Antonio Possevino
history. Painting by Jan Matejko. Possevino is the black robed Jesuit at the center, gesticulating]]
Antonio Possevino (Antonius Possevinus) (1534 - February 26, 1611) was an Italian clergyman who acted as papal legate and the first Jesuit to visit Moscow, vicar general of Sweden, Denmark and northern islands, Muscovy, Livonia, Rus, Hungary, Pomerania, Saxony from 1578.
Born in Mantua, where he became a tutor to the nephews of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, Possevino was educated under the tutelage of his brother, the humanist Giambattista Possevino at the papal court in Rome during the papacy of Julius III. He was in Padua with his Gonzaga wards when Possevino joined the Society of Jesus in 1559. After his novitiate Possevino went on Church business to Savoy and France at the height of the Wars of Religion. where he published Il sacrificio dell'altare(Lyons, 1563). In Rome he served as the Latin secretary to Everard Mercurian,Jesuit general from 1572 to 1578. Pope Gregory XIII in 1578 sent him to Sweden in order to influence the course of the Livonian War. Thence Possevino proceeded to the Russian capital of Ivan the terrible and helped to mediate between him and Stefan Bathory in the Treaty of Jam Zapolski in 1582. He left a valuable account of his nunciature in his descrition of the Tsardom of Muscovy.
A curious episode is connected with Possevino's stay in Moscow. When he tried to articulate the idea of a union between the Roman Catholic Church and the schismatic Russians, Tsar Ivan IV, not exactly known for his sanity and reasonableness, attempted to kill Possevino in a fit of rage. The irascible monarch later allowed Possevino to hold a dispute on the merits of each faith, in the course of which, Ivan "confounded" the papal legate with inane questions concerning the meaning of the western habit to shave a beard. Unable to sustain realistic questions about Orthodoxy, Ivan "defended" his faith by settling for a more aggressive approach.
Possevino was retired from diplomacy by Jesuit general Claudio Acquaviva and exiled as too political from Rome to Padua and Venetian territory. There between 1586 and his death he produced important works of Counter Reformation scholarship, the Bibliotheca selecta and the Apparatus Sacer and other, more controversial works pseudonymously. Following the Papal Interdict of 1606 against Venice Possevino was banished with the Society of Jesus from the Republic of Venice and was sent to Ferrara where he died in 1611.
- Apparatus sacer ad scriptores Veteris et Novi Testamenti (Venice, 1603-06)
- Bibliotheca selecta (Rome, 1593)
- Muscovia (Vilna, 1586)
- Del sacrificio dell'altare (Lyons, 1563)
- Il soldato cristiano (Rome, 1569)
- Notæ verbi Dei et Apostolicæ Ecclesiæ (Posen, 1586)