GIBERTI, GIAN MATTEO. - Born in Palermo on 20 Sept. 1495, died in Verona on 30 Dec. 1543. At twenty he was governor of Tivoli. In Rome he became intimate with Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who, upon his election as Pope under the name of Clement VII, appointed him his datary. In 1524 he became Bishop of Verona. His political activity was tied to the Holy See’s attempt to form an alliance with Francis I. It was Giberti who urged the Pope to reach an agreement with the King of France in January 1525. A supporter of the League of Cognac (1526), he remained shut up with the Pope in Castel Sant’Angelo during the Sack of Rome (1527). Only after the collapse of his political hopes did he take up his post in the diocese of Verona (February 1528). In 1537 he attempted to negotiate a truce between Charles V and Francis I; this effort failed because Francis I refused to discuss peace unless Charles V ceded the Duchy of Milan or placed it in pawn with the Pope. Another attempt by Giberti to persuade Henry VIII to renounce the schism likewise failed.
Thus Giberti suffered complete disappointment in political life, a sphere to which he was not inwardly drawn. His charitable work and his Roman friendships (Jacopo Sadoleto, Gaspare Contarini, Gian Pietro Carafa, Reginald Pole, Girolamo Alcardo, Pietro Bembo, Vittoria Colonna) reveal his spiritual and cultural affinities rather than political ones. Indeed, while his political activity ended in failure, his pastoral work did not. From the time he took possession of his see until his death, he labored with zeal and enthusiasm for the civic and religious renewal of his diocese. Here lies his richest and most lasting achievement as a reformer, an executor of that *renovatio* long desired by the most thoughtful spirits concerned with the fate of Catholicism. The *Constitutiones* he compiled for the needs of his diocese were later taken as a model by many in Italy and abroad.
Frugal, quick to anger yet capable of self-mastery and indulgence toward others, quick-witted and swift in the conduct of affairs, full of fervor, he stands among the most compelling figures of the Catholic Reformation.