This book was published in conjunction with an exhibition staged in Lambeth Palace Library in the last quarter of 2023 which illuminated the multifaceted life of Cardinal Reginald Pole through the remarkable collection of his books donated to New College, Oxford, around the time of his death in 1558. New College Library came together with Lambeth Palace Library and the Venerable English College in Rome to present a portrait of the cardinal generated through the prism of his library, with exhibits drawn from all three institutions, along with others from the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The volume is copiously illustrated with contemporary images, very many of them drawn from manuscripts and books from Pole's library. The editor must be lauded for recruiting a team of ten outstanding scholars and overseeing them so well to create a book that portrays Pole so engagingly and accessibly in the context of the exciting but turbulent times in which he lived.

John Edwards opens the volume with a useful introduction that highlights three strong and enduring themes in Pole's life: his attachment to Christian humanism, his preoccupation with martyrdom and his irenic understanding of the Christian Church. The chapters which follow the introduction are arranged largely in chronological sequence. Susan Brigden's chapter is focused on Pole's early life. She highlights his intense pride in his noble Plantagenet blood, his indebtedness to Henry viii, his cousin, for his outstanding education and the consequently great and general expectations that he was destined to make major contributions to the Tudor commonwealth. She tentatively traces his hesitant evolution from being a faithful subject of the king, even to the extent of promoting his ‘great matter’ in Paris, to becoming an opponent of Henry's growing pretensions to supremacy over the English Church. The transition is not entirely clear because ‘[o]f his nature, and later by necessity, Pole was reserved, hidden, secret’ (p. 13).

One of the best chapters in the book is Tim Wade's discussion of Pole and humanism in Padua. He sets the scene in the Italian university city with exemplary clarity, reveals a dense network of scholars associated with Pole and uses the books that he acquired in the 1520s to trace his engagement with the intellectual currents swirling around him. Wade highlights a significant shift in Pole's interest over the decade away from classical authors to patristic theology, particularly that of St John Chrysostom (d. 407). By 1530 Pole was already questioning his earlier support for the royal divorce but he remained ‘studiously silent’ (p. 28) on the subject until the execution of Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More in 1535 compelled him to address the subject in a very public and forthright manner in De unitate. Fred Smith presents a very interesting account of that seminal text. It was ostensibly written to convince Henry viii to renounce his royal supremacy but was never likely to do so. Pole was declared an arch-traitor by the king and had a bounty put on his head, and his mother and eldest brother were imprisoned and executed afterwards. Smith opines that the conspiracy in which they were implicated was ‘probably nothing more than a fiction concocted by the regime’ (p. 38). This reviewer is not convinced that the Exeter conspiracy was fictional.

Anne Dillon's study of Pole's engagement with the concept of the martyr is impressively informed by the remains of his library. She shows that his ‘understanding of the ideal of martyrdom ran like a leitmotif through his life and his work’ (p. 65). The deaths of Fisher and More, as well as those of his mother and eldest brother, affected him very deeply and shaped his thoughts profoundly. Dillon opens up a new panorama on the subject by highlighting Pole's influence on Michelangelo's visual interpretations of martyrdom. Abigail Brundin's chapter on Vittoria Colonna's relationship with Pole is rich in human interest and offers a very unexpected perspective on the cardinal. Colonna and Michelangelo were leading figures among the Spirituali along with Pole.

In her chapter on ‘Pole and the Spirituali: Italy, 1532–1553’ M. Anne Overell uses his library and a very close examination of Il Beneficio to present fascinating new insights into Pole's engagement with Christian humanism. She declares that ‘Il Beneficio is the best evidence we have of the beliefs of the Spirituali … their own conclusions presented in a distinctive voice’ (p. 46). Its rich and diverse sources included not just the Bible and patristic works but it also contains ‘over sixty unattributed quotations from Melanchthon, Luther and Calvin’ (p. 48). Pole subsequently admitted in a letter he drafted but did not send that he had for a time believed in salvation by faith alone, but by the eve of his return to England in 1554 he had changed his mind on reading the Epistle of St James. Overell concludes that ‘Pole came to reconcile England after a desperate struggle to reconcile himself’ (p. 55). Lucy Wooding offers a succinct summary of Pole's roles in the Marian restoration in England. She concludes that ‘Pole's death … might be said to have marked the death of Catholic England’ (p. 104). In fact, however, everything had ultimately depended on the queen rather than the cardinal, and as she was dying Pole's mission ‘began to crumble around him’ (p. 104). As for his legacy, Wooding is circumspect. Maurice Whitehead affirms that Pole left an enduring legacy in the form of seminary educational provision through the eleventh decree of his 1556 legatine synod not only in the Catholic Church, as has long been recognised, but also in the Anglican communion of the present day. Gerard Kilroy explores Pole's legacy to Nicholas Harpsfield and Nicholas Sander, two Catholic apologists who ‘remain comparatively unknown’ (p. 126). Conspicuously missing from this volume is any consideration of Pole's most enduring legacy, the ferocious animus towards Catholicism generated by his presiding over the burning to death of hundreds of Protestants who were immortalised shortly afterwards by Foxe’s Book of martyrs. Wooding claims that burning heretics ‘was viewed by nearly all at the time as a necessary evil if the fabric of society was to be preserved’ (p. 91). The visceral reaction to the burning of the Marian martyrs proves otherwise. It was to shape English perceptions of Catholics and Catholicism until late into the last century. It shaped Englishmen's mistreatment of the Irish for centuries, and it is still echoed in manifestations of anti-Catholicism in Ulster to this day.

Overell acknowledges that her chapter was made possible by Dermot Fenlon and Tom Mayer. In fact, the entire book could hardly have been written but for the work of those two exceptional scholars. None the less, this collection of essays forms a very valuable complement to the conventional biographies by using the cardinal's library to such great effect.