Francesco Sforza Pallavicino | |
|---|---|
 Attributed toGiovanni Maria Morandi, Portrait of Cardinal Pallavicino, 1663 (oil on canvas, British embassy, Vatican City, Holy See) | |
| Diocese | Diocese of Rome |
| Appointed | 9 April 1657 |
| Term ended | 4 June 1667 |
| Orders | |
| Created cardinal | 9 April 1657 byPope Alexander VII |
| Rank | Cardinal-Priest of San Salvatore in Lauro |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1607-11-28)November 28, 1607 |
| Died | 4 June 1667(1667-06-04) (aged 59) Rome |
| Buried | Sant'Andrea al Quirinale |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Parents | Alessandro Pallavicino Francesca Sforza di Santa Fiora |
| Alma mater | Roman College |
| Education | |
| Education | Roman College (Ph.D., 1625; D.Th. 1628) |
| Doctoral advisor | Juan de Lugo |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Baroque philosophy |
| Region | |
| School | Aristotelianism Scholasticism Conceptualism |
| Institutions | Roman College |
| Notable students | |
| Main interests | Natural philosophy,metaphysics,epistemology,aesthetics |
| Coat of arms |  |
Francesco Maria Sforza Pallavicino orPallaviciniSJ (28 November 1607 – 4 June 1667), was an Italiancardinal,philosopher,theologian,literary theorist, andchurch historian.
A professor of philosophy and theology at the Roman College and a fixture of important academies such as theAccademia dei Lincei and the Academy ofPrince Maurice of Savoy, Pallavicino was the author of several highly influential philosophical and theological treatises (praised among others byGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,Benedetto Croce andEugenio Garin) and of a well-known history of theCouncil of Trent that remained authoritative until the late 19th century.
Pallavicino was born in Rome on November 28, 1607. He was the firstborn son of Marquis Alessandro Pallavicino and his second wife, Francesca Sforza di Santa Fiora, widow of Ascanio della Penna della Cornia. He belonged to theParma branch of the ancient and noblePallavicini family.
He was baptised with the names Francesco Maria Sforza, but in all of his published works throughout his life, he only gave Sforza as his first name, which is also the only first name inscribed on his tomb in the Church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale in Rome; Sforza is also the only name used universally by his contemporaries.[1][2] The name Sforza was in honor ofSforza Pallavicino, a famous Italiancondottiero,Captain-General of theRepublic of Venice, who had adopted Marquis Alessandro, leaving him all his wealth and titles.[3] An eldest son, he renounced the right ofprimogeniture and entered thepriesthood.
Pallavicino studiedliterature,philosophy, andjurisprudence at theRoman College, and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1625 at the age of eighteen.[4] His thesis,De Universa philosophia, was printed in the same year in the presses of Francesco Corbelletti.[5] Soon afterward, Pallavicino started studyingtheology in the same college underJohn de Lugo, earning his doctorate in 1628.
The young Pallavicino was soon introduced to the leaders of Roman cultural life. He was elected Member of theAccademia degli Umoristi and became friends with the poetVirginio Cesarini and with some of the most prominent personalities ofItalian Baroque, includingAgostino Mascardi,Fulvio Testi,John Barclay andGiulio Strozzi.Alessandro Tassoni praised him in a verse of hismock-heroic poemLa secchia rapita. Federico Cesi portrayed him as achild prodigy, whose greatingegno ("ingegno grande"), relentless will ("volontà indefessa"), and his familiarity with writing ("l'amicitia stretta della penna") held promise "of even greater things" ("di cose tuttavia maggiori") in the future.[6]
An ardent supporter ofGalileo, on 27 January 1629 Pallavicino became a Member of theAccademia dei Lincei, together withLucas Holstenius andPietro della Valle.[7] Following Ciampoli's guide Pallavicino started an open and harsh struggle againstAristotelianism.[8] AfterFederico Cesi's death in 1630 he was taken under consideration as his successor for the presidency of the Academy.[9] According toPietro Redondi Pallavicino played a part in delaying, or deflecting,Orazio Grassi's attack against theatomistic argument in Galileo'sAssayer.[10]
In 1630 he tookminor orders. Soon afterwards, thePope Urban VIII appointed him referendary of the Tribunals of the Apostolic Signatures of Justice and of Grace and member of theCongregatio boni regiminis and of theCongregatio immunitatis, assigning him a pension of 250scudi.
When his friendGiovanni Ciampoli, thesecretary of briefs, fell into disfavour, Pallavicino's standing at the papal court was also seriously affected. In 1632 he was sent to govern the provincial towns ofIesi,Orvieto, andCamerino.[11] In contrast with Ciampoli, who died in Iesi in 1643 without ever having set foot again in Rome, Pallavicino returned there in 1636.[12]
Over his father's objections, he entered the Society of Jesus on 21 June 1637. After the two years'novitiate he became professor of philosophy at the Roman College.[13] In 1643, when John de Lugo was made a cardinal, Pallavicino succeeded him in the chair of theology,[14] a position he held until 1651 while also fulfilling assignments forPope Innocent X. He was appointed member of the commission that examined the writings ofCornelius Jansen andMartin de Barcos, which resulted in the condemnation of two works by de Barcos in 1647. Sforza Pallavicino was a staunch opponent ofJansenism and a vocal supporter of the Jesuit theological tradition, and while he certainly did not opposeprobabilism, which he taught in his earlier scholarly career, he did not condone its most radical outcomes either.[15]
Pope Alexander VII created Pallavicino cardinalin pectore in his first creation on 9 April 1657. His appointment was made public in March 1650.[16] He received the red hat and the title ofSan Salvatore in Lauro on December 6, 1660. He was also appointed examiner of the bishops, and soon afterwards a member of theCongregation of the Holy Office. As the master of the Jesuit novitiate on the Quirinal Pallavicino was closely involved in planning the church ofSant'Andrea al Quirinale, designed byGian Lorenzo Bernini from 1658 onwards.
In his later years Pallavicino played an active role in Italian cultural life. He became a member of the so-calledpleias alessandrina, the international network ofNeo-Latin poets gathered around Alexander VII. He warmly endorsed the activities of theAccademia del Cimento and took part to them.[17]Leopoldo de' Medici entrusted him with the stylistic revision of the academy's sole publication, theSaggi di naturali esperienze.[18] On 3 February 1665 he entered theAccademia della Crusca,[19] an association of scholars and writers devoted to the Italian language. The cardinal was a loyal protector of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's interests in Rome and with the French court, as well as mentor to his oldest son, Pietro Filippo. A late portrait of Pallavicino inred chalk on buff paper by Bernini is in theYale University Art Gallery.[20]
Owing to ill health Pallavicino could not participate in theconclave of 1667, which electedPope Clement IX; he died in his room in the Jesuit house of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale on 5 June 1667, at the age of 59.[2] His pupilSylvester Maurus assisted him on his deathbed. According to the provisions of his last will and testament, Pallavicino was buried in the church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale. He was entombed under a magnificent slab designed by baroque architectMattia de Rossi.
Pallavicino is chiefly known by hisHistory of the Council of Trent, a harsh if well researched rebuttal toPaolo Sarpi'sIstoria del Concilio Tridentino.[13] The work was published at Rome in twofolio volumes in 1656 and 1657 (2nd ed., considerably modified, in 1666). Several potential candidates had been taken under consideration for the onerous task of correcting and superseding the very damaging work of Sarpi. According to an unpublished account by the custodian of the papal archives Felice Contelori (1588–1652), these wereGirolamo Aleandro, secretary to CardinalFrancesco Barberini, the historian Agostino Mascardi, the ex-Jesuit Francesco Herrera, Giovanni Ciampoli and Felice Contelori himself. The JesuitTerenzio Alciati had been eventually chosen for the task byPope Urban VIII. In early 1652, a few months after Alciati's death, Pallavicino took over Alciati's task.
Alciati had access to the original acts of the Council of Trent deposited in the Archives of Castello, Archivum Arcis (Castel Sant'Angelo). Together Felice Contelori, Alciati collected and catalogued a huge amount of unpublished sources. Pallavicino draws on not only the sources collected over decades by P. Alciati, but also directly on the Latin manuscript of Alciati's unfinished and unpublished historyPseudo historia Concilii Tridentini refutata.[21] In addition to these sources Pallavicino continued searching the vast holdings of the Roman archives for documentary materials relating to the Council of Trent.[22] Fabio Chigi, an old friend of Pallavicino, gave him liberal access to the acts of the council and other important documents preserved in theVatican Apostolic Archive. Pallavicino read and made use of historical authors such asJohannes Sleidanus,Francesco Guicciardini,Paolo Giovio,Nicholas Sanders, François de Beaucaire (1514–1591), andFlorimond de Raemond.[23] Thanks to the preparatory work by Alciati, as well as his own research, he was able to cite a large array of printed and unpublished documentary sources on the Council of Trent.
Pallavicino'sHistory exposed Sarpi's bias and inaccuracy and marked an advance in the collection and use of original documents.[24] According to the great nineteenth-century historianLeopold von Ranke, who examined many of the manuscript sources from which Pallavicino drew his materials, the extracts he has made from the instructions and other official documents are "scrupulously exact" and he has "carefully consulted the whole of the documents".[25] Until the twentieth century, Pallavicino'sHistory of the Council of Trent was the principal work on this important ecclesiastical assembly. It was appreciated even by Protestant scholars:Algernon Sidney, who knew Pallavicino at Rome, commends the work in a letter to his father,Lord Leicester.[26] Pallavicino'sHistory was translated intoLatin by a fellow Jesuit, Giovanni Battista Giattini (Antwerp, 1670–1673), intoFrench byJoseph-Epiphane Darras (Migne series, Paris, 1844–1845); intoSpanish by Juan Nepomuceno Lobo,Antolín Monescillo, and Manuel M. Negueruela (Madrid, 1846) and intoGerman by Theodor Friedrich Klitsche de la Grange (1835–1837). There is a good edition of the original byFrancesco Antonio Zaccaria (6 vols.,Faenza, 1792–1799).
The codex used by Sforza Pallavicino to write hisIstoria is preserved in theArchives of the Pontifical Gregorian University (APUG).[27]
Before his entrance into the Jesuit order Pallavicino had published orations and poems. His greatpoemI fasti sacri, an imitation ofOvid'sFasti celebrating the main Christian feast days, was left unfinished upon his entrance into the novitiate.[28] Pallavicino'sFasti were praised byLudovico Antonio Muratori,[29]Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni,[30] andFrancesco Saverio Quadrio.[31]
His first considerable literary work as Jesuit was atragedy,Ermenegildo martire, amasterpiece of seventeenth-centuryJesuit drama. It was published in 1644 after the first of several performances at the JesuitSeminario Romano.
The tragedy narrates the last day in the life of St.Hermenegild, who converted to the Catholic faith and rebelled against his father, the ArianVisigoth KingLiuvigild, and whose defeat, exile, and death were celebrated as amartyrdom in the struggle againstArianism.
Pallavicino's postscript to the play elucidates the author's views on theatre, its rules, and its functions as apedagogical tool. While contemporary secular plays andoperas played to an uneducated crowd that wanted to be amazed by scenic effects, the unspectacular theatre of Sforza Pallavicino aspired to educate by providing the public with strong and exemplary characters to emulate. Pallavicino identifies the true function of the tragic genre in the fortification of honesty andmorality in the audience.[32] He believes that the plot of the tragedy is the foundation on which its success should rely. His disdain fordeus ex machina characters, personifications of moral and allegorical qualities,supernatural events, and asides, choruses and messengers as devices to provide information, fully represents his belief that the dramatist should build dramatic action on detailed and verisimilar situations. According to Pallavicino «wonder without verisimilitude is easily achieved and gives no pleasure except perhaps that of laughter to those who hear the plot, nor does it merit the name of poetry». In clear opposition to the taste ofMarino andhis followers, Pallavicino suggests looking at classical writers to see how verisimilitude can convey a feeling ofwonder. Unlike thebaroque writers of the time who thought that precious style could make the reader forget about any violation of verisimilitude, Pallavicino affirms that classicdecorum and good taste, the very foundation of verisimilitude, can convey the feeling of marvel to the public.
In 1649 Pallavicino began the publication of his great dogmatic work in conjunction with his theological lectures,Assertiones theologicae. The complete work treats the entire field ofdogma in nine books. The first five books appeared in three volumes (Rome, 1649), the remaining four books are included in volumes IV—VIII (Rome, 1650–1652). Immediately after this he began the publication of disputations on the second part of theSumma Theologica ofThomas Aquinas,R. P. Sfortiae Pallavicini. Disputationum in Iam IIae d. Thomae tomus I (Lyons, 1653). Pallavicino attempted to reconcile Aristotle with the new science. His Christian Aristotelianism did not keep him from calling himself a follower of Galileo ("Galileista"),[33] and expressing his esteem forTommaso Campanella.[34] He endorsedCartesian dualism,[35] though he did not approve of the Cartesian interpretation of theCogito.[36]
In 1649 Pallavicino published hisVindicationes Societatis Jesu, a circumstantial refutation of the numerous accusations raised against the Society of Jesus.[2] But Pallavicino did more than respond to the criticism of the Society of Jesus; he included several passages presenting his own view of the ideal intellectual environment within the Society. TheVindicationes have been considered amanifesto of the progressive current within the Jesuit order. Pallavicino refuted the need for strict adherence toAristotelianism andThomism in all aspects ofnatural philosophy, because much of what Aristotle had stated had been shown to be false. It was "ridiculous" to forbid discussion of new questions, as if nothing new could ever arise in philosophy.[37]
Although almost forgotten today outside scholarly circles, Pallavicino is considered by some as one of the missing links between scholastic theology and early modern philosophy.[38]
True to his Galileian leanings, Pallavicino edited the first, posthumous editions of Giovanni Ciampoli'sRime (1648) andProse (1649), in an attempt to restore his friend's reputation.[39] A work ofascetic character,Arte della perfezione cristiana, divisa in tre libri, appeared in 1665 (Rome). In theTrattato dello stile e del dialogo (A treatise on style and dialogue), first published in 1646 (under a slightly different title) and revised for the final time in 1662, Pallavicno endorses a neo-Aristotelian ideal of dialogue as a pleasant form of instruction.[40]
Pallavicino's treatiseDel bene libri quattro, a dialogue in four books between prominent members of the Barberini circles (Rome 1644 and often reprinted), has been praised by theItalian philosopherBenedetto Croce for its contribution to the development of modernaesthetics.[41]Leibniz, who was familiar with the work of Sforza Pallavicino, quoted this book with high esteem.[42] When he visited Rome in 1689, he regretted that Pallavicino had died as he would have loved to have met the Jesuit and conversed with him.[43] Leibniz's friendFranciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1618–1699) appreciated Pallavicino's philosophy too.[44]Richard Cumberland in his treatiseDe legibus naturae disquisitio philosophica (London, 1672) borrowed a great deal from Pallavicino'sDel bene.[45]
Several of Pallavicino's works were not printed until later; others are still inmanuscript. An opinion which he had written on the question whether it was most appropriate that the pope live in Rome at St. Peter's, was printed together with a discussion of the same question by his fellow Lincean Lucas Holstenius, in Rome (1776). Larger collections of various works of Pallavicino were brought out as late as the nineteenth century. His biography ofAlexander VII, written in close collaboration with the pope himself, was published posthumously in 1839–40 asDella vita di Alessandro VII.
In the year after Pallavicino's death, his former secretary, Giambattista Galli Pavarelli, published a collection of his letters,Lettere dettate dal card. Sforza Pallavicino (Rome, 1668). Other collections appeared in Bologna (1669), in Venice (1825), in Rome (4 vols., 1848). His extensive network of correspondents included Fabio Chigi, the future Pope Alexander VII,[46] the scientistCarlo Roberto Dati,[47] andPhilip IV's official historianVirgilio Malvezzi.[48]
Pallavicino's life was first recounted in a laudatory biography by the noted eighteenth-century scholarIreneo Affò and much of our information about him comes from this. Affò's life was picked up by Francesco Antonio Zaccaria (1714–1795), who included an expanded version of the biography in his edition of theIstoria del Concilio di Trento (1792–1797). A eulogy of Pallavicino was written byPietro Giordani as a premise toPerfezione cristiana in the edition of Pallavicino's works published in Milan in 1820.[49] Giordani emphasised the literary qualities of Pallavicino's work, positioning and comparing him to contemporaries such asVirgilio Malvezzi,Daniello Bartoli,Paolo Segneri,Giovanni Battista Doni andGalileo.
In his history of aesthetics,Benedetto Croce singled out Pallavicino as a major Italian seventeenth century literary theorist and argued that Pallavicino's writings contained a historically important kernel of aesthetic considerations that suggested that mimetic art is concerned with its expressive qualities rather than the constraint ofverisimilitude imposed by the legacy of Aristotle.[50] Pallavicino was highly praised by Italy's leading historian of philosophyEugenio Garin, who called him "one of the more lucid minds of the seventeenth century".[51]
When authors like Giovanni Getto, Carlo Calcattera, Guido Morburgo-Tagliabue, Franco Croce, Ezio Raimondi and Mario Costanzo reevaluated Italian baroque literature, Pallavicino's oeuvre emerged as a point of reference for the so-called "moderate baroque", authors who attempted to ground the formal innovations of poets likeGiambattista Marino in a more reasoned and religiously inspired approach to literary invention. Pallavicino distances himself from the two Baroque extremes,marinism andconceptismo, aligning himself with theCiceronian position, as held byAgostino Mascardi.[52]
The following editions of hisComplete Works are to be noted as the most important: Rome, 1834 (in 2 volumes); Rome, 1844–1848 (in 33 volumes); and a collection of other works in five volumes published at the same time by Ottavio Gigli.
Notes
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)cum [...] authoritatem sequeretur Ioannis Ciampoli eidem Urbano ab epistolis, quem sibi nonnulli paterni amici quasi Principem ingeniorum colendum proposuerant, quique ut erat magni quidem & admirabilis, sed ambitiosi, praecipitisque ingenii, atrox et apertum Peripateticae Philosophiae bellum indixerat.
Richard Cumberland, dans son traitéDe legibus naturæ disqusitio philosophica (Londres, 1672) a beaucoup emprunté au livreDel Bene pour ce qui regarde l'âme de l'homme comparée à l'âme de l'animal.
Select Bibliography
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pallavicino, Pietro Sforza".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates public domain material fromMcClintock, John;Strong, James (1867–1887).Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature.Harper and Brothers.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1911). "Pietro Sforza Pallavicino".Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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