The Bishop’s Conscience: Pietro Camaiani, Cosimo I, and the Residency Debate at the Council of Trent, 1562–63

Abstract

The third phase of the Council of Trent (1562–63) witnessed a crisis erupt over whether bishops resided in, and ruled, their dioceses de iure divino (by divine right) or by papal authority. Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence, cooperated with instructions from Pope Sixtus IV to send the Tuscan bishops to Trent, to vote as a bloc for Episcopal residency by papal authority. This position strengthened papal primacy and weakened bishops’ claims to autonomy. Pietro Camaiani, the Bishop of Fiesole and a longstanding Medici loyalist, defied the Duke’s instructions, claiming his freedom of conscience and episcopal liberty. Through an examination of diplomatic and personal correspondence, treatises, and judicial documents, I argue that there are three reasonable causes that influenced Camaiani to support episcopal residency de iure divino, in defiance of his patron Cosimo I. These include, the episcopalist theological arguments circulating at the Council, the heterodox literature of the 1540s, and his own lived experience as the Bishop of Fiesole. I uncover the challenges Camaiani faced while governing his diocese that brought him into conflict with Cosimo I, explore the political dimensions of episcopacy by papal authority, and problematize the meaning of Trent’s “ideal bishop.”

1. Introduction

The Council of Trent has been called a “seismograph” of international European politics, yet its meter was also sensitive enough to register the ecclesiastical politics within a given state (Prosperi 2001, pp. 44–50; Pirillo 2018, pp. 56–76; Pirillo 2020, pp. 281–300). The residency debate in the Council’s third period displayed the papacy’s concern that episcopal residency de iure divino could diminish pontifical authority, and weaken the diplomatic bond between the princes and the court of Rome. Demonstrating a collaborative “conciliar politics,” Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence, urged Tuscan bishops to attend the Council and vote for residency by canonical authority, in order to support the papacy against French, Spanish, and Imperial interests (Jedin 1950; Cavarzere 2014; Lavenia 2006).

Despite his past loyal service to the House of Medici, however, the Bishop of Fiesole, Pietro Camaiani, defied his patron and voted for residency de iure divino. In this essay, I suggest three reasons why Camaiani resisted the conciliar politics of the Duke in the name of liberty of conscience, drawing on theological discourses, heretical literature, and the Bishop’s own experience. This unnoticed act of resistance is significant, because it reveals the extent of a diversity of ideologies, including heterodox ones, at play at Trent, and the route by which they came to circulate in the Tuscan court. Moreover, it reveals the political interests in strengthening papal primacy against the cause of episcopal liberty and bishops’ autonomy, unsettling the meaning of Trent’s “ideal bishop.” Cases like this one give further reason for the scholarly shift on the Council of Trent in recent decades, which has placed greater emphasis on the period’s intellectual dynamism, porosity of boundaries between intra-Catholic schools of thought, as well as between Catholics and Protestants, and the unsettled character of political realities (Gleason 1996; Jedin 1946; Prosperi 2009; Ditchfield 1995, 2013; O’Malley 2000, 2013; MacCulloch et al. 2006). These new approaches come in response to the still dominant Jedin paradigm, of a finite distinction between Catholic Reform and Counter-Reformation, which was itself an improvement on the previous scholarship’s more rigid confessional mode of history.1 In this article, I have written from the standpoint of the disappointed yet not defeated, for whom the Council spelled neither triumph nor tragedy, but rather the foreclosure of one status quo and the prologue to another (Gleason 1996; Ditchfield 2013; Bonora 2016; Firpo 2014; Prosperi 2009).

2. Pietro Camaiani: A Biographical Sketch

Pietro Camaiani remains one of the many intriguing but little studied factotums of sixteenth-century Tuscany. He was born into an Aretine patrician family on 1 June 1519. Although little is known about his early years, by twenty years of age, in 1539, he had entered the Duke’s service, like his brother Onofrio, who also pursued a career in diplomacy. In 1545, he took the office of Segretario del Consiglio di Stato, and shortly thereafter set off for Trent to assist the ailing Bernardino Duretti, the ducal ambassador to the Council. When Duretti died in early 1546, Cosimo appointed Camaiani his envoy “so that he might daily give us briefings on the events of the Council.”2 Aside from an assignment as the ducal agent in Venice in April and May 1547, he spent three years at the Council (1546–1549), following it from Trent to Bologna. During this time, he developed a rapport with Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte (1487–1555), the future Pope Julius III, whose friendship would greatly benefit Camaiani in the 1550s. In the following years, Camaiani would serve diplomatic roles in the service of the Florentine state as well as the Papacy: as the Duke’s agent in Venice (September 1549–December 1551) and extraordinary nuncio to Parma (February 1551), and as Papal emissary to the Court of Charles V in Innsbruck and Brussels (January 1552–May 1552).

During this last post, Camaiani butted heads with the more senior apostolic nuncio Pietro Bertano. When Bertano departed Innsbruck on 28 March 1552, he left Camaiani as the sole papal representative at the Court. The veteran Florentine ambassador to the Empire Averardo Serristori, took this as a near sure sign that Camaiani would be named apostolic nuncio, which indeed happened.3 Finally, on the 18th of February 1552, a letter arrived at the Imperial Court from Cardinal Innocenzo del Monte, announcing that he had been named Bishop of Fiesole, whose diocese extended east and south of Florence into Chianti. Although Cosimo’s patronage cannot be underestimated, his nomination was also due to the favor of Julius III. When Julius III died, Camaiani’s tenure as nuncio in Naples (1554) came to an end, and he returned to his see. Even after his arrival, however, Camaiani continued to rule his diocese by vicars, and resided in the episcopal palace adjacent to Santa Maria in Campo in Florence, where the Bishops of Fiesole had been permitted to live by a papal concession, since the thirteenth century.4 It is likely that Camaiani continued to carry out diplomatic duties for Cosimo, and perhaps the Pope, during this period.

Known for his independent streak, Camaiani earned varying reputations among his peers, including ill reports of his character noted by diplomats, churchmen, and rulers. Pier Filippo Pandolfini, Cosimo’s representative at the Imperial Court, and Ercole Rangoni, the Ferrarese ambassador, marked him as a social climber, and called him a “man without letters and unexperienced with negotiations.” Cardinal de Granvelle thought him “vain, unreliable, and verbose.”5 Cardinal Dandino complained of his surly manner and unwillingness to collaborate. As easily as he made enemies, however, Camaiani earned and kept the trust of several important supporters. Cardinal Girolamo Seripando praised him “on account of the acumen of his intellect, faith, diligence, and skillfulness,” as well as his intelligence and pleasant manner.6 When he lost face before Charles V in May 1552, for impugning the Elector of Saxony, Julius III refused to recall him, reiterating his trust in Camaiani’s abilities. It appears whatever he lacked in Latin, he made up for with skill in negotiation and efficacy.

Little did Camaiani know that he would return to the Council not merely as an agent, but as a bishop and active participant in the debates. He arrived in Trent on October 6, 1561, a few months before the Council opened again for the 17th session, and would stay through the 25th and final session. It is illustrative of the Tuscan episcopacy that during the third phase of the Council, Camaiani, in addition to his episcopal duties, also served as an agent for the Duke of Florence (Jedin 1950, p. 351; Taddei 1980, pp. 70–76). In that role, he wrote 30 letters to Cosimo, informing him of developments between 8 October 1561, and 30 March 1562. By that point, Giovanni Strozzi, a humanist from the family of fuoriusciti, had been named Cosimo’s official agent at the Council.

During the 22nd session, which began on 17 September 1562, the disagreement over the nature of episcopal residency reignited (Jedin 1949–75, IV, pp. 237–63). Two parties developed: the papalists, dominated by Italians, who held that bishops ruled by canonical authority and the pope’s will, and the episcopalists, composed of Spaniards, French, and some Italians, who held that bishops ruled by divine authority. By 22 October, the implications of residency de iure divino for papal primacy were clear: “Among the articles for debate, one asked if bishops are superior to priests; and it was concluded: yes. This very simple affirmation was not liked by many, and they want it to read that bishops are superior to priests de iure divino. Many others do not want this, as it seems to them really to disregard the pope; and perhaps they fear that one could fall from this position into a greater inconvenience.”7 The discussion of bishops’ superiority to priests escalated to a debate over the relation of bishops to the Bishop of Rome. On 2 November, Strozzi wrote to Cosimo explaining a middle path that the legates had devised, whereby “they had resolved to say that as for ordination [bishops] are de iure divino, but that their jurisdiction depends on the pope.” This subtle definition, however, displeased many bishops, “seeming to them a thing without reason to say that bishops have such a rank from God and authority from men.”8 By then, the two parties had continued to crystallize. The more numerous episcopalists were “of the opinion that not only are bishops constituted and superior to priests de iure divino but that it is said in doctrine and in the canon.” Meanwhile, the papalists still wanted to put a finer edge on the relation between bishops and priests, founding their argument on canon law rather than divine law and dogma. These papalists “are some of those who show themselves most jealous of the dignity and power of the pope, who want this to be established in the canon, and that even if it is said that bishops are from Christ, it may be said together with the way in which they depend on the pope.”9

On December 19, Camaiani took his vote for residency de iure divino.10 Cosimo had heeded the call of Pius IV, and his nephew the Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, urging bishops in Tuscan sees and Tuscan bishops to go to the Council to mitigate the very effort that Camaiani was supporting (Jedin 1950, pp. 480–81). When he finally wrote to the Duke in January 1563, he explained that in the general congregations he had sought “humbly and without pertinacity to unburden [his] conscience, leaving the rest to God.” Silence on this issue would have entailed “offending the truth itself and my own soul.” The Duke could not “expect that he who professes to be a Christian should speak against conscience.”11 Despite Cosimo’s paternal response, that he was acting out of “affection and fear lest you were erring, for many valiant men who are there are of the opinion contrary to yours,” the damage had been done. After twenty years of loyal service to the Medici, what could have brought Camaiani to make so defiant a resistance against his patron?

3. Theology

In his letter, Camaiani framed his self-defense in terms of liberty of conscience and episcopal liberty.12 While he certainly could have acquired these concepts by osmosis, serving alongside prelates in the service of the Medici and papacy, there is evidence that the reasoned case for the episcopalist jus divinum position circulated at the Council among the Tuscan delegation.

Among the papers Jacopo Guidi (1514–1588), the Bishop of Atri e Penne, preserved from his service to Cosimo at the third period of the Council, is a manuscript copy of a letter running to fifteen pages.13 Undated, and without information identifying the sender or receiver, the letter mounts an extensive case for episcopal residency jure divino, while critiquing those stakeholders at Trent who argued the pro-papal position. The author’s theological erudition and knowledge of biblical texts suggest he was a theologian, and the familiarity with conciliar debates and figures indicate that he was a ranking prelate. What stands out most, however, and ultimately helped to identify its author, was the repetition of an expression whose irony grows with each echo: “Who was as severe in actions (essecutioni) than Paul IV of happy memory?” and “This very thing took place in the time of Paul IV of happy memory.” Finally, “That which your most illustrious lordship writes me of the Lateran Council, I know well having read that council many times, having great convenience to do so in the time when I was in Rome in the pontificate of pope Paul IV of happy memory, it not being conceded to me to read any other book but that.”14

Egidio Foscarari (1512–1564), the Bishop of Modena, wrote this letter from Trent, on May 21, 1562, to his longtime supporter and friend, Cardinal Giovanni Morone.15 It was Foscarari’s misfortune to be brought to trial and extradited to Rome, on account of his close friendship with Morone, who had been a spirituale among the followers of Juan de Valdés (1509–1541) (Firpo and Niccoli 2010; Firpo and Maifreda 2019; Felici 2010 in Firpo and Niccoli 2010). His imprisonment in Castel Sant’Angelo, with nothing to read but the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), was the cause of the happy memory of Paul IV, Gian Pietro Carafa (r. 1555–1559), who brought the spirit of the Inquisition to the pontifical throne. Only Paul IV’s death delivered Foscarari and Morone from a worse fate.

Between April 1561 and February 1563, Foscarari and Morone exchanged at least 125 letters concerning the Council of Trent.16 Some of these letters may have been drafted with the input of other prelates and, though privately addressed, were intended for wider circulation at the Council. In fact, a manuscript copy of the letter in Guidi’s possession has also been located among the papers of Ludovico Beccadelli, the Archbishop of Ragusa (r. 1555–1564), who maintained close ties to Cosimo I.17

Although Foscarari himself had not been a follower of Valdés, his sympathies for Morone, and his initiative secretly to reconcile heretics to the Roman faith, brought him into the Inquisition’s crosshairs.18 Foscarari’s letter to Morone, his “unico patrone,” makes a case for episcopal residency jure divino, by responding to four accusations leveled against the former: (1) that his views are contrary to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), (2) that even if the jure divino position were true, it would be wrong to propose it, for it would cause much scandal, (3) that even if the jure divino position ought to be proposed, it would be wrong to influence others’ votes so that they conformed to his opinion, and 4) that he gave his vote in order to bring about impious results.19

Foscarari also advanced a political critique, at the same time as he sought to neutralize these aforementioned accusations with biblical and theological citations and to reassure Morone. He explained his position’s goal, to add teeth to the requirement for episcopal residency, as the early decrees from the Council had had no effect on bettering episcopal behavior.20 By his lights, the best way to guarantee that bishops reside in their sees would have been to make nonresidency a mortal sin, but he was careful to stipulate the Papal prerogative to dispense from residency, and that dispensation from residence would have to be with good cause, otherwise the prelate would not have a secure conscience. Citing Panormitanus, the canonist and Archbishop of Palermo, Niccolò de’ Tedeschi (1386–1445), Foscarari argued that the obligation to residency had deeper roots than canonical law, for a prelate who receives a canonical dispensation does not, perforce, also have a secure conscience.21

For Foscarari, the security of bishops’ consciences was a leading priority, otherwise they might be in a state of mortal sin. For this very reason, he found the comportment of the legate Ludovico Simonetta appalling, for he was seeking to force bishops to vote against conscience by threats and intimidations. “Certain legates” had “had the effect they desired, that is, that many [bishops] have changed their votes, against their consciences, and had made them say that which contradicted their own spirit. And this matter is so common that there are few in Trent who are not aware of it.”22 This was all the more despairing to Foscarari because the legates and other bishops knew well that residency de iure divino was biblically, theologically, and canonically founded, but they were militating against it for political aims:

“To me it seemed scandalous to hear in the public congregation that, even though residency was by divine right, nevertheless one had to remain quiet, since it entailed the ruin of the papacy. It appeared scandalous to me, I say, because I cannot imagine a more heretical proposition than this: that because this truth contradicts the papacy, it would necessarily follow that the papacy is something fake and contrary to the word of God, an intolerable blasphemy. And more prudence would be desired from those who say that the dogma does not contradict the papacy, although the consequences that follow from it do.”23

How Guidi came into possession of a copy of Foscarari’s letter is not clear. In all his letters to Cosimo from Trent, Guidi never mentioned the Bishop of Modena, and he arrived at the Council on 13 December 1562, nearly seven months after Foscarari had originally written it.24 Perhaps he had received it through his close contact with the zelanti, chiefly Ludovico Simonetta, in order to pass it along to the Duke, but it is also possible he collected it as part of his personal endeavor to chronicle the third period of the Council. Neither did Camaiani mention Foscarari in any of his correspondence to Cosimo, but we cannot say for sure that Camaiani, as a Medici insider, did not read the letter or hear these arguments from Foscarari himself. After all, his self-defense does echo Foscarari’s points, concerning the violation of conscience and the danger of contradicting one’s own spirit. Like Foscarari, he criticized the panicked defenders of the Papacy who, in seeking to twist the arm of the divine right party, gave occasion to the heretics who “have been prophetic in their malicious writings about the Council.”25 Moreover, it seems they were on friendly terms since, following the Council’s conclusion, Camaiani dined with Foscarari, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and other episcopalist bishops (Jedin 1950, p. 352).

Such heretical critics of Trent will be discussed in the following section; for now, it is important to bear in mind that Camaiani read such critics during his first conciliar sojourn in 1546.26 Although he did not make theological arguments for divine right residency outright, his self-defense does appear to echo points of Foscarari’s long letter to Morone, especially the stress on the grave danger of contradicting one’s conscience, and thereby offending one’s own spirit.27 These reasoned positions appear to leave no room for dismissals of the kind one Medici informant at Trent sent back to Tuscany: “among the Italians, many young men do not know what this conclusion means and nor consider how much it entails: for example, all the Venetians who, by my lights, have the same goal as the Spaniards of making themselves little popes in their dioceses; many of the Dominicans […]; [and the Bishop of] Modena.”28 Camaiani and Foscarari were neither young, nor inexperienced, and such ad hominem attacks laid bare the political implications of the theology.

4. Heresy

Besides theological convictions, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Camaiani read heretical books, and plausible as well that, as a ducal secretary and agent, he was initiated into his patron’s heterodox intelligence network in the 1540s. Camaiani numbered among the very few Tridentine fathers who were present at all periods of the Council. Whereas Camaiani’s role at Trent in 1562–63 reflected the dualistic quality of his life, as a creature of the Duke and a bishop, his earlier service at Trent reveals the cultural elements of his diplomatic office. At the first period of the Council, besides serving as a clearinghouse for all communication to and from his patron, Camaiani also forwarded books from various sources to the Duke and his majordomo, Pier Francesco Riccio. Given its proximity to Trent, Venice, the “door of the Reformation,” had become a choice place of residence for the Conciliar fathers.

If Camaiani had not yet been initiated into Cosimo’s heterodox network, he got to know it at the Council, in the guise of Marc Antonio Flaminio (1498–1550), who was engaged in procuring books for the Duke (Assonitis 2016, p. 24). A humanist among the spirituali, Flaminio had secretly edited the heterodox bestseller the Beneficio di Cristo (Pastore 1997; Prosperi and Ginzburg 1975, pp. 40–52). On 18 February 1546, Paolo Giovio (1483–1552), the Bishop of Nocera de’ Pagani, sent Cosimo––likely by means of Camaiani––a copy of Flaminio’s new paraphrases of the Psalms.29 And in November 1546, Flaminio sent Cosimo a copy of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime spirituali, by means of Camaiani (Assonitis 2016, pp. 24, 40 n148, 40 n149).

In a missive sent on 9 October 1546, Camaiani wrote to Riccio, “The little book contained herein was given to me by a gentleman who finds himself at the Council, so that I could deliver it to His Excellency as a new work, erudite and skillful but full of an infinite number of heresies and ribaldries.”30 This book was the Tragedia intitolata Libero arbitrio, written by the former Benedictine friar Francesco Negri (1500–1563) (Negri 1546). He wrote his greatest work, the Tragedia, in Chiavenna, in the Grisons, where he had been working as a teacher since 1538 (Biasiori 2013; Barbieri 1997, pp. 107–40). When Camaiani sent it to Cosimo, by way of Riccio, in 1546, it had just been printed by Johannes Oporinus in Basel, an epicenter of Italian heterodoxy.

Camaiani also forwarded additional books. In the same message on 9 October Camaiani wrote, “The same friend that gave me the tragedy also humored me with another little work entitled Il disordine della Chiesa, not of so much erudition and skill as the said tragedy, but not any less full of heresies and ribaldries, etc. Your Most Reverend Lordship may read it.”31 This work was a pamphlet of sixteen octavo sheets clandestinely published (Vergerio 1545). Scholars believe that Pier Paolo Vergerio (1498–1564), the Bishop of Capodistria, wrote it, and that it was printed in Venice (Biasiori 2020; Pierce 2003; Barbieri 2000, pp. 239–76). Occasioned by Paul III’s convening the Council, it circulated at Trent, but after the repression of Giovanni della Casa’s Catalogo, the Venetian Index of 1554, and the Roman Indices from 1559, only two copies have come down to us.32

In the mid-1540s, heterodox literature, and other books such as these, circulated at Trent. They represent a critique of the state of the Roman Church but share an optimistic view of the Council’s potential. ”Italian evangelism,” the spring time of religious exploration begun in the early 1530s, was beginning to feel autumn’s chill by the mid-1540s.33 In the early phase of the Council, reconciliation with Protestants was a slim but live possibility, but as the sessions passed, the struggle between the wings of the Church, the intransigenti and the spirituali, gradually unbalanced. The 1549 conclave, that saw the election of Gian Pietro Carafa to the pontifical throne, marked the end of conciliatory dreams.

In 1546, however, both Vergerio and Negri still had hope for what might come. Il desordine della chiesa reads as a white paper for secular and ecclesiastical princes, enumerating ten errors in need of correction. After the letter to the reader, contrasting the ancient and modern church, a short introduction makes clear the author’s intended audience: “Here begins a brief treatise where certain manifest errors are mentioned, which up to the present hour have not been removed and addressed by Bishops, neither have they been corrected and emended by the other Princes.”34

On the other hand, Negri resorted to the dialogue form, a common impulse among the Italian heterodox, but extended it beyond the normal parameters of a few interlocutors. Literary and dramatic, Negri’s dialogue represents an incisive theological critique of Roman doctrine, indicated by the glossary of scholastic theological terms provided.35 It also betrays an eschatological hope, whether proceeding from the Council or not, that the Reformation movement beyond the Alps would grow, and disempower the false system of salvation grounded on the predication of Free Choice. Ultimately in the drama, justice comes from on high: sent by God, the character Justifying Grace strikes down Free Choice, and God executes the papal Antichrist with the divine word. The divine word does the work of Reformation.

Whereas Vergerio’s Desordine della Chiesa came with a list of problems and solutions, Negri’s Tragedia intimated, by means of drama and plot, how the Church would be reformed. In the 1550 edition he unmasked himself as the author, revealing his motivations in writing. In his 1550 letter to the reader, he explicitly allies himself with the cause of Vergerio and Bernardino Ochino (1483–1564), the Vicar General of the Capuchins, who fled to Protestant territories in 1542.36 We also gain an understanding of Negri’s sense of the stakes, as it is Paul III, “almost constrained by the princes to have to concede a general council to Christendom,” who designs a means to satisfy the princes while not endangering the power of the papacy.37

Negri explains why Paul sent each of the original legates to Trent: Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–1558) because he had written a defense of the papacy, Cardinal del Monte because he was a canonist who would act in the interest of the curia, and the future Marcellus II, Cardinal Marcello Cervini (1501–1555), because “used to keeping good account of children, pedant that he was, […] he [would] keep similar good account of those bishops who may have wanted both with words and with deeds to show themselves for the Roman see, and chase off all those who seemed to him to want to do the contrary both for the sake of their conscience and the truth.”38 Some form of “conscience” (i.e., conscientia, conscientie) appears three times in the 1550 letter to the reader, and ten times in the original 1546 text, in connection with the notion of unburdening the conscience, freeing it, and having a peaceful conscience or a stained conscience (Negri 1546, pp. D4 v, F3 v, F4 r, H1 r, Q2 r, Q2 v, R3 v, V 3 v; 1550, pp. A3 r, A4 v, A6r). These appeals could have made an impression on the young Camaiani, as the Council unfolded before his eyes.

5. Experience

Besides theological arguments and heterodox critiques, there were concrete events in Camaiani’s tenure as Bishop of Fiesole that were more important to his view of episcopal liberty. Several conflicts over benefices, in the 1550s and 1560s, pitted Camaiani against inhabitants of his diocese, and revealed the emphasis that Cosimo placed on jurisdiction. These were the practical considerations that could have more significantly motivated Camaiani’s defiance at Trent.

Letters between Camaiani and the Duke reveal faults in their relationship as early as 1556. Accusations had been leveled against Camaiani before the lieutenants and counselors of Florence, concerning his actions as bishop.39 He wrote to the Duke on August 21, informing him of the “evil and falsity of such accusations” against him. The Duke could not have had all the information, so he begged him not to believe anything before hearing his side of the story. He went on, “I, not so much as Pietro Camaiani your subject and servant creature but even more as bishop, casting aside my whole exemption and ecclesiastical privilege, submit myself forever to all censures and orders of Your Excellency.” He feared that “as an Aretine and as one born of a good family of true and very faithful servants of your most illustrious house, I am exceedingly hateful to many Florentines and chiefly because I find myself here unworthily in this dignity and episcopal jurisdiction.” For this reason, Camaiani begged his ruler not to let him be “judged and condemned among these mobs if not by Your Excellency or some non-Florentine person whom you will command from the public magistrates.” Then would he demonstrate that “all my actions are justified and that I neither in deeds nor in words ever distanced myself at all nor will I distance myself from the office of sincere bishop, Your Excellency’s most devoted servant and creature in good grace.”40

The Duke offered a cool and noncommittal response: his goal was justice for all his subjects. He replied, “our office is to listen to everyone and according to the truth, do such that they report whether wrong has been done. Where the matters of priests are concerned, we will leave it to those responsible to think about.” Cosimo, however, assuaged Camaiani’s anxieties in such a way that he reminded him of his authority to uphold justice. He went on, “As our creature, you would do us great wrong especially in our dominion to do things for which you would be faulted, however, we believe you not to be straying from justice and honesty, even if outside there is commonly a great noise among the people.”41 Cosimo was committed to intervening if the laity was wronged by clergy, but if the matter dealt wholly with clergy, he was decided to keep to his own sphere.

Camaiani wrote another letter to Cosimo two months later on 10 October. The bishop explained how he had been attempting “for many days already through Messer Jacopo Guidi to have the favor of a third of an hour’s secret audience” with the Duke to address the “sinister opinions that you may have conceived against me by the mere fraudulent reports of a few malicious people.” Camaiani responded to each of the three claims against him in succession, asserting that his actions provided no cause for censure since the time he had resided in his see:

“The first [matter] is concerning avarice and cupidity because I sooner decreased rather than increased my income and not a single quattrino arrived in my hands unjustly. It is also false that I rigidly collected debts from my debtors, but for the future, if I want to live, the power to change style in collecting debts would be good for me, and good to avail myself, as regards disputing, of as much as is conceded to me canonically. The second matter is that concerning my person and manners, giving glory to God for them, for which I do not fear at all being denoted as dishonest and inconvenient to the ecclesiastical standard. On this particular matter, I want to speak little so as not to seem to praise myself, being also a sinner, and silencing my other equals who carry on differently from me. The third matter is that in the rule and in the spiritual, ecclesiastical, and secular care of my episcopate, diocese, and diocesan clergy, I affirmatively want to prove with a rigid examination of my every word, deed, and writing that not even the last iota will be found contrary to the sacred canons and to the sacred Florentine provincial constitutions. With these presuppositions my soul instructs me that from Your Excellency, who is always of the same justice and religion, I had for myself the birth of every favor and protection, the safe exercise of my vocation.”42

The claims against the Bishop touched every significant aspect of his episcopal office: the collection of income, his morals and life, and the care of those under his authority. No element of his episcopate remained unquestioned.

Camaiani called his detractors “satellites of the Devil,” indicating that this treatment was not new. “Aim was taken against me, injuring me by illegitimate means, even by way of calumnious suppositions, which I tolerated with patience, believing that at least those who were prevailing against me would be confounded with the name of Your Excellency.” The day before, on 9 October, he had received “a new injury […] beyond the several others done to me previously.” The Bishop could not wait any longer for the secret audience, so he wrote to the Duke, asking for two favors. The first was that Cosimo “specify the particular imputations that have been impressed in [his] mind” against Camaiani. The second favor was more demanding: he requested that Cosimo order the magistrate of the Consiglieri, and other ministers, not to meddle in his ecclesiastical affairs. Camaiani claimed that these officials were “violating and trampling on the spiritual and temporal jurisdiction of [his] episcopal seat and ecclesiastical liberty,” which, he was careful to add, was done without Cosimo’s permission. Given the opportunity, he would explain the circumstances in a private audience with the Duke.

Despite their being couched in formal language, Camaiani sent Cosimo nothing less than a veiled ultimatum. Writing in a somewhat paranoid tone, he suspected that these slanderous allegations against him and his office did not displease the Duke. In order to remedy his situation, he felt it may have been necessary to absent himself from his diocese, “leaving the field open to those who do not want to hear any correction at all about the execrable abuses in religion and about the nefarious ignorance and wickedness that [he] found in this diocese.” He then implicated two of his accusers: “many already were beginning to show signs of emendation such as to hope each day for greater fruit, if we were not impeded by a certain presumptuous few who trust the petitions made by the venomous and wicked Ser Piero Berni and the reports of Messer Lelio to the Consiglieri that tell them to escape the conflict, and lead the people to believe that my faithful servitude is not to the degree that is merited by Your Excellency.” He thought his only option left was to leave for Rome, with the Duke’s permission, in order to “at least unburden my conscience before God.”43 Camaiani was attempting to play Cosimo off the Pope, admittedly a reckless maneuver. Identifying the two people who initiated the conflict with Camaiani sheds further light on the role of bishops in the Tuscan state and Cosimo’s justice system.

Lelio Torelli (1489–1576), who served as auditore della giurisdizione from 1546 until his death, was a consummate Medici insider.44 The auditorato della giurisdizione had the singular aim of “effecting an absolute and centralizing power on the part of the Duke, in a capillary form in every party of the dominion, and to assert the autonomy of the State from any foreign interference.”45 All appeals that came before Torelli followed the same procedure: a supplica, or petition, was addressed personally to the Duke, who imagined himself the “fount of justice.” (Ibid, pp. 67, 70. Cf; Cochrane 1973, pp. 59, 61–65). Once he had made his judgment, he wrote a rescritto (his findings about a case written directly on a copy of the supplica), which was forwarded to Torelli, who executed the Duke’s legally binding rescritto.

The other person named, Ser Piero Berni, is hard to identify: beyond his name, only the striking epithets Camaiani used to describe him––“poisonous and wicked”––stand out. It appears that he was a layman with ties to the church of Santa Maria Novella di Panzano, in Chianti. In the summer of 1556, a conflict arose with the Gaddi family about a benefice to be assigned to Camaiani from that church, of which they were patrons. Typically obdurate, Camaiani refused the deal that Cosimo had brokered with the Gaddi.46

Cosimo had little patience for the bishop. He responded, “we do not know what you wish to say. Whether your actions are good or bad, it is not our responsibility to correct them.” Still in the role of an impartial judge, the Duke marveled that Camaiani claimed to be his creature but did not welcome words of correction. Furthermore, Camaiani seemed reluctant fully to entrust his case to his patron:

“Much more we marvel that you speak of so many injuries inflicted on you without saying either by whom or where or how but again we marvel that in such exaggeration of words that you made in your letter, you do not come to any particulars, saying that your ecclesiastical liberty has been impeded, saying neither by whom nor why, you knowing well that our custom is that the Church of God stay in its sphere perhaps more in our state than in any other that we know of.”47

We see Cosimo’s style of personal justice, wanting to receive every detail of complaints and defenses. Camaiani’s error was concealing the targets of his complaint. Cosimo, however, wanted the facts of the case.

Cosimo continued his critique:

“In ultimo you say you want to go to Rome […] as His Holiness now is in need, and this we will always praise, but we will not accept what you say: because you do it and because you are impeded, I not having ever given any impediment. You praise your life, for your consolation and our satisfaction, about which we still desire to hear from others. For today exterior matters are not of very much use and we would like to hear that, just as you satisfy yourself, that you satisfy the people too if only in part.”

The Duke modeled impartial justice: he repeatedly urged him to do good but warned him too: “if you wish to harm your neighbor unjustly beneath our shade and in the general name of ecclesiastical liberty, we do not wish to be drawn into that company but let you extricate yourself from the particular people with which you have to do.” Not to be outdone, he concluded with a jab: “length of words but more detailed and reasonable perhaps than what you wrote to us.”48

Not mentioned in any of Camaiani’s biographies, this conflict is key to understanding his actions during the third period of the Council. The rhetoric of liberty recurred in Camaiani’s political imaginary, in the context of his episcopate and his secular diplomatic service. Added to his difficult disposition and ideal of liberty, was the concrete experience of ruling as Bishop of Fiesole. Camaiani weathered this 1556 diocesan conflict, and it brought home to him the gravity of episcopal liberty. At the Council, he recognized residency de iure divino could neutralize machinations of the kind he experienced. After surviving his defiance at Trent, it was a bitter irony that before the Council had ended, another diocesan conflict––with the inhabitants of San Pietro de’ Turicchi––sealed his fate. In 1566, he was transferred from Fiesole to the smaller, less influential diocese of Ascoli Piceno (Jedin 1950, p. 352; Rill 1974).

6. Conclusions

Camaiani’s role in the residency debate at Trent is a prism by which to view the politico-religious concerns of the European powers. This essay has sought to recenter the political, in a reading of the Council that acknowledges the indispensable role of secular princes like Cosimo I in establishing the Tridentine settlement. It has also sought to unsettle the notion that Trent “strove to enhance episcopal authority” and instead strengthened papal primacy, in line with the trend toward centralizing governance of the early modern era (O’Malley 2013, p. 270). I have argued that Camaiani could draw from three sources––the theological arguments of Foscarari, the heterodox literature of the 1540s, and his own lived experience––to stand for divine right residency against the nakedly political interests of the papalist party and the pressure of his patron Cosimo I. The coexistence of contrary viewpoints, interest in heterodox literature, and fluidity of opinion among the ecclesiastical hierarchy at Trent, as well as within the Tuscan Court, should further reframe our vision of early modern Catholicism and the political options available to princes like Cosimo I, whose choice between episcopal or papal primacy shaped the future of not only the Catholic Church but also early modern Europe. In the end, whom did Trent reform? Neither the pope, nor the curia, nor the princes (Prosdocimi 1939; Alberigo 1977). And at last, neither could it reform the bishop’s conscience.