ZABARELLA, FRANCESCO
Jurist, cardinal, b. at Piove di Sacco (Padua) Aug. 10, 1360; d. at Constance Sept. 26, 1417.
He studied law at Padua and Bologna, where he was a pupil of Giovanni di Lignano, and obtained his degree in 1383. Vicar of Bishop Acciaiuoli at Florence, where he taught and obtained ecclesiastical benefices, he was later consulted in Rome by Boniface IX regarding the schism. Having become a doctor in both laws, he taught at Padua, where he was archpriest of the Cathedral and for a short time held in commendam the abbey of Praglia. A friend of Pier Paolo Vergerio, he felt the influence of the nascent humanism; he was also orator for Padua in the matter of its submission to Venice after the fall of the Carraresi.
Like the rest of Venetia, he adhered to John XXIII and the Pisan party, and from that party on July 18, 1410, was named bishop of Florence, a see he left when that pope created him cardinal deacon of SS. Cosma and Damiano on June 6, 1411; he never received major orders. Generous, sober, and shrewd in business and possessed of a spirit of initiative, he played a large part in the ecclesiastical events of those years. He took part in the council that John XXIII held at Rome in 1413, where he knew how to deflect reform proposals considered inopportune at the moment. In the attempt to end the schism, on the one hand he claimed that it was the Emperor’s duty to convoke an ecumenical council when the College of Cardinals did not wish or was unable to do so, a theory that prevailed at Constance; while on the other he admitted that power resides in its foundation in the Christian community and that the pope is not alone the principal minister, i.e., the head ministerial. The Sacred College, in turn, was to be regarded as a permanent commission charged with the government of the Church, directed to limit the arbitrariness of the pontiff.
Works: *Commentaria in V. libros Decretalium*, Venice 1502; *Lectura super Clementinis*, Rome 1477 ff.; *Consilia*, Pescia 1490 ff.; *Repetitiones*, Venice 1587; *De Schismate sui temporis*, written 1403-1408, printed several times and prohibited *donec corrigatur*; *Acta in Concilis Pisano et Constantini*; he also wrote a treatise *De felicitate*, Padua 1655; *Epistolae et sermones* published in A. Kneer, *K. Z.*, Münster 1891.