Between Church and Empire

Chapter 2 continues the discussion of Panvinio’s life. It begins with Panvinio’s journey to Germany in the summer of 1559. After his return to Rome in September 1559, in time for the conclave in which Pope Pius IV was elected, Panvinio started publishing only works on sacred matters, although he continued to produce unpublished studies on Roman antiquity. In 1565, he was given a position in the Vatican Library; but he held on to it for less than a year because the next pope, Pius V, did not renew it for financial reasons. In this period Panvinio also found new patrons in Germany and Spain: Hans Jakob Fugger, Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, and, among royalty, the Habsburgs Maximilian II and Philip II. During this phase of his career, Panvinio employed several scribes—and the more he had to pay the scribes, the more funding he needed from patrons. This, in turn, meant that he had to produce yet more manuscripts for income. His feverish productivity was halted only by his untimely death on a journey to Palermo in 1568. This chapter ends with a discussion of the fate of Panvinio’s manuscripts, the publication of which after his death was held up by an order of Pius V as well as by the Congregations of the Index of Prohibited Books and the Inquisition.

‘The Clouds Roar’

Chapters 1 and 2 provide for the first time since 1899 an up-to-date intellectual biography of Onofrio Panvinio, which shows that he was much more than the antiquarian and historian of ancient Rome whom existing scholarship has generally presumed him to be. The first chapter begins with a discussion of his family background, education, and entry into the Augustinian Order in Verona. Panvinio’s relations with the general of the order, Girolamo Seripando, are then discussed, as are his studies in Naples and Rome. Panvinio found another patron in Cardinal Marcello Cervini (elected pope in 1555), who encouraged him to study ecclesiastical history as well as Roman antiquity. The first fruit of this new approach was his treatise on papal primacy. The chapter then turns to the earliest series of historical accounts Panvinio wrote: the histories of several Roman noble families of his time. Here Panvinio made small but decisive interventions, resorting to forgery to prove his points. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese became Panvinio’s most important patron, giving him access to a significant learned circle. From 1557 to 1559, Panvinio went into exile from Rome with Farnese, spending two years in Parma and Venice. In this period, Panvinio wrote his first short history of the popes and cardinals. This chapter also discusses Panvinio’s works on Roman antiquity, which raise questions regarding epigraphy and forgery.

Panvinio’s History of Papal Elections

This chapter deals with Panvinio’s history of papal elections (De varia creatione Romani pontificis). Panvinio was the first author to write such a work. He put together an extensive range of relevant historical material to cover 1,500 years of history. Panvinio felt free to criticize past popes for their ‘lust’ for power, while at the same time defending papal primacy. He stated in his preface that he wanted to demonstrate two things: first, that there had been different forms of election from the time of St Peter to his own day; and second, that no variation in the electoral process had taken place without the authority and consent of the popes. One of the key issues was Panvinio’s presentation of change, discord, and diversity in the Church’s past. Panvinio stated ‘What I have written will not please the Christian reader’, and he included some hard-hitting criticism of the papacy’s growing bid for secular power from Gregory VII (1073–85) onwards. Panvinio did not attempt to publish the full version of De varia creatione, but instead presented an abridgement—which still contained much criticism of the Church’s past—to Pope Pius IV and his nephew, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo.

Church History, Censorship, and Confessionalization

This chapter begins by examining the interrelationship of history and theology. From the Reformation onwards, church history presented a challenge to each confession in its own right. Protestants re-invented the prevailing models of church history; Catholics responded by underlining the uninterrupted continuity of the apostolic traditions. The second section of the chapter concentrates on the genre of papal biography, reviewing the various contemporary authors who wrote on the subject. By editing and continuing the humanist Bartolomeo Platina’s standard papal biographies from the fifteenth century, Panvinio put himself in the position of being considered the most important authority on papal history. The censorship of historical works by Catholic theologians is then discussed by comparing the cases of other important authors including Carlo Sigonio. The chapter investigates the question of the extent to which Panvinio’s unpublished Church History (Historia ecclesiastica) was an expression of the confessionalization of historiography. There follows a discussion of the censorships of several of Panvinio’s works, including that of his history of papal elections carried out by the Spanish jurist Francisco Peña and the German Jesuit Jakob Gretser.

Introduction

This Introduction presents Onofrio Panvinio (1530–68), an Augustinian friar who gained prominence as a historian of both the Catholic Church and Roman antiquity. Historiography in sixteenth-century Rome and the interrelationship between history and theology have been awaiting a profound re-examination. Panvinio’s case enables us to trace changes in the approach to history-writing across the epochs of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. This Introduction discusses Panvinio’s methods, which were modelled on humanist source criticism. It highlights differences between Panvinio and the more strongly confessionalized and dogmatized historiography (such as that of Cesare Baronio) which came after him. Lastly, there is a brief discussion of the terms Catholic Reform and Counter Reformation.

Epilogue

The Epilogue provides thoughts on the development of ecclesiastical historiography after c.1580. Catholics published relatively few works on church history during this period; this was largely because Catholic universities neglected the teaching of church history. After the Magdeburg Centuriators had created a new Protestant church history, historical criticism in the Lutheran camp remained subdued in the shadow of their great achievement. In the Catholic Church, the censorship of historical authors remained a widespread practice. Also, papal biographies were rarely printed as individual publications directly after a pope’s death. The official Catholic answers to the Magdeburg Centuries are well known. In the field of doctrine, these were provided by Robert Bellarmine, while Cesare Baronio provided the Catholic answer on the historical side. To sum up, both Catholics and Protestants had many reasons to appeal to and invoke history. Polemicists naturally preferred the solutions which were closest to their own interests; and, depending on these interests, they accepted or rejected the results of humanist scholarship. Panvinio trod a fine line, exploring the limits of what could be said and written—but at times overstepping this line grossly.