Giovanni Caroli and the New Humanist Aesthetics

Amos Edelheit

Abstract
The relation between two dominant traditions which converged during the Renaissance – the scholastic, religious, and traditional culture whose duration is wrongly confined to the Middle Ages, and the younger humanist culture that is usually associated with modernity – stand at the heart of this article. The argument here is that to understand the intellectual history of the Renaissance there is a need for a much more nuanced approach that is sensitive towards both these traditions and alert to the ways in which they interacted and overlapped. Our case study is provided by the Dominican friar Giovanni Caroli (1428–1503), who was a leading theologian in Florence during the second half of the fifteenth century. This article focuses on Caroli's reaction to the new aesthetics in the context of a deep spiritual crisis.

[1] Giovanni Caroli (1428–1503) was the leading Dominican theologian in Florence during the last decades of the fifteenth century.¹ In this article he will serve as a case study for the interactions between Dominican friars and the relatively new humanist culture. As we shall see, Caroli was not only fully aware of the changing atmosphere in Florence but also played an active role in, and reacted to, what was going on around him. These developments included the growing tensions inside the Dominican order between the Observants and the Conventuals over the need for reform, increasing tensions in Florentine politics between the Medici family and its rivals, and the rise of Savonarola during the 1490s as a result of religious and political turmoil. Moreover, Caroli was a man who lived between the two great traditions of his time: the scholastic and the humanist. Despite his position as a leading Dominican theologian in Florence and his obvious preference for the scholastic tradition (as well as his explicit critique of the new humanist fashion), his writings reveal a far more complex picture, in which we find the unique fifteenth century mixture of traditional ideas and new notions. In this respect he remained loyal both to his spiritual mentor, the influential Florentine archbishop Antonino Pierozzi, and to his teacher and colleague at the University of Florence, the humanist Cristoforo Landino.

[2] I will start with a few considerations on the historiographical problem underlying this entire special issue. Why has the full story of the Dominicans in the Renaissance not yet been told by modern scholars of the Renaissance? Two revealing episodes, one from the beginning of the fifteenth century and another from the last decade of the same century, might explain the common notion – as it is reflected in modern historiography – of a contrast, as it were, between the Dominicans and what they represent on the one hand, and the Renaissance and what it stands for on the other. The first episode is the clash between the Dominican reformer and cardinal Giovanni Dominici and the famous humanist and Chancellor of the Florentine Republic Coluccio Salutati on the issue of the moral and religious value of studying the ancient classical and pagan poets. While Dominici adopted a critical position, Salutati argued that through reading these poetic accounts of the gods one can purify one's own notion of the true Christian God.² At the centre of the second episode, we find the charismatic Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola, hurling fire and brimstone on the humanists' fashionable admiration of classical pagan civilisation and calling for an overall renovation of the religious life in Florence and in the Church.³ However, the situation in both exemplary episodes was much more complex and calls for a diversified engagement with the sources as well as for new interpretations. In my view, the image of an essential dichotomy regarding the relationship between the Dominicans and the Renaissance can no longer be maintained. Up to now, the Dominicans are mostly depicted in historiography as narrow-minded fanatic inquisitors who were completely opposed to the emerging Renaissance culture.⁴

[3] In what follows I criticise this overly simplistic, standard view and some of the assumptions behind it that, to the best of my knowledge, are biased, distorted, and neglect the contributions and achievements of several Dominicans during the Renaissance and the role they played in its emergence and evolution. Such an unorthodox account may force us to question both the negative image of the Dominicans and the idealistic image of the Renaissance, as they emerge from previous research contributions.

[4] We begin with a look at one counter example. Giovanni Gatti (ca. 1420–1484), an important Dominican thinker who has been the subject of a study by a modern scholar,⁵ provides a rare, scholarly portrait of a fifteenth-century "Thomist". According to Monfasani, Gatti was a non-doctrinaire Thomist who was sympathetic to Scotus, with a strong humanist inclination that drove him to learn Greek and Hebrew and cite classical authors. He was quite critical of pagan philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, and, as can be expected, was very interested in patristic authors. Apparently, Gatti was instrumental in collecting the sources that were used by Cardinal Bessarion in writing the third book of his In calumniatorem Platonis.⁶ This portrait of Gatti shows the complexities involved in studying such a Renaissance Dominican "Thomist", well beyond some common clichés and uncritical images.

[5] We could clearly continue and present more historical evidence that shows the contributions made by Dominican thinkers to the Renaissance, and even to the new political discourse. For example, we could mention the history of republican tendencies among Dominican friars and among members of other religious orders in fifteenth-century Florence. For instance, both Giovanni Caroli and Savonarola can be viewed in the context of Dominican republicanism in Florence, a tradition that started at the end of the thirteenth century into the early decades of the fourteenth century with thinkers such as Ptolemy of Lucca (c. 1236 – c. 1327) and Girolamo dei Remigi (1235–1319).⁷ Yet there is a difference between them: Caroli must be regarded as a representative of a moderate version of aristocratic republicanism according to the classical model of Leonardo Bruni, and thus supporting the Medici regime; Girolamo Savonarola, on the other hand, must be regarded as a representative of a more extreme version of popular republicanism, influenced by biblical and early Christian models, but also by the Ciompi Revolt of 1378 and its persistent and influential memory in Florentine politics throughout the fifteenth century, which was also used by some of the political rivals of the Medici family.⁸

[6] What might be the reason for this negative image of Renaissance Dominicans? In order to deal with this question, we need to add another conceptual component: "scholasticism", or "scholastic philosophy", which is of course associated with the Dominicans and has a very bad reputation among many scholars of the Renaissance. Why do many Renaissance scholars still disregard the scholastic philosophy of the Renaissance? There are many reasons for that: the terms "scholastic" or "scholasticism" are still used as pejorative terms by many contemporary scholars. We should mention here the old historiographical paradigm presented by Étienne Gilson, who argued that after the thirteenth century, scholastic philosophy was in constant decline, thus ignoring all the important developments in scholastic philosophy that took place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.⁹ Admittedly, philosophers of the fourteenth century have featured prominently in several recent scholarly discussions, which has elevated their importance. However, the fifteenth century is still, in this regard, terra incognita. So, what should we do? We must return to the archives and manuscript libraries. We need first editions of texts that currently remain unpublished, we need new critical editions of printed texts, and we need commentaries and contextualisations that might provide us with a better understanding of those texts and thinkers, among them many Dominicans, in the contexts of the Renaissance.

[7] Our attention now shifts back to Giovanni Caroli.¹⁰ He joined the Dominican Order at Santa Maria Novella in Florence at the age of 14 or 15. He was then ordained as a priest by Archbishop Antonino at the age of 20 in 1448. On the same occasion he also became a Master of Arts and Theology at the Florentine monastery. In 1453 he began to teach the Scriptures and the Sentences at the University of Florence. Three years later, at the age of 28, he received his magisterial laurea by the hands of the same archbishop. In April 1459, at the age of 31, he was elected prior of Santa Maria Novella for the first time. Yet he did not remain in this office for long and was deposed in September 1460. In December he was exiled to the convent of San Romano in Lucca. These stormy events of April–December 1460 belong to the background of Caroli's book, the dialogue Liber dierum lucensium ("The Book of My Days in Lucca"), which was written during his exile in Lucca. This book focuses on the institutional and spiritual crisis within the Dominican Order, both at the personal and the collective level, and provides a profound reflection on Renaissance religiosity as a whole.

[8] What, then, was this religious crisis? And why, while serving as prior of the convent of Santa Maria Novella, was he exiled to Lucca in September 1460? Salvatore I. Camporeale reconstructed the historical background that led both to Caroli's exile and to his literary account of these events, the Liber dierum lucensium:

In April 1460 disagreement and conflict surfaced between the community of Santa Maria Novella, of which Caroli was prior, and Marziale Auribelli, general superior of the order, regarding monastic reform and renewal. This was but a particular case of a more widely spread divergence of attitudes on how to implement the reform already begun by Giovanni Dominici in the early Quattrocento, which was to determine the development of the mendicant orders in Italy for the rest of the century. Caroli argued for a reform that would respect the juridical autonomy and specific tradition of the convent. Auribelli, instead, sought to impose a reform using the authority of his own jurisdiction as general superior, that is to say, with criteria quite unrelated to their local tradition. Despite the support of the Signoria of Florence, who agreed entirely with the convent’s position, Caroli was removed as prior and exiled to Lucca in September 1460.¹¹

[9] The immediate conflict, then, was between the convent's liberty and autonomy, grounded in its tradition and local history and enabling it to carry out reforms, and the authority of the general superior, who sought to impose reform from outside. But the wider context was the Dominican observant reform movement that had already begun in Germany in the last decades of the fourteenth century and arrived in Italy by 1391 through the activity of Giovanni Dominici (c. 1356–1419).¹² This reform movement raised a serious constitutional problem: under whose authority should the reformed convents operate? As mentioned, in 1391 the reform movement reached Italy, and reformed convents began to unite and demand autonomy from the provincial institutions. In 1393, Giovanni Dominici became the first general vicar to deal with this problem.¹³ This was the context for what took place at Santa Maria Novella in the early 1460s.

[10] Let us go back to Caroli. At some point, most likely during the late 1460s, he returned to Santa Maria Novella in Florence and in 1469 he was elected dean of the College of Doctors of Theology at the University of Florence. In 1476, he directed the Studium of Santa Maria Novella, but in October he was replaced by the scholastic philosopher Dominic of Flanders (c. 1425–1479), who had arrived from Bologna. In November 1479, he was elected prior of Santa Maria Novella for the second time, an office he held this time until October 1481. In 1483, he was vice-dean of the College of Doctors of Theology. Caroli was therefore responsible for the monastery's economic administration throughout the 1480s and 1490s, and he represented the monastery on several occasions. In July 1499, he was elected prior of Santa Maria Novella for the third time and held the office until September 1500. During these years, he also served as librarian and copyist, and was among the friars who wrote the monastery's obitus, the book containing biographical records of deceased friars. Caroli himself died in Florence in 1503.

[11] Among Caroli's works is a series of seven biographies of great Dominicans of the past: Giovanni di Salerno, Aldobrandino Cavalcanti, Simone de' Salterelli, Angelo Acciaiuoli, Alessio Strozzi, Guido da Raggiolo, and Giovanni Dominici. All of them were important members of Santa Maria Novella's community, and some of them were central figures in Florentine public life and in the ecclesiastical hierarchy between 1217 and 1420. The work, entitled Vitae nonnullorum fratrum beatae Mariae Novellae ("The Lives of Several Brothers from the Blessed Maria Novella"), was written between 1475 and 1480. In this work, Caroli combines history and hagiography, traditional medieval elements derived from contemporary chronicles, and the classical model of Plutarch's biographies to develop his own distinctive conception of history and historiography. The work opens with a dedicatory letter to the humanist Cristoforo Landino (1425–1498) and with a short encomium of Florence, most likely written around 1478. In these texts, Caroli relates himself directly not only to contemporary Florentine humanists such as Landino, but also alludes to Leonardo Bruni's famous laudatio of Florence, thus inscribing himself in the glorious tradition of Florentine humanism. The same is true of his dedications of individual biographies: those of Simone de' Salterelli to Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Angelo Acciaiuoli to Donato Acciaiuoli, Guido da Raggiolo to Roberto Buoninsegni, and Giovanni Dominici to Francesco Berlinghieri. However, this was not the only occasion on which Caroli wrote an encomium. He had already dedicated an earlier work, the Laudatio pratensis, to Prato while staying there during a plague in Florence, probably in 1456.

[12] Another important work that combines history and contemporary politics is the Libri de temporibus suis ("The Books of Our Own Times"), a pro-Medici treatise written between 1480 and 1482 under the impression of the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478.¹⁴ The first of its three books is entitled Defensio Cosmi et suorum adversus Filelfum and is clearly a reply to Francesco Filelfo – yet again an indication of Caroli's dialogue with the humanists as well as his involvement in contemporary politics. In a later work, entitled De comparatione aliarum aetatum ad senectutem ("On Comparing the Other Ages of Life with Old Age") and written between 1497–1500, Caroli seems to follow the classical model of Cicero (e.g., Cato Maior de Senectute ["Cato Major on Old Age"]) and Seneca (e.g., Letter 26 in the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium ["Moral Letters to Lucilius"]: "On Old Age and Death"). Among many sermons and works of biblical exegesis written throughout his career as a professional theologian, as a preacher and a professor of theology, we can mention here his 1474 treatise entitled De exemplis sacrae scripturae ("On Moral Models from Scripture") or his later work (in Italian) entitled Esposizione dei Salmi penitenziali ("An Exposition of the Penitential Psalms") written around 1499.

[13] Caroli's Liber dierum lucensium was closely related to the controversy within the Dominican Order regarding the observant reform movement and the nature of the necessary reforms. It was by no means the only occasion on which Caroli became involved in a contemporary controversy on spiritual and political issues. During the 1490s he was one of the main opponents of the powerful Dominican preacher and prophet Girolamo Savonarola and he expressed his opposition to the popular preacher and to some of his followers in sermons and polemical writings. Among these, we may mention his Contro una difesa del convento di S. Marco contrario all'unione coi conventi riformati tosco-romani ("Against a Defence of the Convent of San Marco Contrary to the Union with the Tosco-Roman Reformed Convents"), or Contra la lamentazione della falsa sposa di Cristo e lamentazione dello sposo ("Against the Lamentation of the False Bride of Christ and a Lamentation of the Bridegroom"), or his 1497 attack on a student and follower of Ficino who later became a keen supporter of Savonarola, Giovanni Nesi, Contra Johannis Nesii oraculum de novo saeculo ("Against Giovanni Nesi’s Oracle of a New Era"). Another attack came in Caroli's belated response to the humanist-oriented philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and his 900 Theses (published in 1486), entitled Contro Pico della Mirandola ("Against Pico della Mirandola") and written in 1498.¹⁵

[14] In the Liber dierum lucensium, both Florentine republicanism (here reflected in Caroli's following of Bruni in writing a laudatio for Florence) and the humanist fashion in Florence (Caroli as a student of Cristoforo Landino at the Studio, to whom he addressed the introductory letter to his laudatio) become part of the Dominican Order's internal crisis over reform. Thus, however, the internal institutional crisis became a more general spiritual crisis of the Dominican Order, with both political and cultural reverberations.¹⁶

[15] Do we have other, more specific references in Caroli's writings to the emerging humanist fashion and to Renaissance aesthetics? A very interesting reference to the studia humanitatis in the context of the debate over the proper reform is found in the beginning (I, 22) of the Liber dierum lucensium:

When that memorable and doleful ruin of our house and family chased me out of my city and drove me away into exile in Lucca, along with Jacobus Petri, who had barely escaped unscathed from the same destruction, we were very kindly and courteously received by the friars [and] spent all the winter season in literary studies. I, indeed, having been given a position in public education in that city, devoted myself to these worthy and laudable pursuits.¹⁷

[16] The key phrase is found in the sentence in studiis humanitatis tempus hyemale transegimus – conspicuously different from in studiis divinitatis – and this way of spending time is here somewhat contrasted with (or else functions as an antidote to) the institutional crisis in the Dominican Order. In the same way, a variation on a verse from Virgil appears in another passage recalling the same painful crisis in Book Three of the Liber dierum (III, 18):

I have never seen anything more turbulent, nothing more similar to ruin and destruction. In like manner that verse of Virgil, yet in a different sense, came to mind: "O unfortunate, whose walls are now crumbling".¹⁸

And both Virgil and Jeremiah 'are called' to help Caroli in his efforts to deal with the crisis (I, 5-6).¹⁹ It is quite astonishing to find these references to Virgil at the very heart of his account of such a personal and institutional crisis involving his own Order and monastery, a crisis so closely related to the essence of monastic life and occurring during the broader historical transition from medieval communal culture to the Renaissance city-state.

[17] We find interesting references to the new Renaissance aesthetics in Caroli's biographies of the seven Dominican friars mentioned earlier. Caroli's aesthetic awareness is manifested in his account of the foundation of the Dominican community in Florence, as presented in his biography of its founding figure, Giovanni da Salerno, written in 1474/75. The description is inspired by Dominican iconography found in Santa Maria Novella (cf. Andrea di Bonaiuto's mural of The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, in which the Dominicans – sometimes referred to as domini canes – are accompanied by black-and-white spotted dogs):

Yet these dogs of different colours distinguished by white and black, against whom flocks of wolves were rushing with great passion, tearing apart with their teeth the divine sheepfold, cruelly and wickedly devouring the limbs of the believers, which no human hand would have dismembered.²⁰

[18] The biographies of the theologian Alessio Strozzi and the grammarian Guido da Raggiolo show, as noted by Camporeale, the special place given in the community of Santa Maria Novella to both studia divinitatis and studia humanitatis as complimentary disciplines, essential to the intellectual activity of the city. It shows the bond between the monastery and the city.²¹ This bond also has an aesthetic dimension: in the biography of Aldobrandini Cavalcanti, Caroli points out that there was so much love in those friars for the souls of their fellow citizens that they were striving for the enlargement of their Order and its ornament, and for this purpose they spared no effort.²² Caroli refers in this context to the architectural beauty and solidity of Santa Maria Novella (the summum civitatis templum) that has become an object of admiration; as the focal point of this admiration we find the sacristy where the objects for the liturgy are kept.²³

[19] Writing the history of the Dominican community of Santa Maria Novella from its formation in the thirteenth century up to the fifteenth century through the biographical lens of seven distinguished members provides Caroli with a critical perspective regarding a declining present.²⁴ However, this sense of decline is not restricted to religious matters only, it has implications for all walks of life and on every element in Florentine society. These are the opening words of Caroli's preface to the biography of Alessio Strozzi:

It is most clearly agreed by all that between this age of ours and the previous one there is a significant distance both with regard to virtue and prudence, as well as to corporeal strengths and to all other matters which are subject to the fluctuations of fortune.²⁵

Caroli is obviously alluding here to a famous Renaissance theme (from Petrarch to Machiavelli) that became the title of a widely read book by Poggio Bracciolini written in 1447–1448, De varietate fortunae, to which Caroli had already explicitly referred in his Liber dierum lucensium. According to Caroli, the decline from the communal era to the present republican era was taking place on both levels: spiritual and corporeal; it was a moral (virtue) and political (prudence) decline just as it was a physical-material decline:

Also the arts which are called mechanical were once practiced by people with the highest faith and integrity; but now everything has become phoney and insincere, and everything is made for the sake of showing off rather than for the sake of truth and integrity in art. Therefore, who would be wrong in saying that there is the greatest distance between this age of ours and the previous one, especially when we notice that everything changed in such a diverse, miserable and desperate fashion?²⁶

Caroli targets 'pomp' as a form of behaviour (being led by a personal and familial ambition instead of the common good) and its aesthetic manifestations, that is, doing everything in excess and not keeping the proper measure. According to him, if those who foolishly spent all their fortune on buildings had rather spent it on their businesses, it would have been much more beneficial and useful for both themselves and for others. This investment in houses, both in the city and outside the city, was not without a huge cost, not to mention the injustice (iniuria) and oppression (oppressio) of many. On the other hand there was so much ingenuity (solertia) and probity (probitas) among the ancients, those members of the Florentine society in the previous generation who kept their houses in the city honourable (honesta), and equally so their properties in the countryside, never seeking royal houses or such a variety of ornaments (varia superlex).²⁷

[20] In his preface to Guido da Raggiolo's biography we find how the aesthetic critique is related to a moral and religious critique in the context of music and liturgy:

Yet I cannot approve enough of that which we see is abundantly visible in an enormous assemblage by quite a few people of our city where, as they say, people have become accustomed to sing both prophetic psalms and divine hymns through fake melodies and harmonies […] certainly it would have been much better to adhere to the footsteps of the sacred fathers [who], as they say, devoutly pursue divine praises through that firm as well as solid song, so that our soul would not wander off either because of extravagance and superficiality or lose its way and fall through that fake, trifling and weak [song], and finally produce no spiritual fruit.²⁸

As pointed out by Camporeale, Caroli contrasts here the tradition of monophonic chant (cantus firmus) with the new Renaissance polyphonic chant (cantus figuratus) that he regards as distracting. In parallel to how Caroli lamented a deterioration in the contemporary products of the mechanical arts (buildings and artistic monuments), the lament was repeated also in the case of liturgical music: artificiality and lightness replace authenticity and profundity. Essentially, the problem is that through such music the words of the liturgy cannot be grasped and understood.²⁹ For Caroli, just as proper nutrition is required in raising children, so too in the arts should the best artists and musicians be used as examples for training future artists. Having expressed his view, Caroli cites as additional support the story of the sculptor of Croton found in Cicero, who always looked for the most beautiful women to imitate.³⁰

[21] Caroli's criticism is focused on the lack of balance in contemporary civic life and in its artistic products – on the fact that, according to him, the proper balance between the common good and personal ambitions that was kept during the communal era is now broken in all walks of life (economic activity, politics, the arts), and that the products of architecture, arts, and music have lost an inner sense of purpose that made them so valuable, precious, and genuine to previous generations. But to be able to present such a critical analysis of contemporary politics and culture, Caroli had to be deeply involved and familiar with all the components of politics and culture; he needed to play an active role as a moral theologian in an age of transition and dramatic changes that will eventually result in the birth of modernity. In other words, Caroli had to be part of the culture that he criticised, and obviously, as we have seen, he developed dialectical relations with Renaissance humanism and culture, exposing himself to its influence and making his own unique contributions to its development.

[22] Therefore, the role of members of religious orders in the Early Modern period, such as Giovanni Caroli, and their relationship to Renaissance culture should not be dismissed for the sake of a 'great story' of secularisation and progress. We need to modify this 'great story' and change it in order to make room for historical evidence concerning religion and the religious institutions and individuals who played their part in shaping Early Modern European civilisation.

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Anonymous

Handling Editor
Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome

Citation
Amos Edelheit, "Giovanni Caroli and the New Humanist Aesthetics", in: RIHA Journal 17, 2 (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2026.2.107573.

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The text of this article is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.