On Aug. 21, 1541, the cardinal was appointed legate at Viterbo, and for a few years passed a happy and congenial life amid the friends that gathered round him. Here he came into close rela tions with Vittoria Colonna, Contarini, Sadoleto, Bembo, Morone, Marco Antonio, Flaminio, and other scholars and leaders of thought; and many of the questions raised by the Reformation in Germany were eagerly discussed in the circle of Viterbo. The burning question of the day, justification by faith, was a special subject of discussion. Pole's own attitude to the question of justification by faith is given by Vittoria Colonna, to whom he said that she ought to set herself to believe as though she must be saved by faith alone and to act as though she must be saved by works alone. In the excited temper of the times any defender of justification by faith was looked upon by the old school as heretical; and Pole, with the circle at Viterbo, was denounced to the Inquisition. Though the process went on from the pontificate of Paul III. to that of Paul IV., nothing was done against the cardinal until the time of the latter pope.' While at Viterbo his rule was firm but mild ; and he regained many heretics, such as his friend Flaminio, by patience and kindli ness, to a reconsideration of their opinions. During this time also he was still engaged in furthering a proposed armed expedition to Scotland to aid the papal party, and in 1545 he was again asking help from Charles V. But the Council of Trent (q.v.) required all his attention. In 1542 he had been appointed one of the presiding legates and had written in preparation his work De concilio; and now in 1545, after a brief visit to Rome, he went secretly, on account of fear of assassination by Henry's agents, to Trent, where he arrived on May 4, 1545. At the council he advocated that dogmatic decrees should go together with those on reform as affording the only stable foundation. His views on the subject of original sin, akin as it is to that of justification, were accepted and embodied in the decree. He was present when the latter subject was introduced, and he entreated the fathers to study the subject well before committing themselves to a decision. On June 28, 1546, he left Trent on account of ill-health and went to Padua. While he was there frequent communications passed between him and the council and the draft of the decree on justification was sent to him. His suggestions and amendments were accepted, and the decree embodies the doctrines that Pole had always held of justification by a living faith which showed itself in good works. This effectually disproves the story that he left the council so as to avoid taking part in an adverse decree.
On the death of Henry (Jan. 28, 1547), Pole was excepted from the general pardon. At the conclave of 1549 Pole received two thirds of the votes, but by a delay, he lost the election and Julius III. succeeded. He then retired to Magazzano on the Lake of Garda and occupied himself in editing his book Pro unitate ecclesiae, with an intended dedication to Edward VI.
On the accession of Mary he was appointed legate to the new queen, and began his negotiations. But he was still under at tainder; and the temper of England was not yet ripe for the presence of a cardinal. The project of the queen's marriage was also an obstacle. A marriage between her and Pole, who was then only a deacon, was proposed by some, but this was opposed by the emperor. The marriage with Philip, of which Pole did not approve, having taken place (July 25, 1554), and Rome yielding on the practical difficulties of the lay holders of Church lands, Pole was allowed to return to England as cardinal. On his landing
he was informed that the attainder had been reversed; and he was received with joy by Mary and Philip. He proceeded to parlia ment and there absolved the kingdom and accepted in the pope's name the demands respecting ecclesiastical property. He rectified the canonical position of those who had been ordained or conse crated since the breach with Rome. Those ordained in schism, indeed, but according to the old Catholic rite, were absolved from their irregularity, and, receiving penance, were reinstated; those ordained under the new rite were simply regarded as laymen and dismissed without penance or absolution. Pole was not re sponsible for the cruel persecution by which the reign was dis figured. On Nov. 4, 1555, Pole opened, in the chapel royal aL Westminster, a legatine synod, consisting of the united convo cations of the two provinces, for the purpose of laying the foundations of wise and solid reforms. In the Reformatio Angliae which he brought out in 1556, based on his Legatine Constitu tions of 1555, he ordered that every cathedral church should have its seminary. He also ordered that the Catechism of Caranza, who, like him, was to suffer from the Inquisition for this very book, should be translated into English for the use of the laity. On Cranmer's deprivation, Pole became archbishop of Canter bury; and, having been ordained priest two days before, he was consecrated on March 22, 1556, the day after Cranmer suffered at Oxford. But the clouds began to gather round him. His personal enemy Caraffa had become pope under the name of Paul IV. and was biding his time. When Rome quarrelled with Spain, and France, on behalf of the pope, took up arms, England could no longer observe neutrality. Paul IV. deprived Pole of his power both as legate a latere and legatus natus as archbishop of Canterbury (June 14, 1557) ; he also reconstituted the process of the Inquisition against the cardinal, and summoned him to Rome to answer to the crime of heresies imputed to him. Mary, who had been warned by her ambassador to the pope that prison awaited Pole, prevented the breve ordering the cardinal to pro ceed to Rome from being delivered, and so Pole remained in England. Broken down as much by the blow as by ill-health the cardinal died at Lambeth on Nov. 17, 1558, twelve hours after Mary's death and under the unmerited disgrace of the papacy in defence of which he had spent his life. He was buried at Canterbury near the site of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket.
The chief sources for Pole's biography are his life written in Italian by his secretary Beccatelli, which was translated into Latin by Andrew Dudith as Vita Poli cardinalis (Venice, 1563), and his letters (Epistolae Reginaldi Poli) edited by Girolamo Quirini and published in 5 volumes (Brescia, 1744-57), a new edition of which is in preparation at Rome with additions from the Vatican Archives. See also the State Papers (foreign and domestic) of Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Mary ; the Spanish and Venetian State Papers; vol. i. of A. Theiner's Acta genuine S.S. Oecumenici Caecilii tridentini (1874) ; the Compendio dei processi del santo uffizio di Rotna da Paolo III. a Paolo IV. (Society romana di storia patria, Archivio, 261 seq.) ; T. Phillipp's History of the Life of R. Pole (Oxford, 1764 67) ; Athanasius Zimmermann, S.J., Kardinal Pole sein Leben and seine Schriften (Regensburg, 1893) ; Martin Hailie, Life of Reginald Pole (1910) ; and F. G. Lee, Reginald Pole.