s in succession after him (1590-1591) led to the election of Clement
VIII. in January 1592, a man of ability and piety. He mistrusted the
genuineness of the offer which Henry had for some time been making of
returning to the bosom of the church, and was not inclined to alienate
Spain. There was danger that the French Catholics would maintain their
point, and even sever themselves from Rome. The acceptance of Henry
would once more establish France as a Catholic power, and relieve the
papacy of its dependence on Spain. At the end of 1595 Clement resolved
to receive Henry into the church, and he reaped the fruits in the
support which Henry promptly gave him in his claim to resume Ferrara
into the Papal States. In his latter years, he and his right-hand man
and kinsman, Cardinal Aldobrandini, found themselves relying on French
support to counteract the Spanish influences which were now opposed to
Clement's own sway.

On Clement's death another four weeks' papacy intervened before the
election of Paul V., a rigorous legalist who cared neither for Spain nor
France, but for whatever he regarded as the rights of the Church, as to
which he had most exaggerated ideas. These very soon brought him in
conflict with Venice, a republic which firmly maintained the supremacy
of the authority of the State, rejecting the secular authority of the
Church. To the pope's surprise, excommunication was of no effect; the
Jesuits found that if they held by the pope there was no room for them
in Venice, and they came out in a body. The governments of France and
Spain disregarded the popular voice which would have set them at
war--France for Venice, Spain for the pope--and virtually imposed peace;
on the whole, though not completely, in favour of Venice.

But the conflict had impeded and even threatened to subvert that unity,
secular and ecclesiastical, which was the logical aim of the whole of
the papal policy.

_IV.--The Counter Reformation: Second Stage_

Meanwhile, the Protestantism which had threatened to prevail in Poland
had been checked under King Stephen, and under Sigismund III.
Catholicism had been securely re-established, though Protestantism was
not crushed. But this prince, succeeding to the Swedish crown, was
completely defeated in his efforts to obtain a footing for Catholicism,
to which his success would have given an enormous impulse throughout the
north.

In Germany, the ecclesiastical princes, with the skilled aid of th