The Heretic Who Saved the Church: Cardinal Giovanni Morone and the Origins of the Counter-Reformation

Description

machine translation of L’eretico che salvò la Chiesa: Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e le origini della Controriforma

Giovanni Morone (1509-80) had a seemingly paradoxical existence: twice papal legate to the Council of Trent—which he closed in 1563, saving it from the failure it seemed destined for—he was the subject of serious accusations of heresy that led to two inquisitorial trials ordered by the popes-inquisitors of his time, Paul IV (who imprisoned him for over two years in Castel Sant'Angelo) and Pius V. Only the esteem and support of the Habsburg sovereigns (King Philip II of Spain and Emperor Ferdinand I) allowed him to escape condemnation and return to the forefront of the major events of his time: from the alliance that led to the Battle of Lepanto to the crisis of the Republic of Genoa. An unparalleled diplomat trained in Milan under the Sforza family, a key figure in the religious talks in Germany shaken by Luther, a friend of Vittoria Colonna and patron of Michelangelo, a reformist bishop, Morone was a man of great European prestige, whose memory has nevertheless been revived only as an exemplary Catholic prelate, removing the dramatic internal conflicts within the ecclesiastical hierarchy that marked his life and had a decisive influence in shaping the identity of the Catholic Church during the long age of the Counter-Reformation.

Giovanni Morone's story is paradoxical. He was papal legate both at the first failed convocation of the Council of Trent in 1542-43 and at the last one in 1562-63, when the greatest modern historian of that synod, Hubert Jedin, credited him with saving it from the failure to which it seemed destined. Between those two convocations, however, he was the subject of serious accusations of heresy, which led to the inquisitorial trial prepared in secret for years by Gian Pietro Carafa and formalized in June 1555, the day after his papal election. The trial was made public two years later with the sensational arrest of “such a great cardinal, [...] certain to be pope,” as Henry II of France put it. Only the death of the inquisitor pope allowed Morone to escape conviction. And only the support of King Philip II of Spain allowed him to leave Castel Sant'Angelo after 27 months of imprisonment and participate in the conclave of Pius IV, his friend and fellow citizen, who a few weeks later, in early March 1560, pronounced his acquittal. The paradox of that illustrious cardinal, whose historical and historiographical profile alternates between the image of a heretic and that of a “bulwark of the Catholic faith,” would continue in the years to come, as demonstrated by the resumption of the trial prepared (though never implemented) by another inquisitor pope, Pius V. This book finally reconstructs a clear and coherent profile of a historical figure of extraordinary depth.