and then of Lyons where he received the Jesuit General Francis Borgia in 1571 on a journey from Spain to Rome. He was there during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. During these militant years he first conceived of the plan of his Counter Reformation bibliographical works, as he states in the introduction to the Bibliotheca selecta. Rome: Jesuit Secretary; Sweden, Poland, Russia: Apostolic Nuncio When Borgia died, Possevino returned to Rome for the third Jesuit General Congregation and stayed on as the Latin secretary to Everard Mercurian, Jesuit general from 1572 until 1578. Pope Gregory XIII sent him to the court of King John III of Sweden in order to influence the course of the Livonian War. During this decade travelling around the Baltic and Eastern Europe Possevino wrote several tracts against his Protestant adversaries, including the Lutheran David Chytraeus, the Calvinist Andreas Volanus and the Unitarian Francis David After Sweden and Poland Possevino proceeded to the Russian capital of Ivan the Terrible and helped to mediate between him and Stefan Bathory in the Treaty of Jam Zapolski in 1582. He left a valuable account of his nunciature in his description of the Tsardom of Muscovy. He also wrote accounts of his travels in Transylvania and Livonia. During these years he helped found, with Piotr Skarga, the Jesuit Vilnius University and Jesuit academies and seminaries in Braniewo, Olomouc and Cluj historically connected to present day institutions. Possevino's efforts to bolster the Catholics in Poland under the patronage of Bathory engendered hostility to the Jesuit diplomat at the Habsburg court of Rudolf II reflected at the papal court of Rome. Padua and Rome: Jesuit encyclopedist and bibliographer After his protector Bathory's death at the end of 1586 Possevino was retired from diplomacy by Jesuit general Claudio Acquaviva. He was banned from Rome as too political and exiled to Venetian territory. In Padua Possevino continued to conduct the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises thus influencing the vocation of the Bishop and Saint Francis de Sales there as a student of law. Finally, in Padua began the scholarly project of assembling and organizing the library of orthodox Catholic learning assembled in the Bibliotheca selecta (1593) dedicated to Pope Clement VIII and Sigismund III Vasa. His sections were carefully reviewed by the leading professors of the Roman College including Christopher Clavius and Robert Bellarmine. Next he set to prerparing the compendious theological reference work Apparatus Sacer