Sadoleto, Giacomo

SADOLETO, GIACOMO. - Cardinal, born in Modena to Giovanni and Francesca Machiavelli on 12 July 1477; he devoted himself to the study of Latin and Greek at Ferrara under Niccolò Leoniceno; in 1503 he was in Rome at the court of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who obtained for him a canonry at S. Lorenzo in Damaso; for his culture and gentleness of character he was a friend of Bembo, of Fregoso and of Filippo Beroaldo the Younger.

In 1513 Leo X wished him as his secretary together with Bembo, and on 24 April 1517 appointed him bishop of Carpentras. He did not leave Rome except during the pontificate of Adrian VI; but he resumed the office of secretary under Clement VII. In 1527, shortly before the sack of Rome, he withdrew to his bishopric, whence Paul III recalled him, to employ him in the projected reform of the Church in October 1536, and on 22 December created him cardinal together with Carafa, Rodolfo di Carpi, Pole, Aleandro, and he took part with them in the commission that drafted the celebrated consilium of reform and was called to prepare the Council of Trent. In 1538 he accompanied Paul III on his journeys and returned to Carpentras. Recalled to Rome in 1542, he was sent to France as legate for the peace of that King with Charles V; he was again in Rome in 1545, whence he no longer moved and died on 18 October 1547.

His literary activity is manifold: he was admired for his short poems (the most notable being the one on the Laocoön) and his Latin orations, and he was one of the most convinced Ciceronians of his age, as can be seen from his copious epistolary collection (Epistolarum libri XVI, 7 vols., Rome 1559-67; besides the other letters published later). In 1533 he published in Venice the work De liberis recte instituendis, which gives him a distinguished place among the pedagogues of that age. In a harmonious picture of familiar humanistic education, he makes the study of technical and liberal arts converge toward moral formation, which is realized in the virtues of self-mastery and of the golden mean and in the direction of all intellectual faculties toward philosophy, the sole guide to the discovery of the dignity of man and of his likeness to God and therefore to happiness. With the same humanistic intent the De laudibus philosophiae (Lyons 1538) is composed. S. was besides a humanist a notable theologian. He wrote an interpretation of Psalm 50 (Rome 1525) and another of Psalm 93 (Lyons 1530); then, with regard to the controversies of the time, a Commentarius

on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (ibid. 1535), where, following the tendencies of Erasmus, on the question of Grace he inclines to a kind of semi-Pelagianism; for this he was taken to task by Badia, master of the Sacred Palace; he wrote an apology and corrected his work in a new edition of 1536. A short work, De peccato originali, was published by Ritter only in 1912.

Fernando Gagliuolo