Giovanni Minnucci, a world-renowned expert on the life and works of the famous Italian Protestant jurist Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), has published the first critical edition of Gentili's De papatu Romano Antichristo [The Roman papacy as the Antichrist]. De papatu is a combative pamphlet written in vehement and at times bombastic Latin. The young Gentili, who had been exiled for religious reasons, takes a resolute and energetic anti-Roman position, arguing, along with Luther and many other reformers, that the papacy was not the Vicar of Christ but the actual Antichrist.
More than four hundred years after the publication of Gentili's De papatu, the pamphlet is still of great interest. It constitutes a landmark in the history of the Italian Reformation and in the early development of the myth of the pope as Antichrist, but it especially constitutes an inestimable source for understanding Gentili's religious convictions. His doctrines and ideas profoundly influenced the secularization of the science of the law of nations and international relations. This critical edition of Gentili's De papatu thus will be welcomed not only by scholars interested in the history of the Reformation but also by those who study the history of international law. Minnucci's transcription of the manuscript and his editing and commentary are excellent. The edition highlights his deep familiarity with medieval and early modern legal sources.
The idea of the pope as the Antichrist first appeared in the Middle Ages, but it developed and spread broadly as a doctrine of the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gentili's pamphlet should be understood in that context. The 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith (25.6) summarizes the Reformed doctrine as follows: “There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, the man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalted himself, in the church, against Christ and all that is called God.” Something similar appears in article 26.4 of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith and in many other Protestant documents.
Until now, Gentili's 190-page monograph was inaccessible—available to scholars only in the not always legible manuscript stored at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. De papatu was first identified by the British legal scholar Thomas Erskine Holland (1835–1936) and was carefully analyzed later by Gentili's principal biographer, Gesina H. J. van der Molen (1892–1978), and by the Gentili expert Diego Panizza. Minnucci spent more than six years, sometimes in collaboration with Diego Quaglioni, transcribing the manuscript and crafting the erudite 150-page introduction (in Italian) that precedes this edition of De papatu.
Thanks to information provided in this text, we now know that Gentili wrote the manuscript between 1580 and 1585, shortly after he settled in London (and later Oxford) in 1580 while fleeing religious persecution. (He refers to Pope Gregory XIII as still alive, and Gregory died in 1585.) In 1591, Gentili himself made some additions and modifications to the manuscript, probably with the desire of publishing it.
Conjectures abound about why Gentili did not publish De papatu during his lifetime. Minnucci points out personal and prudential reasons related to Gentili's controversial discussions with the English Puritan theologians (particularly John Rainolds) about the appropriate roles of jurists and theologians. Other conflicts would have occurred with the Anglican church if the book had been published, especially with the continental Protestant community living in England. De papatu was mainly a theological writing, but Gentili was a distinguished jurist and lawyer, not a professional theologian. It makes sense, therefore, that Gentili—who years later, in his 1598 treatise De iure belli (1.12.92), recommended that theologians keep silence in matters that concern others (“silete theologi in munere alieno!”)—opted in the end for silence and did not publish his controversial manuscript. Otherwise, theologians could have told him with good reason, “sile jurista in munere alieno!” Finally, Minnucci demonstrates with evidence from later works (clx) that Gentili remained deeply convinced until the end of his days that the Roman papacy was the very Antichrist. Thus, Gentili's decision not to publish the pamphlet was not due to a change in his thinking about this topic.
Gentili's main argument is that the pope does not accept Christ as the only redeemer since the papacy emphasizes, among other doctrines, the theological efficacy of good works, the intercession of the saints, and the existence of purgatory. Gentili believed that the papacy had fallen into Pelagianism. In his view, good works have nothing to do with justification (136, “bona opera partem nullam tenere in justificatione”); rather, justification comes only though Christ and faith in him (136, “Christo totum, et fidei in ipsum”). Gentili also rejects canonization because the pope cannot know the intentions and the internal actions of Christians. Gentili asks, how the pope knows about the holiness of internal things to judge them (78, “Qui scit Papatus, Sancta hominis fuisse opera interna?”). Gentili rejects the idolatry behind the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the saints (217), and he dismisses the existence of purgatory because it is not mentioned in the Holy Scriptures (108, “tertium penitus ignoramus, nec esse in scripturis sanctis reperimus”). According to Gentili, a different church than that of Rome—a remnant of the primitive church of the Apostles—still exists, although it is small in number (267, “aliam Ecclesiam a Romana ductam usque a diebus Apostolorum”).
De papatu is divided into twenty-four assertions (assertiones) rooted in the Bible and the teachings of early church fathers. Each assertion argues a reason for considering the papacy as the Antichrist. For example, assertion 1 explains why the pope, as a “false prophet,” (pseudopropheta) is the Antichrist and why the papal religion, that is, the Catholic Church, is as well. Assertion 2 deals with the tyranny of the Antichrist, led by the pope. Assertion 3 argues that the pope is the abomination of desolation; assertion 4 analyzes the great papal apostasy; assertion 7 rejects, as the claim of the Antichrist himself, the primacy of the Church of Rome and the supremacy of the pope over the whole church. Assertion 8 affirms that the pope, as the Antichrist, sits in the temple of God. Assertion 9 focuses on the erroneous doctrines fixed by the Antichrist pope. Assertion 20 calls the pope an atheist because, like the Antichrist, he is separated from Christ and unable to recognize the essential attributes of God. Assertion 23 identifies the pope's way of dressing and using insignia as further evidence of the Antichrist. I will not analyze each of the 24 assertions here because their arguments, from a theological point of view, are not original. Gentili's originality lies, instead, in his capacity to harmonize and synthesize these assertions, as well as to offer a great variety and richness of sources supporting his interpretation. Yet his vehement and passionate style, typical of a Protestant pamphlet, weakens his arguments at times.
More interesting than the assertiones, which, as such, have little value today, is that Gentili uses each assertio to discuss intersecting and controversial topics from a Protestant perspective. For instance, he explores the doctrines of predestination, free will, and justification by faith alone; opposes the persecution of heretics by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities (arguing that excommunication should be the last punishment); and rejects the compulsory celibacy of priests and nuns. Gentili also considers unscriptural the celebration of masses for the dead; denies the distinctions of the statuses in the church (clergy, religious, and lay people); and rejects the use of relics and images. Following Lorenzo Valla and Nicholas of Cusa, among others, Gentili also denies the authenticity of the so-called Donation of Constantine (22), an imperial constitution by means of which the emperor supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the Western part of the Roman Empire to the pope.
Inspired and guided by the Bartolist method (mos italicus), Gentili's De papatu is full of quotations of authorities. He very often refers to the Old and New Testaments and the church fathers (especially Augustine of Hippo); he liberally cites such legal sources (civil and canonical) as the Digest and the Justinian Code, the Decretum of Gratian, the Liber Extra of Gregorius IX, and the Liber Sextus of Boniface VIII. He also makes many references to famous poets, among them Virgil, Dante, and Petrarch; to great medieval legal scholars such as Giason del Maino, Giovanni d'Andrea, Bartolus, and Baldus; to legal humanists (many of them Protestant) such as Andrea Alciato, Jean Coras, François Hotman; and to Reformation theologians Martin Luther, Theodore Beza, Bernadino Ochino, and Lambert Daneau. Gentili does not mention John Calvin in this pamphlet, although he cites Calvin very often in his 1601 essay on marriage (De nuptiis).
With great thoroughness, Minnucci has discovered an error in quotation made by Gentili, perhaps because he quoted by heart. Namely, Gentili attributed La Cortigiana to Cardinal Bibbiena. Cardinal Bibbiena wrote La Calandria, but Pietro Aretino wrote La Cortigiana. Minnucci also offers some interesting conjectures in favor of Gentili's use (though it is not mentioned expressly) of the famous book, The Pageant of Popes (Acta Romanorum Pontificum), by English historian, churchman, and controversialist John Bale.
Minnucci's introduction could have benefited from more historical, theological, and political context and a deeper explanation of the content of Gentili's broader work. After reading the introduction, one has a great picture of the history of the manuscript itself, but probably not about the main ideas contained in Gentili's work. The meticulous indices of normative sources and scriptural sources, as well as names and places, help provide the reader with precise information. They lack, however, the most important index—the index of topics—which, in my opinion, is essential but unfortunately sometimes omitted in Italian publications.
In sum, Giovanni Minnucci has fulfilled his mission as a legal historian. With great patience and wisdom, he has prepared a careful critical edition of an unpublished and complicated manuscript. Minnucci can be proud of his scholarship and his vivid and intelligent engagement with the religious and legal sources. This edition will stimulate a new debate among theologians, canon lawyers, and historians about an old but ever-fascinating myth still supported by certain Protestant denominations who view the pope as the Antichrist.
