Readers of Gigliola Fragnito's collection Church, censorship and culture in early modern Italy (Cambridge 2001) will recall Luigi Balsamo's contribution ‘How to doctor a bibliography: Antonio Possevino's practice’. The essay distils the argument of the present book, and promises a survey of the Possevino holdings in British and Irish libraries. Part ii of this book (pp. 143–91), fulfils the promise. Balsamo provides a clear account of Possevino's work as a Jesuit in Savoy and France during the early 1560s, his repudiation of military tactics, and his recognition of the need to meet the challenge of Protestantism by providing the future governing classes of the ‘respublica christiana’ with a ‘Catholic library’ to counter the Protestant ‘encyclopaedia’ of Conrad Gesner. Gregory xiii gave him plenipotentiary powers to act as nuncio from Poland to central and northern Europe. Balsamo provides an excellent account of Possevino's energetic labours in the '70s and '80s, extending to Sweden, Lithuania and Muscovy, and of his sudden recall to Italy in 1587 at the height of an impressively successful mission. The Jesuit General, Acquaviva, acted to discourage Possevino. As Balsamo shows, he consistently impeded Possevino thereafter. Possevino's practice of composing pocket books for princes establishing the principles and practice of a Catholic education for the ruling classes became, after 1587, the basis for his elaboration of the Bibliotheca selecta of 1593, and the Apparatus sacer of 1603: the provision of a recommended encyclopaedia of theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, mathematics, history and geography along lines approved by the Congregation of the Index, and establishing the principle of expurgation rather than obliteration of texts deemed incompatible with Catholic faith and life. The latter practice aroused the ire of the Bodleian Librarian, Thomas James. The second part of Balsamo's book explores the ‘Anglican reaction’ to Possevino. Balsamo remarks on Possevino's retort that censorship as practised by the Bodleian did not exclude the burning of books deemed to be heretical. Privately, Thomas James recognised and acknowledged significant scholarly merit in individual pages of Possevino's work. Balsamo's impressive trawl of the Anglican libraries of two islands reveals that Possevino's works were avidly purchased in Oxford and Cambridge, and carefully placed in cathedral libraries, beginning with Lambeth. James i had a personal copy of Possevino's Bibliotheca selecta. During the period before the civil wars, Possevino and Bellarmine were identified as the intellectual representatives of the Jesuit ‘Bogey’. There seems to have been not much more to it than that. Balsamo discovers some interesting Anglican annotations on Possevino's works, indicating dyspepsy rather than theological engagement. By the eighteenth century Possevino was largely forgotten. What is more interesting is that the same seems to have been largely the case in the Catholic world. Acquaviva's hostility to Possevino, however, seems to have been astonishingly enduring. In 1606, during the crisis of the Venetian Interdict, Possevino played a characteristically honourable role, seeking to question the interdict at the source, recognising that there was something to be said on the Venetian side, and attempting to say so personally to Paul v. Possevino believed that Acquaviva blocked his access to the pope for a period of two months. Eventually he gained access and papal confidence, through the College of Cardinals. Possevino kept a memoir, in effect an autobiography, which was judged by a fellow Jesuit to be more candid ‘than is customary in the present age’ and therefore unfit for publication. Balsamo tells us that it cannot now be traced. Possevino, he observes, was destroyed by ‘friendly fire’. The difference is that the fire was not accidental. This dismal story is part of a history of lost opportunities. It raises some important questions. Possevino's urging of a pacific policy on Philip ii's nuncio in the Netherlands is in need of greater elucidation. Was he alone? If not, does his recall from the Polish mission a year before the Armada evoke a world that we need to know about? Again, was Possevino's account of theology in relation to the other sciences as normative as Balsamo believes for the period from 1593 to the trial of Galileo? In Galileo's own account Baronius affirmed a different and more sympathetic approach. Was he alone in this? Surely the fluidity of the period, politically and intellectually, is now in need of further investigation.