(14 May 1572 — 10 Apr. 1585)
Fourth son of a local merchant and an aristocratic mother, Ugo Boncompagni was born at Bologna on 1 Jan. 1502, graduated as doctor of laws at the university there, and remained as professor of law for eight years (1531 — 9). Although already in minor orders, in order to preserve the family name he deliberately had a natural son, Giacomo, whom he later made governor of Castel Sant'Angelo. In 1539 he went to Rome, was ordained when about 40, and under
Paul III became so highly regarded as a lawyer and administrator that he was given a succession of responsible judicial posts.
Paul IV appointed him to the commission for the reform of the church in 1556 and in the same year sent him on a diplomatic mission to France and then to Brussels (1557), and in July 1558 named him bishop of Vieste. From 1561 to 1563 he attended the council of Trent as an expert in canon law, and played a noteworthy part in drafting its decrees. In recognition of his services
Pius IV made him cardinal priest of S. Sisto on 12 Mar. 1565 and entrusted him with the important legation to Spain. Here he won the confidence of Philip II (1556 — 98), and the king's influence was largely responsible for securing his election at the exceptionally brief conclave—less than 24 hours—following
Pius V's death.
More easy-going and readier to compromise than Pius V, Gregory proved no less resolute in promoting the Tridentine decrees and Catholic reform; influenced in part by Carlo Borromeo (1538 — 84), he had exchanged his earlier worldliness for religious earnestness. An independent worker, he allowed only a restricted role to his closest adviser, Tolomeo Galli, the first papal secretary of state in the modern sense. He appointed a commission of cardinals to ensure that the decrees were carried out, and was particularly concerned that bishops should be carefully chosen and the duty of residence observed. One of his achievements was to transform the nunciatures, hitherto primarily diplomatic agencies, into instruments of church reform. This led him to establish new ones at places like Lucerne (1579), Graz (1580), and Cologne (1584) where the critical situation demanded direct representation of the holy see. In full agreement with the Tridentine view that reform was impossible without a well-trained clergy, he established colleges in Rome and other cities at vast expense, entrusting them, in the main, to the Jesuits (whose privileges he increased). In Rome he reconstructed and richly endowed (1572) the Roman College (later named after him the Gregorian University), secured the future of the German College, and established the English College (1579). He also founded a Greek, a Maronite, and an Armenian college, and a Hungarian college (later amalgamated with the German College). These famous seminaries, especially the German and English Colleges, were soon to bear rich fruit in a continuous flow of professionally equipped priests to their Protestant homelands.
Fervently concerned for the maintenance and restoration of Catholicism, Gregory gave the Counter-Reformation a more militant slant. When news of the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in France of Huguenots (23/4 Aug. 1572) reached Rome, he celebrated it with Te Deums and thanksgiving services as a victory for the church over infidelity as well as the defeat of political treachery; and he actively subsidized the Catholic League against the Huguenots. Even so, his efforts to get the decrees of Trent accepted in Catholic France met with disappointment. He encouraged Philip II of Spain to turn his attention to the Netherlands and Ireland, from which he hoped that an attack might be launched on Elizabeth I of England. When his dreams of an Irish invasion of England collapsed (1578 and 1579), he gave his personal support to the Ridolfi plot. In the Netherlands he had the satisfaction of seeing the southern provinces joining for the defence of the Catholic faith in the Union of Arras (6 Jan. 1579), but his negotiations with John III of Sweden (1568 — 92), who demanded concessions like clerical marriage, suppression of the invocation of saints, and communion in both kinds, came to nothing and the country remained Lutheran. His attempts, too, to secure the union of the Russian church with Rome broke down. Poland, however, was won over definitively to the church, while in Germany the expansion of Protestantism was arrested and much territory was recovered for Catholicism. Here he was assisted from 1573 by the German Congregation, a special commission of cardinals charged with fostering Catholicism in Germany. It was typical of him that, in order to ensure Catholic property rights in north-west Germany, he allowed the worldly Ernst of Bavaria, youngest son of Duke Albrecht V (1550 — 79), to accumulate as many as five bishoprics in defiance of the Tridentine prohibition of pluralism.
Gregory supported the Jesuits not only in Europe but in missionary work as far afield as India, China, Japan, and Brazil. He gave similar support to Franciscans and Augustinians in the Philippines, where he established the diocese of Manila. He approved (1575) the Congregation of the Oratory of Philip Neri (1515 — 95), and sanctioned (1580) the reform of the Discalced Carmelites by Teresa of Avila (1515 — 82). He organized the publication, as required by Trent, of an improved edition of the Corpus of Canon Law (1582), and was quick to recognize the importance for church history of the rediscovery (1578) of the Roman catacombs. Finally, his name remains associated with the reform of the Julian Calendar, projected under earlier popes but completed by a commission at the papal Villa Mondragone near Frascati on 24 Feb. 1582. The new calendar, involving the dropping of ten days (5 — 14 Oct. 1582) and a new rule for leap years, was adopted by Catholic states, but Protestant states did not follow suit for more than a century.
As well as fostering scholarship, Gregory was a considerable builder; he completed, for example, the Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuit order, comissioned four fountains, two of which are in the Piazza Navona, and started a great palace on the Quirinal as a summer residence. He was especially concerned to renew Rome so that the holy year of 1575 could be celebrated with particular splendour. His expenditure on such works, however, as well as on subsidies to Catholic princes and on his colleges and foundations, was crippling, and he was obliged to raise additional revenue from papal monopolies and customs. He also used his legal and administrative skills to obtain the reversion of papal lands whenever the title seemed defective. One of the results of this was widespread banditry caused by the dispossessed and disgruntled nobles, and in his latter years serious disorder and lawlessness came to prevail in the papal state and in Rome itself.
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Pius IV,
Paul IVNext (chronologically): Sixtus V,
Urban VII,
Gregory XIV
