This short book brings together concise conference papers by eminent contemporary Italian historians, including for example Gigliola Fragnito, as well as the French scholar Alain Tallon. It deals both with Morone as the crucial presiding legate at the concluding phase of the Council of Trent, in some interpretations the ‘genius’ of that episode, and in fact other aspects of his career, especially his notorious troubles with the Roman inquisition, so revealingly and fully studied previously by Massimo Firpo. Many of the papers take the opportunity to summarise the authors' recent contributions to Italian historical debate on the role of the Roman inquisition relative to such things as papal authority, conciliar achievement or underachievement, book censorship or episcopal reform, in the mid to late sixteenth century. Tallon usefully brings into focus some of his most recent clarifications on the still often misinterpreted career of the Cardinal of Lorraine. A paper by Maurizio Sangalli enriches understanding of the post-conciliar evolution of Morone and Charles Borromeo (alongside, famously, Gabriele Paleotti) by reference to correspondence between the first two of these figures. Two final papers provide historiographic and iconographic surveys relating to Morone. In all this Morone's own spirituality, even personality, arguably remain as obscure as ever compared with the emphatic accusations made by some of his contemporaries in an essentially inquisitorial context, as several contributors acknowledge. Nevertheless, this book represents a valuable point of reference for those following the latest Italian historical debates on the religious scene in the peninsula in the sixteenth century. The consensus which substantially emerges, though of course with individual degrees of commitment, is once again to attribute a limited achievement to the council and to argue instead for an enduring command of ecclesiastical evolution by the Roman inquisition.