pon his shoulders.
At the last, he was conscious of having opened a new era for the Church,
and of being able to transmit a scepter of undisputed authority to his
successors. His death-bed was troubled with no remorse, with no
ingratitude of relatives, with no political complications produced by
family ambition or by the sacrifice of his official duties to personal
aggrandizement.

[Footnote 34: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 74.]

[Footnote 35: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 71, says: 'II marchese suo fratello
con la moglie gli diede il cappello, e con la morte il papato.']

[Footnote 36: Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 52. Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 93.]

[Footnote 37: Margherita Medici, sister of the Pope, had married
Gilberto Borromeo.]

[Footnote 38: See Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 53. Soranzo, _op. cit._ p.
91.]

[Footnote 39: Gia. Soranzo (_op. cit._ p. 133) says of Carlo Borromeo,
'ch'egli solo faccia piu profitto nella Corte di Roma che tutti i
decreti del Concilio insieme.']

Soon after the election of Pope Pius IV. the state of Europe made the
calling of a General Council indispensable. Paul's impolitic pretensions
had finally alienated England from the Roman Church. Scotland was upon
the point of declaring herself Protestant. The Huguenots were growing
stronger every year in France, the Queen Mother, Catherine de'Medici,
being at that time inclined to favor them. The Confession of Augsburg
had long been recognized in Germany. The whole of Scandinavia, with
Denmark, was lost to Catholicism. The Low Countries, in spite of Philip,
Alva, and the Inquisition, remained intractable. Bohemia, Hungary, and
Poland were alienated, ripe for open schism. The tenets of Zwingli had
taken root in German Switzerland. Calvin was gaining ground in the
French cantons. Geneva had become a stationary fortress, the stronghold
of belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries and
promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active
press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a
pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under
Spartan discipline had been to Athens in the Peloponnesian war--a
permanent _epiteichismos_, perpetually garrisoned and on guard to harry
the flanks of Catholics. Faithful to the Roman See in a strict sense of
the term, there remained only Spain, Portugal, and Italy. As the events
of the next century proved, the disaffected nations still offered
rallying-points for