Giovanni Francesco Commendone

Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone, papal diplomat

Giovanni Francesco Commendone (born March 17, 1523 in Venice , † December 26, 1584 in Padua ) was an Italian cardinal and papal nuncio .

Life

After training in the humanities and law at the University of Padua , he came to Rome in 1550 . The ambassador of Venice introduced him to Pope Julius III. before who appointed him one of his secretaries.

After completing various papal missions of minor importance, he accompanied Cardinal Legate Girolamo Dandino to the Netherlands , whereupon Pope Julius III made him. 1553 sent on an important mission to Queen Maria Tudor , who was just Edward VI. had succeeded on the English throne. He was to speak to the new queen about restoring the Catholic faith in England.

Commendone arrived in London on August 8, 1553, accompanied by Penning, a servant and confidante of Cardinal Reginald Pole . Despite being a devoted Catholic, Mary Tudor was surrounded by numerous opponents of papal authority who made it difficult for Commendone to have a secret conversation with her.

By chance he met John Lee, a relative of the Duke of Norfolk , and a bailiff whom he had met in Italy. Lee managed to arrange the conversation. Mary received Commendone kindly and expressed her desire to restore the Catholic faith and to recognize the spiritual authority of the Pope. However, she felt it wise to act slowly because of her powerful opponents. Commendone came to Rome on September 11th, informed the Pope of the news and at the same time presented him with a personal letter from the Queen.

Commendone retained the office of papal secretary under Pope Paul IV , who held him in high regard and appointed him bishop of Kefalonia and Zakynthos in 1555 in return for his services . In the summer of 1556 he accompanied Cardinal Legate Scipione Rebiba on a papal mission to the Netherlands, to the courts of Charles V , Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and of King Philip II of Spain , the husband of Queen Mary of England.

Commendone was assigned to remain as nuncio to Philip's court, but was recalled to Rome soon after his arrival in the Netherlands. On September 16 of the same year, the Pope sent him as an extraordinary legate to the governments of Urbino, Ferrara, Venice and Parma in order to obtain aid against the Spanish troops that occupied the Campagna and threatened Rome.

In 1560, when Pope Pius IV decided to reopen the Council of Trent , Commendone was sent as a legate to Germany to invite the Catholic and Protestant estates to the deliberations. He arrived in Vienna on January 3, 1561. After consulting with Emperor Ferdinand, he went to Naumburg on January 14th, where the Protestant estates held a religious meeting. He was accompanied by Delfino , who had been sent to Ferdinand as nuncio four months earlier and was still at the imperial court. After arriving in Naumburg on January 28th, they were heard by the Princely Assembly on February 5th. They urged the assembled Protestant estates to create the necessary Protestant representation in the Council of Trent to enable religious association, but all their efforts were unsuccessful. From Naumburg, Commendone traveled north to invite the stands from northern Germany. He traveled to Berlin via Leipzig and Magdeburg, where he arrived on February 19 and was warmly welcomed by Joachim von Munsterberg , Elector of Brandenburg. Joachim spoke respectfully of the Pope and the Catholic Church and expressed his desire for religious reconciliation. However, he did not promise to appear at the council. Here Commendone also met Joachim's son, the young Archbishop Sigismund von Magdeburg , who promised to appear at the council but did not keep his word.

After Berlin, Commendone visited Beeskow, Wolfenbüttel, Hanover, Hildesheim, Iburg, Paderborn, Cologne, Kleve, the Netherlands and Aachen. He invited all the booths he met in these places. From Aachen he turned to Lübeck with the intention of crossing the sea to invite the kings Frederick II of Denmark and Erik XIV of Sweden. However, the King of Denmark refused to receive the legate, while the King of Sweden invited him to England, where he intended to travel in the near future. Queen Elizabeth I of England had forbidden the papal nuncio Hieronimo Martinengo to cross the English Channel when he invited the queen to the council. So it was very unlikely that she would allow Commendone to travel to England. So he went to Antwerp and waited for further instructions from Rome. Then he was recalled by the Pope and returned to Italy via Lorraine and West Germany in December 1561. The numerous letters that Commendone wrote to Carlo Borromeo during this mission convey a picture of the church conditions in Germany at that time. These and others were published in Miscellanea di Storia Italiana (Turin, 1869, VI, 1-240).

In January 1563, the legates of the Council of Trent sent Commendone to Emperor Ferdinand in Innsbruck to negotiate some of the demands he had made to the council in his "Libel" ( Latin libellus , small book, tract ' ). In October of the same year Pius IV sent him as a legate to King Sigismund II August of Poland with instructions to get him to recognize the Tridentine decrees politically. Sigismund fulfilled the demands of Commendone and Bishop Hosius of Warmia and not only pushed through the Tridentine reforms, but also allowed the Jesuits , the reformers' most hated enemies, to enter Poland. Commendone was made cardinal on March 12, 1565 on the recommendation of Charles Borromeo.

He stayed in Poland until the death of Pius IV on December 9, 1565. Before returning to Italy, he went to the Diet of Augsburg as a legate of the new Pope Pius V , which was opened on March 23, 1566 by Emperor Maximilian II . He had previously warned the emperor under threat of excommunication not to discuss religion at the Reichstag. He also used the opportunity to exhort the assembled estates to carry out the Tridentine decrees. In September 1568, Pius V sent him a second time as a legate to Maximilian II. With the Vienna-based nuncio Biglia, he was supposed to induce the emperor not to make any new religious concessions to the Protestant Lower Austrians and to withdraw several concessions that had already been made. During this mission, Commendone was also authorized by a papal letter of October 10, 1568 to visit the churches and monasteries of Germany and the neighboring provinces apostolically. A report on this visitation in the diocese of Passau and the diocese of Salzburg in 1569 is published in Studies and Mittheilungen from the Benedictine and Cistercian Orders (Brno, 1893, XIV, 385–398 and 567–589).

In November 1571 Pius V sent him as a legate to the Emperor and King Sigismund of Poland in preparation for a crusade. After King Sigismund's death in 1572, he promoted the election of Henry, Duke of Anjou, as King of Poland, which led to the emperor's displeasure. After his return to Italy in 1573, Pope Gregory XIII appointed him . to a member of the newly founded Congregatio Germanica, whose purpose it was to protect Catholic interests in Germany. When Gregory XIII. became dangerously ill, it was widely believed that Commendone would be elected Pope, but he was survived by Gregory.

literature

• Giovanni Francesco Commendone . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Robert Appleton Company, New York 1913.
• Antonio Maria Graziani: Vita Commendoni Cardinalis. Paris 1669; French translation by Flechier: Paris 1671 and Lyon 1702
• The Cambridge Modern History (London and New York, 1907), II and (1905), III, passim;
• PALLAVICINO Istoria del Concilio di Trento (Rome, 1846), II, 13, 15, III, 24;
• PRISAC, The Legates Commendone and Capacini in Berlin (Neuss, 1846)
• REIMAN, The mission of Nunzius Commendone to Germany. in 1561 in research on German. Business (Göttingen, 1867), 237–80
• SUSTA, The Roman Curia and the Council of Trento under Pius IV (Vienna, 1904). I.
• SCHWARZ, K. Maximilian II's correspondence with Pope Pius V (Paderborn, 1889)
• GRAZIANI. De scriptis invita Minerva, cum adnotationibus H. Lagomarsini (Florence, 1745-6).

Web links

• Commendone, Giovanni Francesco. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website, English)
• Entry on Giovanni Francesco Commendone on catholic-hierarchy.org