book reviews 113 Adam Patrick Robinson The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509–1580). Between Council and Inquisition. Ashgate, Farnham 2012, xiv + 255 pp. ISBN 9781409417835. £65; US$124.95. The behaviour of Giovanni Morone, like that of Reginald Pole, puzzled both his contemporaries and later scholars. Strongly drawn at one point in their lives by the doctrine of justification by faith so elegantly formulated by Juan de Valdés, the two men remained loyal servants of the papacy and fell into line as soon as it was required of them. Were they, as both the Inquisition and the friends whom they abandoned implied, Protestants at heart who acted out of opportunism? Or had they always remained good Catholics for whom the Lutheran doctrine of salvation should be regarded as little more than an aberration? In the English-speaking world Cardinal Pole has been studied more than Cardinal Morone. Adam Patrick Robinson’s excellent The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509–1580) is thus particularly welcome. Morone’s career was distinguished from the outset. After studying briefly at the university of Padua he took up residence as bishop of Modena early in 1533, was made a cardinal in 1535, and in 1536 was dispatched as papal nuncio to the court of Ferdinand of Austria. It was here that he first exhibited his skills as a diplomat and in these years that he started to press for an ecclesiastical council. Surprisingly enough for a man whose attitude was generally so conciliatory, he was always sceptical about the benefits of colloquies between Catholics and Protestants, and his misgivings were confirmed by his experiences at Hagenau and Worms in 1540, at Regensburg in 1541, and at Speyer in 1542. As bishop of Modena he was called upon, in the second half of 1542, to investigate the rumours of religious dissent at the local Accademia. Although he had toyed with the idea of calling in the Inquisition he ultimately preferred a compromise. By then, moreover, he had met some of the leading spirituali who were attracted by justification by faith. He had encountered both the Venetian cardinal Gasparo Contarini who attended the Colloquy of Regensburg and would die shortly afterwards and, as he was trying to organise the great council to be held in Trent, Reginald Pole. Their influence was reflected in Morone’s choice of preachers in Modena and in the support he gave to the work which, together with the writings of Valdés, would be regarded as the handbook of the spirituali, the Beneficio di Cristo. When the Council of Trent finally opened in 1545 Morone, posted in Bologna, acted as an intermediary between Trent and Rome. He had to accept the coun- cil’s decisions on justification, pronounced in 1547, but by then his enemies had started to collect the evidence against him which would lead to his arrest ten years later. For the time being he was protected by the popes, first by the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/18712428-09401016 114 book reviews Farnese pope, Paul III, who died in 1549, and then by his successor Julius III. At the conclave held in 1555 Morone fell in with the majority and cast his vote in favour of Gian Pietro Carafa, the reorganiser of the Inquisition who held office as Pope Paul IV. His hatred of Morone, suspected of friendship with heretics, was intense and the cardinal was arrested on charges of heresy in 1557. He was kept in prison until 1559. Accused of a series of statements smacking of a Chris- tocentric solfidianism, Morone protested his good faith and refused the offer to abjure. What appears to have saved him was the death of Paul IV on 18 August 1559. Morone was released three days later. Under Pius IV, Carafa’s moderate successor Gian Angelo de’ Medici, Morone resumed his career. The Council of Trent was revived and he again played an important part. He insisted that his innocence of heresy be admitted by the new pope and his cardinals and that the decision be read in consistory, printed, published, and distributed throughout Europe. While many scholars suggest that the tradition of the spirituali had come to an end with the death of Cardinal Pole in 1558, Robinson points out that Morone and his new ally Girolamo Seripando managed to pursue it until 1563 when both Seripando and another former friend of Pole, Ercole Gonzaga, died. But in the last sessions of the Council of Trent Morone’s policy was characterised by his loyalty to the pope. When it came to deciding on the decrees concerning episcopal residence and ordination, for example, he supported the pope in his opposition to any mention of ius divinum which might curtail his own authority, and, with his gifts of diplomacy which enabled him to navigate between the French, the Spaniards, the emperor, and the pope, Morone finally steered the council to a close in 1563. It was largely because he was in such demand as a diplomat that Morone survived. He himself was in the running to succeed Pius IV on his death in 1565 but in the end, just as he had once voted for Carafa, he now voted for Michele Ghislieri who, as Pius V, would revive Carafa’s policies. The final trial and execution of Pietro Carnesecchi, one of the last of the spirituali, which might have led to the renewal of investigation into Morone himself, in fact left Morone’s reputation intact. The prestige he had attained at Trent and his use, even to Ghislieri, as a diplomat, guaranteed his security. Pius V died in 1572 and the last years of Morone’s life were spent under the pontificate of Gregory XIII who again called on him as a diplomat and involved him in the solution to the English question and dealings with the new queen Elizabeth. Morone died in 1580. Morone emerges from Robinson’s study as a moderate and conciliatory fig- ure, an effective reformer in his encouragement of education and his support of the Jesuits, and a brilliant, albeit sometimes reluctant, diplomat. Robinson’s general assessment of spirituali such as Morone and Pole can be applied to Church History and Religious Culture 94 (2014) 77–172.