[2] He was the first Jesuit to visit Muscovy, Sweden, Denmark, Livonia, Hungary, Pomerania, and Saxony in amply documented papal missions between 1578 and 1586 where he championed the enterprising policies of Pope Gregory XIII.

Recent scholarship has identified Antonio Possevino's family as New Christians admitted to the learned circles of the court of Renaissance Mantua and its Gonzaga dukes.

In 1549 at seventeen Antonio came to study with his brother in Rome and met the leading intellectuals at the Renaissance court of pope Julius III (1550–1555), the patron of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the builder of Villa Giulia.

Possevino was connected with the Aristotelian revival associated with Francis Robortello and Vincenzo Maggi (1498–1564) that generated many treatises on literary and courtly matters including his brother's Dialogo dell'honore and his early works.

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.

[9] 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[10] 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.

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.

Revisions and translations into Italian of books, which were originally included in the Bibliotheca Selecta, were later published as free standing works, such as the Coltura degl'Ingegni and Apparato All'Historia.

During the production and publication of his enormous Apparatus Sacer (1603-06) in Venice, Possevino became the Jesuit leader of the traditionalist vecchi in opposing the anti-papal giovani who were being more successfully led by Servite historian Paolo Sarpi.

[13] Possevino's contributions to la guerra delle scritture was written under pseudonyms such as Giovanni Filoteo d'Asti, Teodoro Eugenio di Famagosta, and Paolo Anafesto.

Harsh words about Paolo Sarpi and the opposers of the legitimacy of the Interdict were expressed by Possevino, but, on the other hand, his adversaries did not hesitate to criticize him and other Jesuits.

He was sent to relative obscurity in nearby Ferrara where he wrote several polemical tracts under various pseudonyms concerning the pro-Catholic False Dmitriy I, the Venetian Interdict and other controversial issues.