“Celibacy, Scholarship, and Service to the State in Quattrocento Venice:
The Case of Ermolao Barbaro”
Abstract
This talk focuses on the extraordinary life-story of the eminent Venetian humanist, Ermolao Barbaro (1454-93). In his youthful On Celibacy (De coelibatu, 1472-3) Barbaro seeks to justify a contemplative existence that rejects the career-path expected of the Venetian patrician. The second work belongs to a much later phase in his short life: based on Barbaro’s own experience as a Venetian envoy abroad, his brief treatise On the Duty of the Ambassador (De officio legati, 1488) outlines the conduct expected of the career diplomat. But then an extraordinary turn of events: in March 1491 Barbaro was appointed Patriarch of Aquileia by Pope Innocent VIII; Barbaro was at that time the Venetian ambassador to the Papal State. Barbaro accepted the appointment to Aquileia in obedience to the Pope but without Venetian permission. He was dismissed from his Venetian ambassadorship and remained in Rome, a figure of disgrace in Venice. But how to reconcile his actions with the fact that, only two or so years before, his On the Duty of the Ambassador had preached a sermon of loyalty to the state above all else?
Viewed against each other, Barbaro’s On Celibacy and On the Duty of the Ambassador offer contrasting perspectives on the wider fifteenth-century debate about the claims of the reflective as opposed to the active life. The paper explores the life-long drama of Barbaro’s divided loyalties to the self and to the state, with stress on his recourse to many features of the ancient tension between the vita contemplativa and the vita activa.
