CONTARINI, GASPARE. - Cardinal, b. in Venice to Luigi, of the branch of the C. of S. Maria dell'Orto, on 16 Oct. 1483, d. in Bologna on 24 Aug. 1542; he studied at Padua, taking a great interest in the philosophical questions then fervently debated in that University; he gave his collaboration to the republic in affairs of State and particularly in the embassies entrusted to him, among which noteworthy was that to Rome in 1528 and concluded at Bologna at the court of Charles V.
His youthful works were: a treatise De magistratibus et Republica Venetorum, which was printed several times, and a second, De officio Episcopi, composed in 1516, in which he sets forth the duties of a bishop in order to correspond to his mission. Paul III, in order to have a valuable collaborator in the ecclesiastical renewal he intended to carry out, created him cardinal on 21 May 1535, although he was still a simple layman, and gave him the bishopric of Belluno on 23 Oct. 1536. C. stood at the Pope's side in preparing the reform of the Church and removing the abuses that afflicted it, and he advised above all the creation of cardinals who would be of valid help through their learning and through the integrity of their life and purposes. He therefore promoted the activity of that commission which drew up a radical reform project known as Concilium de emendanda Ecclesia 1536; he was a friend of St. Ignatius of Loyola and of the first Jesuits, and worked to have their institute approved: in creating an environment of true spiritual reform he had the highest merit.
When Charles V returned to the intention of resuming negotiations to reduce the Protestants to union, he favored religious colloquies between the most illustrious masters of the two opposing sides; colloquies that were held at Speyer and at Worms in 1540 in preparation for the imperial diet of Regensburg; but the diet opened before they had reached a conclusion, and the diet was merely a continuation of them. On 10 Jan. 1541 Paul III sent C. there so that, together with the nuncio Giovanni Morone, he might uphold the Catholic side. C. hoped to attract the Lutherans, for whom the dogma of justification stood at the center of the theological system, by drawing near to a tempering of the opposing conceptions, supported in this by the Catholic theologians of the school of Cologne, among whom G. Gropper and A. Pigghe were foremost, and he went so far as to concede that justification is not properly due to good works but to faith, in the sense that faith is the means by which we obtain justification. Therefore there is in us a double justice; the inherent one by which we begin to be just, but it is insufficient, and the other given to us by Christ, that is, the very justice of Christ and his merit: in this alone must one believe oneself to be justified before God; C. uses the phrase iustitia nobis donata et imputata, explaining the second word by the first. C. proposed this doctrine as his own personal one, hoping it would not displease the Lutherans, and he set it out in his writing De iustificatione, which he published at this moment together with other occasional opuscules: Confutatio articulorum Lutheri, Catechesis sive christiana instructio, and indeed on the subject an agreement seemed possible; but the artificiality of the doctrine soon became evident. Moreover there were many other articles of faith to which the Lutherans found themselves resolutely opposed, particularly on the Eucharist, on Confession, on the Church and the Pope. C. composed a pamphlet, De auctoritate Pontificis, and proposed a program of reform; but every agreement proved impossible and Charles V on 29 June dissolved the diet and issued the so-called Interim of Regensburg, which was to hold until an ecumenical or national council or another diet. As for C.'s doctrine on justification, although praised by Card. Pole and his friends, it met with no favor, and C. had to justify himself. Having returned to Rome on 9 Sept., C. was sent by Paul III, on 21 Jan. 1542, as legate to Bologna, where he died, just when the Pope had appointed him legate to Spain. His burial is in Venice in S. Maria dell'Orto.
C.'s works were collected by his nephew Luigi C. and printed in Paris in 1571 and then reprinted in Venice. At Florence in 1558 Quattro lettere had been printed. In the collection of E. Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, IV, Florence, p. 11, there is that of C. after the embassy to Charles V, read on 16 Nov. 1525; in vol. VII, p. 255, the « Relazione di Roma » of 1530, read on 8 March. As for the negotiations of Bologna, cf. ibid., p. 147 ff. Lettere del C., in G. B. Morandi, Monumenti di varia letteratura, I, Bologna 1799, part 2; II, p. 61 ff.
Among his contemporaries, Lod. Beccadelli wrote his life in the aforementioned Monumenti, p. 9 ff.
Bibliography6 works
Paolo Brezzi