ZABARELLA, FRANCESCO. - Jurist, cardinal, b. at Piove di Sacco (Padua) on 10 Aug. 1360, d. at Constance on 26 Sept. 1417.
He studied law at Padua and Bologna, where he was a disciple of Giovanni di Lignano and obtained his license in 1383. As vicar of Bishop Acciaiuoli in 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 briefly held the abbey of Praglia in commendam. A friend of Pier Paolo Vergerio, he felt the influence of the nascent humanism; he was also orator of Padua for the dedication to Venice after the fall of the Carraresi.
Like the rest of the Veneto, he adhered to John XXIII and the Pisan party, and by that party he was appointed bishop of Florence on 18 July 1410, a see he left when that Pope created him cardinal deacon of Sts. Cosmas and Damian on 6 June 1411; he never received the major Orders. Generous, sober and prudent in affairs and endowed with a spirit of initiative, he played a large part in the ecclesiastical events of those years. He participated in the Council that John XXIII held in Rome in 1413, where he knew how to deflect the proposals for reform deemed inopportune at the moment. In his aim of extinguishing the schism, on the one hand he claimed that it was the Emperor's duty to assemble the ecumenical Council when the College of Cardinals would not or could not do so, a theory that indeed prevailed at Constance; while on the other hand he admitted that power resides in its foundation in the Christian community and that the Pope is only its principal minister, that is, the «caput ministeriale». The Sacred College was in turn to be regarded as a permanent commission charged with the government of the Church, directed at limiting the arbitrary will of the pontiff.
From Florence he was sent together with Card. of Challant by John XXIII to the Emperor Sigismund at Como to establish the place of the ecumenical Council, which was fixed at Constance (v.). He was present there with the Pope at the opening, on 5 Nov. 1414, and took an active part in it. On 15 Feb. 1415 he read the message by which John XXIII declared himself ready to renounce the papacy should his adversaries do likewise. After the latter's flight, Z. read on 26 March the decree on the continuation of the Council and participated in the debates on the powers of the Council itself, which concluded on the 30th with the three articles on the authority of the Council. However, Z. did not abandon obedience to John XXIII until the latter in May showed himself reluctant to accept the authority of the Council; he was then one of the promoters of his deposition. A supporter of «reform in head and members», he followed the work of the Council concerning the trial against Hus and his doctrines and the controversy over tyrannicide. He died before the election of the new pontiff, and the Emperor attended his funeral.
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 in 1403-1408, printed several times and prohibited donec corrigatur; Acta in Conciliis Pisano et Constantienii; he also wrote a treatise De felicitate, Padua 1655; Epistolae et sermones collected in A. Kneer, K. Z., Münster 1891.
Bibliography6 works
Pio Paschini