Bartolomeo Spatafora

Bartolomeo Spatafora was born around 1514, the second born child of Francesco and Melchiorra Moncada, of an illustrious Messinese noble family which had roots back at least as far as the broad and tolerant court of Frederick II. Spatafora’s precise birthplace is not known, but he grew up in provincia Messina, a port city with strong connections to both the great trading cities of the north (especially Venice) and the Sicilian diaspora which Caponetto demostrated established itself (much like the Lucchese diaspora) in Geneva.

As a younger son of a less well-endowed cadet branch of the Spatafora family, Bartolomeo sought to make his way in the classics, studying Latin and Greek literature in a city which had been graced by such Byzantine scholars at Costantino Lascaris. Spatafora connected to the humanist circles close to the Viceregal court. These had been influenced by the sort of Christian humanism which was influenced by the eschatology and the desire for renewal of the Church emerging out of northern Europe. Among his circle were Antonio Minturno, tutor of the sons of Ettore Pignatelli; Mariano Accardo, who corresponded with Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Tommaso Bellorusso, apostolic protonotary and member of the Confraternità imperiale dei Sette Angeli, a humanist and renewal circle which (under the patronage of Charles V) was based at the Chiesa dei Sette Angeli in Palermo. This circle was already in receipt of the Valdesianism which Spatafora would later more fully embrace.

His works (such as Quattro orationi di M. Bartolomeo Spathafhora di Moncata, gentil’huomo venetiano. L’una in morte del serenissimo Marc’Antonio Trivisano. L’altra nella creazione del serenissimo Francesco Veniero principe di Venetia, et una in difesa della servitù. L’altra in difesa della discordia, published by Giacomo Ruscelli in Venice in 1554) were full of biblical references, an indicator which Carmen (DBI) suggests points to an internal struggle and search for more satisfactory spiritual answers.

He found a guide in his paternal aunt, Bartolomea, abbess of a Cistercian monastery, Santa Maria dell'Alto. He was also heavily influenced by the sermons of Bernardino Ochino, the Beneficio di Cristo and by reading Juan de Valdés. In December 1541, he married his first cousin, Violante, a union which made Spatafora financially comfortable (his brother, Pietro, would marry Laura, another of their uncle Giacomo's daughters). The couple moved into the palazzo of Violante's father (and Spatafora's uncle), Giacomo: they had two children Pietro Paolo, born on 28 June 1543, and, Giacoma Melchiorra, born between 1544 and 1546.

After his marriage, Spatafora was engaged in the commercial affairs of his family, managing their real estate, including through the aftereffects of the significant earthquake of 1542. The years 1543-1547 were critical ones for the family. The city of Messina and in particular the university attempted to exercise claims in competition with the civil jurisdiction given to Francesco Spatafora, baron of Venetico, on the land of Rometta. Bartolomeo was sent to defend the family cause before the Emperor, then in Regensburg (Ratisbon), Bavaria. At the same time, the family was involved in a struggle to regain the barony of Ferla. Eventually, the dispute was resolved by the marriage of Francesco's daughter, Mattia, with the possessor of the barony, his second cousin, Girolamo Moncada. (Their son, Cesare Alfonso would, in any case, be the last Moncada baron of Ferla, which passed through a female line to the Giramaldi family, and thence by purchase to the Tarallo barons of Baida). On the same journey, then, Bartolomeo was required to obtain a papal dispensation for Mattia’s marriage to Moncada.

Spatafora travelled to Regensburg in the summer of 1546. In the autumn of the same year he was in Rome as the guest of Vittoria Colonna, and so exposed to her literary, artistic and spiritual circle. Spatafora found the influence of Pietro Carnesecchi, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Marcantonio Flaminio and Girolamo Seripando an extension of the conclusions which his own circle had come to in Messina. Through a fellow Sicilian, Giovanni Antonio Buglio (baron of Burgio, then in the service of Ottavio Farnese), Spatafora also met Cardinal Reginald Pole. By the time he left Rome he had forged direct relations with the nephews of Paul III: Ottavio and his brother the Cardinal, Alessandro Farnese.

In 1547 Spatafora, charged with heresy by the Sicilian Inquisition (a dependency of the Spanish Inquisition), was declared in default (in absentia) and excommunicated. His property was therefore confiscated. Unable to return home, he appealed to Pole, who requested Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, prince-bishop of Trento intervene with the island's inquisitors. It was to no avail. By December 1548, despite the protests of the inquisitor of the island, Paul III took the case under his personal purview, assigning it to a commission made up of cardinals Pole, Francesco Sfondrati and Marcello Cervini. Though relieved in Rome, the autonomy of Sicily effectively meant that Spatafora remained in exile.

The fact that his uncle, Giacomo, was Venetian consul in Messina, became a matter of importance. On 26 January, 1549, Spatafora applied to the Venetian Republic to be recognized, for all intents and purposes, as a member of the Maggior Consiglio. While this provided him with some protection, allowing him to remain in exile in Venice, the involvement of some members of his family in anti-Imperial conspiracies, and the politics of both the Empire (which was locked in a struggle with Lutheranism and against the Farnese Papacy) and the island meant that Spatafora remained persona non grata in Sicily. On 3 July 1549, in the midst of a crackdown on the Sicilian nobility, the viceroy Juan de Vega (whose wife Eleonora Osorio had close connection to Ignatius Loyola) wrote to Charles V praising the Sicilian inquisitor's good zeal and warning the sovereign of the strong support Spatafora continued to enjoy in the Roman Curia.

In Venice, he made a living, and emerges as a ‘gentleman’, in 1552 breaking into international attention with publications such as his discourse on slavery. In 1550 he had been granted patrician rank, and maintained a close relationship with Francesco Venier (who was Doge from 1554-1556).

The Abbess, Bartolomea came to the defense of her nephew, soliciting the support of Loyola and the Jesuit order. In a letter 14 April 1548, Ignatius Loyola wrote to Gerolamo Domenech (who Salvo describes as ‘the spiritual father of the viceroy and his family’, DBI), inquiring about Bartolomeo's situation and pleading the cause of his acquittal. It was to no immediate avail. It was not until 1555 that de Vega permitted the re-examination of his case. While awaiting in Venice for the restoration of his possessions, however, Carafa was enthroned as Pope Paul IV, commencing a new and even more severe round of repression. In August 1556 Spatafora was arrested in Venice by order of the Roman Inquisition, and imprisoned in Rome. In August 1559, at the death of the pontiff, a popular uprising saw the Roman prisons of the Inquisition assaulted – Spatafora was among those freed. For the next three months he took refuge with Giulia Gonzaga in Naples. By 30 November, he was in Scilla preparing to return to Messina. The next year he was confirmed to the position of Venetian consul in Messina, and 1561 he was elected juror.

Little is known about the last years of life, but we know that Spatafora died in Messina in 1566, a few years after his aunt, who died in 1563. Giulia Gonzaga died the same year, leading to the emergence of her correspondence and the subsequent condemnation of Pietro Carnesecchi.

Sources:

Abbadessa, G., ‘Bartolomeo Spatafora: oratore siciliano del secolo XVI’, in Archivio storico messinese, s. 3, 1939-1948, vol. 1, pp. 165-172.

Caponetto, Salvatore, Studi sulla Riforma in Italia, Firenze 1987

Caponetto, Salvatore, Un seguace di Juan de Valdès - l'oratore siciliano Bartolomeo Spatafora, Arti Grafiche "L'alpina", 1940.

Firpo, M & D. Marcatto (a cura di), I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi. Edizione critica, voll. I–II, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Città del Vaticano 1998–2000.

Gallo, C.D., Gli Annali della città di Messina, a cura di A. Vayola, I, Messina 1877.

Salvo, Carmen, ‘Spatafora, Bartolomeo’, DBI 93 (2018).

Salvo, Carmen, ‘Tra valdesiani e gesuiti: gli Spatafora di Messina’, in Rivista storica italiana CX (1997), 2, pp. 541-601

Salvo, Carmen, Dalla spada alla fede. Storia di una famiglia feudale: gli Spatafora (secoli XIII-XVI), Catania 2009.

Salvo, Carmen, Monache a Santa Maria dell’Alto. Donne e fede a Messina nei secoli XV e XVI, Roma 1995

San Martino de Spucches, F., La storia dei feudi e dei titoli nobiliari in Sicilia, I-X, Palermo 1923-1941.