secretary to several prelates in Rome until about 1560, when he moved to Venice. See Mutini, Claudio, ‘Dionigi Atanagi,’ in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, IV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1962), 503–506.Google Scholar

46 Dolce's anthology was first issued in 1554-1555; it was reprinted by Giolito in 1559. Bongi, 1, 440-441; n, 67. Dolce was apparently commissioned by Giolito to compile this ‘anthology of anthologies.’ He justified his enterprise on the grounds that he had added some letters not previously published, provided a summary for each letter, and indexed the book by subject as well as by author. These innovations are explained in his dedicatory letter to Silvio da Gaeta, sigs. A2-A3v. See also Menghini, pp. viii-x. On Dolce's career, see Grendler, pp. 67-68.

47 The magnitude of the total figure depends, of course, on whether only original editions or all printings are counted. In the eighteenth century Fontanini and his editors listed 59 first editions (44 collections of individuals’ letters, 11 anthologies, 4 books containing letters addressed to an individual); multiplying by 3, which seems to have been the average number of reprints, yields a total of 177. Randolph Starn states that around 1580 Montaigne's library contained approximately 100 volumes of Italian letters, and he suggests that the total may have been close to four times that number (which strikes me as somewhat exaggerated). Donato Giannotti and His ‘Epistolae’ (Geneva: Droz, 1968), P. 7.

48 Curiously, Aretino, in dedicating the first book of his letters to Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, concentrated on complimenting the Duke and said nothing about the novelty of his venture or how it might serve the cause of the Italian language. Il primo libro delle lettere, ed. Nicolini, pp.1-3.

49 LV I, sig. A2-A2V. In translating from the Italian I have occasionally broken up long sentences. Otherwise my renderings are as literal as is consistent with comprehensibility.

50 LV II, sig. A2-A2V. The ‘I’ in the first sentence of the longer quotation must refer to the firm Figliuoli di Aldo; it has never been suggested that Antonio edited LV i.

51 Lettere volgari became popular so quickly that from 1544 on it was apparently assumed by most editors that they were worthy of being issued and that no lengthy justifications were required. Of the ten collections which I have examined, only two others, Tasso's and Atanagi's contain a significant discussion of this matter. In one of his two dedicatory letters Tasso protested to his patron, Ferrante Sansevcrino, Prince of Salerno: ‘I do not wish in any way to deny that I am eager for glory and desirous of having our noble Italian vernacular extend itself everywhere and live in the mouths of mortals’ (sig. a7). His most extensive discussions of letters and the language question are addressed to men who also published their letters. Writing to Annibale Caro, he employed a legal simile (the Italian language as a ward to be protected by guardians) and drew an analogy to relations of kinship (Italian as the daughter of Latin, who could learn from her distinguished mother's example) (fols. 2-3). Congratulating Claudio Tolomei on the publication of his correspondence, Tasso stated that the genre in which examples of good Italian style were most needed was that of letters; Paolo Manuzio's collection had only partially filled the gap, and therefore Tolomei's letters were most welcome (pp. 354-360). Atanagi, like the Manuzio brothers, was concerned with content as well as style. In his dedication to Cardinal Giulio Feltrio Delia Rovere he spoke of the appearance in every age of cultural heroes who provided both living examples and instruction in manners, morals, and style. His ‘thirteen illustrious men,’ he believed, served this function for their generation (sigs. a2-a5).

52 Much modern scholarly attention has been devoted to the role of rhetoric in the Renaissance. For a forceful statement of what appears to be the dominant interpretation, see Gray, Hanna H., ‘Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 24 (1963), 497–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Butler, , Anthology, pp. 10–11, 17-19.Google Scholar Ferrero, Giuseppe Guido, ed., Lettere del Cinquecento, 2nd ed. (Turin: U.T.E.T., 1967), pp. 9–13.Google Scholar The historical connection between the classical art of letter-writing as revived in late medieval Italy and the rise of Renaissance humanism has been established by Paul Oskar Kristeller in several well-known studies. A typical mid-Cinquecento statement of the link between form and content is contained in a letter from Francesco Maria Molza to Paolo Manuzio (Rome, n.d. but before the publication of LV I): ‘I say … that your most excellent idea of bringing to light the aforesaid letters is not only necessary but most useful. For writing in the proper manner (ornately and with the correct arrangement of the words) not only brings delight to the reader but most of the time easily inclines him toward the position advocated by the writer. The force of words and pens is much greater than most people realize. Therefore, when the two are put together in the right order, suddenly there enters a spirit of marvelous strength which strikes, warms, and bends souls at the same time that it pleases them, in such a way that the readers do not venture to resist it’ (LV i, fol. 154-154v; Dol., p. 348; Ferrero, p. 330).

54 As a guide to the large specialized bibliography on the questione della lingua, see two authoritative summary statements: Migliorini, Bruno, ‘La questione della lingua,’ in Questioni e correnti di storia letteraria, ed. Bosco, Umberto and others (Milan: Carlo Marzorati, 1949), pp. 1–75 Google Scholar; and Grayson, Cecil, A Renaissance Controversy: Latin or Italian? (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960).Google Scholar

55 Butler, , Anthology, p. 12.Google Scholar

56 ‘Letteratura … Concilio,’ pp. 327-329. Although the present discussion is restricted to lettere volgari, it should be noted here that Dionisotti and more recently Grendler, who argues along similar lines, do not represent a consensus view on this point. For example, a pervasive theme in Burke's recent study is the growing elitism in Italian culture at the same time that Dionisotti sees an opening. While Burke's terminal date is 1540, he treats figures who lived and worked later, and he certainly gives the impression that no abrupt transformation in the cultural atmosphere was impending in 1540. Burke, pp. 29-30, 49, 141-144, 158-164, 167, 280.

57 Starn, p. 7.

58 These observations suggest a compromise between the views of Dionisotti and Grcndler on the one hand and Burke on the other, discussed in footnote 56. Paolo and Antonio Manuzio and their peers were hardly democrats. Yet their claims that one type of book could be of value to two different audiences should, I believe, be taken as something more than a crass advertising pitch to the largest possible market. Aware of a cultural gap between the elite and the middle ranks of society, they were trying conscientiously to bridge it.

Strange as it may seem, textbooks of Italian epistolary style (as opposed to books of genuine letters which could serve as examples and models) preceded and followed but did not accompany the efflorescence of lettere volgari in the mid-Cinquecento. According to Butler (p. 18), the earliest of these was Formulario et epistolario da dittare lettere a ogni persona (1485) by Bartolomeo Miniatore (a pseudonym for Cristoforo Landino), which was reprinted many times in the next four decades. In a late imprint of this handbook (n.p.; placed conjecturally in Venice around 1520, but I would be inclined to date it earlier because the type is black-letter), the dedication to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (sig. A2-A2V) says nothing about language except to suggest that the Duke may appreciate some plain, rough food to vary his diet. The letters are invented models suited to various situations. After a hiatus in the period under discussion here, textbooks began to appear again in 1565, when the poligrafo Francesco Sansovino issued Il segretario (Venice: Rampazetto). Butler, pp. 17-19. This second phase in the story of the lettere volgari—the growing popularity of manuals containing innumerable classifications, as well as the tendency to produce more specialized anthologies (lettere amorose, lettere cavalleresche)— coordinates well with the periodization proposed by Dionisotti.

59 Butler, , Anthology, pp. 8, 24.Google Scholar See also Ferrero, p. 13; and Nicolini, Benedetto, ed., Lettere di negozi del pieno Cinquecento (Bologna: Riccardo Pàtron, 1965), p. vii.Google Scholar

60 An unscientific estimate, based on my readings of the lettere volgari collections, would be that about one-sixth of the letters dealt primarily with news of a political or diplomatic nature; one-third with favors given, received, or hoped for; and one-half with ‘news of the mind.’ These compartments are not water-tight, but, as I shall observe later in another connection, most letters treated one subject exclusively.

61 Butler, p. 22. Ferrero, pp. 19-20. Starn, pp. 7-8. Marti, Mario, ‘L'epistolario come “genere” en un problema editoriale,’ in Studi eproblemi di critica testuale (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1961), pp. 206–207.Google Scholar Certain poligrafi capitalized on the vogue by producing whole volumes of fictitious letters, such as Lando's Lettere di molte valorose donne (1548) and Doni's Pistolotti amorosi (1552). Grendler, p. 34, 59-60.

62 ‘Pietro Bembo e la vita letteraria,’ p. 151.

63 See below, p. 667.

64 Butler, , Anthology, pp. 8–12.Google Scholar Ferrero, pp. 19, 33. Marti (pp. 206-207) goes even further, asserting that since letter-writing was considered to be a branch of rhetoric, formal considerations made every letter an inherently self-conscious, artificial rhetorical production.

65 Poeti e scrittori, II, 66.

66 For information on Colonna and Giberti, see the works referred to in footnotes 30 and 14. The most recent biography of Flaminio, Carol Maddison's Marcantonio Flaminio: Poet, Humanist and Reformer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), is strong on literary analysis but less satisfactory on his religious stance; see instead Fenlon (cited in n. 4), pp. 74-99 and passim. Paschini, Pio, Pier Paolo Vergerio e la sua apostasia: un episodio delle lotte religiose nel Cinquecento (Rome: Scuola tipografica Pio X, 1925)Google Scholar, is factually accurate but very brief and extremely biased; as noted above, I am completing a study of Vergerio's per-exilic career. On the Duchess of Ferrara, see Blaisdell, Charmarie Jenkins, ‘Reneéa de France between Reform and Counter-Reform,’ Archiv für Reformations geschichte, 63 (1972), 196–226 Google Scholar; and the same author's unpublished doctoral dissertation, ‘Royalty and Reform: The Predicament of Renee de France, 1510-1575’ (Tufts University, 1969). On Marguerite, see Jourda, Pierre, Marguerite d'Angoulême, duchesse d'Alençon, reine de Navarre (1402-1540): étude biographique et littéraire, 2 vols. (Paris: Honore Champion, 1930).Google Scholar

67 Seven of the letters in Opuscoli e lettere di riformatori italiani del Cinquecento, ed. Giuseppe Paladino, 1 (Bari: Laterza, 1913), were taken from lettere volgari collections: pp. 68-92 (numbers 49-50, 52-54, 62), 95-96 (number 7). Ferrero included eighteen Evangelical letters from these collections: pp. 161-169 (numbers 63-64), 173-174 (number 70), 312-315 (number 71), 350-352 (number 32), 359-361 (number 106), 383-389 (numbers 49-50), 396-401 (numbers 54, 59), 415-417 (number 84), 495-496 (number 7), 520-531 (numbers 119, 121, 125, 120, 122, 124). The only Evangelical letter in Butler's anthology is number 119 (pp. 217-218). Number 121 appears in translation in The Portable Renaissance Reader, ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin (New York: Viking, 1953), pp. 730-732. Both Paladino in his second volume (Bari: Laterza, 1927) and Ferrero published several letters from the edition of Olimpia Morata's correspondence prepared by Celio Secondo Curione (Basel: Pietro Perna, 1558); for additional information about this collection, see Ferrero, pp. 553-554. Since Morata's correspondence was not published in Italy, I have not utilized it in this study.

68 See footnote 13.

69 Brunetto's prefatory letters are numbers 8-9 in the Appendix.

70 Because several of these themes are often present in a single letter, I have not attempted to quantify or rank them.

71 The doctrine which some sixteenth-century theologians and modern scholars have ‘considered the logical corollary of election—namely, reprobation—is discussed very rarely, and then indirectly (in connection with Old Testament examples of God's hardening the hearts of sinners).

72 For the most part the Evangelical letter-writers pay little attention to the Council of Trent and the attempts at reunion preceding it. On the rare occasions when they do concern themselves with efforts to end the schism, they adopt a very reserved attitude, as may be seen in the following assessment of the early phases of the Worms-Regensburg Colloquy (Vergerio to Marguerite, early January 1541, Letter no. 122): ‘Madam, I am greatly disturbed to see that the cause of Jesus Christ is treated with such indignity, for it seems to me that it is not the main reason why so many people are going to so much trouble. The principal matter being dealt with under this pretext of Christ, in my view, is the particular interest of certain individuals. Such is the goodness and patience of Our Lord God that He is bearing with this, but it is greatly to be feared that in the end He will rise up in wrath and punish us. I have another bitter pain in my soul. Conversing with many of these theologians, I find very few who have spirit and place their ultimate object in Christ, for they reason about these articles dealing with our justification, the grace of God, and the sacraments as if they were dealing with profane matters in a litigation. Your Majesty knows very well that God's matters and mysteries are not to be learned, taught, or treated with rancor or contention or with the learned words of human wisdom, but in an entirely different way. In sum, Madam, for this reason I am especially fearful that nothing good is being accomplished here, for we are trying to measure divine things with a human rule.’ This lack of emphasis on colloquies and the Council is in harmony with the observation of Dionisotti quoted in footnote 29 but at odds with the position taken more recently by Fenlon (see footnote 4).

73 Butler, , Anthology, p. 8.Google Scholar

74 For a complete listing of the Evangelical letters, see the Appendix.

75 Gherardo claimed in his 1545 title to have made additions to his original 1544 edition, which I have not seen.

76 In LV I Paolo Manuzio did not give the date of composition for any of the letters. Place and date are indicated for most of the letters in Gherardo. From this time on (except in Brunetto's and Tasso's collections) places and dates were given for the majority of letters in both anthologies and collections. As previously noted, the next editorial innovations were made in 1554: Atanagi grouped his letters by author; Dolce did likewise and also provided brief summaries of each letter and a subject index.

77 Eleven letters were published more than once: numbers 43-44, 75-78, 84, 104 (twice); numbers 42, 106, 111 (three times). Thus the number of separate letters is 131. Because I am concerned with the appearance of Evangelical letters in print, however, I use here the total of 145.

78 Direct evidence on the process by which anthologies were assembled is rather scanty. See, however, the following: Gher., fol. 186 (Gherardo thanks Matthia di Clario for furnishing letters for his collection); LV II, fols, 22v-23 (Bartolomeo Paganucci informs Claudio Tolomei that he is sending Tolomei's letters on to Paolo Manuzio so that they may be included in LV II); LV II, fols. 24v-25 (Tolomei writes to Manuzio requesting that he either refrain from printing his letters or include the present one with them); Atan., fol. 176-176v (Bernardo Tasso tells Giovanni Angelo Papio that, if he had a secretary, he would send Atanagi copies of his letters written since the first book of his own correspondence was published). In addition, clues as to who sent letters to editors of anthologies are provided by clusters of letters to and from one person. Paolo Manuzio evidently had several suppliers, most notably Giacomo Bonfadio (15 letters: fols. 3l-39v, 75V-76v, 85-87v, 178-179) and Annibale Caro (14 letters: fols. 10v-21, 72v-73v, 79-84v, 90-92, 113v-116). Lodovico Domenichi was of particular help to Gherardo, furnishing 26 letters: fols. 14-14V, 23-28v, 116v-121, 137-138; sigs. S5-s6v (there is an 8-page gap in numbering at this point in the volume); fols. 145-146, 153-155, 159-163v, 178V-179V, 184-184v, 191-192, and 195V-196. Antonio Manuzio received special cooperation from Galasso Ariosto (19 letters: fols. 42v-45, 67-75v, 96-99v, 103v-108v) and Benedetto Rhamberti (9 letters: fols. 29v-40, 53).

79 Atanagi gave his dedicatee the following explanation of how he obtained his material (sig. a3): ‘Therefore, having given myself with all diligence to investigating and searching out all the compositions written by learned men in the vernacular, I worked by now asking this person, now stimulating that one, and sometimes courteously forcing that other one, so that in the course of time, not without great trouble on my part, I acquired by the most honest means an infinite number of things both in verse and in prose.’

80 Grendler, pp. 38-49, 109-113.

81 Tolomei's attitude toward Evangelism was ambivalent, as can be seen in four letters in which he made light of others' spiritual interests and claimed that his own concerns were strictly mundane: fols. 75-75v (to Diego Roges, Rome, June 2, 1545), 85–85v (to Luca Contile, Rome, July 21, 1543), 116v-117 (to Luca Contile, Rome, April 11, 1545), 207v (to Girolamo Ruscelli, Parma, January 18, 1547). In 1554 Tolomei was taken to task in print by Vergerio for what the latter considered his lack of comprehension of the religious situation. In a subsequent article I intend to examine Vergerio's Sopra le lettere volgari di M. Claudio Tolomei ([Basel]: Giacomo Parco, 1553) and his critique of Atanagi, Giudicio sopra le lettere di tredici huomini illustri, published anonymously (n.p., 1555).

82 Letter number 8, sig. A8.

83 Letter number 9, sig. A1-A2V.

84 Letters number 10-12.

85 Letters number 10-11; Vergerio's reply is Letter number 129.

86 See, for example, sigs. A6V-A9V (to an unknown addressee, arguing that theological rather than arithmetical capacity distinguishes man from the lower animals) and fols. 113v-118 (to M. L. S. Mercante on whether a noble and a nonnoble can truly love each other).

87 See, for example, fols. 140-141v ('La Bella Dori all’ Amoroso Amintha’), 142v-144 (‘Damita a Clori’), 146v-148v (‘Flora a Menalca’), 148V-150 (‘Nai a Iola’).

88 The length of most of these letters precludes reproducing more of them here. For assistance in locating other examples, see footnote 67 and refer to the Appendix.

89 Paschini, pp. 66-77.

90 Letter number 123.

91 All writers and recipients of letters referred to here are listed in the Appendix. On Vergerio, see the works cited in footnotes 15 and 66.

92 On Flaminio, Giberti, Vermigli, and Ochino, see the works cited in footnotes 66, 14, 2, and 16, respectively. On Sadoleto, see Douglas, Richard M., Jacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547), Humanist and Reformer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Pole's Italian career, see the study by Fenlon cited in footnote 4. On Valdés, see de Santa Teresa, Domingo, Juan de Valdés: su pensamiento religioso y las corrientes espirituales de su tiempo (Rome, 1957)Google Scholar; Ricart, Domingo, Juan de Valdes y el pensamiento religioso europeo de los sighs XVI-XVII (Mexico City, 1958)Google Scholar; Cione, Edmondo, Juan de Valdés: la sua vita e il sua pensiero religioso, 2nd ed. (Naples: Fausto Fiorentino, 1963)Google Scholar; Bakhuizen van den Brink, J. N., Juan de Valdés, reformateur en Espagne et en Italie (Geneva: Droz, 1969)Google Scholar; and Nieto, José C., Juan de Valdés and the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1970).Google Scholar For Valdés’ correspondence with Gonzaga, see Cartas ineditas de Juan de Valdés al cardenal Gonzaga, ed. Jose F. Montesinos (Madrid: S. Aguirre, 1931). On Carnesecchi, see Ortolani, Oddone, Pietro Carnesecchi (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1963).Google Scholar On Contarini, see (in addition to the works cited in footnote 12) Jedin, Hubert, ‘Gasparo Contarini e il contributo veneziano alia Riforma Cattolica,’ in La civiltà veneziana del Rinascimento (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1958), pp. 103–124 Google Scholar; and Elisabeth G. Gleason's unpublished doctoral dissertation, ‘Cardinal Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) and the Beginnings of Catholic Reform’ (University of California-Berkeley, 1963). On Grimani, see Pio Paschini, Il cardinale Marino Grimani ed i prelati della sua famiglia, Lateranum, N.S., 1-2 (Rome: Facultas Theologica Pontificiae Universitatis Lateranensis, i960); and Anderson, Marvin W., ‘Luther's Sola Fide in Italy, 1542-1551,’ Church History, 38 (1969), 17–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A new biography is needed to replace Young, M., The Life and Times of Aonio Paleario, or A History of the Italian Reformers in the Sixteenth Century, 2 vols. (London: Bell and Daldy, 1860).Google Scholar Florimonte, Domenichi, Fregoso, and Gonzaga also lack satisfactory full-scale treatments.

93 Mantua is a special case: both the court of the Gonzaga and a resident bishop (by no coincidence, Ercole Cardinal Gonzaga) were located there.

94 The geographical distribution of those letters for which a place of origin is given is as follows. Italy. Rome: 19; Venice: 16; Verona: 14; Loreto: 5; Capodistria: 4; Viterbo: 3; Camaldoii, Florence, Mantua, Modena, Naples, and Trent: 2; Amantea (southwest of Cosenza), Belriguardo (near Ferrara), Buceto (Busseto?), Civitella (north of Rome), Correggio (northwest of Modena), Farnese (near Lake Bolsena), Ferrara, Lago di Garda, Parma, Piacenza, Pola, Porcia, Salerno, and Udine: l. France. Carpentras: 2; Lyons: 1. The publication of most of the letter collections in Venice is not surprising, since Venice was the major Italian publishing center in this period. Yet if one accepts the argument about the editor's crucial role presented here, then an additional piece of evidence may be added to support the proposition recently advanced by a number of scholars: that the Republic was the focal point of a distinctive type of religiosity. See, for example, the articles by Cervelli and Pommier cited above (footnotes 2-3), and also the following: Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)Google Scholar; and Pullan, Brian, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).Google Scholar It is surprising and somewhat unfortunate that in Culture and Society in Venice, 1470-1790: The Renaissance and Its Heritage (London: B. T. Batsford, 1972) Oliver Logan does not pursue an interest in Venetian religiosity manifested in his ‘Grace and Justification,’ cited in footnote 20.

95 Approximately the same small percentage of women holds for the entire contents of all the lettere volgari collections examined in this study, this finding calls into question Jung's contention that women were extraordinarily numerous among the Evangelicals. Thus far studies of women and religion in sixteenth-century Italy have consisted almost exclusively of biographies of great ladies.’ See, for example, Bainton, Roland H., Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971).Google Scholar The only exception known to me is an unpublished investigation of feminine piety by Elisabeth G. Gleason, ‘Types of Devotion among Sixteenth-Century Italian Women,’ presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, St. Louis, August 1971. Two recent articles on nonnoble Northern women utilize approaches that might well be applied to the study of Italian women: Chrisman, Miriam U., ‘Women and the Reformation in Strasbourg, 1490-1530,’ Archiv für Reformations geschichte, 63 (1972), 143–168 Google Scholar; and Davis, Natalie Zemon, ‘City Women and Religious Change in Sixteenth-Century France,’ in A Sampler of Women's Studies, ed. McGuigan, Dorothy Gies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Continuing Education of Women, 1973), pp. 17–45.Google Scholar

96 On Vittoria, Marguerite, and Renee, see the works cited in footnotes 30 and 66. On Gonzaga and Cibo, see Bainton, , Women, pp. 187–198 Google Scholar. I do not, of course, wish to imply that if an individual is represented minimally or not at all as an Evangelical correspondent in the lettere volgari he or she cannot be considered an Evangelical. Additional research would no doubt furnish good reasons why some persons’ letters were not published. Other factors which need to be taken into account are editorial connections and sheer happenstance.

97 See, for instance, Brim., fols. 74-75, where Brunetto explains to Signer G.D. that he writes to great men because he knows that they will pass his letters around and make his name known.

98 Ecclesiastical censorship in Venice dates from 1549. Grendler, p. 18. (This subject, as noted earlier, will be dealt with extensively by Grendler in a book which he is now completing.) Another small insight into this issue may be gleaned from Anton Francesco Doni's La libraria (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1550), the first biobibliography of authors who had published books in the volgare. Doni states (fol. 3) that he has excluded any mention of writers prohibited, anathematized, or suspected by the Church. Brunetto is on his list—which is somewhat surprising considering his ties to Vergerio— as are Martelli, Tasso, and Tolomei. Doni's biographical format probably accounts for his omission of anthologies.

99 As far as I know, neither he nor any of Vergerio's other correspondents in the lettere volgari was drawn into the wide net cast by the prosecution of Vergerio.

100 See especially Letters number 53, 54, 55, 59.

101 It might be argued along Cantimorian lines that in the letter translated in full above, Vergerio's reference to ‘some shortcuts, summaries, and lights which will lead you out of certain shadows’ is a prime instance of knowing ‘how to differentiate between “affirmative” and “negative” arguments’ and ‘how to express [oneself] by inferences, by implications, by inconclusive demonstrations.’ I am inclined, however, to interpret Vergerio's language in exactly the opposite way: as provocative rather than cautious. The absence or infrequent appearance of certain people noted above, however, may suggest that some Evangelicals were more cautious than others.

102 Brun., fols. A3-A4.

103 Some of the Evangelicals probably were not familiar with transalpine religious ideas or did not realize that they had imbibed them in seemingly indigenous books like the Beneficio di Cristo. (See footnotes 13, 16.) Others—such as Vergerio, who had read ‘heretical’ theological works during his nunciature in Hapsburg lands and other travels in the North, as well as at home, and Flaminio, who may have been responsible for introducing Calvinist passages into the Beneficio—undoubtedly were.

104 In almost all of these letters it is clearly assumed by the writer that the recipient shares his religious sentiments. The only exception is Sisto da Siena, to whom Brunetto addressed two polemics downgrading the importance of rhetorical polish in preaching (Letters number 14-15).

105 Some Evangelicals were not farsighted enough to cover their tracks in this way. The records of Carnesecchi's trial contain many letters written or received by him thirty years or so earlier. His lack of caution had unfortunate consequences for him but fortunate ones for historians; see footnote 13.

106 Mutini, p. 503.

107 Atanagi was less timid than Dolce. He not only included a larger proportion of Evangelical letters but also printed some of the least reserved of all, those written by Flaminio. Flaminio's letters were later utilized as propaganda by the German reformer Camerarius, who interspersed Latin translations of them with an account of Flaminio's career: Camerarius, Joachim, ed., Epistolae aliquot M. Antonii Flaminii, de veritate doctrinae eruditae, et sanctitate religionis, in Latinum veteran sermonem conversae, ex Italico hodierno, nee non narrationes de Flaminio, & aliis quibusdam, cognitione bonarum & opt. disciplinarum ac artium & pietatis studiosorum, non indignae: editae (Nuremberg: Dietrich Gerlach, 1571).Google Scholar

108 John A. Tedeschi has made a beginning in this area of research. See his ‘Florentine Documents for a History of the Index of Prohibited Books’ in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), pp. 577-605, where he shows that the effort at the turn of the century to expurgate books was a fiasco. As Grendler's forthcoming study will show, however, it is most unlikely that a command to exercise self-censorship could have been issued in Venice in the mid-sixteenth century without provoking an immediate uproar from the bookmen and some show of resistance sooner or later from the secular government. Grendler's preliminary report on his findings (see footnote 18) contained no mention of a confrontation between Rome and Venice over the contents of lettere volgari collections.

109 See, for example, the last book of Atanagi (fols. 212v-228v), which is comprised of fifteen letters from Paolo Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras. His letters, dated between 1549 and 1552, show that he aspired to the role that his uncle Jacopo had played in his later years, that of a diligent resident bishop and theologian. They are full of earnest religiosity without a glimmer of Evangelism.

110 A study of Della Casa with special emphasis on his Galateo is being prepared by Antonio Santosuosso. A thorough examination of Muzio, Counter Reformation propagandist, authority on the etiquette of the duel, and all-round poligrafo, is needed to replace Paolo Giaxich, Vita di Girolamo Muzio giustinopolitano (Trieste: I. Papsch, 1847).

111 The essence of the transition from the crisis of Evangelism era to the age of the baroque has been preceptively captured by Dionisotti, ‘Letteratura … Concilio,’ p. 320; ‘And between 1550, a now incontrovertible reality: the [creative] forces [of the two previous decades] gradually approach the limit of their power, beyond which calculation and pride are not enough, and are necessarily transmuted into an ambition for and ostentatious display of grandeur.’