II.—­Sixteenth Century Popes

The interest of this period lies mainly in the antagonism between the imperative demand for internal reform of the Church and the policy which had become ingrained in the heads of the Church.  For the popes, these political aspirations stood first and reform second.  Alexander Farnese (Paul III.) was pope from 1534 to 1549.  He was already sixty-seven when he succeeded Clement.  Policy and enlightenment combined at first to make him advance Contarini and his allies, and to hope for reconciliation with the Protestants.  Policy turned him against acceptance of the Ratisbon proposals, as making Germany too united.  Then he urged the emperor against the Protestants, but when the success of Charles was too complete he was ill-pleased.  He withdrew the Council from Trent to Bologna, to remove it from imperial influences which threatened the pope’s personal supremacy.  So far as he was concerned, reformation had dropped into the background.

Julius III. was of no account; Marcellus, an excellent and earnest man, might have done much had he not died in three weeks.  His election, and that of his successor, Caraffa, as Paul IV., both pointed to a real intention of reform.  Caraffa had all his life been a passionate advocate of moral reform, but even he was swept away by the political conditions and his hatred of Spain, which was an obsession.  Professed detestation of Spain was a sure way to his favour, which, his kinsfolk recognising, they won his confidence only to their own ultimate destruction when he discovered that he had been deceived.  Half his reign was worse than wasted in a futile contest with Spain; when it was done, he turned rigorously to energetic disciplinary reforms, but death stayed his hand.

A very different man was Pius IV., the pontiff under whom the Council of Trent was brought to a close.  Far from rigid himself, he still could not, if he would, have altogether deserted the paths of reform.  But most conspicuously he was inaugurator of a new policy, not asserting claims to supremacy, but seeking to induce the Catholic powers to work hand in hand with the papacy—­Spain and the German Empire being now parted under the two branches of the House of Hapsburg.  In this policy he was most ably assisted by the diplomatic tact of Cardinal Moroni, who succeeded in bringing France, Spain, and the empire into a general acceptance of the positions finally laid down by the Council of Trent, whereby the pope’s ecclesiastical authority was not impaired, but rather strengthened.

On his death, he was succeeded by one of the more rigid school, Pius V. (1563-1572).  This pope continued to maintain the monastic austerity of his own life; his personal virtue and piety were admirable; but, being incapable of conceiving that anything could be right except on the exact lines of his own practice, he was both extremely severe and extremely intolerant; especially he was, in harmony with Philip of Spain, a determined persecutor.