Vittoriano
Antonio Michele Ghislieri (Bosco, today Bosco Marengo 1504 - Rome 1572), of modest social background, after his early studies in his native village, entered the Dominican convent of S. Maria della Pietà in Voghera at a young age and in 1521 took his vows, receiving priestly ordination in 1528.
His theological education was based on the teachings and works of St. Thomas Aquinas, which he learned while attending courses at the Studium in Bologna. His studies enabled him to teach in some of the Order's convents beginning in the 1930s. During the decade he was invested with his first positions as procurator and prior, and, given his growing importance, in 1543 he delivered the public conclusions of the provincial chapter of the Dominican Order in Parma. In 1551 Pope Julius III appointed him commissioner general of the Inquisition.
It was, however, with Pope Paul IV, elected pontiff in 1555, that Michael Ghislieri acquired increasing responsibilities. On September 4, 1556, he was appointed bishop of Nepi and Sutri, while a few months later, on March 15, 1557, he obtained the cardinal's purple. In 1558 he ably directed the trial against Girolamo Savonarola, committing the Dominican Order to his side in protecting the friar from Ferrara. Also in the same year the pope in consistory assigned Ghislieri the title and function of summus ac perpetuus inquisitor, or supreme inquisitor for life.
On January 7, 1566 Ghislieri, with the support of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, became pope, taking the name Pius V. During the six years of his pontificate, the pope distinguished himself as one of the most rigorous interpreters of the Counter-Reformation, or that process of reaction and reorganization promoted by the Church of Rome in response to the Protestant Reformation. His name is linked to the creation of the Holy League and the naval battle of Lepanto, in which Christian allied forces defeated the Ottoman army on October 7, 1571. Pius V died in Rome shortly after the victory, on May 1, 1572. In the early eighteenth century Clement XI proclaimed him a saint.
