Preaching at the Court of Pope Julius II by John W. O'Malley

In Erasmus’ dialogue Ciceronianus, Bulephorus describes a sermon he supposedly heard preached before Pope Julius II on a Good Friday. It is easy to infer , as many historians have, that Erasmus is recounting for his readers the substance of a sermon at which he himself was present when he visited Rome in 1509. If that is the case, the sermon as summarized by Bulephorus exemplifies a most inappropriate substitution of pseudo-Ciceronian rhetoric and pagan learning for a central Christian mystery. The exordium and peroration, together  almost longer than the body of the sermon itself, were filled with elaborate praises of the Pope as Jovis optimus maximus, whose power was unlimited and whose omnipotent right hand brandished a thunderbolt. The preacher used the body of the sermon to parade before his listeners tedious and irrelevant stories from Greek and Roman history. Bulephorus finally betrays his disgust by saying, ‘In such a fine Roman fashion did that Roman speak that I heard not a word about the death of Christ.’ Our worst suspicions about the quality of religion and theology at the papal court have thus been confirmed, this time by the prince of humanism himself.

Subsequent scholarship, when it deigned to take notice of the sermons at the papal court at all, accorded with Erasmus’ negative assessment. Burckhardt does not specifically discuss the sermons at the papal court, but his general evaluation of Renaissance preaching is well known: the sermons were concerned with problems of conscience, were empty of doctrinal content, and had only a temporary effect upon the hearers. Savonarola was his chief example. These sermons typified the difference between southern and southern piety: the former produced a ‘ mighty but passing impression,’ whereas the latter ‘worked for the ages.’

Ludwig Pastor [‘History of the Papacy’, Engl. Transl., 1923], who was himself influenced by Burckhardt, saw in the mendicant ‘preachers of penance’ one of the ‘most cheering signs in an age clouded with many dark shadows’. He esteemed the moral earnestness of the preachers. Curiously enough, he comments on the sermons preached at the papal court only occasionally and in the most generic terms, but he does leave the reader with the impression that by and large in these sermons classical forms disguised, deformed and displaced Christian substance. When Pastor calls attention to the Ciceronianus, it is obvious that he feels Erasmus was not describing an isolated case. His lamentation over the ‘extravagances’ which some of the Renaissance preachers allowed themselves would, seem, therefore, to have a certain application to the sermons preached before the popes:

 

We hear of preachers whose sermons were overcharged with vain learning, or hairsplitting theological questions, and again, of others who condescended too much to the taste of the populace. The newly revived pagan philosophy was too often brought forward in the pulpit at the expense of Christianity. Passages from the works of the heathen poets and teachers replaced the customary quotations from the Fathers. The glamour of the new learning obscured the old simple doctrines, and heathen Mythology was mixed up with Christian dogma. Equally objectionable was the conduct of the new preachers who, instead of aiming at the conversation and edification of the hearers, thought only of making a name for themselves. Such men invented all sorts of miracles, sham prophesies and silly fables . . .with politics and all sorts of worldly matters, and leaving out the one thing that was necessary.

Since Pastor’s day the sermons preached to the popes during the  Renaissance have received even less attention. The article on “Oratoria sacra’ in the Enciclopedia  cattolica passes them over without mention as does the otherwise informative article on ‘Preaching’ in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. Even more significant is tye fact thy\at Johann Baptist Schneyer’s recent and impressive Geschichte der katholischen Predigt does the same. We might easily thereby conclude that no comment on these sermons is offered because no comment is deserved.

While working on as somewhat different subject last summer, I began to scan some of the sermons in various Roman libraries.  Gradually I became persuaded that they deserved more attention than they had hitherto received and that they had significance for the interpretation of the Roman religious scene in the late Quattrocento (15^th C) and early Cinquecento (16^th C). At the very least they provided new data, for they do not to have been seriously utilized by historians since the days they were printed . . .

In the Appendix I list the fifty sermons which I am at present prepared to discuss. Some of these sermons were chosen very deliberately because of specific themes developed in them, especially the theme of  the ‘dignity of man,’ while others were chosen rather at random simply to give a coverage of various pontificates and liturgical occasions. To these fifty printed sermons I join a ‘letter’ of Giles of Viterbo which is found only in manuscript and which until now has been ignored by scholars. This document is a sermon intended for the eyes of Julius II . . .

One of the  few sermons that Pastor specifically commented upon was the panegyric in honor of St. John delivered by the Roman humanist Pietro Marso during the pontificate of Innocent VIII in 1485. Pastor said ‘The wealth of classical reminiscences which the reader encounters stands in singular contrast to the subject of the speech, praise of John the Evangelist.’ Pastor simply could have not read the sermon and passed such a judgement! The sermon a somewhat abstract rehearsal of John’s virtues, especially his virginity, is replete with quotations or paraphrases from the Old and New Testaments, with a special preference shown for St. Paul. Moreover, there are five or six quotations from St. Jerome and St .Augustine and one from Gregory the Great. If a ‘singular contrast’ occurs in this sermon, it results from te juxtaposition of this ‘wealth’ of Christian ‘reminiscences’ along side one brief quotation  each from Plato and Seneca and a very perfunctory mention of Aristotle. No matter what our final judgment of the quality of this sermon might be, it certainly cannot be criticized for substituting pagan sources for Christian ones.

Marso’s   panegyric is not an exception. Critical editions of the sermons would be required to determine with a scientific accuracy the precise incidents of reference to various sources. However, even without such detailed studies, it is clear that Scripture was the source these preachers quoted most liberally and that second to Scripture came the Fathers of the Church, especially Jerome and Augustine. Occasionally in sermons which deal with a more philosophical subject, such as Marso’s on human immortality, the references to classical authors are more numerous. But  these ‘authorities’ are either rejected as ignorant of Christian truth or are seen as confirmatory of it. . . .These preachers were not loath to display their classical learning but there was  no question, however, of this learning swamping a sermon’s them and submerging it.

Scholastic authors are referred to very sparingly by name, and only rarely do traditional scholastic terms such as potential absoluta and ordinate, actus and potentia, materia prima and Marso’s puris naturalibus appear. This does not mean the preachers wee uninfluenced by scholastic doctrine. In some instances, indeed, direct dependence is obvious. But they eschewed scholastic arguments and scholastic distinctions in their sermons. Marso explicitly rejects  ‘inane disputations’, and Augustinus Philippus Florentinus confesses to a Socratic ignorance concerning the nature of God. Although the other preachers are not so explicit as these two, they in general imply that for them living and loving were far more important than theological subtleties, which in any case were inadequate to the mysteries being discussed. .  .  .

One of the fundamental themes of the sermons, no matter what formal category expressed, was that the universe as God’s creation, was or ought to be a universe of unity, concord and harmony. In such a context we should not be surprised that considerable emphasis is given to the virtue of charity, which had much to recommend it to the preachers. Marso, once again using a scholastic expression, extols is as ‘the form of all virtue.’ One of the most telling commendations of charity comes from Ferrariensis. He puts in the mouth of Christ the reproach that what he found more reprehensible about men was not their delivering him up to death, but their exercising no mercy or piety towards one another. Although man was to be restored to the tranquility and concord of Original Justice, he had not been created that ‘he might pass his days with hands tied, but that he might be active.’ The activity thus commended often relates directly to the question of trying to establish peace among the Christian princes and, paradoxically, taking military measures to contain and defeat the Turks [ though the princes were reluctant]. But it is more generally viewed in a more specifically religious  context of prayer, acts of virtue, and diligent praise of God. There is very little, if any, consciousness of man as the builder of the earthly city, and Marso, indeed, comes close to an explicit rejection of this idea. What was important, as Florentinus never tired of reminding his hearers ,was transformation of life . . .

 

What is certain is that these preachers [above their ambiguous treatment  of the relationship between  grace and free will] hoped to move the listeners to a better way of life, to encourage them to practice the art of ‘good and holy living’. This phrase, so often on their lips, was of course Cicero’s. It’s meaning, however, was translated in terms of Christ’s example and message. For the rest, the preachers expected their listeners to react to the great truths they were propounding to them with the appropriate emotions, emotions which of course varied with the subject matter. However, if one emotion predominates more than the others, it is that of joy –joy at the Incarnation, joy over Christ’s abiding presence, joy even over the final outcome of Adam’s fall and Christ’s death, as interpreted with the liturgical formula of Holy Saturday’s felice culpa. Finally, there was joy over the recognition of the marvelous dignity of man, a dignity which derived from man’s relationship to Christian mystery

The theme of the dignity of man recurs with amazing frequency in these sermons preached to the pope and his court.  . .We should perhaps not be surprised that this is the case .Most of these preachers seemed, at the very least, to have been exposed to the humanist tradition and, therefore, exposed to the dignity-of-man in its humanist form. Moreover, Renaissance theory that  panegyric was more effective than scolding in producing moral change might well have had a special attraction for these preachers and they used the tradition of what Harry Levin calls Renaissance ‘rhetoric of congratulation.’

The range of arguments favoring man’s dignity is broad and subtle, but it can be reduced tp two general headings: 1) arguments deriving in some way from man’s nature or his creation by God, 2) and arguments deriving grace or from man’s redemption by Christ. Charles Trinkaus has convincingly shown the pivotal role the image-and-likeness verse from Genesis played in the general humanist tradition on the dignity of man .The preachers at the papal court also latched onto that verse, and it is quoted or paraphrased frequently. Simply by reason of his creation man already has a sublime dignity, which indeed prompted Marso to refer to him in seemingly hermetic terms as divinum animal. ‘Ours is a singular dignity, observes Arzius. In terms clearly inspired by Pico’s Heptaplus, he continues: ‘the earth and sea serve man, heaven does battle for him, and the spirits of heaven care for his salvation and well being.’ Through the nobility and beauty of the union of body and soul, man was for Ticinensis a ‘microcosm.’ For Arzius and Vasques he was, as citizens of the heavens an as lord of the earth, the true binding force of the universe; mundi copula et hymenaeus [the world's bond and their marriage]. . . .

One of the most marvelous qualities of human nature is its thirst for the divine. God is not so cruel as to deny us of the quenching of this thirst, maintains Totis, and He calls us to his Friendship. But part of man’s dignity consists in the fact that he was endowed with free will, that the Creator deigned to share His causality with him, that he in some mysterious way can choose to fulfill or to frustrate his desire for God. The argument thus gradually moves from man’s excellence as created in the image and likeness of God to his transformation or even ‘deification’ as redeemed by Christ and subject to the workings of grace. The image and likeness, deformed by sin, is restored and even perfected by the grace of the Redeemer, so that man becomes more truly a son of God than ever before. He is, in fact, divinized.

For Ferrariensis nothing is more conducive to man’s dignity than to be able to do those good and just things which others are incapable of doing. This capacity derives from grace and constitutes man’s dignity. Through the sacraments, according to him, the charity of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who now dwells within us. In another sermon he reminds his listeners that God created their souls in love, and that through love they will transform themselves into gods. The emphasis is not on the depths of man’s depravity which would require such a salvation, but upon the immense quantities of God’s love which inspired it. They assess Adam’s sin as the felix culpa, a truly ‘happy sin’ because it merited so great a Redeemer; as the result of the benefits conferred upon man by Christ’s redemption, man was in a better condition than he would have been if Adam had not sinned. .  .  .

Conclusion

First of all, we must resist the impressions about the content and quality of the sermons at the papal court which we inherited from Erasmus, Burckhardt, and Pastor; a significant body of that literature does not correspond to what those authors led us to believe. Whenever  the classics played a role, they were subordinated scriptural and patristic sources. Although there was a vigorous element of moral exhortation in these sermons, not even the mendicants could be described as ‘preachers of penance’. They avoided scholastic arguments and showed a decided preference for  Christian doctrines which preoccupied thinkers during the patristic era. They tried to relate these doctrines, abstract and abstruse though they sometimes were, to the lives of their hearers. If the papal court during the Renaissance was in many respects ‘pagan’ or ‘exceedingly worldly’ it certainly was not so in the quality of the sermons it heard.

What was the nature of religion or piety proposed in these sermons? It was doctrinal and attitudinal It did not rest on the performance of innumerable and specified external practices of devotion, such as pilgrimages and the  veneration of relics, nor was a great deal of emphasis placed on the sacraments themselves . . .there is an amazing little in them that is supportive of ecclesial institutions. Despite the important ethical concerns expressed in the sermons, the religion they propound cannot be described principally as ethical, if by that term simply the performance of morally correct acts. The preachers invited their hearers to contemplate with them some of the central Christian mysteries, and the hoped to evoke from the same hearers the proper attitudinal and affective response- belief, wonder, joy, gratitude, love.  They realized full well, however, that the love or charity with which the Christian life should inspire was not theirs to give. It was poured into the hearts of their listeners by the Holy Spirit. . .

If Erasmus did not hear about Christ in the Good Friday sermon in 1509, he listened to a sermon very different from the ones we have been investigating. My researches  confirm Trinkaus’ thesis about the basically religious, and even theological, inspiration of the theme of the dignity of man in the Italian Renaissance for the period under discussion. It is in this theme as propounded by the preachers I studied, we find the data to support Trinkaus’ assertion that the Renaissance vison of man was based on ’possibly the most affirmative view of human nature in the history of thought and expression’ . It was a vision projected ‘within the inherited framework of the Christian faith.

What I am trying to say, at a minimum, is that this style of religion and religious discourse can be clearly distinguished from scholasticism and from the crude devotional and juridical piety which Erasmus so often decried for us in scathing terms. The emphasis on inner attitude and especial the emphasis on God’s charity, which is the basis for the continuation or restoration of pax and concordia in the universe, are specific characteristics which are common in these speeches. Also common is the strong Christocentism, which qualified and specifies the description ‘anthropocentric’ sometime applied to humanist religion. Perhaps most important of all is the viewing of the process of the individual’s response to the great mysteries of his religion’ as the transformation of a total personality through love.’ Bouwsma sees such an emphasis on this transformation as characteristic of the spirituality of the Italian Renaissance. Our sermons certainly confirm that judgment.

Finally we might submit, that Trinkaus’ term, ’rhetorical theology’, is an accurate and suggestive one for describing this spirituality. The terms serves to distinguish this style of religion and religious discourse from ‘monastic theology’ and ‘scholastic theology’. More important, it suggests that it is a body of literature held together by certain common presuppositions about the nature and truth of religion, and tat its ultimate objective as ‘practical’ and ‘active,’ persuasional. Not abstract speculation, but transformation of life was its goal.