one the same fate. By the middle of the
sixteenth century all resistance was subdued. In opposition, however, to
this centralising policy, the nepotism introduced by Sixtus IV. led to
dismemberment. Paul III. gave Parma and Piacenza to his son Pier Luigi
Farnese, and the duchy was lost to the Holy See for good. Paul IV. made
a similar attempt in favour of his nephew Caraffa, but he was put to
death under Pius IV.; and this species of nepotism, which subsisted at
the expense of the papal territory, came to an end. Pius V. forbade,
under pain of excommunication, to invest any one with a possession of
the Holy See, and this law was extended even to temporary concessions.

In the eighteenth century a time came when the temporal power was a
source of weakness, and a weapon by which the courts compelled the Pope
to consent to measures he would otherwise never have approved. It was
thus that the suppression of the Jesuits was obtained from Clement XIV.
Under his successors the world had an opportunity of comparing the times
when Popes like Alexander III. or Innocent IV. governed the Church from
their exile, and now, when men of the greatest piety and
conscientiousness virtually postponed their duty as head of the Church
to their rights as temporal sovereigns, and, like the senators of old,
awaited the Gauls upon their throne. There is a lesson not to be
forgotten in the contrast between the policy and the fate of the great
mediaeval pontiffs, who preserved their liberty by abandoning their
dominions, and that of Pius VI. and Pius VII., who preferred captivity
to flight.

The nepotism of Urban VIII. brought on the war of Castro, and in its
train increase of debt, of taxes, impoverishment of the State, and the
odious union of spiritual with temporal arms, which became a permanent
calamity for the Holy See. This attachment to the interest of their
families threw great discredit on the Popes, who were dishonoured by the
faults, the crimes, and the punishment of their relatives. But since the
death of Alexander VIII., in 1691, even that later form of nepotism
which aimed at wealth only, not at political power, came to an end, and
has never reappeared except in the case of the Braschi. The nepotism of
the cardinals and prelates has survived that of the Popes. If the
statute of Eugenius IV. had remained in force, the College of Cardinals
would have formed a wholesome restraint in the temporal government, and
the favouritism of the p