COMMENDONE, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO. - Cardinal, nuncio, born in Venice on 17 March 1524 and died in Padua on 25 December 1584; thanks to his solid humanistic and theological training and to his personal gifts as a skilled negotiator, he was able to render valuable services to the pontiffs; he was papal secretary under Julius III and Paul IV and was employed on difficult and delicate missions. In 1553 he was sent by Julius III to England as a confidential agent so that he might report on the true conditions of the kingdom and on what ought to be done for the re-establishment of Catholicism. He was appointed by Paul IV on 25 October 1555 bishop of Zante and Cephalonia, but he never went to that see; for that Pope he also composed a treatise: De iure Romani Imperii ad Germanos translati, de pontificum maximorum potestate ac de publicorum conciliorum vi. Pius IV, as soon as he was elected, availed himself of him, entrusting to him on 29 November 1560 the task of going to Ferdinand I to communicate to him and to the German princes the bull convoking the council. Commendone went to Vienna, then to the diet of Naumburg where, at first, the Protestants refused to receive him; then, passing through Leipzig, Munich and other important places, he reached Trent, where the Council was assembled, on 7 March 1562. In January 1563, because of the difficulties raised by the Cardinal of Guise, the legates sent him to Innsbruck to Ferdinand I, to urge him to take measures against the burdens with which the Church in Germany was oppressed. Even before the council closed, Commendone was sent by the Pope, in October-November 1563, as nuncio to Poland so that he might give new life to Catholicism in that country, troubled by the dissensions provoked by the various Protestant tendencies. While he was up there he was created cardinal deacon of S. Ciriaco on 12 March 1565 and returned to Rome to receive the hat in December.
To these years is assigned a 'discourse' of his on the court of Rome which, although it remained in manuscript, circulated widely, so much so that it is found in several archives, and speaks very explicitly on the subject (cf. Pastor, VII, p. 636 ff.). Commendone remained very little in Rome; on 23 January 1566 he was sent as legate to Germany to the diet of Augsburg; on 17 September 1568 once more to the Emperor; finally on 18 June 1571 he was again sent to Germany and Poland, where he remained until 1573, completing and extending what he had done in the previous legation and leaving a great mark of his work. Under Gregory XIII Commendone was almost left aside; in 1572, however, a relator describes him thus: Commendone « has what is usually found in few, because he has virtue, goodness, experience and competence with infinite judgment, and there is no lord in the (cardinalitial) college who has spoken to more diverse lords and princes and nations than he has done. He is grave and severe, accompanied by gentleness and affability » (Pastor, IX, p. 877).
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Paolo Brezzi