PIUS V, Pope, Saint. - The last Pope to be canonized, b. 17 Jan. 1504 at Bosco, near Alessandria, to Paolo Ghislieri and Domenica Augeria: he entered the Dominican Order at Voghera in 1518 and there received the name Michele, was ordained priest in 1528 and shortly afterward became lector at Pavia; he was also commissioner of the Inquisition for the diocese of Pavia and later was inquisitor at Como and at Bergamo. Through this activity he won the goodwill of Card. Carafa, who in 1551 had him appointed commissioner general of the Roman Inquisition and, having become pope under the name Paul IV, in 1556 appointed him bishop of Sutri and Nepi, in 1557 cardinal and on 14 Dec. 1558 grand inquisitor.
Under Pius IV he was in disfavor because of his relations with the Carafa, so he devoted himself exclusively to the Inquisition and to the reform of the episcopate of Mondovì, which had been entrusted to him in 1560. In the Conclave of 1565, following the agreement between Borromeo and Farnese, on 7 Jan. 1566 he was elected pope to general surprise, the candidacies of Morone, of Sirleto and of Ricci, favored by Cosimo I, having come to nothing. On 17 Jan. he was consecrated. His imperishable merit is that, having carried the Council of Trent into effect, he acted with the utmost seriousness in all fields of ecclesiastical life: he sent the decrees as far as Goa, to Mexico, to Venezuela, to the most distant countries. In the diocese of Rome he personally began the canonical visitation and had the clergy reformed by Niccolò Ormaneto, a man trusted by Charles Borromeo. He appointed apostolic visitors for the episcopates of the Papal States, of the Kingdom of Naples and of Upper Italy. Borromeo's provincial synods at Milan became the model of numerous other provincial synods, within and outside Italy. P. V rigorously denied dispensations from the obligation of residence to bishops and parish priests and gave the greatest importance to the appointment of fervent bishops, to examine whom on 3 May 1567 he appointed a deputation composed of three archbishops. The 21 cardinals elected by him were chosen from strictly ecclesiastical points of view. With the energetic reform of the Penitentiary (1569) and with the founding of the Congregations of the Index and of Bishops he continued the reform of the curial authorities, which had been set aside by the Council of Trent.
With the publication of the Roman Catechism (1566), of the reformed Breviarium Romanum (1568) and of the Missale Romanum (1570), as well as with the establishment of a commission for the revision of the Vulgate (1569), he responded to the wishes expressed by the Council of Trent. On 11 Apr. 1567 he declared St. Thomas Aquinas a doctor of the Church, on 1 Oct. 1567 he condemned the 79 theses of Michel Baius. He severely reinvigorated the Roman Inquisition, which under Pius IV had grown lax; among others Pietro Carnesecchi and Aonio Paleario were executed as heretics.
From the point of view of Church policy, the pontificate of P. V is distinguished by continuous tension with the sovereign of the greatest Catholic power, Philip II, because of the ecclesiastical demands of the royal patronage and the requests for money for the Spanish Church; only with difficulty did the nuncio at Madrid, Giambattista Castagna, avoid a full rupture. During the second and third Huguenot wars the Pope supported the French Catholics with subsidies and military aid; not sufficiently informed of events, he even welcomed the conduct of the duke of Alba toward the insurgents in the Netherlands. He disapproved, on the other hand, of the relationship of the queen of Scotland Mary Stuart with Bothwell, but could not prevent the collapse of Catholicism in Scotland after the queen was made a prisoner. On 25 Feb. 1570 he excommunicated Queen Elizabeth of England and released English Catholics from the oath of allegiance. The difficulties with Emperor Maximilian II were particularly caused by the latter's unclear religious position toward Protestantism and by his yielding attitude toward the Austrian Protestants. The Emperor protested against the appointment of Cosimo I as grand duke of Tuscany ratified by the Pope (5 March 1570). The greatest political undertaking of P. V consists in having brought about the anti-Turkish Holy League with Venice and Spain, whose fleet, headed by Don John of Austria and Marcantonio Colonna, won at Lepanto on 7 Oct. 1571 a naval victory that broke the preponderance of the Turkish fleet in the Mediterranean. The Pope, of whom Charles Borromeo said that for a long time the Church had not had a better and holier head, died on 1 May 1572. He was buried first in the chapel of St. Andrew in St. Peter's, from where he was transferred on 9 Jan. 1588, under Sixtus V, to the chapel of the Presepe at St. Mary Major. On 1 May 1672 he was beatified by Clement X and on 22 May 1712 Clement XI canonized him. His feast falls on 5 May.
Bibliography
Hubert Jedin