in Ferrara due to the Italian War of 1551–1559, Antonio moved to Padua. At this time Don Ferrante, his wards' father, died in the aftermath of the Battle of St. Quentin (1557). Possevino had become an expert in the historical training of princes and was writing commentaries on this battle exalting the victory of Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy. This produced a Piedmontese commendature that he had to renounce in order to become a Jesuit, a severe hardship for his family, as his brother Giorgio was in jail and he was supporting his nephews, Giovanni Battista Bernardino Possevino and Antonio Possevino, both future translators and authors. France and Savoy; Lyons: Counter Reformation Jesuit But in Padua and in Naples he came in contact with the Society of Jesus and joined the order in 1559.<ref>La vocazione alla Compagnia di Gesu del p. Antonio Possevino in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 12 (1945): 102-124. Possevino's Latin account of his vocation is in the Jesuit archives in Rome, Archivio Romano della Compagnia di Gesu, Hist. Soc. ff.183-195.</ref> In 1560 Possevino was accompanied by Jesuit General Diego Lainez to the Savoy of Emanuele Filiberto where he bolstered the Catholic Church against heretics and he founded the Jesuit schools at Chambery, Mondovì and Turin. In his efforts to bring the entrenched Waldensians around, he debated Scipione Lentolo (1525–1599), Calvin's emissary to the Italian Reformed community. In combatting the influence of Calvin's Geneva increasingly he gravitated to France. This was at the onset of the Wars of Religion where he sought to rally the Catholics of Lyons together with Jesuit preacher Edmond Auger. He published a treatise on the Mass, Il sacrificio dell'altare (1563) and debated such Geneva reformers as Pierre Viret and the Italian Calvinist, Niccolo Balbani. For the Italian merchant community of Lyons he provided Catholic books, for example the Catechism of Peter Canisius and several other works in Italian. During this time he was put in jail and rescued from his Huguenot captors by influential adherents. In 1565 he successfully defended his order at the Colloquy at Bayonne before the boy king Charles IX and the future king Henri IV who remained a lifelong friend. In 1569 he wrote Il Soldato cristiano for pope Pius V who had it printed in Rome and distributed to the papal troops at the battle of Lepanto. He served as the rector of the Jesuit college of Avignon