Renaissance in Italy Volume VI Part 44

[Footnote 151: _Opere di Paolo Sarpi_, Helmstadt, 1761, vol. i. pp. 200, 233, 311; vol. ii. pp. 89, 187.]

[Footnote 152: This contradicts the opinion of Hallam and Macaulay, both of whom were convinced that Sarpi was a Protestant at heart. Macaulay wishes that he had thrown off the friar's frock. In a certain sense Sarpi can be cla.s.sified with the larger minds among the Reformed Churches of his age. But to call him a Protestant who concealed his real faith, argues coa.r.s.eness of perception, incapacity for comprehending any att.i.tude above and beyond belligerent Catholicism and Protestantism, or of sympathizing with the deeply-religious feelings of one who, after calculating all chances and surveying all dogmatic differences, thought that he could serve G.o.d as well and his country better in that communion which was his by birthright. To an illuminated intellect there was not in the seventeenth century much reason to prefer one of the Reformed Churches to Catholicism, except for the sake of political freedom. It being impossible to change the State-religion in Venice, Sarpi had no inducement to leave his country and to pa.s.s his life in exile among prejudiced sectarians.]

Very much depends on how we define the word Protestant. If Sarpi's known opinions regarding the worldliness of Rome, ecclesiastical abuses, and Papal supremacy, const.i.tute a Protestant, then he certainly was one.

But if antagonism to Catholic dogma, repudiation of the Catholic Sacraments and abhorrence of monastic inst.i.tutions are also necessary to the definition, then Sarpi was as certainly no Protestant. He seems to have antic.i.p.ated the position of those Christians who now are known as Old Catholics. This appears from his vivid sympathy with the Gallican Church, and from his zealous defense of those prerogatives and privileges in which the Venetian Church resembled that of France. We must go to his collected letters in order to penetrate his real way of thinking on the subject of reform. The most important of these are addressed to Frenchmen--Ph. Duplessis Mornay, De l'Isle Groslot, Lescha.s.sier, a certain Roux, Gillot, and Casaubon. If we could be quite sure that the text of these familiar letters had not been tampered with before publication, their testimony would be doubly valuable. As it is, no one at all acquainted with Sarpi's style will doubt that in the main they are trustworthy. Here and there it may be that a phrase has been inserted or modified to give a stronger Protestant coloring. The frequent allusion to the Court of Rome under the t.i.tle of _La Meretrice_, especially in letters to Duplessis Mornay, looks suspicious.[153] Yet Dante, Petrarch and Savonarola used similar metaphors, when describing the secular ambition of the Papacy. Having pointed out a weakness in this important series of doc.u.ments, I will translate some obviously genuine pa.s.sages which ill.u.s.trate Sarpi's att.i.tude toward reform.

Writing to Lescha.s.sier upon the literary warfare of James I., he says it is a pity that the king did not abstain from theology and confine himself to the defense of his princely prerogatives against the claims of Rome. He has exposed himself to the imputation of wis.h.i.+ng to upset the foundations of the faith. 'With regard to our own affairs [_i.e._ in Venice], we do not seek to mix up heaven and earth, things human and things divine. Our desire is to leave the sacraments and all that pertains to religion as they are, believing that we can uphold the secular government in those rights which Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers confirm.'[154] In another place he says: 'I have well considered the reasons which drew Germany and England into changing the observances of religion; but upon us neither these nor others of greater weight will exercise any influence.

[Footnote 153: _Lettere_, vol. ii. pp. 3, 18, 96, 109, and elsewhere.]

[Footnote 154: _Ib._ vol. ii. p. 6.]

It is better to suffer certain rules and customs that are not in all points commendable, than to acquire a taste for revolution and to yield to the temptation of confounding all things in chaos.'[155] His own grievance against the Popes, he adds, is that they are innovating and destroying the primitive const.i.tution of the Church. With regard to the possibility of uniting Christendom, he writes that many of the differences between Catholics and Protestants seem to him verbal; many, such as could be tolerated in one communion; and many capable of adjustment. But a good occasion must be waited for.[156] Nothing can be done in Italy without a general war, that shall shake the powers of Spain and Rome.[157] Both Spain and Rome are so well aware of their peril that they use every means to keep Italy in peace.[158] If the Protestants of Europe are bent on victory, they must imitate the policy of Scipio and attack the Jesuits and Rome in their headquarters.[159]

'There is no enterprise of greater moment than to destroy the credit of the Jesuits. When they are conquered, Rome is taken; and without Rome, religion reforms itself spontaneously.'[160] 'Changes in State are inextricably involved in changes of religion;'[161] and Italy will never be free so long as the Diacatholicon lasts.

[Footnote 155: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 237.]

[Footnote 156: _Ib._ p. 268.]

[Footnote 157: _Ib._ vol. ii. pp. 29, 48, 59, 60, 125.]

[Footnote 158: _Ib._ p. 120, 124.]

[Footnote 159: _Ib._ p. 226.]

[Footnote 160: _Ib._ p. 217.]

[Footnote 161: _Ib._ p. 427.]

Meanwhile, 'were it not for State policy there would be found hundreds ready to leap from this ditch of Rome to the summit of Reform.'[162] The hope of some improvement at Venice depends mainly upon the presence there of emba.s.sies from Protestant powers--England, Holland and the Grisons.[163] These give an opportunity to free religious discussion, and to the dissemination of Gospel truth. Sarpi is strong in his praise of Fra Fulgenzio for fearlessly preaching Christ and the truth, and repeats the Pope's complaint that the Bible is injurious to the Catholic faith.[164] He led William Bedell, chaplain to Sir H. Wotton and afterwards Bishop of Kilmore, to believe that Fra Fulgenzio and himself were ripe for Reform. 'These two I know,' writes Bedell to Prince Henry, 'as having practiced with them, to desire nothing so much as the Reformation of the Church, and, in a word, for the substance of religion they are wholly ours.'[165] During the interdict Diodati came from Geneva to Venice, and Sarpi informed him that some 12,000 persons in the city wished for rupture with Rome; but the government and the aristocracy being against it, nothing could be done.[166]

[Footnote 162: _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 283.]

[Footnote 163: _Ib._ p. 110, 311.]

[Footnote 164: _Ib._ vol. i. pp. 220, 222, 225, 231, 239.]

[Footnote 165: Campbell's _Life_, p. 132.]

[Footnote 166: _Ib._ p. 133, 135.]

Enough has now been quoted to throw some light upon Sarpi's att.i.tude toward Protestantism. That he most earnestly desired the overthrow of ultra-papal Catholicism, is apparent. So also are his sympathies with those reformed nations which enjoyed liberty of conscience and independence of ecclesiastical control. Yet his first duty was to Venice; and since the State remained Catholic, he personally had no intention of quitting the communion into which he had been born and in which he was an ordained priest. All Churches, he wrote in one memorable letter to Casaubon, have their imperfections. The Church of Corinth, in the days of the Apostles, was corrupt.[167] 'The fabric of the Church of G.o.d,' being on earth, cannot expect immunity from earthly frailties.[168] Such imperfections and such frailties as the Catholic Church shared with all things of this world, Sarpi was willing to tolerate. The deformation of that Church by Rome and Jesuitry he manfully withstood; but he saw no valid reason why he should abandon her for Protestantism. In his own conscience he remained free to serve G.o.d in spirit and in truth. The mind of the man in fact was too far-seeing and too philosophical to exchange old lamps for new without a better prospect of attaining to absolute truth than the dissenters from Catholicism afforded. His interest in Protestant, as separate from Catholic Reform, was rather civil and political than religious or theological. Could those soaring wings of Rome be broken, then and not till then might the Italians enjoy freedom of conscience, liberty of discussion and research, purer piety, and a healthier activity as citizens.

[Footnote 167: _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 86.]

[Footnote 168: _Ib._ vol. i. p. 283.]

Side light may be thrown upon Sarpi's judgment of the European situation by considering in detail what he said about the Jesuits. This company, as we have seen, lent its support to Papal absolutism; and during the later years of Sarpi's life it seemed destined to carry the world before it, by control of education, by devotion to Rome, by adroit manipulation of the religious consciousness for anti-social ends and ecclesiastical aggrandizement.

The sure sign of being in the right, said Sarpi, is when one finds himself in contradiction to the Jesuits. They are most subtle masters in ill-doing, men who, if their needs demand, are ready to commit crimes worse than those of which they now are guilty. All falsehood and all blasphemy proceed from them. They have set the last hand at establis.h.i.+ng universal corruption. They are a public plague, the plague of the world, chameleons who take their color from the soil they squat on, flatterers of princes, perverters of youth. They not only excuse but laud lying; their dissimulation is bare and unqualified mendacity; their malice is inestimable. They have the art so to blend their interests and that of Rome, seeking for themselves and the Papacy the empire of the world, that the Curia must needs support them, while it cowers before their inscrutable authority. They are the ruin of good literature and wholesome doctrine by their pitiful pretense of learning and their machinery of false teaching. On ignorance rests their power, and truth is mortal to them. Every vice of which humanity is capable, every frailty to which it is subject, finds from them support and consolation.

If S. Peter had been directed by a Jesuit confessor he might have arrived at denying Christ without sin. The use the confessional as an instrument of political and domestic influence, reciprocating its confidences one with the other in their own debates, but menacing their penitents with penalties if a word of their counsel be bruited to the world. Expelled from Venice, they work more mischief there by their intrigues than they did when they were tolerated.[169] They scheme to get a hold on Constantinople and Palestine, in order to establish seminaries of fanatics and a.s.sa.s.sins. They are responsible for the murder of Henri IV., for if they did not instigate Ravaillac, their doctrine of regicide inspired him. They can creep into any kingdom, any inst.i.tution, any household, because they readily accept any terms and subscribe to any conditions in the certainty that by the adroit use of flattery, humbug, falsehood, and corruption, they will soon become masters of the situation. In France they are the real Morbus Gallicus.

In Italy they are the soul of the Diacatholicon.

[Footnote 169: It is worthy of notice, as a stern Venetian joke, that when the Jesuits eventually returned to Rialto, they were bade walk in processions upon ceremonial occasions between the Fraternities of S.

Marco and S. Teodoro--saints amid whose columns on the Molo criminals were executed.]

The torrent of Sarpi's indignation against the Jesuits, as perverters of sound doctrine in the Church, disturbers of kingdoms, sappers of morality and disseminators of vile customs through society, runs so violently forward that we are fain to check it, while acknowledging its justice. One pa.s.sage only, from the many pa.s.sages bearing on this topic in his correspondence, demands special citation, since it deals directly with the whole material of the present work. Writing to his friend Lescha.s.sier, he speaks as follows: 'Nothing can be of more mischief to you in France than the dishonesty of bad confessors and their determination to aggrandize Rome by any means, together with the mistaken zeal of the good sort. We have arrived at a point where cure of the disease must even be despaired of. Fifty years ago things went well in Italy. There was no public system of education for training young men to the profit of the clergy. They were brought up by their parents in private, more for the advantage of their families than for that of the hierarchy. In religious houses, where studies flourished, attention was paid to scholastic logic. The jurisdiction and the authority of the Pope were hardly touched on; and while theology was pursued at leisure, the majority pa.s.sed their years in contemplation of the Deity and angels.

Recently, through the decrees of the Tridentine Council, schools have been opened in every State, which are called Seminaries, where education is concentrated on the sole end of augmenting ecclesiastical supremacy.

Furthermore, the prelates of each district, partly with a view of saving their own pockets, and partly that they may display a fas.h.i.+onable show of zeal, have committed the charge of those inst.i.tutions to Jesuits.

This has caused a most important alteration in the aspect of affairs.'[170] It would be difficult to state the changes effected by the Tridentine Council and the commission of education to the Jesuits more precisely and more fairly than in this paragraph. How deeply Sarpi had penetrated the Jesuitical arts in education, can be further demonstrated from another pa.s.sage in his minor works.[171] In a memoir prepared for the Venetian Signory, he says that the Jesuits are vulgarly supposed to be unrivaled as trainers of youth. But a patent equivocation lurks under this phrase 'unrivaled.' Education must be considered with regard to the utility of the State. 'Now the education of the Jesuits consists in stripping the pupil of every obligation to his father, to his country, and to his natural prince; in diverting all his love and fear toward a spiritual superior, on whose nod, beck and word he is dependent. This system of training is useful for the supremacy of ecclesiastics and for such secular governments as they are ready to submit to; and none can deny that the Jesuits are without equals in their employment of it. Yet in so far as it is advantageous in such cases, so also is it prejudicial to States, the end whereof is liberty and real virtue, and with whom the ecclesiastical faction remains in bad accord. From the Jesuit colleges there never issued a son obedient to his father, devoted to his country, loyal to his prince. The cause of this is that the Jesuits employ their best energies in destroying natural affection, respect for parents, reverence for princes. Therefore they only deserve to be admired by those whose interest it is to subject family, country and government to ecclesiastical interests.'

[Footnote 170: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 126; _Opere_, vol. vi. p. 40.]

[Footnote 171: _Opere_, vol. vi. p. 145.]

The Provincial Letters of Pascal, which Sarpi antic.i.p.ated in so many points, suffice to prove that he was justified in this hostility to ultramontanism backed up by Jesuit artifices. He was writing, be it remembered, at the very high tide of Papal domination, when Henri IV.

had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, and when the overwhelming forces of secular interests combined with intellectual progress had not as yet set limits on ecclesiastical encroachment. The dread lest Europe should succ.u.mb to Rome, now proved by subsequent events an unsubstantial nightmare, was real enough for this Venetian friar, who ran daily risk of a.s.sa.s.sination in down-trodden servile Italy, with Spanish plots threatening the a.r.s.enal, with France delivered into the hands of Florentines and casuists, with England in the grip of Stuarts, and with Germany distracted by intrigues. He could not foresee that in the course of a century the Jesuits would be discredited by their own arts, and that the Papacy would subside into a pacific sovereignty bent on securing its own temporal existence by accommodation.

The end of Sarpi's life consecrated the principles of duty to G.o.d and allegiance to his country which had animated its whole course. He fell into a bad state of health; yet nothing would divert him from the due discharge of public business. 'All the signs of the soul's speedy departure from that age-enfeebled body, were visible; but his indefatigable spirit sustained him in such wise that he bore exactly all his usual burdens. When his friends and masters bade him relax his energies, he used to answer: My duty is to serve and not to live; there is some one daily dying in his office.[172] When at length the very sources of existence failed, and the firm brain wandered for a moment, he was once heard to say: 'Let us go to S. Mark, for it is late.'[173]

The very last words he uttered, frequently repeated, but scarcely intelligible, were: 'Esto Perpetua.'[174] _May Venice last forever_!

This was the dying prayer of the man who had consecrated his best faculties to the service of his country. But before he pa.s.sed away into that half slumber which precedes death, he made confession to his accustomed spiritual father, received the Eucharist and Extreme Unction, and bade farewell to the superior of the Servites, in the following sentence: 'Go ye to rest, and I will return to G.o.d, from whom I came.'

With these words he closed his lips in silence, crossing his hands upon his breast and fixing his eyes upon a crucifix that stood before him.[175]

[Footnote 172: Fulgenzio's _Life_, p. 98.]

[Footnote 173: _Ibid._ p. 105.]

[Footnote 174: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 175: Letter of the Superior to the Venetian Senate, printed in the _Lettere_, vol. ii. pp. 450-453. It is worth meditating on the contrast between Sarpi's and Bruno's deaths. Sarpi died with the consolations of religion on his bed in the convent which had been his life-long home. Bruno was burned alive, with eyes averted from the crucifix in bitter scorn, after seven and a half years spent in the prisons of the Inquisition. Sarpi exhaled his last breath amid sympathizing friends, in the service of a grateful country. Bruno panted his death-pangs of suffocation and combustion out, surrounded by menacing Dominicans, in the midst of hostile Rome celebrating her triumphant jubilee. Sarpi's last thoughts were given to the G.o.d of Christendom and the Republic. Bruno had no country; the G.o.d in whom he trusted at that grim hour, was the G.o.d within his soul, unrealized, detached by his own reason from every Church and every creed.]

I will return to G.o.d from whom I came.

These words--not the last, for the last were _Esto perpetua_; but the last spoken in the presence of his fraternity--have a deep significance for those who would fain understand the soul of Sarpi. When in his lifetime he spoke of the Church, it was always as 'the Church of G.o.d.'

When he relegated his own anxieties for the welfare of society to a superior power, it was not to Mary, as Jesuits advised, nor even to Christ, but invariably to the Providence of G.o.d. Sarpi, we have the right to a.s.sume, lived and died a sincere believer in the G.o.d who orders and disposes of the universe; and this G.o.d, identical in fact though not in form with Bruno's, he wors.h.i.+ped through such symbols of ceremony and religion as had been adopted by him in his youth. An intellect so clear of insight as this, knew that 'G.o.d is a spirit, and they that wors.h.i.+p him must wors.h.i.+p him in spirit and in truth.' He knew that 'neither on this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem,' neither in Protestant communities nor yet in Rome was the authentic G.o.d made tangible; but that a loyal human being, created in G.o.d's image, could serve him and adore him with life-wors.h.i.+p under any of the spiritual shapes which mortal frailty has fas.h.i.+oned for its needs.

To penetrate the abyss of any human personality is impossible. No man truly sees into his living neighbor's, brother's, wife's, nay even his own soul. How futile, therefore, is the effort which we make to seize and sketch the vital lineaments of men long dead, divided from us not merely by the grave which has absorbed their fleshly form and deprived us of their tone of voice, but also by those differences in thought and feeling which separate the centuries of culture! Yet this impossible task lies ever before the historian. Few characters are more patently difficult to comprehend than that of Sarpi. Ultimately, so far as it is possible to formulate a view, I think he may be defined as a Christian Stoic, possessed with two main governing ideas, duty to G.o.d and duty to Venice. His last words were for Venice; the penultimate consigned his soul to G.o.d. For a mind like his, so philosophically tempered, so versed in all the history of the world to us-wards, the materials of dispute between Catholic and Protestant must have seemed but trifles. He stayed where he had early taken root, in his Servite convent at S. Fosca, because he there could dedicate his life to G.o.d and Venice better than in any Protestant conventicle. Had Venice inclined toward rupture with Rome, had the Republic possessed the power to make that rupture with success, Sarpi would have hailed the event gladly, as introducing for Italy the prospect of spiritual freedom, purer piety, and the overthrow of Papal-Spanish despotism. But Venice chose to abide in the old ways, and her Counselor of State knew better than any one that she had not the strength to cope with Spain, Rome, Jesuitry and Islam single-handed.

Therefore he possessed his soul in patience, wors.h.i.+ping G.o.d under forms and symbols to which he had from youth been used, trusting the while that sooner or later G.o.d would break those mighty wings of Papal domination.

CHAPTER XI.

GUARINO, MARINO, CHIABRERA, Ta.s.sONI.

Dearth of Great Men--Guarini a Link between Ta.s.so and the Seventeenth Century--His Biography--The _Pastor Fido_--Qualities of Guarini as Poet--Marino the Dictator of Letters--His Riotous Youth at Naples--Life at Rome, Turin, Paris--Publishes the _Adone_--The Epic of Voluptuousness--Character and Action of Adonis--Marino's Hypocrisy--Sentimental Sweetness--Brutal Violence--Violation of Artistic Taste--Great Powers of the Poet--Structure of the _Adone_--Musical Fluency--Marinism--Marino's Patriotic Verses--Contrast between Chiabrera and Marino--An Aspirant after Pindar--Chiabrera's Biography--His Court Life--Efforts of Poets in the Seventeenth Century to attain to Novelty--Chiabrera's Failure--Ta.s.soni's Life--His Thirst to Innovate--Origin of the _Secchia Rapita_--Mock-Heroic Poetry--The Plot of this Poem--Its Peculiar Humor--Irony and Satire--Novelty of the Species--Lyrical Interbreathings--Sustained Contrast of Parody and Pathos--The Poet Testi.