Jacopo Sadoleto was born at Modena and became one of the finest Latin stylists of the Renaissance. With Pietro Bembo he served as secretary to Leo X, who made him Bishop of Carpentras near Avignon in 1517. He was a sincere advocate of reform within the church. In 1536 Paul III made him a cardinal, and he served on the commission that produced the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia of 1537, a frank report on the abuses of the papal court.

In 1538 Geneva expelled Calvin and Farel. Sadoleto saw an opportunity, and in March 1539 he wrote to the senate and people of Geneva urging them to return to the Roman church. He framed the choice in these words:

Whether is it more expedient for your salvation, and whether you think you will do what is more pleasing to God, by believing and following what the Catholic Church throughout the whole world, now for more than fifteen hundred years … approves with general consent; or innovations introduced within these twenty-five years, by crafty, or, as they think themselves, acute men; but men certainly who are not themselves the Catholic Church?¹ Jacopo SadoletoLetter to the Senate and People of Geneva, March 18, 1539

No one in Geneva was equal to an answer, but Calvin, then in exile at Strasbourg, wrote a reply in six days. His Reply to Sadoleto set out the Reformation case on justification, the church, and the authority of Scripture, and called justification by faith “the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.” Beza wrote that Sadoleto was “a man of great eloquence, which he perverted, especially in suppressing the light of truth,” and that after Calvin’s answer he “gave up the whole affair as desperate.”²

Sadoleto died at Rome on October 18, 1547.

Catholic Opponents