An illustrious Roman Catholic Liberal, perhaps the greatest anti-papal son of the Roman Church, Fra Paolo Sarpi, whose history of the Council of Trent ranks among the remarkable books of the world, has told the tale of the synod not only without sympathy and admiration, but with much dislike and disparagement; and more than one Roman Catholic government shrank from publishing the decrees of the council as binding upon its own subjects.57 A liberal Roman Catholic, a lukewarm Protestant, an amiable philosopher, may regret the absolute surrender of the council to the papal will and the thoroughness with which the papal work was done, may regret that no concession was made, no compromise devised, no reconciliation attempted. But no true Papist, no earnest Protestant, no very profound thinker, no clear and strong-minded man of action will participate in the regret. Luther felt that the breach with Rome was eternal, and saw at once that a general council was powerless to repair it.58 Reconciliation was impossible; the synod of Trent showed vigour and good sense by declining to attempt an impossibility. By refusing vain concessions and withholding a worthless compromise it certainly did no disservice to Protestantism. By making the impossibility of reconciliation visible and glaring to all, it made the path of duty, of determined resistance clear and straight. If by re-enacting the Roman dogmas in utmost rigour with fresh solemnity and new anathemas the fathers of Trent lent a watchword and a stimulus to the aggressions of the Romish Church, they likewise roused the Reformed Churches to new resolution and endeavours by leaving them no other choice but that of unconditional surrender or unyielding resistance.59 The council of Trent holds a respectable rank among the

57 Thuanus, lib. xxxvi. c. 21.

58 Seckendorf, lib. iii. c. 11, § 34.

59 The more fervent Protestants of that time had an adequate sense of the direness of the impending peril and the magnitude of the inevitable conflict. The general assembly of the Scottish Church in 1565 appointed a fast in consideration of the troubles of the nation and the perils of the faith. In his Treatise of Fasting composed for that occasion, Knox sets forth the designs of the papacy against Protestantism with all his wonted vehemence of language but with unexaggerated and singular accuracy of statement: 'Now is Satan so enlarged against Jesus Christ and so odious is the light of His gospel to that Roman Antichrist that to suppress it in one province, realm, or nation he thinketh it nothing, unless that in all Europe the godly and such as abhor the papistical impiety be therewith utterly destroyed, and so rased from the face of the earth that no memory of them should after remain, &c.' M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii. pp. 140-3.

efficient councils and congresses of the world; it cannot be reckoned with those assemblies hateful to God and to His enemies.' Deliberately, earnestly, passionately, with all its heart and soul, with all its might and main, it set itself against God's truth and man's freedom; and has rightly earned the hearty and abiding hostility of the lovers and champions of both, as it still dwells in the affections of the foes and assailants of both. Its decrees still fully utter the mind, its canons still fully reveal the spirit of the Roman Church, are still referred to with assent and with disapproval, are still repeated with delight and with detestation.60

60 If Ranke is scarcely referred to here, it arises simply from the fact that, while I had keenly enjoyed and diligently studied his admirable work many years before I undertook this book, I did not have recourse to his guidance during my rapid march over his own peculiar ground from a not unnatural preference for contemporary guides. I cannot over-estimate my obligations to my previous study of his great history of the Roman Catholic reaction.

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BOOK VIII.

THE FIGHT WITH THE REFORMATION.

'Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.'-Isaiah v. 20.

THE work of the council of Trent completed the preparations of the Roman Church for the great fight with Protestantism. Armed at all points she took the field against her foe, under the command too of a peerless captain. Pope Pius IV. did not long outlive the assembly which he had so vigorously wielded, and in 1565 made way for Pius V. (Michael Ghislieri) the perfect and pattern pontiff. In him the Roman Church enjoyed a fervent, vigilant, devoted, laborious, self-denying and consummate head; in him the Reformation encountered a watchful, unweary, implacable and merciless enemy. Of unspotted life, untainted by nepotism, superior to the love of pleasure and the love of money, an ardent devotee and a true ascetic, he lived and breathed, he thought, felt and acted only for his church; all his passions were merged in a passion for her glory and in hatred of her foes; all his powers were perpetually tasked to the uttermost in her service and for the destruction of her adversaries. He was distinguished as a persecutor before he became pope, early flung himself with exceeding delight into the work of exterminating heretics, took service in the Inquisition, waged a vigorous warfare with the Reformation in Northern Italy where he indefatigably searched out and unsparingly destroyed Protestants and Protestant books, and through his surpassing merits was promoted to the post of chief Inquisitor. The sovereign pontiff did not grow slack in the

'Gabutius, de Vita Pii Quinti, lib. i. c. 2: Pro ardenti suo in exterminandis hæreticis desiderio,' c. 2, 5, 9. The unrelieved load of indiscriminate eulogy wherewith Gabutius oppresses his well-written and interesting life of this pontiff, is common to all papal biographers; witness Bzovius, de Vita Pauli V., and Wiseman's Recollections of the last Four Popes.

In

work or fall below the glory of the chief Inquisitor; Pius V. fully maintained the reputation of Michael Ghislieri, fully justified the joy which Philip II. expressed at the election of so eminent a persecutor. Amidst the multitude of pontifical cares and duties, all diligently attended to and exactly fulfilled, he gave closest heed to the supreme care and duty of extirpating heretics, and as the head of the Roman Church outdid his deeds and outnumbered his trophies as the head of the Holy Office. He conducted the operations of the Roman Catholic reaction with great skill, astonishing energy and much success. He carried the war against Protestantism into every land and pressed into the service every mode of assault, every form of seduction and violence; teaching, preaching, imprisonment and torture, fire and sword, Jesuits, inquisitors and soldiers.3 Italy he had the lurking Protestants hunted down and given to the flames, and created that dark and wily tyrant Cosmo de' Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany partly as an assertion of papal power but partly as a reward for the surrender of Tuscan heretics (1568). He heartily seconded the endeavours of Philip II. to root out the Reformation from the Netherlands, hailed the advent of Alva and encouraged the horrors of his administration. He did his best though vainly to crush Polish Protestantism, to thrust the work of persecution upon the enlightened king and tolerant diet of Poland. He threw his whole soul into the hideous civil war in France, lavished blessings, money and soldiers upon the Roman Catholics, inflamed the passions of the combatants and the savageness of the contest, warned Henry of Anjou fresh from the bloody victory of Jarnac against the sin of indulgence, assured Charles IX. of the exceeding cruelty of mercy towards heretics, cautioned the fell mother of that fell pair Catharine de' Medici in one of her moods of

2 Gabutius, lib. i. c. 9.

3 The words of Gabutius are striking: Ad hanc contagionem ubique terrarum radicitus evellendam, cum in omni vita sua, tum in primis in pontificatu, et prudentissimis consiliis et piis cohortationibus, et humanissimis monitis, et bellicis subsidiis, armis ac pœnis adhibitis, nullis laboribus parcens aut impensis, nihil non agendum sibi perpetuo cogitavit,' lib. iii. c. 12. How differently do Gabutius and Alban Butler deal with Pius! The English gentleman of the liberal eighteenth century hides the persecutor in the saint; while the Italian ecclesiastic of the sixteenth century gives due and proud prominence to the persecutor whom he regards as essential to the saint. The liberal Catholic de Thou detests the persecutor and scarcely allows the saint, whom he represents as implacable and unforgiving ('injuriarum tenacissimus,' lib. xxxix. c. 1).

Gabutius, lib. ii. c. 2, 10, 11; lib. iii. c. 10, 12, 16. Thuanus, lib. xxxix. c. 2.

5

constrained and guileful tolerance against the error of supposing any work more pleasant in the sight of God than an onslaught on the Huguenots, and was just prevented from bestowing his benediction upon the Bartholomew massacre which followed close after his decease. Nor while taking pains to train up this sometimes slack tormenter of France into the heroine of St. Bartholomew, did Pius forget or neglect the two other famous women, Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stewart who with Catharine de' Medici bore so conspicuous a part in that awful fight between Rome and the Reformation. In the guide and darling of England he abhorred the Protestant champion, launched a bull of excommunication against her and did his best to shake her throne and win back her people. In the guilty or suspected wife, in the disturber and castaway of Scotland he yearned towards a Roman Catholic martyr, encouraged her during her struggle with her Protestant subjects as work done for the church and consoled her under her imprisonment by her Protestant neighbour as suffering endured for the church.6

But this incessant and wide-spread conflict with the Reformation did not exhaust the wrath and energy of this pattern pontiff. He abhorred misbelievers almost as much as heretics, and lent himself with equal zeal and earnestness to a war against the Turks. When Sultan Selim II. the somewhat degenerate son of Solyman the Magnificent, sought to wrest Cyprus from the Venetians and alarmed Christendom by the greatness of his armament, Pope Pius at once organised a great confederacy against the Ottomans, formed a league with Philip II. and the Venetians and bound together Spain and Italy in a holy war. He lavished toil and treasure upon this undertaking and contributed a considerable squadron to the mighty fleet with which Philip's bastard brother Don John of Austria set sail in quest of the misbelievers; and his galleys, if not his prayers, bore no small or undistinguished part in the battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571), the greatest and most

5 Gabutius, lib. ii. c. 6-10. Lettres de Saint Pie V, Paris, 1826. Henry is warned against the sin of indulgence, ep. 18. Catherine is cautioned, Cave autem putes, carissima in Christo filia, quidquam gratius acceptiusve Deo fieri posse quam quum illius hostes pro catholicæ religionis studio oppugnentur.' Charles IX. is told, 'Nothing is more cruel than pity and mercy bestowed on impious men who deserve the worst punishments (Nihil est ea pietate et misericordia crudelius quæ in impios et ultima supplicia merentes confertur,' ep. 24).

6

Gabutius, lib. iii. c. 8, 9. Romanum Bullarium, tom. ii. p. 305.