BERNARD OF CLES. — Cardinal, born at Cles on 8 March 1485, died at Brixen on 28 July 1539. He studied at Bologna; during the pontificate of Leo X he was elected (12 June 1514) Bishop of Trent, a city which he greatly benefited with his munificence, embellished with numerous buildings, and also concerned himself with practical works such as aqueducts and road paving. He opposed the Protestant Reformation so vigorously that his anti-Lutheran work earned the praise of Adrian VI in 1523. He was created cardinal by Clement VII in 1530. Having gone to Brixen, of whose bishopric he had been appointed administrator, he died there suddenly.
He was a man of great energy and broad political outlook (especially as chancellor to Ferdinand I), a friend and patron of the arts and letters. He was a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, with whom he shared an antipathy toward every form of fanaticism and a sense of religion understood chiefly as interior recollection. Yet, a fervent man of action, he immediately grasped the necessity of summoning a council against the Protestant upheaval: as early as 1522 he had urged Adrian VI in this direction, and at the conference of Bologna between Charles V and Clement VII (December 1532), where he took part in the negotiations, he advocated the urgency of convening a council.