The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

APPENDIX. 415
ponti che non sono anco molto sicuri et dove tuttavia cascano
pietre et altre cose da muri. ...
[Orig. Gonzaga Archives, Mantua.]
37. Onofrio Panvinio as Biographer of Pius IV.
The fourth Pius is among those Popes who have not been
made the subject of a long and full biography. He was not
one of those outstanding personalities, such as a biographer
delights in. Moreover, the closing period of the Council of
Trent drew general attention to itself rather than to what
was happening in Rome. The brief biographical sketch of
Pius IV. which O. Panvinio added to his biographies of other
Popes, is an instance of this. In this matter the veil has
been drawn back by a German historian, who has won great
renown by his history of Pius IV., namely, Giuseppe Susta,
in his splendid monograph published in Czech in the year
Pius IV. pred pontificatem a na pocatku
1900, under the title :
pontifikatu (Pias IV. before his pontificate down to its be-
ginning). J. Goll wrote a spirited review of this work in
the Abendpost of Vienna, 1902, Beilage n. 21, to which atten-
tion was drawn in the Histor. Zeitschrift, LXXXIX, 330.
In spite of this, the results of the researches of Susta have
remained quite unnoticed among scholars. Even Merkle,
who, in the second volume of his great collection of authorities
called Concilium Tridentinum, devotes a very minute dissertation
to the life and writings of Panvinio in their bearing on
the Popes and conclaves during the Council, knows nothing
of them. With the acumen which is characteristic of him,
Susta, in Appendix II, p. 159 seqq. submits to a critical
examination the Vita Pii IV. of Panvinio, as it appears in the
edition of 1568, which hitherto has been accepted, together
with the Venetian reports, as the principal authority, and
comes to the surprising conclusion that for Pius IV.
Panvinio is by no means the safe guide that even Miiller
(Konklave Pius IV., 228, n. 242) thought him to be. In
this case that fact comes out even more strongly, which,
in speaking of the sources and authorities for the history
of Paul IV. in the present work (Vol. XIV., 486 seqq), I established
in the case of the Carafa Pope, namely that our
historian has allowed himself to be very strongly biased