s of their very arbitrary protector. When
Father Caussin, the king's confessor, warned him against the
cardinal's wars, and his Protestant alliances, his superiors agreed
to remove him.

Richelieu refused allegiance to system or party, and opposed the
Jansenist and the Gallican as he did the Jesuit extreme. He desired
to be aided, not hampered, by the Church and cultivated as much
independence as allowed friendship with Rome. Towards the end of his
life it was his object to become patriarch of France. The Pope who
reigned in his time had been in France when Cardinal Barberini. He
was a pontiff of a modern type, when compared with many of his recent
predecessors; and it was in his pontificate that the Roman Inquisition
put out its fires. He did not escape the influence of the Frenchman's
more vigorous personality. He shared his dread of the Habsburgs and
his interest in Gustavus, but they came to a breach at last.

It was in Richelieu's time, and under his auspices, that the great
division occurs between the modern Papacy and the medieval, which the
Counter-Reformation had revived. The striking contrast between France
under Richelieu and France under Lewis XIV is the tolerance of the one
and the intolerance of the other. But no spirit of independence could
be safe under the absolutism which the cardinal inaugurated, and which
was a glaring inconsistency as long as consciences were free. The
change, which was sure to come, came when, under very peculiar
constellations, Lewis XIV desired to show that he was a better
Catholic than the Pope.

The cardinal never abandoned the hope of healing the division of
churches, which was a calamity in his eyes, both as a statesman and a
divine. He provided for Huguenot ministers who were reconciled, and
he made serious plans to prepare for reunion, plans which Bossuet
resumed, but which had to be given up when the king resorted to
violence. The deepest part of the scheme to exalt the throne was the
endeavour to raise France above the nations. The opportunity was
afforded by the Thirty Years' War. All Europe was involved, the
Protestant Powers uniting against the House of Habsburg, which, by
tradition, by pretension, and by its actual position and power, was
the one constant obstacle to the desired supremacy of the French king.
Richelieu assisted them, and ended by openly joining them. Once he
said, "I will prove to the world that the age of Spain is passing away
and t