Q, Luther Blissett [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

raise any kind of suspicions about his orthodoxy. He is a man of great culture and refinement, incapable of suspicion or bad faith, a genuine supporter of the possibility of engaging in a dialogue with the Protestants, with a view to bringing them back within the bosom of the Holy Roman Church.

So, as I remarked above, it should come as no surprise that the Emperor sees this pious man of the Church as a champion of his own interests.

Pole also enjoys the friendship of Cardinal Contarini of Bologna, the man chosen by His Holiness Pope Paul III to conduct fresh negotiations with the Lutherans in Regensburg after the collapse of the Diet of Worms. To this we may add Cardinal Morone, bishop of Modena, Gonzaga of Mantua, Giberti of Verona, and Cortese and Badia of the Pontifical Curia. All of these men are fairly flexible in their response to Protestant doctrines, preaching the use of persuasion upon those brethren who have deviated from the path of Rome, and consequently abhorring the persecution of such ideas with coercive force.

Reginald Pole, as Your Lordship is well aware, is a man of letters who studied in Oxford with the same Thomas More whose experiences have so shaken the Christian world. A martyr and a friend of martyrs: his credentials really do appear unimpeachable. After Oxford he completed his studies in Padua, and is consequently most familiar with the realities of Italian life.

So it is not difficult to guess how well he relates to the men of letters with whom he surrounds himself, and in particular with Marco Antonio Flaminio, the poet and translator who enjoys the friendship of His Holiness Paul III, whose name Your Lordship will surely have heard mentioned for that very reason. The association between Pole and Flaminio, who are very close here in Viterbo, is not, in my view, any less dangerous than the one consolidated more than twenty years ago in Wittenberg, between Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton. When a faith stubbornly maintained comes into contact with learning, the product of that encounter is always something magnificent, whether it be for good or ill.

The sooner I am able to bring Your Lordship further news about events in Viterbo, the sooner my desire to serve you will be satisfied.

Kissing Your Lordship’s hands and imploring your continued favour

Viterbo, 1st May 1541

Your Lordship’s faithful servant

Q.

Letter sent to Rome from the pontifical city of Viterbo, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, dated 18th November1541.

To my most reverend and honourable lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa in Rome.

My most respected lord, it is with satisfaction that I learn of the collapse of the initiative conducted by Cardinal Contarini in Regensburg. As I had predicted, the Lutherans remained immovable on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and, despite Contarini’s willingness to accommodate them, Your Lordship’s skilled diplomacy was able to impede and repel the agreement that appeared on the point of being ratified.

It is a bitter disappointment for the members of Reginald Pole’s circle, and I can still see the horror on their thunderstruck faces.

But it is not time to sheath our swords;� the danger that these minds represent is far from weakened. And I shall now give you a detailed account of a new menace, so that Your Lordship may advise his servant about the measures he will consider it opportune to undertake.

The Diet of Regensburg posed the threat that the doctrine of the Holy Roman Church on the subject of salvation might be contaminated by the teachings of the Lutheran heretics.

As Your Lordship knows, the Protestant theologians, reinforced by certain ill-interpreted New Testament passages (Mt 25, 34; Rm 8, 28-30; Eph 1, 4-6), assert that those whom God has chosen as his saints since the beginning of the world, and only they, will be saved on the Day of Judgement. The accomplishment of good works as a pledge to gain eternal salvation is, according to this, pure illusion. Salvation is guaranteed to the elect not by meritorious actions, but by the divine gift of faith and nothing else. Consequently no good work carried out by a Christian could intervene in order to alter this original gift which is received by some men, the elect, those who are predestined to salvation according to the plan of God. I do not need to remind you of the danger that this doctrine presents for good Christian order, which must instead be affirmed on the basis of the free choice of faith or its rejection on the part of men. Furthermore, I have no hesitation in asserting the doctrine known as justification by faith alone as the pillar supporting all the abominations committed by the Lutherans over the past twenty-five years. This is the architrave of their upside-down theology, and it is what gives them the strength to inveigh against the Holy See without the slightest humility, and to call into question the hierarchies of the Holy Roman Church, on the basis that it is senseless to appoint a judge of human deeds, or establish an ecclesiastical body to administer the law and assess just who is worthy to enter the Kingdom of God and who is not. Your Lordship will of course recall that one of Luther’s first bold moves was to refuse to recognise the Holy Father’s authority to perform excommunications.

So what Cardinal Contarini was unable to do — crippling and mutilating the Catholic doctrine of salvation through good works — the increasingly broad circle of Cardinal Pole’s acolytes could well achieve today.

I have already had cause to inform Your Lordship of the dangerous fascination exerted upon naive minds by the writings of that young Genevan who seems to have picked up Luther’s baton where the dissemination of heresy is concerned. I am referring to that John Calvin, author of a putrid work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, which confirms and reinforces many of the ideas that have emerged from the heretical mind of the monk Luther, prime among them the one known as justification by faith alone.

This work has inspired what I consider to be the most dangerous publication in these Italian lands since the days of the perfidious sermons of Savonarola, which we owe to the twisted genius of the minds of Viterbo, in whose company I find myself.

I am referring to a brief treatise whose danger far exceeds its volume, since in it is fully expounded, in a language easily understandable to anyone_, the Protestant doctrine of the justification by faith alone as though this did not run entirely contrary to the doctrine of the Church_.

There can be no doubt that this is an attempt on the part of this circle of learned men and clerics to introduce at a doctrinal level elements favouring rapprochement between Catholics and Lutherans, in complete acceptance of the doctrine of salvation maintained by the latter.

The author of the work in question is a Benedictine friar, one Benedetto Fontanini from Mantua, currently resident in the monastery of San Nicol� Arena, on the slopes of Mount Etna. But the hands which have worked on the writing of the text, introducing almost literal translations from Calvin’s Institutes, are those of Reginald Pole and Marco Antonio Flaminio.

Inquiries conducted with extreme care led me to discover that Cardinal Pole had an opportunity to meet Friar Benedetto as early as 1534, when, on his flight from England, he found himself passing through the monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. At that time, in fact, Fontanini was staying there. Your Lordship must be aware that the abbot of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore at the time was none other than the same Gregorio Cortese who is today a fervent supporter of the spirituali in the Curia.

To this precedent we may add the fact that two years later, in ‘36, Marco Antonio Flaminio went to that monastery, called there by Cortese himself on the pretext of undertaking the printing of the Latin paraphrase of Volume XII of the Metaphysics of Aristotle.

So: Cardinals Pole, Cortese and Flaminio. All friends and all very close to the conciliatory policies of Cardinal Contarini of Bologna. These are the minds that have brought this terrible work to life. If Friar Benedetto of Mantua supplied the clay, it was the circle of the Spirituali who moulded it into a vessel filled with heresy.

The title of the treatise speaks for itself, literally picking up as it does on an expression used several times by Melanchthon in his Loci communes.

The Benefit of Christ Crucified, or A Most Useful Treatise on the Benefit of Jesus Christ crucified for Christians. That is the title of the work the editing of which completed in the past few days by Flaminio, in which it is clearly affirmed that:

the righteousness of Christ shall be sufficient to make us righteous, and the children of grace, without any of our good works. Neither can those works be good except that before we do them we our own selves be made good and righteous by faith.

Your Lordship can easily judge the threat that the distribution of ideas of this kind would represent for Christendom and in particular for the Holy See, should they meet with approval. If, then, this little book were to be endorsed by the important men of the Church, an epidemic of agreement with the Protestants could break out within the heart of the Church of Rome. I do not dare to think what odious consequences that might have for the policies of the Holy See in its dealings with Charles V.

I am therefore preparing to receive new directives from Your ingenious mind, certain that you will once again be able to advise in the best possible way this your zealous servant.

I implore your protection in faith, kissing Your Lordship’s hands

Viterbo, 18th November 1541

Your Lordship’s faithful servant

Q.

Letter sent to Rome from the pontifical city of Viterbo, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, dated 27 June 1543

To my most honourable and reverend lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa in Rome.

My most honoured lord, I am writing to tell Your Lordship that I now know for certain that The Benefit of Christ Crucified has been sent to Venice for printing.

A few days ago Marco Antonio Flaminio returned from his journey as part of the Holy Father’s entourage to Busseto, to meet the Emperor. By questioning one of Flaminio’s page-boys I was able to discover his movements. My suspicions proved to be justified. Indeed Flaminio, after taking part in the meeting in Busseto and spending May in that town, made an unusual detour via Venice on his journey home. The page-boy mentioned that he visited the printing press of one Bernardo de’ Bindoni, but he was unable to tell me more. At any rate I am sure that his purpose was none other than the delivery, or perhaps even the final revision, of the text in question.

Since Pope Paul III placed the revived Congregation of the Holy Office in Your Lordship’s hands a year ago, establishing that heresy may be persecuted wherever it may lurk, and with every means necessary, the Spirituali have become more cunning. His Holiness’s bull Licet ab initio, the consequent rebirth of the Inquisition, and not least the death of Cardinal Contarini, have led Pole and Flaminio to work with extreme caution. I suspected that they had printed the little book away from Rome; furthermore they know very well that Venice enjoys an unusual level of freedom as regards the printing and selling of books, and if I still had any lingering doubts concerning Flaminio’s visit to the Venetian press, they would be dispelled by these reflections.

My Lord is fully aware how dangerous a weapon the printing press can be: without