religious life 401
in the spanish kingdom in 1523, and frequent envoy to Rome in the follow-
ing years, he had the honor of representing the Republic at the ceremony
of Charles V’s imperial coronation by Pope Clement Vii in Bologna in 1530.
When he returned home, Contarini, by now perfectly inserted among the
small class of governing elite, was preparing to fill a series of the Repub-
lic’s most prestigious offices—starting with his election to the Council of
Ten—when Pope Paul iii, who had come to value him during his Roman
missions, awarded him a cardinal’s hat. “These thieving priests... they’ve
taken the best citizen we had” was the comment with which Contarini’s
principal adversary greeted the news of his elevation to the College of
Cardinals.48 The passage from one to the other state, from the laity to the
clergy (his acceptance of the nomination implied his sacerdotal ordina-
tion) was not difficult, and there was no sign of trauma in the new cardi-
nal: Venice was, after all, a minor power, in stasis if not in decline, while
Rome was the focal point of a Church which claimed to be universal. in
the service of this universal Church, the new cardinal put to use the intel-
lectual and diplomatic talents that had distinguished him in the service
of the Venetian state. As president of a commission of cardinals charged
with preparing a program of Church reform in view of the recently con-
voked Council, Contarini would be responsible for presenting the pope
with the results of the commission. The Consilium de emendanda ecclesia
[Report on how to reform the Church, 1537] contained some proposals of
reform that were greeted with approval by Protestants—particularly the
reform of the apostolic Penitentiary—but at the same time condemned
erasmus’ Colloquia and sounded the alert to the dangers of its widespread
use in schools. in 1541 Contarini had the chance to display his diplomatic
talents as head of the papal delegation at the religious colloquy in Regens-
burg: he is given credit for the possible accord with Protestants on the
article of justification which, for a moment, a brief moment—maybe just
a mirage—was glimpsed at Regensburg. The extensive production of cor-
respondence he has left us stands out for its very concrete pragmatism
which implied the same ideas of discipline, ordered subordination to the
ruling authorities, and conformity with current doctrine in managing
the highest spiritual offices that had marked his actions as a citizen of the
Republic.49
48 Cozzi, “i rapporti tra stato e Chiesa,” p. 23.
49 gigliola fragnito, Gasparo Contarini. Un magistrato veneziano al servizio della Cristia-
nità (florence, 1988); elisabeth g. gleason, Gasparo Contarini. Venice, Rome, and Reform
(Berkeley/los Angeles/oxford, 1993) (with an ample list of secondary literature). Among
Contarini’s works there stand out the treatise De officio boni viri et probi episcopi (1517), the