The name of the Cassinese Benedictine monk Isidoro da Chiari is well-known to specialists in the religious history of sixteenth-century Italy. Author of several tracts, advisor to members of the commission responsible for the famous Consilium de emendanda ecclesia of 1536, and later suspected of crypto-Lutheranism by the Roman Inquisition, he nevertheless has never acquired wider fame in Reformation history. Yet his many contacts with Italian spirituali and his importance in his Benedictine congregation made him a conspicuous player among protagonists of church reform. As one of three Benedictine abbots he took part in the first session of the Council of Trent. Appointed Bishop of Foligno in 1547, he devoted himself to reforming his clergy, preaching, and the care of the poor until his death in 1555.
The tract reprinted here in a scholarly edition with a good Italian translation is Chiari's best-known work. Written in 1536–37 and dedicated to Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, it was published in Milan in 1540. The author summarizes his views of the most contentious issues separating Protestants and Catholics, but unlike many of his Italian contemporaries, attacks neither Luther nor other Protestant theologians. Although he is not mentioned by name, the imagined recipient of the work is Philip Melanchthon. Unlike Luther, who is seen as given to anger and vengeance, Melanchthon is viewed as moderate, even irenic. Chiari appeals to him and other like-minded Protestants to put their hostility to Rome aside. He calls them “brothers in faith” and hopes that their common humanistic education will serve as a basis for discussing theology. His familiarity with Melanchthon's Loci communes is obvious throughout as is his knowledge of Luther's early writings that explain his reasons for breaking with the Catholic Church. Like Erasmus, Chiari distinguishes between major issues and those that are the “adiaphora.”
A recurring theme throughout the Adhortatio is the problem of throwing pearls to the swine, as it were. For Chiari one of the most significant errors of the Protestants was to address the common people as if they were capable of understanding the debates of theologians in difficult issues like justification or the nature of sacraments. Following Gregory Nazianzen and other Greek Church Fathers, Chiari emphasized the great gulf between the learned and the uneducated multitude. Ignoring this, Protestants were responsible for disorder and confusion. An example of the latter is Luther's teaching about free will that even theologians find difficult to understand. The Adhortatio does not emphasize salvation by faith alone, as Protestants do, but firmly follows in the Cassinese tradition of giving primacy to sola gratia, or salvation by grace alone. In his important book of twenty-five years ago, Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation, Barry Collett has argued that the main cause of the division between Protestants and Catholics was not the issue of abuses like the hawking of indulgences but rather their different understanding of faith and works. For Chiari the primacy of faith is unquestionable while works are its necessary manifestation. He echoes Erasmian ideas on this subject and wonders why Luther launched such a furious attack on human works. While granting that scholastic theologians have gone too far in their explanations of the nexus between faith and works, he thinks that Protestants have also made mistakes. The best solution to all these problems is peace and concord between Christians rather than further theological hairsplitting.
Chiari is not the first to call for a return to the past as necessary for reform of the church. More unusual is his choice of models like the Gregorian reform or the pontificate of Leo the Great because both epochs witnessed the union of great power with moderation, modesty, and humility. Now it is up to the viri prudentes to form a sensible middle between scholastic philosophers and reformed theologians and to steer the church in new paths. Here Chiari adds great praise of Pope Paul III for having called a commission of such men to Rome in order to deal with pressing issues of reform.
The Adhortatio remained without effect. Neither Chiari nor most Italian spirituali realized that the bridges between the two confessions had already been burned and that appeals to good will were no longer sufficient. The treatise is no more than the testament of a reasonable man's hope in the increasingly sharp and bitter division of Western Christendom.
