SERIPANDO, GIROLAMO.—Troiano S. (in the Order, Girolamo) descended from a noble Neapolitan family belonging to the seggio of Capua. Felice Milensio and other earlier authors give Troia in Apulia as his birthplace; he himself, however, states that his native city was Naples, where he spent his youth (born in 1492 or 1493) and where, in 1507, he entered the convent of the Augustinians of S. Giovanni a Carbonara, the principal convent of the Congregation of Observants of that name.
After serving as secretary to the Order’s superior general, Egidio Canisio di Viterbo, he became regent of the Order’s Studium at Bologna in 1516; in 1523, however, he returned to Naples to direct the Congregation of S. Giovanni a Carbonara. In Naples, stimulated by members of the Accademia Pontaniana and by Neapolitan unianism, of which his brother Antonio was also a member, he perfected his Platonism through 109 Quaestiones; around 1535, however, he withdrew from the circles close to Italian evangelicalism, in opposition to Juan Valdés. His sermons by then reflected the spirit of Paulinism. He took part in the controversy over Augustinianism which, after the sermons preached at Siena by the Augustinian Agostinus Musaeus, had arisen in 1538 among don Timoteo da Verona, Contarini, Lattanzio Tolomei, and Marcantonio Flaminio.
Meanwhile, after the death of the Order’s superior general Giovanni Antonio Aprutino, Paul III appointed S. vicar general of the Order; in 1539, at the general chapter in Naples, S. was elected superior general. To reform the Order, endangered by the penetration of Lutheranism and by other abuses, S. began an inspection that took him between 1539 and 1542 through almost all of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; he also maintained a lively correspondence with the vicar general of the German Augustinians, Giovanni Hoffmeister. He expelled from the Order the masters Giulio della Rovere, Agostino Mainardi, Ambrogio da Milano, and Niccolò di Verona, who were inclined toward Protestantism.
The first culmination of his activity was his participation in the Council of Trent-Bologna, 1545–48, of which he left incomplete Commentarii (Conc. Trid., II, 399–488). As Cardinal Cervini’s trusted associate, he took part on many occasions in drafting the decrees; in particular, the second draft of the Decree on Justification, published in the sixth session, originated with him, although it underwent many changes. S.’s views on concupiscence, on the place of Faith in the process of Justification, and on the essence of merit—whose defense led him, among other things, to invoke the doctrine of the Duplex iustitia represented by Gropper and Contarini—were opposed especially by Lainez and did not receive the Council’s approval. This, however, does not diminish his influence, as his numerous opinions and treatises demonstrate (in Conc. Trid., V, XII and XIII, 1).
Paul III’s plan to make him a cardinal failed; shortly afterward, an apoplectic stroke that struck him in 1550 as a result of severe exertions forced him to resign as superior general (1551). Once his health had improved, he went in 1553 to the court of Charles V in the Netherlands to obtain from the Emperor, in his capacity as ambassador of the city of Naples, the restoration of privileges repeatedly violated by the viceroy Pietro di Toledo. On 30 March 1554, by imperial appointment, he became archbishop of Salerno, where he conducted an apostolic visitation in the spirit of the Catholic Reform and preached on the Pater Noster and the Credo.
During the war of the Carafa against Philip II, he sided with Spain. Pius IV, in view of the imminent continuation of the Council of Trent, appointed him cardinal on 26 February 1561 and, shortly afterward, legate to the Council.
Because of his great experience in matters concerning the Council, he was the right hand of its president, Ercole Gonzaga; in May 1562, however, he fell out of favor with Pius IV because of his position in the dispute over the ius divinum of the obligation of residence for bishops.
Gonzaga and S. were unable to overcome the serious crisis that broke out in the winter of 1562–63 during the debate on the sacrament of Orders and on a new form of the decree on residence. The cardinal’s strength could not withstand the debate; and a few days after Gonzaga, S. too died, on 17 March 1563, at Trent, and was buried in S. Marco, the Augustinian church. Even his adversaries had to acknowledge the integrity of his character, the refinement of his spirit, his sincere piety, and his great learning. He was a representative of the Catholic Reform, not of the Counter-Reformation, and still less a precursor of Jansenism.