Pius V

Pope Pius V (17 January 1504 – 1 May 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri, was a Dominican friar and former inquisitor whose six-year pontificate drove the Counter-Reformation's effort to renew the Church from within. Born to a poor family in Bosco, in the Duchy of Milan, Ghislieri entered the Dominican Order at fourteen, taking the name Michele. He rose through the order as a theologian, professor, and inquisitor, gaining a reputation for putting orthodoxy before personalities — including publicly rebuking his predecessor, Pius IV, for proposing to make a thirteen-year-old relative a cardinal. Elected pope on 7 January 1566, he brought to the papal throne the discipline of a monk. He continued to wear his Dominican habit, ate simple meals, and walked barefoot in penitential processions through Rome. His most lasting liturgical contribution was the standardization of Catholic worship through the Roman Catechism (1566), the Roman Breviary (1568), and the Roman Missal (1570). The Tridentine Mass codified by that missal became the universal form of the Latin Rite and remained essentially unchanged for four centuries until the Second Vatican Council. He also declared Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church. Among his more politically charged acts, Pius issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis in 1570, excommunicating Elizabeth I of England for heresy and the persecution of English Catholics — a move of contested practical effect but great symbolic force. Politically, Pius V is best remembered for organizing the Holy League — an alliance of Catholic maritime states — that defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. The victory halted Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean. According to biographers, as the battle ended Pius rose, went to a window gazing east, and declared: 'A truce to business; our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given the Christian army.' He attributed the outcome to the intercession of the Virgin Mary and instituted the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, later renamed Our Lady of the Rosary. Pius V died on 1 May 1572. He was beatified in 1672 and canonized by Clement XI in 1712.