A Worldly Reform: Honor and Pastoral Practice in the Career of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505-63)

The present study argues that a worldly sense of honor could spur a Renaissance prelate to reform as much as it might inhibit him from it. Many clerics were more interested in their livelihoods than in reform. Nevertheless, the social prestige that these individuals enjoyed or sought led them, paradoxically, to carry out reforms that have often been attributed to a more "pure" or "evangelical" inspiration. Thus, historians should use caution in examining the motivations and lives of sixteenth-century prelates. The career of one such figure, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505-63) of Mantua, highlights this combination of worldliness and reform. This article addresses how Gonzaga's awareness of his place in society and the demands of honor for maintaining that place encouraged his patrician reform activity at least as much as it might have hindered him.