Counter Reformation

The Venetians were to interpret the teachings of the Counter Reformation in much the same way. But recognition that religion could be exploited for political ends did not in evitably mean that it could not be true or even that its political exploitation was in all cases illegitimate. And although so utilitarian a view of the faith seems quite un-Augustinian, it did not prove incompatible with an Augustin ian piety, as Venice would demonstrate in the later sixteenth century. It may be observed also how Machiavelli's view that civic virtue requires spiritual nourishment points to the dependence of works on faith.

As Domenico de'Domenichi declared in a typical pronouncement: "Papal power stems from God alone, but all legitimate temporal power depends on papal power." Against this tradition of thought, therefore, it seems difficult to continue to view the popes of the later Renaissance as hardly more than local Italian princes. Not only did their own ambitions have a wider reso nance (as the Venetians were perhaps the first fully to recognize), but they helped to transmit the articulated papalist tradition of earlier centuries to the Counter Reformation.

In spite of the charges that would eventually be levied against Venetian society and the Venetian church during the Counter Reformation, there is little evidence that the quality of moral and religious life supported by this unusually autonomous church was inferior to what prevailed elsewhere in Italy. Indeed, the reverse may have been true. That Venetian bishops were largely drawn from the patriciate of the Republic probably meant that the high standards of social responsibility among this group were applied to ecclesiastical as well as to secular office.

Paolo Paruta, eight-five years after the event, still spoke, in tones of outraged innocence, of the "persecution" of Venice "with spiritual arms, although for an occasion of state and temporal things"; and a nuncio contemporary with him noted how Venetians regularly flared up still at any reference to the alleged concessions of 1510. But they did so not only because Venetian memories were long, but also because the pressures dramatized by the action of Julius II were tending to grow steadier and more strong. The Renaissance papacy was increasingly the papacy of the Counter Reformation.

Nevertheless this rather selective deference to the pressures of the age for religious conformity was sufficient for the time being to satisfy the papacy, which had not yet passed into the most militant phase of the Counter Reformation; and the nuncios, although continuing to protest Venetian jurisdictionalism, were inclined to give a good report of Venetian Catholicism. 102 Venice was rewarded by the appointment, once again, of Venetian cardinals; Pius IV included six Venetians in his elevations of 1561 and 1565.

The Venetians felt they had understood Pius IV. He had seemed a part of the familiar world of Renais sance politics which, except for short intervals under Adrian VI and Paul IV, had so long dominated the Curia. He had been a man of the world, a practical statesman, a politique with whom one knew how to deal. But Pius V was, to the Venetians, shockingly different. He was austere, idealistic, devout, a pope at last of the Counter Reformation. He evidently required a good deal of study, and the Venetian ambassador, now Paolo Tiepolo, was of two minds about him. In comparison with his flexible and worldly prede cessor, he seemed in a way admirable. A militant reformer, he met the high standards Venetians had long called for.

There was again talk of excommunication. But for Venice this reaction, which was followed by renewed pressure for Venetian participation in war against the infidel, chiefly demonstrated the incompatibility of political needs with the militant idealism of the Counter Reformation. It posed the question how Venice could, in the long run, survive as a Catholic state.