PART TWO
HISTORY AND CHRONICLE
SECTION ONE
DOCUMENTS AND TESTIMONIES FROM OUTSIDE THE ORDER
(1526-1632)
II
“CAPUCHIN” EPISTOLARY OF VITTORIA COLONNA
(1535 – 1542)
INTRODUCTION
TEXTS AND NOTES
by
CONSTANZO CARGNONI
I FRATI CAPPUCCINI. Documenti e Testimonianze del Primo Secolo. Edited by COSTANZO CARGNONI. Rome 1982, II, 183-191.
INTRODUCTION
The “Capuchin” epistolary of the Marquise of Pescara Vittoria Colonna († 1547), considered by the friars to be a benefactor and, with Caterina Cybo, a very effective “mother” of the reform of the Order,[1] includes in this collection 28 letters, some of them small treatises; 21 sent, five to Ambrogio Recalcati, four to Card. E. Gonzaga, three to Bernardino Ochino, two to Paul III, two to Card. G. Contarini and the remaining ones respectively to the authorities of Monte S. Giovanni Campano, to Eleonora Gonzaga, to Ercole II d’Este and to cardinals A. Trivulzio and M. Cervini; and 7 received, of which one signed by Giberti, another by C. Gualteruzzi, four by Pietro Bembo and a last one by Ochino.
Chronologically they span only seven years, from 1535 to 1542; years, however, of exceptional importance for the history of the Capuchin friars, during which the fate of the Order was at stake. Four letters date from 1535, six from 1536, five are from 1537, four from 1538; three from 1539, one from 1540 and two from 1542. Note how the explosive period, so to speak, of the epistolary, are the years 1535-38; then there is a sharp decrease, and this fact is in close correspondence with the trajectory of Bernardino Ochino, which peaks in 1536 and declines and disappears in 1542.
The entire epistolary could be summarised in three main themes:
1) full approval, defence and support of the Capuchin “holy reform” without those barriers that prevented the entrance of the Observants and other proselytes and blocked its expansion; 2) defence of the legitimate authority against the ambitious proceeding of Ludovico da Fossombrone; 3) admiration and spiritual relationship with Bernardino Ochino.
The one who breaks the ice is the bishop of Verona G. M. Giberti who in 1535 replied to V. Colonna (doc. 14), approving her commitment in favour of the Capuchins and promising to do the same, thereby cooperating in the true reform of the Church, because in them he saw “true, simple and non-feigned religion” shine forth.
The Marchioness, however, had also involved other ecclesiastical personalities in her love for the Capuchins in the same year 1535, and first of all the Venetian cardinal G. Contarini (doc. 15.1), one of the members of the commission created by Paul III to resolve the question of the friars; and then the powerful cardinal of Mantua E. Gonzaga (doc. 17), exhorting him to help “these reverend fathers of the holy and true life of St. Francis”, despite the aversion of the General of the Observants F. Quiñones who had stirred up Emperor Charles V himself against the Capuchin “sect”. These are fragmentary and partial pieces of information that reveal the hidden traps of the many enemies of the Capuchin reform.
The letter to the Cardinal of Mantua was sent on 29 December from Genazzano. From the same place, ten days earlier, another letter had been sent to urge the Community of Monte S. Giovanni Campano to finish the construction of the Capuchin friary (doc. 16), so that it could then glory in the Lord of having begun “that good for which the world together has not done so much”.
But the most combative and most fruitful year of the Marquise’s interventions in favour of the Capuchins is 1536. No less than six letters, two of which are small apologetic treatises, follow one another at a rapid pace in favour of the “servants of the Lord”, another denotation, among many, by which the Capuchins are defined. She wrote a long letter to Paul III in early February 1536 (doc. 18), informing him of the “truth” about the Capuchins and unravelling, one after the other, with inexorable logic, the captious arguments of their adversaries. She does the same in another prolix text in the form of an apologetic letter to Card. G. Contarini (doc. 21), drafted, it seems, in the last months of 1536, where she specifies even better certain aspects of the accusations made against the Capuchin reform. In the meantime, she wrote three more letters to A. Recalcati, in February and May and towards the end of 1536, intervening above all in the delicate and difficult case of Brother Ludovico Tenaglia (doc. 19,1-2 and 15,2), and on this subject she also expanded in another letter written on 27 June to the Duchess of Urbino Eleonora Gonzaga (doc. 20).
The core, however, of her thoughts in favour of reform are gathered, as is obvious, in the two letters-treatises to Paul III and Card. Contarini, which remain, even today, beyond the controversy, a “charismatic” presentation of the Capuchin spirit, with evangelically radical, spiritually convincing and energetically victorious reasoning. They are two texts that must be read together: one explains the other and completes it; the different arguments are clarified and specified with more focused details now in one, then in the other text. But one senses that they are the same state of mind, the same seedbed of reflection.
The theme of obedience and that of the habit are repeated in both writings, as is the repeated prohibition to enter into the new reform. The response is always very sharp in the letter to Paul III, while in the one to Card. Contarini expands on some historical details that caused this prohibition. To the pope she presents a series of absurd syllogisms, as if to say: ‘Do not do good because it causes scandal among those to whom it is done’. Except that the scandal is from eight or ten superiors only, not from the body of the observant family, who generally dislike this deployment of juridical prohibitions in the flurry of papal briefs. For, in fact, the argument goes against the Observants themselves, and therein lies, in her opinion (writes the Marquise to Cardinal Contarini), the real reason for the battle. They have opened the door to receive those Capuchins who wish to return among the Observants, but they have bolted it for those who wish to pass to the Capuchin reform. Now (observes Vittoria Colonna), in three months at most about twenty have returned, while as many as 3,000 brothers would be ready to don the hooded habit, according to a count made at the time. Moreover, did not the Observants themselves already do this when they separated from the Conventuals? Why now (one asks) so much obstinance and envy? It seems that the struggle rages between the law of Moses and the grace of Christ, between charity and ambition, humility and the desire to be first. Because, after all, (says the marquise ruthlessly), it is only a question of primacy in the Order on the part of those who rule.
Writing to Contarini, she inserts other interesting elements, such as a mini-history of the Franciscan reforms, which took place twice, once “mediocrely” and that would be the Observance, the other “perfectly” and that is the Capuchin reform, because here the “holy habit” of St Francis and “his evangelical Rule without gloss” is observed, and “and that it has excluded all claims to have a founder or new branches”. This last sentence is a direct answer to the objection that the Capuchins have no holy founder, because Matteo da Bascio, “a most holy man (says V. Colonna) who began this reform, who is alive today and is one of these Fathers, he was wary of ambition and was going around preaching when the bull was made”, returned to the Observants to continue his itinerant preaching. The answer is categorical: “St Francis is the founder”. The Capuchins have no other guide, nor do they walk “by any other light”: this is the great strength, the profound meaning of the reform that has taken the Rule, the writings and the life of the Poverello as its norm.
In extolling the Capuchin reform, V. Colonna also manifests her poetic temperament. One could collect all the expressions that depict “the most perfect life of six hundred friars”, who are “true mendicants”, carrying out a “holy reform” that is “the work of Christ” because it has “increased in order, in spirit, in number of most perfect and learned fathers” with the coming of great personalities and with the constitutions of 1536, and gives “infinite good examples” with “the habit of the glorious father St. Francis”, with “humble, learned and fervent preaching”. His followers “do not ask for greatness”, but “submit themselves to the whole world”, renouncing the documents that relax “the purity of the Rule and simpe intention of Saint Francis” and are truly the “backbone of the faith of Christ, of the service of his holiness and of the Church”.
This exciting presentation of Capuchin life was, in V. Colonna, connected to the love that was growing in her towards Bernardino Ochino’s preaching, ideas and life. In fact, in her letter to Eleonora Gonzaga (doc. 20); in which she severely judges the “haughty” behaviour of Ludovico da Fossombrone, she expresses a feeling of compassion for Ochino: “the poor brother Bernardino” as the victim of Tenaglia’s “insolences”. In reality, it would have to be ascertained whether here the Marquise is not speaking out for Ochino, who was the most enterprising against the line of Ludovico da Fossombrone; or whether the resulting image of the latter as seditious, seduced by Card. Quiñones, “incongruous thinking”. Probably both are true, but more the influence of Bernardino Ochino’s line, according to the latest historiography that has tried to rehabilitate the ‘pathetic’ figure of Tenaglia.[2] The Marquise, in any case, after her letters to Recalcati and the Duchess of Urbino, no longer returns to Tenaglia, but only speaks of Bernardino Ochino, who now takes over every other subject.
The letters from 1537 onwards, with the exception of those written in 1538 to Paul III and Card. A. Trivulzio, practically follow the apostolic itineraries of the great preacher and are painstakingly involved in the concerns, accusations and tragic end of their hero. It almost seems as if all the femininely passionate ardour that the Marquise had had in defending the Capuchin reform, she now transfuses it into exalting and defending the person of Ochino, who in those years, at the top of the Order as Vicar General, and ‘superstar’ of preachers in Italy, could represent in the eyes of the general public, but also of the cultured elites, the most significant expression and the most fruitful and effective synthesis of the Capuchins’ renewed Franciscanism.
But this is only partially true. V. Colonna intervenes again, in a delicate and very dangerous passage, to defend, as she had done previously, her “poor little” Capuchins. She does so in her usual style of great contrasts, edgy, almost expressionistic, writing on 16 September 1538 from Lucca to Paul III (doc. 25), after two years of silence, with evangelical freedom that almost makes one think of St Catherine of Siena: she says clearly that if the pope wants the reform of the Church, he cannot destroy those who are already living and carrying out this reform. And she also appeals “to poor Brother Bernardino” to enhance the spirit of obedience of the Capuchins, who only want to depend on the pope in everything.
And she repeated the same, in a calmer but still lucid tone, on 3 October of the same year, to Card. A. Trivulzio (doc. 26), so that he too, who has great prestige and authority in the Roman Curia, might continue to defend the Capuchins from any attempt or secret project to rejoin them to the jurisdiction of the Observants.
This last intervention in defence of the Capuchins as an autonomous reform gets lost among the letters she wrote in those years in defence of Ochino. From Monte San Giovanni on 22 April 1537 she addressed Card. Gonzaga (doc. 22,1), commending to him the cause of Bernardino Ochino accused of preaching heresies, as this was not true since he was being requested by many cities and he did not want to preach except with the obedience of the pope; and she applied to Ochino a thought she had already used with Paul III to defend the Capuchin reform, which had grown as a “miracle”, but the Pharisees accused that it was done on the Sabbath! Similarly, while in Ochino’s preaching ‘the powerful spirit of Christ becomes more alive’, the new Pharisees resort to slander! The Marquise tries to conceal her affection for the person of Ochino, saying that she does so ‘for the benefit of so many souls’ otherwise endangered.
On 12 June she wrote from Ferrara to the cardinal of Mantua (doc. 22,2) to free him from any reason for doubt in deciding to defend the Capuchin, since Ochino had been to Rome and had been received there with great love by the pope and the cardinals. That Ochino was then requested by many, by the bishop of Verona, by the viceroy of Sicily, by Florence, could be proved by a letter from C. Gualteruzzi received eight days earlier and was attached as proof (doc. 22,3).
In late autumn, again from Ferrara, the Marquise reached out to the personal secretary of Paul III with two letters, one of 8th November (doc. 23,1) and the other of 3rd December (doc. 23,2). She is all concerned about Ochino’s preaching commitments, so that she will eventually be able to hear him during the Advent period in Ferrara. By now she was attracted like a magnet by his preaching, so that towards the end of February 1538 she left Ferrara and had the joy, after the vicissitudes of the journeys, of hearing him again in Pisa and then in Florence, as she wrote from Pisa on 26 March 1538 to the Duke of Ferrara Ercole II d’Este (doc. 24).
The accusations against Ochino seemed to have died down. He preached more than ever, everywhere ‘adored’, as V. Colonna told the duke. On this admired preaching of Ochino we have presented four letters from Pietro Bembo to the marquise, written from Venice within the period of a year, from 6 April 1538 to 4 April 1539 (doc. 27,1-4), during which time Bembo was created cardinal by Paul III. It is a praising of Ochino almost competing with the love of V. Colonna that becomes the reason for it.
Of a different and far more instrumental slant is, instead, the admiration expressed, in three passages of letters reported here (doc. 31,1-3), by the feared pen of Pietro Aretino. Written from the city of Venice to the Augustinian Andrea Centurione da Volterra on 20 July 1538, to the scholar Giustiniano Nelli on 20 March 1539 and to Paul III himself on 21 April 1539, the reader may be struck by Aretino’s typical description of Ochino’s “new” way of preaching; but perhaps the reader does not realise that Aretino does it only to follow the current fashion and to exploit it for his own venal purposes with a hypocritical literary anointing that was characteristic of him.
This brings us to the beginning of 1540. Ochino is still the most acclaimed preacher. A letter from V. Colonna to Card. Gonzaga, dated 16th January (doc. 22,4), informs the cardinal that the Capuchin had passed through Rome on his way to Naples to preach Lent. Meeting with the Marquise, he had thanked her for the protection he had received from the Cardinal of Mantua. This is the last letter written by V. Colonna in our collection in which she speaks admiringly of Ochino. From 1540 to 1542 the epistolary is silent.
The one who breaks the silence this time is Ochino himself. Let us overlook two undated letters, written by the Marquise undoubtedly to Ochino (according to Simoncelli, who fully supports the hypothesis of the editors of the correspondence, Ferrero and Müller), probably within the years 1540-1541, and which contain meditation-like reflections on the Gospel of the adulteress, as a resonance of the preaching of her “spiritual father” (doc. 28,1-2). In this context should also be placed, according to Simoncelli, the Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Cristo (doc. 28,3), also originally addressed in the form of a letter to Bernardino Ochino. It is “a suffered and lyrical inner meditation in which the author identifies herself in the part of the Madonna during the passion of Christ and the deposition from the Cross”.[3]
The marquise was immersed in these evangelical meditations; she was undoubtedly shocked when she received the letter of 22 August 1542 from her idolised ‘master’ notifying her of his irrevocable decision to leave Italy and the Roman Catholic faith (doc. 29).
It is the Ochino’s only surviving letter to her, in which a certain detachment between the two can already be noticed: V. Colonna had not written to him for over a month, and Ochino had not approached her for some time, such that he made his desperate decisions without at all asking her opinion. But the pious marquise, frequenting the circle of Viterbo, was becoming more and more attached to the English cardinal Reginaldo Pole, who, after Ochino’s escape, was to take his place as spiritual director.[4] On the orders of her new spiritual father, she did not reply to Ochino’s letter, which, by the way, must have reached her late, if it corresponds to the one she received in Viterbo on 4 December 1542 with a printed booklet of Ochino’s sermons; but she delivered everything to Card. Marcello. Cervini, future pope Marcellus II (doc. 30), postulating a severe judgement against her former ‘idol’ now shattered, rejecting his justifications for having fled to Geneva: by leaving the ‘Ark that saves’, that is, the Catholic Church (retorted the Marquise), he could not save himself, let alone save others.
This last subject is developed with great literary dexterity and richness of argument in a long letter from Bishop Claudio Tolomei to Ochino, his great friend and fellow citizen, dated from Rome 20 October 1542 (doc. 34). To this letter we have added another letter written by G. M. Giberti to the provincial vicar of the Milanese Capuchins, Fr. Francesco di Calabria, dated 26 September of the same year, also concerning Ochino’s escape (doc. 33), and interesting because it partly lifts the veil on the attitude taken by some simple Capuchins who hoped for a repentance of their former vicar general. And this tradition remained for a long time in the Order, which then raised, at the invitation of Bernardino d’Asti, incessant prayers for Ochino’s conversion, to the point that Boverio in his Annales (and this documentation has remained abundant in the AGO)[5] came to the point of convincing himself, as the spokesman of the majority of the friars, that after long wanderings in Protestant countries, Ochino would be converted and for his refound faith he would suffer martyrdom.[6] Moving faith, which, however, finds no historical justification!
The reason why we have insisted on the figure of Bernardino Ochino, even in his tragedy, stems from the fact that he represents a powerful moment in the history and life of the young Capuchin reform. With him it had quickly and too easily found its success, its glory, its expansion. The Capuchins had become known throughout Italy above all for the fame of Ochino’s preaching. But they had to pay dearly for this hasty fame and rapid growth, to the point of risking their very survival.
- “Never was a mother so jealous of her children as was this Capuchin marchioness, so that she called them her children” (MHOC I, 400). ↑
- Cf. C. Urbanelli, Storia I/1, 366-374. ↑
- Cf. Paolo Simoncelli, Italian Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento. Questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico, Rome 1979, 209-225, especially 214f. ↑
- Cf. B. Nicolini, Sula religiosità di V. Colonna, in id., Ideali e passioni dell’Italia religiosa del Cinquecento, Bologna 1962, 27-44. ↑
- AGO, PC 8. ↑
- Cf. AC I, 350-355. ↑