James G. Kroemer has composed a short but interesting book that sheds additional light on the relationship between church reform and fears of Ottoman expansion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He does this by examining a text titled Libellus (a small book) composed in Latin by two Camaldolese hermits, Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini, that was intended to offer advice on church reform for the newly elected Pope Leo X in 1513. As Kroemer acknowledges, there has not been a scholarly consensus on the influence of the Libellus on Pope Leo X. Nevertheless, Kroemer makes a very compelling case that even if Leo X did not even read it, the Libellus itself is still a valuable window into the various currents of thought existing in that era regarding the need for church reform in the context of Ottoman military advances. Kroemer emphasizes that the most distinguishing characteristic of the Libellus was its assertions that church reform would only really be possible after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks.
The first chapter of the book sets the stage by addressing the life of Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici before he became Pope Leo X in 1513. Kroemer discusses the cultural upbringing of this son of the famed Medici leader Lorenzo the Magnificent in order to contextualize Pope Leo X’s worldview as well as his possible familiarity with the Camaldolese authors of the Libellus. Kroemer notes that Leo X, as a young man, had already visited the hermitage of Camaldoli and had fond memories of it. The Medici family, for years, had close ties to the Camaldoli hermitage. For example, the famous patriarch of the Medici family, Cosimo the Elder, as well as his brother Lorenzo, frequented the Camaldoli hermitage. Indeed, so did Leo X’s father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Leo X’s uncle Giuliano, as did other influential people in the Platonic League.
The second chapter offers the reader a broad overview of the life of Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini, the two Camaldolese monks who wrote the Libellus. Both of these men came from well-known and affluent Venetian families, with some family members having served in the Venetian navy against the Ottomans, which may have influenced Giustiniani’s and Querini’s negative perceptions of the Turks. Before becoming a monk, Querini had advocated a crusade against the Turks while serving first as a Venetian ambassador to the court of Duke Philip the Fair of Burgundy and then shortly thereafter to the court of Philip’s father, Emperor Maximilian I. This chapter also highlights the similarities of the Libellus’s reform agenda with other contemporaries.
In the third chapter, Kroemer contextualizes the Libellus further by offering a description of papal efforts at leading crusades against the Turks from Pope Urban II during the First Crusade to late medieval and Renaissance crusading attempts. As Kroemer mentions, there had already been seven papal bulls from six different popes advocating for a crusade against the Turks from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to the papal election of Leo X. Because of the broken record of failed crusading efforts, the Libellus stressed the claim that Leo X would not be able to reform the church if he did not fully commit to establishing a crusade against the Ottoman Turks.
The fourth chapter situates the Libellus within other forms of Renaissance literature advocating for a crusade with warnings about the consequences of Turkish military victories over Christendom. Kroemer notes that the Libellus did follow common medieval and Renaissance stereotypes about Islam and the Turks, such as believing that they were originally split off from the Christians in the form of a diabolically inspired heresy and that they were naturally tyrannical. Likewise, they shared the belief among many that if there were no military resistance against the Turks, the Turks would corrupt the West as they had done in the areas of the eastern Mediterranean.
The fifth chapter explains the Libellus’s emphasis on the possibility of success for a crusade since there had been so many failed attempts previously. Kroemer convincingly points out that the Libellus reflects two strategies that the historian Norman Housley identified as part of the late medieval and Renaissance crusading efforts. One of these strategies had first been articulated by the Croatian humanist Felix Pentancius, who published a plan in 1502 to conquer the Turks by a long-term coordinated attack that would allow an offensive war to finance itself from the booty obtained in the fighting. The other strategy was that of Emperor Maximilian I’s attempts at creating coalition armies to bring down the Turks. The sixth and final chapter addressed the actual possibilities of Leo X promoting a crusade by 1517 when Martin Luther began challenging the legitimacy of indulgences as well as papal crusading efforts against the Turks. Kroemer’s conclusion also points to Erasmus’s questioning of crusading tactics as well as the final careers of the Libellus’s authors. In its totality, Kroemer’s book offers a work suitable for general readers and scholars that allows them to gain a further nuanced understanding of the relationship between crusading efforts and church reform at the dawn of the sixteenth century.
