The Franciscan Preaching Tradition and Its Sixteenth-Century Legacy: The Case of Cornelio Musso

THE FRANCISCAN PREACHING TRADITION AND ITS SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LEGACY: THE CASE OF CORNELIO MUSSO BY Corrie Norman* Recent scholarship on the changes that took place in early modern preaching has cited a number of Franciscans who were instrumental in the return to classical rhetorical models including Lorenzo Traversagni in the fifteenth century, Luca Baglione in the sixteenth, and Francesco Panigarola at the turn of the seventeenth. But it is their Humanism that has been emphasized while their affiliation with the Franciscan Order, one of the great preaching orders, has been treated as background detail . Although McGinness and O'Malley have noted that the Franciscan Rule is quoted in several important preaching documents of the period and even served as a shorthand formula in the primarily classicallyinspired post-Tridentine sacred rhetorics, the contributions of the Franciscan Order to early modern preaching remain largely unexamined.1 The case of the Conventual Franciscan Cornelio Musso highlights continuity with the values of the medieval Franciscan preaching tradition and the need for a closer look at its significance for sixteenth-century preaching. Musso (1511-1574) was a man of many talents and roles. He was a prodigious scholar, a churchman of distinguished service in the courts of Paul III and Pius FV, and a bishop who both helped to define Tridentine ideals and strove to put them into practice.2 But Musso was known *Dr. Norman is an assistant professor of religion in the University of the South, Sewanee , Tennessee. 'Frederick McGinness,"Preaching Ideals and Practices in Counter-Reformation Rome," Sixteenth CenturyJournal, 1 1 (1980), 109-127, and Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton, 1995), esp. pp. 30-35. John O'Malley, "Form, Content, and Influence of Works about Preaching Before Trent: The Franciscan Contribution ," in Ifrati minori tra '400-'50O (Assisi, 1985), pp. 27-50. The amount of attention Musso has received by scholars is meager relative to his significance for sixteenth-century Catholicism. Between 1586, when a short biography of Musso was published, and 1933,almost no new information about him appeared. In 1933, attention was brought to Musso again by Hubert Jedin, who published a long article on 208 BY CORRIE NORMAN209 mostly in his own day as a preacher, as his five volumes of Italian sermons attest.3 He was chosen to preach the inaugural sermon at the Council ofTrent and was a preacher of choice for the annual Lenten cycles of several Italian cities. Musso's Italian sermons were reported to have "effected miracles" in the hearts of the crowds that thronged to hear him. Many of the same sermons, translated into Latin,were enjoyed at papal court.4 To connoisseurs of sacred rhetoric, Cornelio Musso was a "humanist" preacher: a "modern Demosthenes," the "Chrysostom of Italy"5 In 1554, at the midpoint of Musso s career, the Paduan humanist Bernardino Tomitano wrote a short treatise praising Musso's preaching. For Tomitano , Musso was "a Michelangelo of words" whose vivid adaptation of Musso based on information he found in Vatican collections. Hubert Jedin, "Der Franziskaner Cornelio Musso, Bischofvon Bitonto. Sein Lebensgang und seine kirchliche Wirksamkeit ," Römische Quartalschrifl, 41 (1933), 207-275. Musso has received only cursory attention since, mostly from Franciscan scholars interested in his theology, episcopacy, or role at Trent. For example, Angélico Poppi, "La spiegazione del Magnificat' di Cornelio Musso (1540)," in Benjamino Costa e Samuele Doimi (eds.), Problemi e figure della scuola scotista del Santo (Padua, 1966), pp. 415-489; and "Il Commente della lettera di S. Paolo ai Romani di Cornelio Musso," in Il Santo, 6 (1966), 225-260. Also, Giovanni Odoardi,"Fra Cornelio Musso, OFMConv.(151 1 - 1 574). Padre, oratore e teólogo al Concilio di Trento,"Miscellanea Francescana, 48 (1948), 223-242, 450-478; 49 (1949), 36-71 ; and R. J. Bartman, "Cornelio Musso, Tridentine Theologian and Orator," Franciscan Studies, 5 (1945), 247-276. Despite Musso's fame as a preacher in his own day, only one scholar in this century, Gustavo Cantini, has focused at any length on Musso the preacher. Gustavo Cantini, "Cornelio Musso dei Frati Minori Conventual·!, Predicatore, Scrittore e Teólogo al Concilio di Trento," Miscellanea Francescana, 41 (1941), 146-174, 424-463...