Editing Gasparo Contarini (section)

==Biography==
He was born in Venice, the eldest son of Alvise Contarini, of the ancient noble [[House of Contarini]], and his wife Polissena Malpiero.<ref>{{cite web|author-link=Salvador Miranda (historian) |last=Miranda |first=Salvador |title= CONTARINI, Gasparo (1483-1542) |url= https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios1535.htm#Contarini|work=The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church |publisher=[[Florida International University]]|oclc=53276621}}</ref>  After a thorough scientific and philosophical training at the [[University of Padua]], he began his career in the service of his native city. From September 1520 to August 1525 he was the Republic's ambassador to [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]], with whom Venice was [[Italian War of 1521-1526|soon at war]], instructed to defend the Republic's alliance with [[Francis I of France]]. Though he participated at the [[Diet of Worms]], April 1521, he never saw or spoke with [[Martin Luther]]. He accompanied Charles in the Netherlands and Spain.

Contarini was in Spain when the [[Magellan's circumnavigation|Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation]] returned in 1522,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Brown |first1=Horatio F. |title=Studies in the History of Venice, Volume II |date=1907 |publisher=E. P. Dutton and Company |location=New York |page=117}}</ref> bringing with them a cargo of spices from the East as well as a scientific curiosity. Although the sailors had carefully recorded every day of the three-year journey since they left Seville, the ship's log was one day earlier than the actual date when they returned to Seville. Contarini was the first European to give a correct explanation of this phenomenon.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Winfree |first1=Arthur T. |title=The Geometry of Biological Time |date=2013 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |location=New York |isbn=978-3-540-52528-8 |page=11 |language=en}}</ref> Since the ship had sailed westward around the world, in the same direction as the apparent motion of the sun in the sky, the sailors had experienced one fewer sunrise than a stationary observer.

He participated at the Congress of Ferrara in 1526 as the Republic's representative; at the Congress the [[League of Cognac]] was formed against the Emperor, allying France with Venice and several states of Italy. Later, after the [[Sack of Rome (1527)]], he assisted in reconciling the emperor with [[Pope Clement VII|Clement VII]], whose release he had obtained, and with the Republic of Bologna. Upon his return to Venice, he was made a senator and a member of the Great Council.
===Spirituality===
According to historian Constance Furey, Contarini "was representative of a European-wide phenomenon associated with names such as [[Erasmus]], [[Thomas More]] and [[Jacques_Lefèvre_d'Étaples|Lefèvre d'Étaples]], people who combined an Erasmian critique of the established church and ritualism with an interest in biblical scholarship as a means of cultivating internal piety,"<ref name=furey>{{cite journal |last1=Furey |first1=Constance |title=The Communication of Friendship: Gasparo Contarini's Letters to Hermits at Camaldoli |journal=Church History |date=2003 |volume=72 |issue=1 |pages=71–101 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4146805 |issn=0009-6407}}</ref> each with no thought of leaving the Catholic church.

In a letter to encourage a missed friend who had become a hermit, Contarini late recounted an event in 1511 where, following Confession with a wise and holy monk, he had a peace-giving epiphany that reliance on penances and heroic asceticism was not necessary for salvation, instead of simple faith, hope and charity: Christ's passion was "more than sufficient."  This has been likened by some historians as a similar event to Luther's "tower experience" and some historians even ascribe Lutheran views to Contarini,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hirsch |first1=Elisabeth F. |title=Contarini and Camaldoli. By Hubert Jedin. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Estratto dall' Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà, vol. II, 1953. |journal=Church History |date=March 1956 |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=85–86 |doi=10.2307/3161769 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/abs/contarini-and-camaldoli-by-hubert-jedin-roma-edizioni-di-storia-e-letteratura-estratto-dall-archivio-italiano-per-la-storia-della-pieta-vol-ii-1953/7F3D8480B9CABA74088AEEB95A57588D |language=en |issn=1755-2613}}</ref> however the parallels are disputed by other historians.<ref name=furey/>

===Cardinalate===
[[File:Ingeram Codex 180.jpg|thumb|Contarini's coat of arms (left) in the [[Ingeram Codex]]]]
In 1535, [[Pope Paul III|Paul III]] unexpectedly made the secular diplomat a cardinal in order to bind an able man of evangelical disposition to the Roman interests. Contarini accepted, but in his new position did not exhibit his former independence. At the time he was promoted to cardinal, May 21, 1535,<ref>The consistory also promoted to the cardinalate [[Desiderius Erasmus]], [[John Fisher]] and [[Jean du Bellay]]</ref> he was still a [[layman]]. However, already in October 1536 he was appointed [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Belluno-Feltre|Bishop of Belluno]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04323c.htm|title=Gasparo Contarini|publisher=Catholic Encyclopedia}}</ref> One of the fruits of his diplomatic activity is his ''De magistratibus et republica Venetorum''.

As Cardinal, Contarini figured among the most prominent of the ''[[Spirituali]]'', the leaders of the movement for reform within the Roman church. In April 1536 Paul III appointed a commission to devise ways for a reformation, with Contarini presiding. Paul III received favorably Contarini's ''[[Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia]]'', which was circulated among the cardinalate, but it remained a dead letter.  Contarini in a letter to his friend Cardinal [[Reginald Pole]] (dated 11 November 1538) says that his hopes had been wakened anew by the pope's attitude. He and his friends, who formed the Catholic evangelical movement of the [[Spirituali]], thought that all would have been done when the abuses in church life had been put away. What Contarini had to do with it is shown by his letters to the pope in which he complained of the schism in the church, of [[simony]] and flattery in the papal court, and the dangers of a papal ''fiat'' monarchy, its least grateful passages. Paul's successor [[Pope Paul IV|Paul IV]], once a member on the same 1536 commission and fellow ''spirituali'', put it on the new ''[[Index Librorum Prohibitorum]]''.

In 1541 Cardinal Contarini was papal legate at the [[Conference of Regensburg]], the diet and religious debate marking the culmination of attempts to restore religious unity in Germany by means of conferences. There everything was unfavorable; the Catholic states were bitter, the Evangelicals were distant. Contarini's instructions though apparently free were in fact full of papal reservations. But the papal party had gladly sent him, thinking that through him a union in doctrine could be brought about, while the interest of Rome could be attended to later. Though the princes stood aloof, the theologians and the emperor were for peace, so the main articles were put forth in a formula, Evangelical in thought and Catholic in expression. The papal legate had revised the Catholic proposal and assented to the formula agreed upon. All gave their approval, even [[Johann Eck]], though he later regretted it.

Contarini's theological advisor was [[Tommaso Badia]]; his own position is shown in a treatise on justification, composed at [[Regensburg]], which in essential points is Evangelical, differing only in the omission of the negative side and in being interwoven with the teaching of [[Thomas Aquinas|Aquinas]]. Meanwhile, the papal policy had changed, and Contarini chose to follow this. He advised the emperor, after the conference had broken up, not to renew it, but to submit everything to the pope.

[[Ignatius Loyola]] acknowledged that Cardinal Contarini was largely responsible for the papal approbation of the [[Society of Jesus]],  on September 27, 1540. Meanwhile, Rome had drifted further into reaction, and Contarini died while legate at Bologna, at a time when the [[Inquisition]] had driven many of his friends and fellows in conviction into exile.
[[File:Madonna dell'Orto (Venice) - Chapel Contarini - Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) by Danese Cattaneo (ca 1563).jpg|thumb|His tomb in the church of the [[Madonna dell'Orto]]]]