On May 25, 1545, the Jesuit Nicolás Bobadilla, a member of the papal legation to Germany under Girolamo Verallo, directly petitioned Pope Paul III for the faculty to absolve those who wished to return to the Catholic faith and to dispense them from the irregularities that might impede their priesthood or religious life. His stated motivation for this request was “the glory of God and the salvation of souls.” While Jessica Dalton doesn't include this particular example in Between Popes, Inquisitors and Princes: How the First Jesuits Negotiated Religious Crisis in Early Modern Italy, she does an exceptional job of locating the narrative within the tension of the pastoral (in foro interno) and the juridical (foro externo) strategies for dealing with the particular cases of heretics. The book covers sufficient time, 1540–1605, to show the development and use of this privilege and to support the thesis that “Jesuits and successive popes disagreed about how heretics should be dealt with in the long term” (9).

While the presentation retains some of the style of a dissertation, it presents the arguments coherently and draws not only from the abundant (and sometimes slanted) Jesuit primary sources but also from the archives of the papal curia, especially the Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Holy Office). While, as Dalton points out, “these documents do not allow us to reconstruct the experience of the privilege from the penitent's point of view” (27), they do show the development of the strategies of both the Jesuits and the Inquisitions as well as give another look into the longstanding tension between juridical and pastoral approaches that had “coexisted for many centuries and become increasingly important in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries” (23). In this, Dalton echoes many of the recent early modern historians, such as Giovanni Romeo, who see the Jesuits less as a tool of the Holy Office than as a “crucial supplement to the Inquisition” (20).

Chapter 1 begins with the Jesuits’ requests for the privilege from their foundation and their practical reasons for having it. The reforming mission of the Society of Jesus from its earliest days provides the context for this request. As with Bobadilla, many Jesuits found themselves in places and positions that put them in the midst of other reformers. Jesuit preaching, use of the Spiritual Exercises, and even their attempt to present a model of “reformed priests” brought them the opportunity for personal (and private) encounters with those who would be identified as heretics by the Inquisition. If with the privilege to absolve heretics they were able to reconcile key figures in areas of religious conflict, they hoped to avoid the violence and repression of the Inquisition. While the Jesuits cooperated with the officials of the Inquisition, they did not become overly involved within it (Ignatius discouraged ecclesiastical offices for Jesuits). That they received the privilege and were encouraged to use it (even missioned in ways that would facilitate it) shows the extent of the personal relationships that many of the early Jesuits had with many of the popes with whom they first dealt as well as other cardinal friends and protectors. Dalton provides the example of the Jesuit friendships with Cardinal Giovanni del Monte, Pope Julius III after February 7, 1550. She lists Diego Laynez and Alfonso Salmerón, Jesuit theologians at Trent, as early colleagues of del Monte (38).

The next two chapters introduce the tensions that arose between the Jesuits and the papacy. If some popes trusted the Jesuits more readily than the officials of the Inquisition as outsiders oriented towards Rome, others mistrusted them for being further from the control of the institutional structures of the church. The example of Nicolás Bobadilla being commissioned to the Marches of Ancona as a Commissary of the Inquisition (a temporary appointment) intended to bring someone from outside to execute sensitive directives with which local authorities may not have been completely trusted. In addition to reconciling an apostate (68), Bobadilla saw to the burning of 6,000 ducats worth of Jewish books. No doubt it was useful to have a commissary from Rome to authorize that kind of financial loss.

The book resolves with the withdrawal of the privilege by Pope Sixtus V in 1587. While there is a fifth chapter that examines the aftermath and partial restoration of the privilege under Pope Clement VIII, there is a clear sense that the context had changed by that point. Thus, the first three chapters provide the most dynamic part of the narrative. It is there that Dalton demonstrates the diverse motivations for requesting and granting the privilege, and she demonstrates the clear pastoral concern from which it arose.

Dalton avoids the tendency to accept Jesuit versions of history at face value. She follows the research of many contemporary historians of the Jesuits (for example, Guido Mongini) who introduce a hermeneutic of suspicion into the self-descriptions of the official chronicles of the Society of Jesus. As with any good historical work, Between Popes, Inquisitors and Princes suggests a few tantalizing directions for future research. Dalton suggests “a comparison between the faculties . . . granted to the Society and the order of the Capuchins” (183) would address the uniqueness (or not) of the Jesuits. I would suggest that the Theatines, Barnabites, or Somaschans might provide a similar comparison. Dalton also makes a brief mention of the bull In Coena Domini but primarily as a limit on the Jesuits’ privilege. The granting of a privilege to absolve government officials of the sanctions of that bull in Spanish Naples of the 1550s provides yet another avenue for examining the use of the Jesuits as a “pastoral solution” while maintaining a strong public position regarding papal power.