Luigi Lippomano was a deeply worried man. He had heard that Lutheran ideas were being debated openly in Verona—even in such inappropriate places as “the piazzas, the workshops, the taverns, and even the women's washrooms.”Footnote ² As bishop of Verona, responsible for the city's spiritual health, he feared that he would see the city reduced to outright heresy. He felt increasingly stymied, watching his flock “become more corrupted every day” from inappropriate books and conversation, the “idle chatter of a few gossips.” And so, at a certain point, he had had enough. “How can I … stay silent,” he asked, “cross my hands, close my eyes, shut my ears, and act like a mute dog that cannot growl?”Footnote ³ The result of his frustration and fury was a series of publications seeking to block the perceived threat of Protestant infiltration.

Lippomano's publication record demonstrates how Catholic reform, especially reform through preaching, took place at the local level. His overall approach is evident only from considering his own writings together with the works he supervised or commissioned as bishop. These works have previously been studied only in isolation, if at all. Collectively, however, they display consistent priorities not otherwise evident and provide a comprehensive picture of Lippomano's complex agenda as a bishop.

Because he collaborated closely with members of his staff, Lippomano's agenda for Verona embraced diverse and occasionally contradictory points of view. The works from Verona show how Catholic reform was a vibrant and diverse process at the local level, especially during the turbulent middle decades of the sixteenth century, and how episcopal reform was always a group effort.Footnote ⁴

At the same time, a consistent set of concerns motivated Lippomano throughout his entire career. These priorities led him, in turn, to take risks with his reforming efforts that many other bishops avoided. While Lippomano held cautious positions regarding scripture and heresy, and carefully sought to regulate the dissemination of information, his deep concern for the spiritual state of his parishioners also pushed him into surprising candor. He was honest where other reformers were secretive. He believed in educating his congregations and in giving them more information whenever possible. He took advantage of new technology at hand, publishing books in different genres for educating the laity. He went out of his way to give them tools for understanding scripture.

The same was true for heresy. Where other bishops argued for keeping the laity in the dark on both of these controversial issues, Lippomano made a point of stating heretical doctrines openly so that his congregants would know exactly what they were up against and how to fight back. Lippomano's frankness extended even to his own emotions; he shared with his readers his ambivalence about his unusual strategy.

I. The Catholic Context

During the first decades of the Protestant reformation, the same fears that plagued Lippomano haunted clergy throughout Italy, as they faced the unenviable task of teaching and protecting the faithful while Europe's religious topography was turned upside down. Luther's criticisms, and those of his followers, sounded dangerous and diabolical to priests like Lippomano, but they had to be reckoned with, not ignored. Closer to home, the Council of Trent had begun its irregular series of sessions, with no certainty as to its conclusion. Despite religious uncertainties everywhere—or perhaps because of them—the laity still had to be taught what it meant to be Catholic.

Nowhere was this problem more evident than in teaching and preaching scripture. This was, of course, the traditional and most important task of preachers, with an unequivocal biblical mandate: Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15). In this era, it was also their most difficult task. For Catholics, sola scriptura was the worst of all the Protestant offenses. In Catholic eyes, Protestants arrogantly appropriated scripture and interpreted it for themselves, rejected the apostolic tradition that enabled them to understand it, contrived grossly disrespectful misreadings, and then offered ignorant laypeople the chance to do the same, at grave peril to their salvation. As a result, scriptural knowledge in a layperson was increasingly seen as an indicator of Protestant sympathy.Footnote ⁵

Nonetheless, Catholics could not do without scripture, claim that it was unnecessary for their faith, or abandon their long-standing traditions of scriptural preaching. Scripture therefore became a central conundrum for Catholic preachers: how could they continue, or adapt, their tradition of preaching scripture without leading the faithful astray?

Modern scholars have described the fate of scripture in sixteenth-century Italy as uniformly dismal, precisely because scripture teaching increasingly fell to bishops, not mendicant preachers.Footnote ⁶ A typical analysis argues that, as the first generation of Catholic reformers passed away, “hardline” reformers, who considered the preaching of scripture a dangerous activity, gained the upper hand, and that this transition is reflected in the difference between the Council of Trent's first decree on preaching, in 1546, and its last, in 1562. Looking closely at the decisions of one bishop, however, shows that scriptural exegetical preaching continued, though in a different format, and that it could be the cornerstone of a diverse and methodical program of diocesan reform.

Diocesan preaching itself was in great flux during the Tridentine period. As required by the council fathers at Trent and Bologna, bishops increasingly returned to their dioceses, after centuries of absenteeism, to take up residence and enact reform. They paid increasing attention to the poor or uneducated laity, long ignored by the churchmen charged with ministering to them, whether in rural areas, small towns, or large cities—people who might never before have received a systematic catechetical education.Footnote ⁷ Once home, bishops started to educate the secular clerics who worked for them. A great deal of the sermon literature produced in this century was intended to train and equip secular clerics in preaching for the first time. It also contributed to a revival of the homiletic style, which was well suited to the transmission of basic doctrine and catechism.Footnote ⁸

II. Lippomano's Background

Luigi Lippomano's entire career was marked by a deep and personal sense of the danger of what he called “the perfidious and evil Lutheran heresies, which … lacerate the church, spreading throughout a good part of Italy and elsewhere bringing moral infection.”Footnote ⁹ These concerns came from direct experience, and he brought them to bear on his episcopacy in Verona.Footnote ¹⁰

When Lippomano arrived in Verona in 1549, his personal antipathy to heresy and his involvement in centers of Catholic power were already well established. He had participated actively in the Council of Trent's fourth session, transferring with it to Bologna, and also taking part in the heated discussions of session VI on justification. (Later, when the Council convened for the second time, Julius III would name him its co-president.) His many diplomatic appointments had also exposed him to foreign, sometimes heterodox, ways of thought. In 1542 Paul III had sent him as nuncio to Lisbon, charged with convincing Portugal to adhere to the bull of convocation for the Council of Trent. In 1548 the pope sent him abroad again, this time as nuncio to Germany with Sebastiano Pighino, bishop of Ferentino. In Germany the two men were supposed to meet with Charles V and persuade him to support the Catholic clergy and distance himself from Protestant preachers. They were sorely disappointed, and wrote home, “we did not realize how changed the souls of these Germans are: nobody, neither monk, nor priest, nor layman has been willing to see us and recognize us as servants of His Holiness. May God illuminate their minds, so that our coming here will bear some fruit; for our part we will omit nothing in trying to win back these poor souls.”Footnote ¹¹ He and Pighino stayed in Germany until 1550 but returned home no more optimistic about the fate of Catholicism in Germany.Footnote ¹² Lippomano hated and feared Protestants for the rest of his life.

This picture of Lippomano makes him seem rigidly defensive; a perfect embodiment of a fearful and reactionary Counter Reformation. Scholars of religious reform in Italy, especially Italian scholars, have traditionally divided reformers into opposing camps, pitting those they consider more broadminded, the spirituali, against the repressive intransigenti. In this view the opinions of the former group, influenced by humanism and a spirit of tolerance, eventually lost out to the latter, which was responsible for the Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books, and which resisted attempts at compromise.Footnote ¹³ This model has been much debated in recent years, and persists alongside recent and compelling challenges.Footnote ¹⁴ Attitudes to scripture are considered a barometer of reform; intransigenti tried to limit scriptural knowledge among laypeople. Lippomano, for such scholars, falls firmly into this category; they define his episcopate as the triumph of paranoia over tolerance, a “defensive and inquisitorial rigidification” of his predecessor's work, lacking any positive content—“a Counter-Reformatory figure” with a “hierarchic, sacerdotalist, authoritarian ideology.”Footnote ¹⁵

Given the timing of Lippomano's episcopate in Verona, from 1549 to 1558, one might indeed expect an intransigente attitude. His appointment in Verona began shortly after that of Gian Matteo Giberti, who is beloved among scholars of reform in Italy not only for being one of the century's first resident bishops, but also for having, they claim, an open-minded, tolerant, and loving approach to episcopal reform.Footnote ¹⁶ As his critics have intimated, Lippomano was indeed more defensive and rigid than his predecessor in office—and with good reason. Unlike Giberti, he had to adhere to the decisions of the council of Trent, at which he had been present. Furthermore, he did not enjoy the same extensive support network among the Italian elite, which had allowed Giberti to implement his reforms in the face of anyone who challenged him. In addition, the situation in Verona had changed since Giberti's death. Many of Giberti's reform initiatives had lapsed or deteriorated. In his first year as bishop, Lippomano had to reexamine priests and clerics in many churches, make sure they knew their duties and their doctrine, and remove the ones who did not.Footnote ¹⁷ Incidences of heresy were on the rise. In 1550, he presided over an extensive series of heresy trials in Verona.Footnote ¹⁸ His letters show that he was increasingly worried about its spread. It is no surprise that he was more cautious than Giberti.

Yet a holistic picture of his Veronese publications defies these expectations. Under these circumstances, the surprise is that he worked so hard both to teach his faithful explicitly about the dangers surrounding them and to create a secure environment for scriptural learning.

III. The Preaching Guide of Paolo Aleni

Most scholars who discuss Lippomano draw their evidence solely from one work, a preaching guide by his vicar, Paolo Aleni, from 1552.Footnote ¹⁹ They see this work as an example of how Catholic preaching became nothing but a polemical instrument against heresy, seeking only to create an obedient, unquestioning laity.Footnote ²⁰ Lippomano's detractors are correct insofar as Aleni's text, which Lippomano commissioned, takes a cautious, even polemical, approach to educating the faithful.Footnote ²¹ In Aleni's work, the preacher's primary task is to instill right dogma and religious conformity.

Aleni's preaching guide hews closely to the line; he seems to feel that nothing should be left to the discretion of the individual preacher in an era when “heretics today assert that any preacher who is not explicitly against them is actually with them.”Footnote ²² Scriptural exegesis is ignored in favor of doctrine: nowhere does he discuss the preaching of scripture, refer to the role of scripture in sermons, or suggest that teaching scripture is one of the goals of preaching. Instead, he reminds preachers of the Tridentine position, much debated at the first meeting of the Council, that Church traditions are of equal weight with scripture.Footnote ²³ Above all, Aleni is concerned that both preachers and congregants stay far from “novelty,” that is, heresy.

This work does not, however, fully represent Lippomano's episcopate. It is only a guide, and a very short one at that—it tells us what Aleni thought should happen but cannot reveal either what Lippomano thought or what his preachers might actually have said. For that, we need Lippomano's own words, and texts of sermons. In addition, Aleni's guide is just one of the works Lippomano commissioned. It gives only a partial picture of Lippomano's preaching and reform. A close reading of two longer, more detailed works from Lippomano's episcopate in Verona makes it impossible to see Lippomano in such stark terms. Though fearful and defensive, he cannot be dismissed as a “bad bishop.” These works reveal a more accurate picture of Lippomano's thought and demonstrate a broader, more pastoral agenda in which Aleni's restrictive approach is the exception, not the rule.

IV. Lippomano's Treatise on Heresy

Lippomano's comprehensive work on heresy and doctrine—the treatise Confirmatione et stabilimento di tutti li dogmi heretici (1553)—gives a better indication of his priorities. It was the careful result of collaboration between Lippomano and two of the curates who oversaw his diocese: Maffeo Albertini, canon of the cathedral of Verona since the days of Gian Matteo Giberti; and Giovanni Del Bene, a nobleman who was also archpriest of the church of St. Stefano.Footnote ²⁴ Lippomano asked these two men to compose the work during his travels in Germany, which had acquainted him with Protestant thought. Upon his return home, Lippomano spent twenty months rewriting the sections on heresy, based on his experiences abroad, until he had increased the volume of the book again by half.

The treatise was explicitly intended as a work of Catholic doctrine, meant to counter Lutheran gossip among Verona's “plebeians and lower classes … so that poor people, who are not learned, and who have good minds (which may sometimes have been assaulted by these scoundrels, or taught wrong by false preachers), will have a book [that] … will teach them to stay firm in the Catholic faith.”Footnote ²⁵Confirmatione et stabilimento explains in full Lippomano's positions on major tenets of Catholicism, including the topics of scripture and heresy.

The title page of the treatise boasts that the reader “will see that no similar work has ever fallen into your hands, in which you have a full confutation of all of Lutheranism.” Indeed, the Confirmatione et stabilimento became the most exhaustive and most important vernacular polemical work of its era.Footnote ²⁶ It was also by far the longest and most detailed, at over 600 pages, and the only one to go through three Italian editions, one of which (1553) attempts to be pocket-sized.Footnote ²⁷

The book's sole purpose was to teach the uneducated faithful, in detail, why Catholics were right and Protestants were wrong. This was not an obvious course of action. Many Catholic reformers in Italy felt that ignorance was the best protection for the laity. Influential churchmen throughout the century, from Gasparo Contarini to Tommaso Badia, master of the Sacred Palace, had decided not to waste time teaching theology to people with no education, lest they be tempted by the arguments of the “other side” or led astray by complicated doctrines poorly understood. It was safer simply to teach people what good Catholics should do, and direct them to consult their superiors and obey the church in case of questions.Footnote ²⁸

Lippomano's treatise took the reverse tactic, laying out Protestant ideas and then refuting them with Catholic responses. Footnote ²⁹ Lippomano flaunted his desire to be overt by organizing his work so as to highlight the views of his antagonists. His introduction explicitly told his readers that the book contained “all the topics in which these innovators have introduced false doctrine, and deceive the world with seeming reason and scriptural authority, which they understand and interpret falsely.”Footnote ³⁰ By citing the misuse of scripture, and considering it the main weapon in the heretics' arsenal, Lippomano demonstrated that he defined heresy primarily as a scriptural problem.

Above all, Lippomano took advantage of the new printing technology at his disposal to bolster his methodology. Throughout the treatise he was careful to print the heretical arguments he refutes in italics so that readers could easily distinguish them from the Catholic position.Footnote ³¹

Lippomano, a high-ranking bishop and envoy to Protestant countries, had read heterodox works, and his knowledge allowed him to state multiple opinions at length.Footnote ³² Paradoxically, his fear of heresy drove him to a position of openness and trust regarding the laity. He so worried about heresy that he was willing to let laypeople engage in polemic, based on their own reading, and to become familiar with both heretical and Catholic ideas. Though written primarily to keep people away from new doctrines, this work openly discussed those doctrines alongside more orthodox alternatives.

Lippomano felt that he had taken a bold step in writing so openly. In fact, he explained, he was originally reluctant to do so, fully conscious that the decision to write a book of Catholic doctrine for the unlearned was neither easy, nor obvious, nor without danger:

Lippomano was deeply ambivalent about writing his treatise. On one hand, he recognized the need to appeal to “common people and women” who might be “seduced” by the heretical books if he did not step in. On the other, he considered those people “base and lowly”; he felt that theological and doctrinal matters were beyond them. Writing a treatise, for him, was a desperate measure for desperate times, occasioned by the “depraved discussions of those enemies of truth” and spurred on by the “reading of vernacular books printed and given out in secret.” Warning the laity of this threat was a necessary counter-offensive strike, using the weapons of the enemy.Footnote ³⁴

Nonetheless, having made the decision, he embarked on the task wholeheartedly and included a vigorous plea in his own defense:

In other words, Lippomano felt that writing his treatise was a critical step in protecting his flock from imminent and extreme danger. This self-justification reveals that, for Lippomano, scripture was not a topic for speech. “Chatter” or “gossip” or “blather” led to “speaking ill,” “scoffing,” and ultimately “ruin.” This passage also reminds modern readers again that Italians in the sixteenth century had no assurance that Italy would remain Catholic. To them, the threat of widespread apostasy throughout the peninsula was entirely plausible.

Lippomano's frankness extended to the topic of scriptural teaching, which, unlike Aleni, he discussed at length. Indeed, he provided one of the most thorough justifications of the Catholic position available in the vernacular. Much of his argument confirmed the views discussed and eventually adopted at Trent. Lippomano emphasized the impropriety of ill-prepared people discussing complicated doctrine, and the resulting need for scriptural interpretation to be regulated by a suitable authority.

Above all, Lippomano worried about the practical dangers of laypeople reading on their own, as he imagined Protestant converts doing. He feared that untrained readers would approach scripture literally. Their carnal natures would lead them directly to sordid, immoral interpretations. Readers would learn to gratify their basest instincts, he argued, from reading about Judah approaching a prostitute. They would learn idolatry from the animal sacrifices in Leviticus, envy and inebriation from the stories of Noah after the flood and Joseph in Egypt, and magic and soothsaying from the stories of Moses and Daniel.Footnote ³⁶ The real benefits of scripture required more thought: “we seek the fruits of scripture, which is the spirit, and which are not said to be manifest. Thus the fruit of the spirit is found with much effort, and sweat, and worthy practice in reading.”Footnote ³⁷

Because scripture is so prone to misinterpretation, access to it had to be carefully controlled. At first glance, Lippomano's argument seems as defensive and restrictive as his worst critics believe, and as Aleni's treatise implies. Lippomano argued strongly against vernacular translations of scripture. Not even the liturgy needs to be understood, he explained; the point of reciting prayers is the glorification of God, not the edification of the self. Lippomano argued that God had reasons for delivering scripture in only the three “princely” languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Scripture would lose some of its mysterious reverence if made too readily available; too many translations would lead to chaos and confusion.Footnote ³⁸

For Lippomano, the natural order of the universe was at stake in this debate. Lippomano believed that every stratum and group in society had a distinct purpose; if one group were to take up the tasks of another, the whole would disintegrate. Thus ignorant laypeople who acted like teachers and learned doctors disrupted all of Christian society; the learned should govern society the way the head governs the body. Teaching scripture to the unlearned meant giving them only the dose that suited their current social standing. Strict conceptions of the social order were common enough in early modern Europe, but Lippomano explained explicitly what this meant for scripture:

Lippomano's focus here on social order recalls the pastoral context in which he wrote, and the specific practical concerns that occupied him. Protestant successes were a real threat in Verona during his episcopate and, in Catholic eyes, the appeal of the Protestant message was to empower the socially disenfranchised by allowing them to read scripture. In response, Lippomano cast lay access to scripture as a dangerous source of confusion. It would impede, not speed, the path to salvation by destroying trust in Christ and deference to clergy. Again, Lippomano's antipathy toward “base and plebeian” commoners is clear. Their job was to receive doctrine, or digest it like milk, without it passing through the brain where it could be subject to questioning.

At the same time, the problem of teaching scripture remained, and Confirmatione et stabilimento proposed a solution: scripture must be declared and taught publicly, ideally by a bishop in a sermon:

Lippomano made scripture learning an entirely aural process. This approach may have been both cautious and orthodox, but the underlying intent was radical because, unlike Aleni's guide, Lippomano's treatise emphasized the need for frequent, careful explications of scripture despite its many dangers. Learning scripture orally solved a number of problems. It addressed, though perhaps did not satisfy, the indisputable lay desire for access to scripture. It ensured that proper interpretations would accompany exegesis, and that the clergy would have closer oversight of lay religious activity. Finally, it placed the burden on the “preachers, readers, prelates, and curates,” increasing the need for the clergy, too, to play their proper role in society and to live up to the standards set for them.

This is the solution that the council of Trent would ultimately adopt when it decreed, in its twenty-fourth session, that “the bishops shall themselves in person, each in his own church, announce the sacred Scriptures and the divine law … and this at least on all Lord's Days and solemn festivals; but, during the season of the fasts, of Lent and of the Advent of the Lord, daily, or at least on three days in the week, if the said bishop shall deem it needful.”Footnote ⁴¹ Lippomano's treatise shows an early and energetic endorsement of this model, with details about how it should be done, and an emphatic belief that Catholic traditions need not be abandoned.

Lippomano's conclusions about how to teach scripture were multifaceted; on the one hand, he believed that scripture must be carefully controlled and almost never read; on the other, he directed preachers to undertake frequent scriptural teaching instead. His charge to the clergy is only one small section of a long text, but it reveals the most about his agenda as bishop. It shows concern for the spiritual needs of his flock, a practical understanding of how to meet those needs, and a fundamental commitment to distributing, rather than withholding, information.

V. Model Sermons in Verona

Lippomano laid out his agenda in theory in his treatise but also made sure it happened in practice. He commissioned a volume of sermons for novice preachers called Sermoni ovvero homelie.Footnote ⁴² Model sermons, especially in Latin, were an established tradition that flourished with the coming of the printing press.Footnote ⁴³ This example, however, had close ties to Lippomano's treatise. Both works were entrusted to the same author, Giovanni Del Bene. Both were written in the vernacular explicitly for lay readers as well as clerical. Like the treatise, Sermoni ovvero homelie stemmed directly from Lippomano's concerns about heresy in Verona. The introductory letter, written by the author's brother, explained that Lippomano had requested the work in reaction to the “heretics … who have sown every sort of error and false doctrine among the ignorant in these calamitous times.” The sermons were intended to provide a remedy for an endangered population “fed with rotten poisonous nourishment, and lacking true and solid spiritual food.”Footnote ⁴⁴

Sermoni ovvero homelie is intended to guide secular clerics who were taking up the burden of preaching for the first time. It provides a year's worth of short, straightforward de tempore sermons for Sundays and festivals.Footnote ⁴⁵ A novice preacher could use them as inspiration for his own sermons, or adopt them verbatim. While the book was by no means the first or only example of model sermons, it is a noticeably comprehensive and pedagogically minded illustration of the genre, produced at a moment when Catholic scriptural preaching was under particular scrutiny.Footnote ⁴⁶

In other words, when Lippomano's treatise told his lay readers that they could learn their scripture in church, it was no idle promise. He went on to commission a work that taught his clergy exactly what they were supposed to do, and how to do right by their congregations.

These sermons indicate Lippomano's pastoral agenda more accurately than Aleni's guide, not only because we know that he read and approved of them, but also because they were intended to have the broadest reach of all Veronese works. Lippomano read the book of sermons after it was written, showed it to his superiors, and approved it for publication. Furthermore, it was published fully ten years after Aleni's guide, and was much more widely distributed. Aleni's treatise never reached a broad readership, whereas Del Bene's volume went through six editions in the twenty years following its publication.

These sermons indicated what messages Lippomano wanted a congregation to hear on Sundays. In terms of scripture, they started from the same premise as the treatise: lay scriptural reading, unsupervised, would disrupt the world. Different members of society must approach scripture differently. For Del Bene, as for his supervisor, the Protestants' worst sin was the way they taught scripture, not only because they gambled with the souls of the faithful, but also because their teaching ruptured the social order:

At first glance, such words seem to reinforce the restrictive social hierarchy of Lippomano's treatise. For the unlearned, scripture could be heard, understood, contemplated, and comprehended intimately, but only passively, through the explanations of trained priests.

But these limitations did not, in fact, prevent the laity from having access to scripture. Rather, they reveal how sermons could, in fact, provide a layperson with a thorough catechetical education. Del Bene's goal was to reach complete beginners and leave them with a working knowledge of scripture, mediated through its liturgical context.

As the title indicates, these sermons are homilies: informal running paraphrases of scripture. The homily, a sermon form from the patristic era, experienced a revival in the sixteenth century as a vehicle for inexperienced preachers teaching an unlearned laity.Footnote ⁴⁸ Del Bene's sermons are the simplest form of homily. Lippomano's endorsement of this form shows a pastoral approach that is in tune with the basic needs of his flock, long before Borromeo and other preachers recommended its use.

The sermons form a continuous commentary on the gospel, embellished with interpretations and moral lessons, but never straying far from the text. This approach is evident from the first sermon, which begins, without preamble, by identifying the period of Advent and explaining its spiritual function. It then proceeds directly to exegesis, saying, “Now that we have begun this way … let us enter into the declaration of the holy Gospel text for today.” Del Bene paraphrases the gospel fully into the vernacular as though reading aloud: “Saint Luke, in the twenty-first chapter, narrates that Our Lord Jesus said to his disciples, ‘there will be signs in the sun, and moon, and stars.’”Footnote ⁴⁹ The sermon structure thus closely follows the gospel narrative. While it includes other scriptural quotations, it uses no patristic or medieval commentaries. Throughout his sermons, Del Bene refers explicitly to his intent to follow the text: “Continuing in the first chapter, of which we covered a great deal the other day.”Footnote ⁵⁰ He also provides context. When he discusses apparitions in the gospel of Luke, he mentions disputed interpretations of the location of Galilee, compares versions of the story from Luke and Mark, and tries to relate a chronological version of events that reconciles both gospels.Footnote ⁵¹

Above all, Del Bene believed that scripture must be understood. For him, scripture was the ultimate weapon against all demonic temptations, but it was no talisman. To be useful, it had to be comprehended, even if an artisan's comprehension differed from a theologian's: “Whoever has scripture, and the holy commandments of God at hand, can answer to and confound the enemy; thus the Lord always answered the Devil with scripture … . So we see that it isn't enough to have scripture at hand, if you don't understand it, because the enemy uses it himself too, as he commonly does through the mouths of heretics.Footnote ⁵²” Del Bene argued that because of heretics, Catholics must learn not to avoid scripture for its dangers, but to comprehend it, in order to beat the heretics at their own game. This argument avoids, without explicitly contradicting, Lippomano's conservative stance on Bible translations by providing a safer alternative.Footnote ⁵³

In these sermons, Del Bene's overall goals and vision for laypeople went far beyond rote obedience. In his approach to Catholic reform, to scripture, and to heresy, Del Bene showed concern for the spiritual state of his readers. He emphasized the internal renewal of faith and piety as much as possible, and balanced negative messages with positive Catholic values whenever he could. While he spoke harshly of heretics, as often as not, he invoked them only in order to goad his readers into being better Catholics. He turned the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, for example, into an explanation of the role of faith and a plea for good works. His readers, he says, should not only obey but should “delight in the divine things necessary for their health.”Footnote ⁵⁴ His words reflect a vision of Catholicism that fostered personal devotion and individual faith.

The point, for Del Bene, was not simply to crush heretics, but to create Catholics. Although the volume was inspired by fear, it combated heresy through education as well as through obedience. Del Bene's work, which has received no extensive scholarly attention, shows that actual sermons present a more complicated approach to reform than Aleni's theoretical guide. They could simultaneously foster individual Catholic piety and construe devotion as a shield against heresy. They could give their audience tools for understanding scripture and maintain a close grip on its interpretation. Above all, Del Bene's sermons show that, in Verona, preaching could emphasize positive Catholic behavior, demand true devotion and intent, and also transmit a detailed understanding of scripture, even while keeping the laity on a very short leash.

VI. Lippomano's Early Works

The approach outlined in Lippomano's treatise, and then enacted in Del Bene's sermons, was different from Aleni's guide for preachers, but in fact it was consistent with Lippomano's earliest pastoral works. Earlier in his career he had produced two volumes of devotional sermons: the Espositioni and the Sermoni. These works shared the same concerns that would later define Lippomano's episcopate in Verona: a serious approach to preaching, deep concern for the needs of his flock, angry abhorrence of heresy, and a willingness to be explicit both about heresy and, where possible, about scripture. Such characteristics marked all of Lippomano's career, and not solely his work in Verona.

Lippomano published both the Espositioni and the Sermoni in 1541, when he was coadjutor of Bergamo. Both works were intended for devotional reading, not oration, but relied heavily on sermon forms. The Sermoni is a collection of twenty-two sermons for major festivals of the liturgical year, each dedicated to a particular person or group in Bergamo.Footnote ⁵⁵ The Espositioni, written for a group of convertite (penitent prostitutes) in Bergamo and Rome, explain liturgical texts.Footnote ⁵⁶

Lippomano's explicit comments on preaching in the Sermoni show that episcopal reform and lay education interested him long before he arrived in Verona. In this work, Lippomano railed against elite orators, who were almost always mendicants, both for their preaching habits and for the content of their sermons. He complained that they only preached in well-known cities before famous and learned people, instead of visiting villages and towns, preaching to humble men, and including women. Otherwise, they “are committing a great error, because the Lord does not want to make distinctions among people and things … and wants everyone to be saved. Everywhere, no matter how lowly a place it is, it is necessary to preach the word of God, as the Apostles did.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Misguided preachers, he said, also defeated their own purposes by bringing in unnecessary works from the secular world in order to dazzle their audiences: “The Gospel says, preach to every creature. Does it say, perhaps, to teach the doctrine of Plato, or the philosophy of Aristotle, or the eloquence of Cicero, or the beautiful Tuscan of Boccacio, or the fairy tales, dreams, and revelations of the simple folk—as, to our disgrace, we often hear people preach these days?”Footnote ⁵⁸ With evident relief, he noted that in the past twenty years “God has rekindled the intelligence of these preachers,” who had begun to return to a more straightforward style free of extraneous material. Through his conviction that preaching is pedagogy, Lippomano showed his early support for new models of episcopal reform.

Both works also display the attitude toward heresy that would become Lippomano's trademark: a deep-seated anxiety alongside a willingness to articulate and rebut specific Protestant doctrines. In 1541, when these works were published, many Catholic reformers still hoped for reconciliation. Lippomano himself had not yet traveled to Protestant countries or confronted heterodoxy directly. Yet hints of his later attentiveness to heretical arguments still appear in these works. He devoted two Sermoni to explaining and then discrediting various heretical theological positions that disturbed him.Footnote ⁵⁹ The fear of heresy also partly inspired the Espositioni. In a dedicatory letter to the nuns, Lippomano explained that three factors led him to write: continual war and bloodshed; the faltering behavior of those who were Christian in name only; and the insidious spread of Lutheran thought. In 1541, Lutheran ideas had not taken over “a good part” of Italy, but Lippomano's statement reflects his fear that they would, long before his career in Verona.

Finally, these two works demonstrate that when Lippomano did use sermon literature to explicate scripture, it was a deliberate choice. In the Espositioni, he admitted that his audience of penitent prostitutes, rarely a well-schooled population, “cannot read, or … don't want to make the effort, or … ought not to read sacred books.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Instead, he focused on devotional acts and pious thoughts, and chose to explicate common prayers rather than scriptural passages. At the same time, he asked the convertite to remember the centrality of scripture to all the moral lessons in his book:

Reducing scripture to its moral lessons, and freeing the convertite from the obligation to learn scripture, was a pragmatic position for Lippomano to take with this audience. It shows that he sought to meet his readers at their level, and to adapt his writing to their needs. At least one reader appears to have taken that message to heart; a copy from 1541 shows marginal notes summarizing daily devotions to recite, drawn from the Espositioni: twelve for the articles of the faith, seven for the sacraments, ten for the commandments, and two for love and charity.Footnote ⁶²

The Sermoni, in contrast, employed the same thorough homiletic techniques Lippomano would later endorse as a bishop. They eschew the questions, metaphors, and long explanations so common to formal oratory, as well as the scholarly linguistic discussion appropriate to learned clergy.Footnote ⁶³ Instead, the sermons retell and then interpret biblical stories verse by verse, explaining how each passage is organized and comparing it to other passages. Lippomano encouraged his readers to contemplate the text on their own, asking such questions as, “What did the evangelist intend by so carefully expressing here so many proper names?” He used the Sermoni to imbue in his audience a thorough and thoughtful acquaintance with scripture.