Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e l'ultima fase del concilio di Trento. Atti del convegno "Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e l'ultima fase del Concilio di Trento." Trento, 5-6 giugno 2009 (review)

Abstract

cardinale Giovanni Morone e l'ultima fase del concilio di Atti del convegno Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e l'ultima fase del Concilio di Trento. Trento, 5-6 giugno 2009. Edited by Massimo Firpo and Ottavia Niccoli. [Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Quaderni, 80.] (Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino. 2010. Pp. 293. euro23,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-815-13811-8.) This volume illuminates significant facets of one of the most prominent clerics in early-modern Italy, Cardinal Giovanni Morone. Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcano blazed the trail leading to the sophisticated, nuanced portrait of Morone that emerged over the past thirty years, and the essays here collected represent a substantial further contribution. All who study the age of the Council of Trent will find this book valuable. In the introduction, Firpo and coeditor Ottavia Niccoli set the stage perfectly for the excellent studies that follow. Firpo and Niccoli insist that Morone, as legate to the final sessions at the council, beautifully reflects the diversity and complexity- if not to say the contradictions- of the sixteenthcentury Church. Readers learn thereafter of interesting twists in the work of Morone after the election of Pope Pius IV until the death of the cardinal in 1580. Elena Bonora, Umberto Mazzone, Alain Talion, and Alessandro Paris focused their fine studies on the well-established political savvy of Morone and his diplomatic relationships, but related some surprises. Morone, the great ecclesiastical politician and diplomat, apparently was manipulated by the very pope who rehabilitated him when negotiations with the Hapsburgs required it. Political expethency seemingly determined a great deal of his own operation as legate at Trent, as he attempted to divide adversaries, and to forge compromise when necessary with unlikely partners- like the cardinal of Lorraine- to secure the papal agenda. Some of Morone's closer collaborators were politically suspect in the papal curia such as the pro-imperial Cristoforo Madruzzo, who strongly criticized Pope Paul IV's early appointments of cardinals. So, when Morone stared down the barrel of an inquisitorial investigation, his enemies were apparently motivated by an anti-imperial political agenda, not just by Paul IV's storied intransigence toward heresy. Likewise, when the path for Morone to the papal throne was blocked, it probably had as much to do with the political role he had played as with his infamous trial before the Roman inquisition. Gigliola Fragnito, Lucia Felici, and Maurizio Sangalli have contributed rich works on the reform commitments exhibited by Morone in relationships with Ludovico Beccadelli; Egidio Fosearan, O.P.; and St. Carlo Borromeo.They found Morone taking sides at times with pope and curia against members of the spirituali on significant reform matters while assisting to secure, through publication, the ideas of its most prominent members: Gasparo Contarmi and Reginald Pole. Morone may thus have spent his last years struggling to reconcile pro-papal activities against fidelity to his intellectual, cultural, and religious patrimony. Surely, the best essay in this volume is Sangalli's contribution on Morone's interaction with Borromeo. …