Gregorio Cortese

Giovanni Andrea Cortese (his name in the Benedictine Order was Gregorio) (1483 in Modena – September 21, 1548) was an Italian Cardinal and monastic reformer.

After receiving a training in the Humanities at Modena under the learned Cistercian Varino of Piacenza, he devoted himself to the study of jurisprudence for five years, first at Bologna, then at Padua, and graduated as doctor of laws at the early age of seventeen. His thorough knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages induced Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, the future Pope Leo X, to take him into his service and afterwards appoint him legal auditor in the Papal Curia. Desirous of leading a more quiet life, Cortese resigned this office and in 1507 entered the Benedictine monastery of Polirone near Mantua, one of the most flourishing abbeys of the recently founded Cassinese Congregation.

When Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici heard that his former auditor had become a monk, he addressed a letter to him expressing his surprise and his displeasure at the step which Cortese had taken and urging him to leave the monastery and resume his former occupation in Rome. In his answer to the cardinal's letter Cortese states that great dangers beset his soul when he was still engaged in worldly pursuits, and speaks of the interior happiness which he experienced while chanting the Divine praises and applying himself to the study of Holy Scripture. When in 1513 Giovanni de' Medici ascended the papal throne as Leo X, Cortese sent him a letter of congratulation in which, however, he did not omit to remind the new pontiff of his duty to begin at last general reform of the Church. Cortese was deeply grieved at what he saw as the indifference manifested by many ecclesiastical dignitaries towards a wholesome internal reform of the Church. It is due to him that the Benedictine reform, which had recently been inaugurated in Italy by the Cassinese Congregation, was carried through, and that, with the return of monastic discipline, the Benedictine monasteries of Italy again became seats of that learning for which they had been so famous in the past.

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