Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland nebst ergänzenden Aktenstücken, Dritte Abteilung: 1572-1585, 8. Band: Nuntiatur Giovanni Dolfins (1575-1576) (im Auftrage des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom) ed. by Daniela Neri (review)

464BOOK REVIEWS some of the instances analyzed here, to have left him in a similar state of genuine incomprehension of the finer points of Tridentine orthodoxy which the Spanish Inquisition detected in other necessarily marginal figures, such as shepherds . As a barely authorized part of the religious life, hardly of the institutional Church, a lay hermit pronounced on religious questions, even among a rural and uneducated population, with increasing risk to himself. A. D.Wright University ofLeeds Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland nebst ergänzenden Aktenstücken, Dritte Abteilung: 1572-1585, 8. Band: Nuntiatur Giovanni Dolfins (15751576 ) (im Auftrage des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom). Edited by Daniela Neri. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 1997. Pp. Ii, 795, DM 238.00.) This collection comprises the complete correspondence between Giovanni Dolfin, Imperial nuncio in Vienna in 1571-1578, and the papal Secretary of State, Ptolomeo Gallio, during the last years of Emperor Maximilian II's reign (1575-76). Daniela Neri's book forms the eighth volume of a comprehensive edition of the German nunciature's correspondence in the reign of Gregory XIII (1572-1585). Like the preceding issues in this series, the present volume is furnished with an instructive description of the state of documentation and the specific editorial problems encountered. There is also a useful summary of the main subjects of the correspondence. The editor plausibly argues that recent papal administrative reforms account for the nearly complete archival survival of the material, but its occasionally poor physical quality is indicated by the numerous brackets in the texts denoting missing or illegible passages. The palaeographic problems involved are further illustrated by the specimen documents reproduced in the introduction. Given the detailed biographical information included in the preceding volume , Neri sensibly limits her comments to basic information on Dolfin's Venetian aristocratic background, his friendship with St. Charles Borromeo, and his attendance at the final session of the Council of Trent, as well as his diplomatic missions to France and, more important, to Vienna (1569), thus outlining his credentials as negotiator in Counter-Reformation and Imperial affairs. The material presented documents the delicate nature of Dolfin's mission. In Maximilian H, he encountered a shrewd and wayward ruler, whose reluctance to endorse a confrontational religious policy in the Austrian hereditary lands and Bohemia was only partly explained by his financial dependence on his Protestant subjects' support to check the Turkish threat. From Dolfin's depiction , the Emperor emerges as a monarch who was highly sensitive to any real or imagined infringements of his sovereign power and spiritual freedom in matters of personal religious conviction, refusing to the last to defer to papal BOOK REVIEWS465 wishes for a public statement of his Catholic faith. He likewise declined Gregory XHTs offers of consecration either in Rome or Regensburg, thus implicitly repudiating papal authority in matters affecting Imperial dignity and power. The fact that relations were strained had obvious implications for the pope's religious policy in the Empire, which relied for its implementation on the Emperor 's firm commitment. Unsurprisingly, then, the accession of Maximilian's allegedly more tractable successor, Rudolf II, in 1576 was greeted with relief. The difficult preliminary negotiations between the Emperor and the German Electors for Rudolf's election as Roman king form a major theme of the correspondence . In the years 1575-76 the curia concentrated its efforts on the issues of Maximilian's candidature to the Polish throne, the Imperial succession, and the interrelated problems of heresy and clerical reform in the Empire and Bohemia. Military maters and the abortive Imperial peace initiative in the Netherlands, which was intended to liberate forces for the defense of the eastern border of the Empire, formed scarcely less important issues. Useful bits of information on Tuscan, Genuese, and Inner Austrian affairs can likewise be gleaned from the texts. Minor criticism of the present volume concerns a small number of headings which are too monosyllabic or imprecise to be of help to the reader (e.g., nos. 33, 73, 103, 104, 1 14, 1 16, 297, 358). There are also a few inconsistencies in the spelling of names and some instances in which biographical footnotes could have been more detailed, and might have been...