erarchy. Five of
these men represented opinions which at the moment of their elevation to
the purple had a fair prospect of ultimate success. Imbued with a
profound sense of the need for ecclesiastical reform, and tinctured more
or less deeply with so-called Protestant opinions, they desired nothing
more intensely than a reconstitution of the Catholic Church upon a basis
which might render reconciliation with the Lutherans practicable. They
had their opportunity during the pontificate of Paul III. It was a
splendid one; and, as I have already shown, the Conference of
Rechensburg only just failed in securing the end they so profoundly
desired. But the Papacy was not prepared to concede so much as they were
anxious to grant: the German Reformers proved intractable; they were
themselves impeded by their loyalty to antique Catholic traditions, and
by their dread of a schism; finally, the militant expansive force of
Spanish orthodoxy, expressing itself already in the concentrated energy
of the Jesuit order, rendered attempts at fusion impossible. The victory
in Rome remained with the faction of _intransigeant_ Catholics; and
this was represented, in Paul III.'s first creation of Cardinals, by
Caraffa. Caraffa was destined to play a singular part in the transition
period of Papal history which I am reviewing. He belonged as essentially
to the future as Alessandro Farnese belonged to the past. He embodied
the spirit of the Inquisition, and upheld the principles of
ecclesiastical reform upon the narrow basis of Papal absolutism. He
openly signalized his disapproval of Paul's nepotism; and when his time
for ruling came, he displayed a remorseless spirit of justice without
mercy in dealing with his own family. Yet he hated the Spanish
ascendancy with a hatred far more fierce and bitter than that of Paul
III. His ineffectual efforts to shake off the yoke of Philip II. was the
last spasm of the older Papal policy of resistance to temporal
sovereigns, the last appeal made in pursuance of that policy to France
by an Italian Pontiff.[16]

[Footnote 16: Paul IV. as Pope was feeble compared with his
predecessors, Julius II. and Leo X.; the Guises, on whom he relied for
resuscitating the old French party in the South, were but
half-successful adventurers, mere shadows of the Angevine invaders whom
they professed to represent.]

The object of this excursion into the coming period is to show in how
deep a sense Paul III. may be regarded