Pope Pius V

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Pius V (1504–72), Dominican friar, bishop, and pope. Although his reign lasted only six years, he was one of the most important popes of the Counter-Reformation. Michael Ghislieri, who was born at Bosco, became a Dominican at the age of fourteen in the priory of Voghera. After his ordination he was lecturer in philosophy and theology for sixteen years, after which he held the offices of master of novices and prior. His reforming zeal led to his being chosen as Commissary General of the Inquisition by Cardinal Caraffa in 1551; when Caraffa became pope, Ghislieri was appointed bishop of Nepi and Sutri in 1556; in 1557 he became inquisitor general and a cardinal. Later he was transferred to the ravaged diocese of Mondovi (Piedmont), which he restored to comparative peace and order, but was recalled to Rome by Pius IV who had succeeded the fiery Paul IV (Caraffa), but whose nepotism was as famous as the intransigence of his predecessor. Ghislieri's opposition to this abuse did not prevent him from being elected pope in 1565 on the death of Pius IV. He took the name of Pius V and made clear his intention of being a vigorous reformer by enforcing both the letter and the spirit of the decrees of the Council of Trent. His reform began at Rome. The largesse usually scattered among the crowd after the coronation was given instead to hospitals and those in real need; instead of a banquet for the magnates there was relief for the poorer convents. He transformed his household, helped in this necessary task by Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan. His holiness was recognized by the Romans, who experienced his radical reform of the morals of the city by a drastic purge of the curia, the virtual elimination of brigandry and bull-fighting, and firm legislation against prostitution.

For the needs of the Church as a whole Pius V made important decisions. Bishops had to reside in their dioceses, religious orders to be reformed. The Breviary (purged of many legends of the saints) was reformed, as was the Roman Missal, whose use was made obligatory except where there was a prescription of 200 years in favour of local rites. The Roman Catechism was completed and translated into many languages, and catachetical instruction of the young made obligatory for all parish priests. Thomas Aquinas was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1567 and a new edition of his works published in 1570.

In international matters the two greatest forces which Pius V faced were the Ottoman Empire and the Protestant Reformation. Against the latter he used the Inquisition in Italy and Spain, but in England his intervention was more controversial and less effective. In answer to queries from various quarters about clarifying the situation of Roman Catholics in England with regard to Queen Elizabeth, he reissued the bull ‘In Cena Domini’ (1568), which claimed some papal suzerainty over secular rulers; after repeated attempts in various quarters to reconcile Elizabeth to the Church of Rome had failed, she was excommunicated by the bull ‘Regnans in excelsis’ of 1570 which absolved her subjects from allegiance to her. Although defended in some quarters, and the fact of its promulgation doubted in others, there can be no doubt that it reflected attitudes of the medieval papacy which were inapt in 1570. It proceeded from insufficient understanding of the situation of English Catholics; it made their position much more difficult; it gave their opponents in the government a wonderful opportunity, exploited to the full, of accusing them of disloyalty and treason. It was the last time that a pope would exercise anything like a ‘deposing power’.

In opposing the further penetration of the Turks into Europe Pius met with astounding success. A combined fleet of papal, Spanish, and Venetian ships under Don John of Austria decisively defeated the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto. This broke their power in the Mediterranean. It was the last, but one of the more successful efforts by the papacy to contain and defeat the power of Islam in a new crusade. For its organization, coherence, and achievement Pius with his total commitment by frequent prayer, fasting, and other activity was largely responsible. His monastic austerity, personal devotion, and kindness to the poor and sick, his general reforming activities and his defence of Christendom against Islam must be set beside his misreading of the situation in England. He was canonized in 1712. A fine contemporary portrait survives at Rome and a bronze sculpture of 1697 decorates his tomb in the basilica of St. Mary Major. Feast: formerly 5 May, now 30 April.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• AA.SS. Maii I (1680), 617–714; A. Van Ortroy, ‘Le pape saint Pie V’, Anal Boll., xxxiii (1914), 187–215; Lives by G. Grente (1914), C. M. Antony (1911), and L. Browne-Olf (1943). See also L. Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, vols. xvii and xviii; P. Hughes, The Reformation in England (3 vols., 1950–4); N. Lemaitre, Saint Pie V (1994), O.D.P., pp. 268–9

(7 Jan. 1566 — 1 May 1572)
At the nineteen-day conclave following Pius IV's death the rigorist party led by Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1538 — 84) achieved the surprise election of Michele Ghislieri. Born of poor parents on 17 Jan. 1504 at Bosco, near Alessandria, Antonio Ghislieri was a shepherd until he became a Dominican at 14, adopting the name Michele. After studying at Bologna, being ordained (1528), and lecturing for sixteen years at Pavia, he was made inquisitor for Como and Bergamo. His zeal brought him to the notice of Cardinal Giampietro Carafa, on whose recommendation Julius III appointed him commissary general of the Roman Inquisition in 1551—he had by then been involved in the Inquisition at local level for a number of years. When Carafa became Pope Paul IV, he named his protégé bishop of Nepi and Sutri (1556), cardinal priest of Sta Maria sopra Minerva on 15 Mar. 1557, and finally inquisitor general (1558). With Pius IV his intimacy with the Carafa family and severity as inquisitor brought him into disfavour, but as protector of the Barnabites and bishop of Mondovì (Piedmont: both since 1560) he devoted himself wholeheartedly to reform. His earnestness, asceticism, and evangelical poverty suggested even to the Spanish ambassador that he was the pope called for by the times.

Pius made it his avowed objective to put into effect, in every sphere, the decrees of the council of Trent. A man who always thought and acted from a spiritual viewpoint, he made no change in his mortified style of life, continuing to wear a friar's rough undergarments beneath his papal robes. He imposed the strictest standards on his greatly reduced court, and in a series of decrees sought to stamp out blasphemy, profanation of holy days, and public immorality in Rome. To contemporaries he seemed to want to turn the city into a monastery. Although prevailed on to make a grand-nephew, the Dominican Michele Bonelli, a cardinal and use him as secretary of state, he set his face against nepotism and gave his relatives the minimum support. He forbade (29 Mar. 1567) the reinvestiture of fiefs reverting to the holy see; any future alienation of land in the papal state was banned with the severest penalties. More positively, he enforced clerical residence, and conducted a systematic review of religious orders, abolishing some, like the Humiliati (1571), which had become degenerate. The cardinals he named were all conscientiously chosen, and he appointed a commission (3 May 1567) to examine episcopal appointments. In compliance with Trent he published the Roman catechism (1566), the revised Roman breviary (1568), and the Roman missal (1570); he also set up a commission (1569) to revise the Vulgate. He restricted the use of indulgences and dispensations, remodelled the penitential system, and in an effort to promote the Tridentine reforms in Italy personally visited the Roman basilicas, arranged for a commission to visit the parishes, and appointed apostolic visitors for the papal state and Naples. He also took steps to have the decrees of the council of Trent circulated throughout the world as far as Mexico, Goa, and the Congo.

In his eagerness to extirpate heresy Pius relied heavily on the Inquisition, building a new palace for it, sharpening its rules and practice, and personally attending its sessions. Under him the number of persons accused and sentenced, often men of culture and distinction, soared, and as a result he could congratulate himself on having kept Italy free from any trace of Protestantism. Even so, he blamed himself for his leniency. He was no less harsh on the Jews, permitting some for commercial reasons to live in ghettos in Rome and Ancona, but otherwise expelling them from the papal state. In Mar. 1571 he established the Congregation of the Index as a new administrative department with executive powers, with the result that hundreds of printers fled to Germany and Switzerland. In Oct. 1576 he condemned 79 theses of Michael Baius (1513 — 89), the Flemish precursor of Jansenism who had pessimistic views on the Fall and need for grace, but in the same year (11 Apr.) declared the great Dominican thinker Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 — 74) a doctor of the church and had a new edition of his writings published (1570).

Pius' interventions on the international stage often lacked political realism. His rehabilitation of the disgraced Carafa family and his uncompromising stand against state control of the church (expressed in his reissue in a stricter form in 1568 of the bull In coena Domini, read aloud on Maundy Thursday and listing ecclesiastical censures reserved to the pope) alienated the Catholic rulers whose support he needed. Even before his stiffening of its terms, and still more after, the bull was a constant irritant to secular sovereigns because of its exalted claims for the papacy. His excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth I of England (25 Feb. 1570), the last such sentence on a reigning monarch by a pope, was an ineffective anachronism and made matters worse for her Catholic subjects; it also antagonized Spain, France, and the empire. In France he assisted the regent Catherine de Médicis financially and militarily against the Huguenots, only to be disillusioned when they were granted freedom of religion by the peace of Saint-Germain (8 Aug. 1570). His relations with Maximilian II (1564 — 76), strained because of his equivocal stance towards Protestantism, reached breaking-point when Pius trespassed on the emperor's sphere by nominating Cosimo I as grand duke of Tuscany (5 Mar. 1570). With Philip II of Spain (1556 — 98), his most natural ally, he continually clashed because of the control exercised over the church by the crown in Spain; complete rupture was avoided only by the tireless efforts of his nuncio, Archbishop Giambattista Castagna ( Urban VII). His most ambitious and successful enterprise was the formation, with Venice and Spain, of a holy league against the Turks; a combined naval force met the Turkish fleet in the Gulf of Corinth on 7 Oct. 1571 and inflicted on it at Lepanto a defeat which shattered Turkish superiority in the Mediterranean. Attributing the victory to the intercession of the BVM, he declared 7 Oct. the feast of Our Lady of Victory, later to be changed by Gregory XIII to the feast of the Rosary.

Single-minded, devout to the point of intolerance, relentless in his persecution of heresy, Pius did not long survive the victory. A great reform pope whose work was to bear fruit for decades and who left a distinctive Tridentine impress on the church, he was beatified on 1 May 1672 by Clement X, canonized on 22 May 1712 by Clement XI. Feast 30 Apr..

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Pius V (1504-1572) was pope from 1566 to 1572. An austere man, he put the decrees of the Council of Trent into effect and thus occupies a central position in the Catholic Reformation.

Antonio Ghislieri, who became Pius V, was born on Jan. 17, 1504, at Bosco Marengo near Alessandria in northern Italy. He was from a poor family. At 14 years of age Ghislieri entered the Order of Preachers and took the name Michele. He received his higher education as a friar at Bologna. In 1528 he was ordained at Genoa.

For more than 20 years Ghislieri gained a wide breadth of experience as professor of theology, superior in his order, and member of the Inquisition in Pavia, Como, and Bergamo. His dedication to the work of the Inquisition brought him to the attention of officials in Rome, including Giampietro Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV. In 1551 Pope Julius III appointed Ghislieri commissary general of the Roman Inquisition. Under Paul IV, Ghislieri was given greater responsibilities: in 1556 the bishopric of Sutri and Nepi, in 1557 the cardinalate, and in 1558 the post of grand inquisitor of the Roman Church. Pope Pius IV assigned him to the see of Mondovi in 1560. On Jan. 7, 1566, Ghislieri was elected pope and took the name Pius V.

Pius V had a twofold preoccupation: the preservation of the purity of the faith and the advancement of Church reform. He used the Inquisition, although more moderately than Paul IV; severely punished bishops who remained absent from their sees; examined the spiritual tenor of religious orders; implemented the decrees of the Council of Trent; and simplified to the point of austerity the style of life of the papal household. In 1566 Pius V issued the Roman Catechism.

Pius V influenced the liturgical life of the Church in a monumental way. In 1568 he issued the Breviarium Romanum and in 1570 the Missale Romanum, thereby removing the multiplicity of forms in the breviary and in the Mass and creating, with minor exceptions, a liturgical uniformity throughout the Church. In 1567 he made the greatest theologian of his order, St. Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church.

In his foreign policies Pius V experienced both failure and success. Misjudging the situation in England, he seriously blundered in 1570, when he announced that English Catholics no longer owed allegiance to Queen Elizabeth. His action worsened the situation of England's persecuted Catholics. Against the Turks he was successful. He built up the Holy League and on Oct. 7, 1571, a fleet of Spanish, Venetian, and papal ships defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth. Pius V died on May 1, 1572. He was canonized in 1712 by the Church.

Further Reading

The best modern comprehensive study of Pius V, though recent research calls for some modifications, is in Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, vols. 17 and 18, translated by Ralph F. Kerr (1929), with a full bibliography and list of sources. For background consult John P. Dolan, Catholicism: An Historical Survey (1968), and Karl H. Dannenfeldt, The Church of the Renaissance and Reformation (1970).

Additional Sources

Anderson, Robin, St. Pius V, a brief account of his life, times, virtues & miracles, Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1978.

Pius V, Saint, 1504-72, pope (1566-72), an Italian named Michele Ghislieri, b. near Alessandria; successor of Pius IV. He was ordained in the Dominicans (1528) and became celebrated for his austerity. Paul IV made him cardinal (1557) and inquisitor general; under his direction the Roman Inquisition reached a new level of efficiency. On his election he set about putting the decrees of the Council of Trent (see Trent, Council of) into effect; he thus occupies a key position in the Counter Reformation, for his activity in those years just after the council insured the permanence of its work. He governed the Papal States with severity. St. Pius was the first pope after the Reformation to put Catholicism on the political offensive. He excommunicated (1570) Queen Elizabeth I of England and forbade English Roman Catholics to give her their allegiance, a serious political mistake on his part since it had the effect of rallying the English to Elizabeth. He united Venice and Spain with him against the Turks, an alliance that helped to bring the victory of Austria over the Turks at Lepanto (see Lepanto, battle of). He has been much attacked as a persecutor of heresy, but he was certainly not privy to the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in France. He was succeeded by Gregory XIII. Feast: May 6.

Pius V (POPE) (Antonio Ghislieri; 1504–1572; reigned 1566–1572), born 17 January 1504 at Bosco Marengo, near Alessandria; elected pope 7 January 1566; died 1 May 1572; beatified 10 May 1672; canonized 22 May 1712. From poor circumstances, Antonio Ghislieri entered the Dominican Order at age fourteen at Voghera and changed his name to Michele. He studied at Bologna and Genoa, was ordained a priest in 1528, and taught philosophy and theology at Pavia until 1544, when he was made inquisitor for Como, and later Bergamo. Noted for austerity, intelligence, independence, incorruptibility, and rigorous fidelity to Roman Catholic orthodoxy, he was appointed to many offices within his order and soon found favor among cardinals urging strong measures to combat the Lutheran heresy in Italy. Appointed high commissioner of the Inquisition in 1551 by Julius III (reigned 1550–1555), Ghislieri would zealously promote its work until his death, prosecuting persons without respecting social or clerical status or privileges to ensure an Italy purified of heresy. Elected bishop of Sutri and Nepi in 1556 and made prefect of the Palace of the Inquisition, he was made cardinal and appointed Inquisitor General (Grand Inquisitor) of the Roman Church the following year (1557), but removed himself from Rome to the diocese of Mondovi upon the election of Pope Pius IV (reigned 1559–1565).

Elected pope in 1566 by the faction led by Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (nephew of Pope Pius IV), he set about implementing the decrees of the Council of Trent, demanding that bishops reside in their dioceses and clerics in their ministries and that nuns and regular clergy be cloistered. He reformed many religious orders, and in the Papal States, he rigorously enforced the prohibition against the alienation of ecclesiastical properties. Responding to the Council of Trent's call for a catechism and standard liturgical texts, he had published the Roman Catechism (1566), the revised Roman Breviary (1568), and the Roman Missal (1570), and he set up the Congregation of the Index (1571) to examine books published in Italy. An extreme reformer of morality, he sought to cleanse Rome of blasphemy, cursing, adultery, witchcraft, sodomy, and all vestiges of paganism; he banished prostitution and outlawed bullfighting (without success in Spain). At the same time, he promoted constant preaching, the cult of Mary and the Rosary, and eucharistic devotion. Zealous to maintain a purified religion in the Papal States, Pius restricted Jewish merchants to their quarters at Rome and Ancona, expelling all others. Uncompromising with heretics and championing orthodoxy, he condemned seventy-six theses of Michael Baius (1567), and canonized Thomas Aquinas as the fifth doctor of the Latin Church, also seeing to the publication of his works.

Pius's rigor carried over into foreign affairs. He strongly supported Catherine de Médicis in France against the Huguenots in the Wars of Religion (1562–1598), but was angered at the tolerance later extended to Huguenots in the Peace of Saint-Germain (1570). He urged Emperor Maximilian II (ruled 1564–1576) to prosecute heretics vigorously in the empire, but was irate after receiving little satisfaction. He supported the Duke of Alba's efforts in the Netherlands to suppress heresy, but vigorously challenged King Philip II's efforts to exert control over the church in Spain. Other monarchs felt his fury. He ill-advisedly excommunicated and deposed Queen Elizabeth I with the bull Regnans in Excelsis (1570), demanding that Catholic subjects withdraw obedience from her under pain of excommunication; he received little support for this. Pius's unilateral, often counterproductive, actions in foreign affairs seemed to take little account of political realities. Yet he attained success on 7 October 1571: joining his naval forces with Venice and Spain under the command of Don John of Austria, he brought about the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Lepanto. Pius is said to have had a vision that Christian forces were victorious there. The failure to follow up this victory, however, would later prove a strategic mistake. Pius's remains lie in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Bibliography

Lemaître, Nicole. Saint Pie. Paris, 1994.

Pastor, Ludwig von. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Vol. XVII. St. Louis, 1929.

—FREDERICK J. MCGINNESS

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