This volume reminds us how robustly intermingled were Italian religion and politics during the sixteenth century. It also reminds us how historians have changed their foci: earlier studies concentrated on the thematic divisions of religion, ranging from lay heterodoxy to paranoid clerical intransigenti, but recently more archivally-based analyses of groups and individuals have revealed intellectual sources, nuances, ambivalences, even irrationalities that have produced some heady cocktails. Ruling peacefully is such a book. Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga is a difficult target for historians because the man and his religious world are difficult to categorise using the customary historiographical terms. He was a wealthy patrician, an upholder of social order, a prince-bishop open to both new ideas and radical practices, a supporter of the papacy (although unhappy under Paul iii), and a theological conservative who moved with ‘regularity and apparent ease’ in the company of both Catholic and Protestant reformers. Murphy argues that the clue to understanding Gonzaga is his patrician willingness to discharge all his responsibilities – to the Church, to the Gonzaga clan, to Mantua, to the learning and culture of the Rinascimento, to serious theological and other studies, to the spiritual life, to his office as cardinal, to his benefices (although a pluralist and absentee), to serious church reform, to community well-being and political stability, and to his immediate family, including his five children. When these multiple responsibilities clashed, Gonzaga's earnest efforts to reconcile them often devolved into contradictions, confusion and excessive toil, but he continued to do his patrician best. A humanist driven by ambivalent impulses for church reform, he often discussed and sometimes entertained reforming ideas: he was prepared, for example, to offer the eucharist under both species to the laity. When he became regent of Mantua in 1540 he worked to improve church behaviour in the interests of both piety and social order. Murphy has coined a useful new historiographical term to describe Gonzaga – ‘patrician reformer’ – to indicate how for him the day-to-day processes of reform defined ‘reform’ as much as more abstract humanist, evangelical or Catholic ideologies. Murphy's resultant picture of Gonzaga the practical ‘patrician reformer’ is excellent, although his theological ideas might have been pursued further. We are told that Gonzaga paid ‘serious attention to the theological debates of the day’ (p. xvii) and that his religious actions were not only political but ‘a great deal more’ (p. 156), that in theological matters he, a philosophically trained humanist, was broad-minded, even sceptical, and listened to the reforming ideas of Pole, Morone, Ochino, Vergerio and others. He did not accept Protestant arguments, but considered them in an academic way, for he was religious man who lacked dogmatism (p. 157). These are points well made, but one would expect more detail. A man who was theologically aware for forty turbulent years, from Luther's early tracts to the Council of Trent, must have been given to considerable theological thought. One may not expect him to have had clear-cut views on the doctrines of sin, grace justification and faith, but the reader wonders if further analysis of the religious views of this complicated man of contradictions would have revealed more about the theological ambiguities and contradictions of he and others who exercised spiritual and temporal authority. There is a small but disappointing omission regarding the Breve Ricordo, the list of books to be used by the priests of Mantua. Murphy's summary of what is included is most informative (especially the centrality of the Bible), but although he comments that the books Gonzaga left off the list are as revealing as those left on it, he has omitted these omissions.