Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy William V. Hudon Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy. By Paul V. Murphy. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2007. Pp. xxi, 290. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-813-21478-8). Those—like me—who have read and enjoyed Paul V. Murphy's essays in the Sixteenth Century Journal, in several edited volumes, and in this journal now have just what they hoped for: Murphy's thorough analysis covering the whole life of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505–63). He has made a first-class contribution to the history of sixteenth-century Italy. In six chapters here, Murphy traces the background and career of Gonzaga, placing both fully in context. A handsome, powerful Renaissance patrician, Gonzaga was fluent in the humanist culture prized by his social class. After studies in Bologna, entry into the circle of Reginald Pole, plus further studies in Mantua and Venice, he became the episcopal administrator of Mantua in 1521 and cardinal at the age of 22. He built an enormous library of humanist works, including texts on theology, patristics, canon law, and apologetics, the latter in both Protestant and Catholic voices. Murphy described him as a lifelong learner, for in addition to this book collecting—and presumably, reading—the prelate regularly sought out tutors. Present at the beginnings of what Hubert Jedin and others called "Catholic Reform," Gonzaga worked inconsistently to actualize diocesan reform. One reality that spurred such inconsistency in him and in others like him was personal pursuit of thoroughly unreformed behavior. Since he amassed an awesome portfolio of benefices delivering some 35,000 ducats annually, Gonzaga's reacting badly to nepotism under Paul III was rather like the pot calling the kettle black. Still, his modest reform initiatives in Mantua between 1533 and 1561 gained the good will of [End Page 826] prelates such as Gasparo Contarini and Gian Pietro Carafa. Gonzaga focused his diocesan reform on monastic life and on the improvement of local clergy, and he turned out to be fully capable of showing both severity and pragmatism in handling the failings of his human charges. When considering Gonzaga's connection with the contemporary so-called spirituali, Murphy finds it difficult to pin his subject down. Gonzaga exhibited the theological and religious influence of the group, but not consistently. He disapproved open preaching of Protestant doctrine on grace, but he was slow to discipline those who did. It was in artistic commissions and in work as a regent—beginning in 1540 for Francesco, the seven-year-old son of Federico of Mantua—that Gonzaga's patrician credentials were most apparent. There, Murphy explains, he understood his role perfectly: to maintain the status of his family as a clan of great lords. In his final years, Gonzaga served with Girolamo Seripando as legate to the Council of Trent. Murphy challenges the view of Jedin, arguing that the legates were not the source of problems encountered in the last phase of the council, but skillful diplomats facing an impossible balancing act. For Murphy, here at Trent the patrician and the reformer came together. Gonzaga sought, for instance, a limit on papal authority over the Council without any reduction in divinely instituted papal power. He and Seripando tried, Murphy insists, to preserve conciliar confidence in papal commitment to comprehensive reform. If all this sounds a little familiar, there is good reason. Intrepid scholars such as Giuseppe Alberigo, Eric Cochrane, Paul Grendler, and Adriano Prosperi began dramatic reconsideration of characters like Gonzaga long ago. Quite an edifice has been built upon their foundations by the rest of us fellow travelers, including Murphy. His work is another substantial brick in the wall. Prelates like Gonzaga worked amid competing commitments. The interrelationships they established were varied, multifaceted, and rather fluid. The positions they took and tactics they used were anything but uniform. Individual lives, groups of friends, political entities, and long-lasting institutions filled with contradictions defying customary historical models are the stuff of revision. A powerful, persuasive contribution to necessary revision lies here. William V. Hudon Bloomsburg University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of...