Portrait of a Cardinale Editore

Chapter 3 Portrait of a Cardinale Editore

In the light of Cervini’s prominence in his own day, it is unremarkable that a large quantity of documentation about him has survived; what is exceptional, however, is the sheer amount and extent of this material, which allows us to follow Cervini’s movements and his thinking from his youth in Montepulciano to his death. Most of his private papers are preserved in a specific fondo of the Archivio di Stato of Florence, acquired from his heirs by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo in 1787, while many letters, either from or to Cervini, are held in the Vatican Library and the British Library.1 Those sent in the 1540s and 1550s to his secretary Angelo Massarelli are to be found in the fondo of the Tridentine Council in the Vatican Archive (asv, Conc. Trid., vols. 139–140), the first volume of which was put together in January 1627 by the prefect of Castel Sant’Angelo Archive, Giovanni Battista Confalonieri. A large part of the original letters Cervini sent to Cardinal Farnese and the latter’s secretary, Bernardino Maffei, during the legation to Trent are preserved in Carte Farnesiane, another fondo of the Vatican Archive. The correspondence of contemporary scholars also contain relevant information, notably the letters of Pietro Bembo, Annibale Caro, Donato Giannotti, Paolo Manuzio, Claudio Tolomei, Benedetto Varchi, Paolo Giovio, Latino Latini, Andreas Masius (André Maes), Giulio Poggiani and Giovanni Della Casa.2 Within this very large group of sources, the papers of

1 asf, Cervini, comprising 75 filze, two of which (nos. 53–54) contain the correspondence of his nephew, Cardinal Bellarmino. As for the history and the partial inventory of this fondo, see the introduction in CT, x, pp. xvii–xxix. See also bav, Vat. lat. 4104, 6411, 6177–6178, 6186, 6189 (Part 1), 14830 and Reg. lat. 2023; BL, Add MS 10274. Portions of Cervini’s correspondence are published in Léon Dorez, ‘Antoine Eparque: recherches sur le commerce des manuscrits grecs en Italie au xvie siècle’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, 13 (1893), pp. 281–364; Friedensburg, ‘Beiträge’; Gottfried Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition in Italien um die Mitte des xvi. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1910); CT, x–xi; Gottfried Buschbell (ed.), Briefe von Johannes und Olaus Magnus, den letzten Katholischen Erzbischöfen von Upsala (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1932). A great many valuable documents concerning the con- ciliar works are edited in CT, i–xiii, where one can also find a complete transcription of Massarelli’s detailed Tridentine diaries (CT, i, pp. 149–873). 2 Pietro Bembo, Lettere: edizione critica, ed. by Ernesto Travi, (4 vols., Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1988–1993); Annibale Caro, Lettere familiari, ed. by Aulo Greco (3 vols., Florence: Le Monnier, 1957); Donato Giannotti, Lettere a Piero Vettori pubblicate sopra gli origi nali del British Museum, ed. by Roberto Ridolfi and Cecil Roth (Florence: Vallecchi, 1932); Es- ter Pastorello, L’epistolario manuziano: inventario cronologico-analitico (1483–1597) (Florence: Olschki, 1957) and her Inedita manutiana (1502–1597): appendice all’inventario (Florence:

44 Chapter 3

Piero Vettori and Guglielmo Sirleto are especially valuable.3 A number of no- tarial acts concerning Cervini’s publications have been traced in the Archivio di Stato of Rome, which can be put alongside the documents from the Vatican Library and the Vatican Archive.4 When Cervini was elected pontiff as Marcellus ii in April 1555, he was hailed as an ‘angelic pope’, and most Catholics entertained high hopes that he would be able to reform the Church of Rome. His first actions lived up to these expec- tations: he humbly retained his baptismal name and refused to distribute of- fices to his relatives. His pontificate, however, lasted only twenty-two days; al- ready in frail health and weakened by flagellation and overwork, he succumbed to a stroke. In the wake of the unfulfilled promise of his brief papacy, Cervini’s reputation rapidly acquired a legendary aura: the Missa Papae Marcelli, com- posed by Pier Luigi da Palestrina in 1562, contributed to the formation of this posthumous ‘bella figura’. Stemming from a solid family tradition, the majority of the studies devoted to him have also inclined to uncritical praise, overlooking

Olschki, 1960); Claudio Tolomei, De le lettere … libri sette … (Venice: Giolito, 1547); Benedetto Varchi, Lettere (1535–1565), ed. by Vanni Bramanti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008) and Vanni Bramanti (ed.), Lettere a Benedetto Varchi (1530–1563) (Manziana: Vecchiarel- li, 2012); Paolo Giovio, Opera, i–ii: Lettere, ed. by Giuseppe Guido Ferrero (Rome: Istituto Pol- igrafico dello Stato, 1956–1958); Latino Latini, Epistolae, coniecturae, et observationes sacra, profanaque eruditione ornatae, ed. by Domenico Magri (2 vols., Rome and Viterbo: Giovanni Casoni and Typographia Brancatia, 1659–1667); Max Lossen (ed.), Briefe von Andreas Masius und seinen Freunden: 1538 bis 1573 (Leipzig: Adolf Dürr, 1896); Giulio Poggiani, Epistolae et orationes, ed. by Antonio Maria Graziani and Girolamo Lagomarsini (4 vols., Rome: Generoso Salomoni, 1756–1762); Giovanni Della Casa, Opere: tomo terzo contenente le lettere (Venice: Pasinelli, 1752), together with Ornella Moroni (ed.), Corrispondenza Giovanni Della Casa, Car lo Gualteruzzi (1525–1549) (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1986) and Eliana Car- rara, ‘Giovanni Della Casa, Piero Vettori e il loro carteggio in volgare’, in Stefano Carrai (ed.), Giovanni Della Casa ecclesiastico e scrittore, (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007), pp. 125–170. Della Casa’s papers in bav, Vat. lat. 14825–14837 are also of great importance. 3 On Vettori: BL, Add. mss 10263–10282. They are partially published in Giannotti, Lettere a Piero Vettori, with an inventory of the entire correspondence at pp. 163–183; Carrara, ‘Giovanni della Casa’; Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, ‘Contributo all’epistolario di Piero Vettori (lettere a don Vincenzo Borghini, 1546–1565)’, Rinascimento, 19 (1979), pp. 189–227. On Sirleto: bav, Vat. lat. 6177–6186, 6189–6195, 6416, 6946 and Reg. lat. 387, 2023. A significant portion of his correspondence with Cervini concerning the first phase of the Tridentine Council is published in an abridged form in CT, x, pp. 929–955. 4 asr, Notari segretari e cancellieri della Reverenda Camera Apostolica; Notari del Tribunale dell’Auditor Camerae; Miscellanea Corvisieri. bav, Vat. lat. 3963 and 3965 (the latter was tran- scribed with occasional flaws in Léon Dorez, ‘Le registre des dépenses de la Bibliothèque Vaticane de 1548 à 1555’, in Fasciculus Ioanni Willis Clark dicatus (Cambridge: cup, 1909), pp. 142–185, at pp. 168–185); many other codices held in the Vatican Library will be cited in due course. asv, Camera Apostolica, Diversa Cameralia; Armadi; Miscellanea.