SERIPANDO, GIROLAMO.—Troiano S. (in the Order Girolamo) descended from a noble Neapolitan family belonging to the Capua seat. Felice Milensio and other earlier authors give Troia in Puglia as his birthplace; he himself, however, calls Naples his homeland, where he spent his youth (born in 1492 or 1493) and where in 1507 he entered the Augustinian convent of S. Giovanni a Carbonara, the principal convent of the homonymous Congregation of Observants.
After serving as secretary to the Order’s general Egidio Canisio of Viterbo, in 1516 he became regent of the Order’s Studium in Bologna, but in 1523 he returned to Naples to direct the Congregation of S. Giovanni a Carbonara. In Naples, spurred on by members of the Accademia Pontaniana and Neapolitan humanism, of which his brother Antonio was also a part, he refined his Platonism in 109 Quaestiones, but around 1535 he distanced himself from circles close to Italian evangelism, opposing Juan Valdés. His preaching now bore the stamp of Pauline spirituality. He intervened in the controversy over Augustinianism that had arisen in 1538 between Don Timoteo da Verona, Lattanzio Tolomei, and Marcantonio Flaminio following the sermons delivered in Siena by the Augustinian Agostinus Musaeus.
Meanwhile, Paul III, after the death of the Order’s general Giovanni Antonio Aprutino, appointed S. vicar general of the Order; in 1539 at the General Chapter in Naples, S. was elected general. To reform the Order, which was endangered by the spread of Lutheranism and other abuses, S. undertook an inspection that between 1539 and 1542 took him through nearly all of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, and he maintained 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 leaned toward Protestantism.
The first culminating act of his activity was his participation in the Council of Trent-Bologna (1545–48), for which he left incomplete Commentarii (Conc. Trid., II, 399–488). As a trusted agent of Cardinal Cervini, he took part many times in drafting the decrees, and it was especially from him that the second draft of the Decree on Justification came, published in the sixth session, albeit with many changes. His opinions on concupiscence, the role of faith in the process of justification, and the essence of merit—defended in part by appealing to the doctrine of duplex iustitia as represented by Gropper and Contarini—were contested especially by Lainez and did not receive the Council’s approval. Yet this did not diminish his influence, as evidenced by his numerous opinions and treatises (in Conc. Trid., V, XII and XIII, 1).
Pope Paul III’s plan to name him cardinal failed; shortly afterward, a stroke in 1550, brought on by severe exertions, forced him to resign the generalship (1551). After his health improved, in 1553 he went to the court of Charles V in the Low Countries, to obtain from the emperor, in his capacity as ambassador of the city of Naples, the restoration of privileges repeatedly violated by the viceroy Pedro de 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 Reformation and preached on the Pater Noster and the Creed.
During the Carafa war against Philip II, he sided with the Spanish. Pius IV, considering the imminent continuation of the Council of Trent, appointed him cardinal on 26 February 1561, and soon afterward legate to the Council.
Because of his vast experience regarding Council matters, he was the right hand of the president Ercole Gonzaga, but in May 1562 he fell into disfavor with Pius IV due to his stance in the dispute over the divine law of the obligation of residence for bishops.
Gonzaga and S. were unable to overcome the major crisis that erupted in the winter of 1562–63 during the debate on the sacrament of Order and a new form of the decree on residence. The cardinal’s strength gave out in the debate; and a few days after Gonzaga, S. died on 17 March 1563 in Trent and was buried in S. Marco, the Augustinians’ church. Even his adversaries had to acknowledge the integrity of his character, the refinement of his intellect, his sincere piety, and his great learning. He is a representative of the Catholic Reformation, not the Counter-Reformation, and much less a precursor of Jansenism.