[3] Since the ship had sailed westward around the world, in the same direction as the apparent motion of the sun in the sky, the sailors had experienced one fewer sunrise than a stationary observer.

In a letter to encourage a missed friend who had become a hermit, Contarini late recounted an event in 1511 where, following Confession with a wise and holy monk, he had a peace-giving epiphany that reliance on penances and heroic asceticism was not necessary for salvation, instead of simple faith, hope and charity: Christ's passion was "more than sufficient."

[4] In 1535, Paul III unexpectedly made the secular diplomat a cardinal in order to bind an able man of evangelical disposition to the Roman interests.

Paul III received favorably Contarini's Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia, which was circulated among the cardinalate, but it remained a dead letter.

Contarini in a letter to his friend Cardinal Reginald Pole (dated 11 November 1538) says that his hopes had been wakened anew by the pope's attitude.

Though the princes stood aloof, the theologians and the emperor were for peace, so the main articles were put forth in a formula, Evangelical in thought and Catholic in expression.

Contarini's theological advisor was Tommaso Badia; his own position is shown in a treatise on justification, composed at Regensburg, which in essential points is Evangelical, differing only in the omission of the negative side and in being interwoven with the teaching of Aquinas.

Meanwhile, Rome had drifted further into reaction, and Contarini died while legate at Bologna, at a time when the Inquisition had driven many of his friends and fellows in conviction into exile.

Contarini's book De magistratibus et republica venetorum (Paris, 1543) is an important source for the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice's unique system of government.

[8] This magisterial work, written during his time as an ambassador to Charles V, extols the various institutions of the Venetian state in a manner designed to emphasize harmony, fairness and serenity.

Probably written for a foreign, courtly audience, this work functions as the source for the everlasting propagation of the "myth of Venice" as a stable, unchanging and prosperous society.

His depiction of how members of the council were elected to the senate, for example, aimed to emphasise the way the electoral system prevented factionalism from occurring, instead making sure that “public benefits are largely extended among the citizens” rather than narrowly amongst “one family” .

An elaborate lottery is described as giving the maximum amount of chance in appointing patricians to particular offices, and care is taken to point out if two of one family are standing for similar posts.

He creates an image of disparate individuals, with factions broken up by the guiding hand of the law, working to ensure those in positions of importance are fairly chosen from their number and without the capacity to serve the interests of a smaller group.

Things like the “kingly ornaments” which were “always purple garments or cloth of gold”, both very ostentatious assertions of wealth and power, were to ensure he was “recompensed” for his “limitation of authority” .

Indeed, as Edward Muir[11] points out, “by the sixteenth century virtually every word, gesture and act that the doge made in public was subject to legal and ceremonial regulation” .