Antonio Possevino S.I. Bibliografo della Controriforma e diffusione della sua opera in area anglicana (review)

Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) was one of a triumvirate of Catholic scholars who, rather late in the day, took up the challenge laid down by Luther and other Reformers to the claims of Rome to be the true and only descendant of the Apostles, and the one depository of the revelation of Christ. The other two, Cesare Baronio (1538–1607) and Roberto Bellarmino (1542–1621), were respectively historian and polemicist; Possevino's contribution was educational and bibliographical. His Bibliotheca selecta (first edition 1593) and Apparatus sacer (first edition 1603–06) were explicitly conceived as a counterblast to Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis (first edition 1545) and his Pandectae (first edition 1548); they told Catholics how to approach the teaching and study of the major disciplines and what they should and should not read.

The first part of Luigi Balsamo's book consists of a fascinating survey, based on printed and archival sources, of Possevino's life. Balsamo's hero, as readers of his Bibliography: History of a Tradition (1990) will know, is Gesner, with his open mind and bibliographical thoroughness. This probably explains, perversely, his initial interest in Possevino. But there is no parti pris in Balsamo's approach; he gives full credit to Possevino for his encyclopaedic knowledge and extraordinary diligence. Possevino was clearly one of those, like Gladstone, who could do in four hours what would take an ordinary person a whole day. In 1560, after only a year in the Jesuit novitiate, he was sent to the duchy of Savoy to set up a programme of religious education aimed not only at the elite but at ordinary people. Possevino was fully aware of the power of the press, taking a leaf out of his Protestant adversaries' books by disseminating by every means at his disposal cheap, simple religious tracts. In 1572 he became secretary to the fourth General of the order and after 1577 began to be used on diplomatic missions to Eastern Europe. For the next ten years he operated at the highest level, endeavouring to bring about the conversion of the king of Sweden and successfully helping to negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Poland. He also established Jesuit schools in many towns in what are now Poland and the Baltic States, and encouraged the printing of religious texts. However in 1587, in a changed political situation, he was withdrawn from these exhilarating activities and spent the rest of his life in grumpy semi-retirement in various Jesuit houses in Italy.

This retirement gave him the breathing space to bring to fruition the grandiose project that he had nurtured for many years. His Bibliotheca selecta was originally conceived as a two-part work, the first being a treatment of the major areas of study and the second an alphabetical author bibliography. In the event both grew to such proportions that they were published separately, the first (a 600-page folio volume on large median paper) in 1593, with the original title, and the second (in three folio volumes on median paper, totalling nearly 2,000 pages) in 1603–06, as the Apparatus sacer. Possevino had correspondents and collaborators from time to time, but the bulk of the work was his, and one can only marvel at his diligence and persistence in bringing to fruition so monumental a project. The Bibliotheca selecta was divided into self-sufficient books, many of which Possevino subsequently published separately, mainly in smaller formats. These often contained further material and served as preparation for the enlarged and definitive edition of the Bibliotheca selecta published in Venice in 1603 in two volumes. The 1593 edition of the Bibliotheca selecta was financed by the papacy, but thereafter Possevino had to fund his publications himself, usually, it seems, by coming to some agreement with the printers over...