GIBERTI, GIAN MATTEO. - Born in Palermo on 20 Sept. 1495, died in Verona on 30 Dec. 1543. Governor of Tivoli at the age of twenty. In Rome he was on intimate terms with Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, who, on being elected pontiff under the name Clement VII, appointed him his datary. In 1524 he was bishop of Verona. His political activity is bound up with the attempt at an alliance between the Holy See and Francis I. It is G. who urges the Pope toward the alliance with the king of France in Jan. 1525. A promoter of the League of Cognac (1526), during the sack of Rome he remained shut up with the Pope in Castel Sant'Angelo (1527). Only after the collapse of his political hopes did he turn to the Veronese diocese (Feb. 1528). In 1537 he sought to negotiate a truce between Charles V and Francis I: an attempt that failed because of Francis I's inability to speak of peace unless Charles V ceded the duchy of Milan or entrusted it to the Pope as a pledge; just as G.'s other attempt failed, that of urging Henry VIII to renounce the schism.

Complete disappointments, then, for G. in political life, a life to which, moreover, he did not feel intimately drawn. His charitable activity and his very Roman friendships (Jacopo Sadoleto, Gaspare Contarini, Gian Pietro Carafa, Reginald Pole, Girolamo Aleandro, Pietro Bembo, Vittoria Colonna) show his propensities and his affinities to be more spiritual and cultural than political. And indeed, if his political activity was a failure, his pastoral work was not a failure. From his transfer to the episcopal see until his death he labored with tenacity and enthusiasm for the ethico-religious renewal of his diocese: here lies his richest and most lasting work as a reformer, as an implementer of that renovatio hoped for over many years by the spirits most thoughtful about the fortunes of Catholicism. The Constitutiones, which he compiled for the needs of the diocese, were later taken as a model by many in Italy and beyond.

Frugal, prone to anger but also capable of self-mastery and of forbearance toward others, of quick imagination, swift in the conduct of business, full of fervor, he is among the most suggestive figures of the Catholic reform.

Bibliography11 works

BIBL.: T. Pandolfi, G. M. G. e l'ultima difesa della libertà d'Italia negli anni 1521-23, in Archivio della R. Società romana di storia patria, 34 (1911), pp. 131-237; G. B. Pighi, G. M. G., 2nd ed., Verona 1924; P. Paschini, S. Gaetano Thiene, Gian Pietro Carafa e le origini dei Chierici Regolari Teatini, Rome 1926, passim; G. M. Monti, La legazione del Polo e del G. in Francia e in Fiandra nel 1537, in Archivio storico italiano, 87 (1920), pp. 293-309; Pastor, IV, V, passim; L. Simoni, Un volume manoscritto di prediche attribuite al vescovo G., in Atti dell'Accademia di Verona, 1932, 5th series, vol. X, pp. 125-30; F. Pellegrini, Un consulto di Gerolamo Fracastoro per G. M. G. vescovo di Verona, Verona 1934; A. Grazioli, Nel centenario della morte di G. M. G. vescovo di Verona. La sua opera di riforma, in La scuola cattolica, 73 (1945), pp. 85-101; A. Cistellini, Figure della Riforma pretridentina, Brescia 1948 (see indexes); G. Barbieri, Aspetti sociali nell'opera riformatrice di G. M. G., in Saggi di storia economica italiana, Bari 1948, pp. 73-88; H. Jedin, Il tipo ideale di vescovo secondo la Riforma cattolica, Brescia 1950, pp. 38-48.

Massimo Petrocchi

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Giberti, Gian Matteo

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