rm. His policy was guided largely
by his ruling passion, love of a natural son, born before he had taken
priest's orders, whom he made Gonfaloniere of the church and would have
advanced to still further preferment had not his advisers objected.
Gregory was the pope who thanked God "for the grace vouchsafed unto
Christendom" in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was also the pope
who praised and encouraged the plan for the assassination of
Elizabeth.[1]

[Sidenote: Sixtus V, 1585-90]

In the person of Sixtus V the spirit of Pius V returned to power.
Felix Peretti was a Franciscan and an Inquisitor, an earnest man and a
hard one. Like his predecessors pursuing the goal of absolutism, he
had an advantage over them in the blessing disguised as the disaster of
the Spanish Armada. From this time forward the papacy was forced to
champion its cause with the spiritual weapons at its command, and the
gain to it as a moral and religious power was enormous. In some ways
it assumed the primacy of Catholic Europe, previously usurped by Spain,
and attained an influence that it had not had since the Great Schism of
the fourteenth century.

The reforms of Sixtus are important rather for their comprehensive than
for their drastic quality. The whole machinery of the Curia was made
over, the routine of business being delegated to a number of standing
committees known as Congregations, such as the Congregation of
Ceremonies to watch over matters of precedence at the papal court, and
the Congregation {388} of the Consistory to prepare the work of the
Consistory. The number of cardinals was fixed at seventy. New
editions of the breviary and of the Index were carefully prepared. At
the same time the moral reforms of Trent were laxly carried out, for
while decrees enforcing them were promulgated by Sixtus with one hand,
with the other he sold dispensations and privileges.

[1] _Ante_, p. 338.

SECTION 3. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT

While the popes were enjoying their _jus incorrigibilitatis_--as Luther
wittily expressed it--the church was going to rack and ruin. Had the
safety of Peter's boat been left to its captains, it would apparently
have foundered in the waves of schism and heresy. No such dangerous
enemy has ever attacked the church as that then issuing from her own
bosom. Neither the medieval heretics nor the modern philosophers have
won from her in so short a time such masses of adherents. Where
Voltaire slew his t