Chapter 9 POLICY OF THE POPES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

OF all the periods of modern history, the sixteenth is the fullest of tempests, of revolutions, and of important events. It shines with the bright lustre of Italian literature; but, it is tinged with all the blood which fanaticism could shed in the lapse of an hundred years. Each of the eras which divides the duration of this age, is itself a memorable event; the league of Cambray in 1508; the concordat of Leo X. and Francis I.

in 1515: the conquest of Egypt by the Turks, new expeditions to the two Indies, the English schism, and the establishment of the Jesuits, in 1540; the abdication of Charles V. and the accession of Elizabeth in 1558; the council of Trent from 1545 to 1563, and, the increase of heresies, the Batavian confederation, the excesses of Philip II. and St. Bartholomew's-day in 1572; the league, the assassination of Henry III. by James Clement, in 1589; the victories of Henry IV. his recantation, and the edict of Nantz, in 1598. Fifteen popes during these tragical events governed the church, almost all of them of distinguished talents, and some of an energetic character: but the remembrance of the Avignon schism, the permanent scandal of nepotism, the invention of printing, the discovery of a new world, the general advancement of knowledge, the exertions of Luther and Calvin, the influence of their doctrines, and propagation of their errors; so many obstacles were opposed to the progress of the pontifical power, that it required extreme dexterity in the bishops of Rome to retard its decline.

After the concessions made by the emperor, Charles IV. in 1355 the German Sovereigns had lost their ancient preponderance in Italy; and the French, in carrying their arms into it, had obtained a considerable influence, which was much less opposed by the popes than by the Venetians, the princes of Arragon, and the powerful families that ruled Florence and Milan. Pope Julius II. nephew of Sixtus IV. resolved to enfranchise Italy, that is, to subject it to the court of Rome, to expel foreigners, to sow divisions among the rivals of the Holy See, and to take advantage of them in order to re-assume in Europe that supremacy before aspired to by Gregory VII. and exercised by Innocent III. Gregory VII. Innocent III. and Julius II., among so many popes, are the three most violent enemies of kings.

After the death of Alexander VI, and during the twenty-seven days of the pontificate of Pius III. the Venetians had regained important places taken from their republic at the end of the fifteenth century: they occupied a part of Romagna; Cesar Borgia had secured the other, as well as many cities of the March of Ancona, and of the Duchy of Urbino; the Baglioni possessed Perugia; the Bentivoglio, Bologna: divers portions of the pontifical domains were then to be recovered. Julius succeeded in despoiling Borgia, the Bentivoglio, the Baglioni: but, to subdue the Venetians, he concluded against them with the king of France, the emperor, and the king of Arragon, the famous league of Cambray.-But, soon after, the advancement of Louis XII. rendered him uneasy: he feared to allow that of the emperor; he hastens to enter into a secret négociation with the Venetians, and promises them, provided they restore Faenza and Rimini, to join them in repelling the 'barbarians'; it is thus he calls the French, the Spaniards, and Germans. The Venetians, who rejected these offers, were excommunicated, defeated, and absolved by submitting to the pope. Then Julius leagued, in fact, with the Venetians against the French; he puts on the cuirass, lays siege to, in person, and takes Mirandola. Vanquished by Trivulzio, general of the French, he excommunicates Louis XII. lays France under an interdict, and endeavours to arm England against her. Apostolic legates labour to corrupt the French soldiers: the title of defenders of the Holy See rewards the ravages of the Swiss; the Genoese are excited to revolt; the states of John d'Albret, king of Navarre, the ally of Louis XII. are delivered over by the Roman court to the first occupier.291

To crush France, overthrow Florence, such were the designs of Julius when he died in 1513, the tenth year of his pontificate. Medals, struck by his order, represent him with the tiara on his head, a scourge in his hand, pursuing the French, and trampling under his feet the crown of France. Julius II. was so much of a temporal prince, that it would be hard to discover the bishop in him; he attended too little to even the forms of the Apostolat; this was the principal deficiency in his policy.292 It was nevertheless in his pontificate that the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope was established. Julius II. according to Guicciardini,293 did not merit the title of a great man; and he obtains it from those only who, incapable of appreciating the value of words, imagine that a sovereign pontiff becomes less illustrious by setting an example of the pacific virtues, than in extending the domains of the church by the effusion of Christian blood. He was detested even in Italy. Before his death, the inhabitants of Bologna, threw down his statue, the work of Michael Angelo.

Leo X. though he reigned but eight years, has given his name to the age in which he lived: the just and invariable effect of liberal protection extended to men of letters, when it is bestowed with equal judgment and generosity. This pontiff loved power still less for its own sake and the vast designs it facilitates, than for the magnificence and gratifications it procures. The son of Lorenzo de Medicis, he especially interested himself in ways of securing to his family a lasting ascendancy in Italy. He destined for his nephew the sovereignty of Tuscany, and to his own brother the kingdom of Naples. Louis XII. absolved from the anathemas with which Julius had loaded him, was pledged to favour the ambition of the Medicis, who, on their part, were to support their pretensions to Milan. This alliance, secretly stipulated294 not having sufficiently speedy effects, Leo purchased the state, of Modena from the emperor Maximilian, which he purposed uniting with those Of Reggio, of Parma, and of Placentia, and possibly Ferrara, to bestow on his brother, or enrich with them the court of Rome.

After being leagued with the king of France, Francis I. to compel the emperor Charles V. to relinquish the kingdom of Naples, incompatible, he said, with the empire, the pope formed an alliance against the French with this same Charles, whose menaces terrified him to that degree, that he acceded in his favour to the re-union of the two crowns. Leo took into his pay a body of Swiss troops, and vowed thenceforward so violent a hatred to the French, that, when he had heard of their repulsion from the Milanese territory, he almost instantly expired, as is asserted from joy. He was but forty-six years of age; and notwithstanding the errors into which pontifical policy led him, we must regret that he did not live to protect for a longer period the advancement of the fine arts. He encouraged them like a man worthy of cultivating them; he cherished them with a sincere and constant love, with which they never inspire bad princes. His interior administration merited the gratitude of the Romans:295 their grief when deprived of him was profound; and, a few years before, equally pure homage was rendered to him when he escaped a conspiracy similar to that of the Pazzi, and in which the same Cardinal Riario, one of the accomplices in the former with Sixtus IV. was concerned. Guicciardini and other writers have judged too hastily of Leo X. For what pope can obtain approbation, if it be not due to him, who has done more for Rome than any of his predecessors since Leo IV. and who did in Europe but a part of the mischief which tradition and example had bequeathed to him.

The expense which the building the church of St. Peter exacted, obliged Leo to have recourse to the sale of indulgences. The clamours of Luther against this traffic were the prelude of a great revolution in Christendom. Leo X. excommunicated Luther and his followers. Bossuet296 thinks with reason, that the heresies and schisms of this century might have been prevented, if necessary reformations had not been neglected. But, in the history of this pontificate, what most relates to the present subject is, the concordat concluded between Leo X. and Francis I. in 1516.

In vain Julius II. excommunicated Louis XII. and menaced transferring the title of the Very Christian King to the king of England who was destined to merit it so badly, Henry VIII.; in vain the fifth council of the Lateran published a monitory against the parliament of Paris, and all the abettors of the pragmatic sanction, enjoining them to appear at Rome to give an account of their conduct: Julius died without shaking Louis. This excellent prince himself died at the moment in which Leo was preparing to deceive him and the crown of France devolved on Francis I. of whom Louis had often said: 'This great booby will spoil all.'-In fact, Francis I. in an interview with Leo at Bologna, consented to a concordat, and directed his chancellor Anthony Duprat to digest it in unison with two cardinals appointed for this purpose by the pope. The principal articles of this concordat are those which import, that for the future the chapters of the cathedral and metropolitan churches should not proceed in future to the election of bishops; that the king, within the term of six months from the date of a see becoming vacant, shall present to the pope a doctor or lieutenant of twenty-seven years of age at least, who shall be made by the pope incumbent of the vacant see; but, if the person proposed does not possess the requisite qualifications, the king shall be required to propose another within three months, reckoning from the day of the refusal; that moreover the pope, without the previous presentation of the king, shall nominate to the bishops and archbishops' sees, which shall become vacant whilst the incumbents are in attendance at the court of Rome. It is proper to remark that, in granting the nomination to the king, the pope reserved to himself the first fruits.297

Francis I. went himself to the parliament to have the concordat registered, and the chancellor Duprat explained the reasons which dictated it. They refuse to register it; the king gets angry. The parliament places a protest in the hands of the bishop of Langres, that, if the registry take place, it will be by constraint, and that they will not act in consequence in less conformity with the pragmatic. It is at length registered, but in endorsing on the folds of the concordat, that it has been read and published at the express command of the king, many times reiterated.

The see of Alby became vacant in 1519: the chapter nominated agreeable to the pragmatic sanction, and the king according to the concordat; the parliament of Paris, deciding between the two candidates, pronounced in favor of the one elected by the chapter of Alby. In 1521, a bishop of Condom, elected by the chapters of this church, was in the same manner supported against him whom the king had nominated. All the causes of this kind were similarly decided, until after the imprisonment of Francis I. and would have continued so to be, if a declaration of the 6th of September, 1529, had not referred to the grand council the cognizance of all proceedings relative to bishopricks, abbeys, and other benefices, the nomination to which had been granted to the king by Leo X.

The president Henault298 has collected all the reasons alleged in favor of the concordat, and which may be reduced to the two following: 1st, kings in founding benefices, and in receiving the church into the state, have succeeded to the right of election exercised by the early believers: 2dly, simony, intrigue, and ignorance, govern electors, and give to the dioceses unworthy pastors.299

But, at bottom, the royal nominations were not the thing which most excited the clamours of the parliament; it complained more particularly of the first fruits, and the bull of Leo against the pragmatic sanction; of the first fruits, which, from St. Louis to Charles VII. all the kings of France had prohibited, and which the early popes had declared improper and simoniacal, when they were enacted by the emperors; of the bull of Leo, which denounces as a public pest, as an impious constitution, a pragmatic, founded on the decrees of general councils, cherished by the people and promulgated by the sovereign. This bull suspended, excommunicated, menaced with loss of temporal possessions, civil or ecclesiastic, the French prelates, and even lay lords, who should re-demand or regret the pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. In fine, they dared to cite in this same bull of Leo X. the bull of Boniface VIII. "Unam sanctam," in which the right of humbling thrones, of taking and bestowing crowns, is ascribed to the Roman pontiff. This is what provoked the opposition of the parliament; and we must admit, apparently, this was neither unreasonable nor contrary to the interests of the monarchy.300 If the question had only been to substitute to the right of confirming the elections, possessed for a long time by the monarch, that of making the choice himself, we have reason to think the registry would have experienced much less difficulty.

Such as it was concluded, in 1516, the concordat could not be pleasing to a people who had received with enthusiasm the pragmatic of 1439. Under Francis I., under his successors Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., the universities and the parliaments seized every opportunity of remonstrating against this alteration of the fundamental laws of the Gallican church. The states of Orleans under Charles IX., those of Blois under Henry III. expressed the same regret: the clergy themselves have often demanded the restoration of the 'pragmatic;' they said in their remonstrance of 1585, that the king Francis I., when near death, had declared to his son, that there was nothing which weighed so heavily on his conscience as the concordat.301

After Leo X. Adrian VI. born of very obscure parents, occupied for but twenty months the chair of St. Peter. He had taught when a simple doctor of Louvain, that the pope was subject to err in matters of faith: far from retracting this doctrine when pope, he caused a work to be printed in which he professed it.302 On this head, some sophist of Louvain might have, after the example of an old Greek sophist, argued in this manner:303

"If the pope be infalli-

"ble, it follows that Adrian must have been so when

"he asserted he was not; therefore by this very in-

"fallibility they prove it not to exist. Either Ad-

"rian deceives himself, and therefore the pope is in-

"fallible, or Adrian is right, and then we must ac-

"knowledge with him the pope may be de-

"ceived."

The natural and posthumous son of Giulio de Medicis, assassinated in 1478 by the Pazzi, Clement VII. was elected pope, infallible or not, in 1223 (?? Ed.).-The successes and genius of Charles V. restored at this time to the imperial dignity its ancient splendour and its preponderance in the affairs of Italy. Clement wished to place difficulties in the way of it; he formed against the emperor a league, which was called holy, because the pope was its head, and into which the king of France, the king of England, the Venetians, and other Italian governments, entered: but the constable of Bourbon, quitting Francis I. for Charles V. led a German, and, in great part, Lutheran army against Rome, took this city, sacked it, and compelled the people to retire to the castle of Saint Angelo. Clement did not leave it, but by pledging himself to deliver it up to the officers of the emperor, and to pay three hundred and fifty thousand gold ducats. He bound himself, to deliver up to the Imperialists Ostia, Civita-Vechia, Citta di Castello, and, to cause to be restored to them Parma and Placentia. Not being able to fulfil his engagements, the pope escaped in the disguise of a merchant to Orvieto. Affected with the great distresses of the pontiff, Francis I. resolved to march to his assistance, and made arrangements which compelled Charles to become reconciled with Clement. Charles, crowned emperor by Clement in 1530, promised to re-establish the Medicis in Florence, for the pontiff did not neglect the interests of his family; he married his niece Catherine, to the son of Francis I, that niece but too famous in the annals of France, down to the year 1589. It was in these circumstances Henry VIII. of England thought of putting away his wife, Catherine of Arragon, aunt of the emperor, in order to marry Ann Boleyn. While the war continued between the Holy See and Charles, Clement seemed favourable towards this project, and the bull of divorce was prepared. The reconciliation of the pope and the emperor led to quite ah opposite decision. In vain did the theologians of England, of France, and of Italy, declare, that the marriage of a brother with his brother's widow should be considered void; this was the situation of Henry with Catherine of Arragon; Charles dictated to Clement a decision which declared the validity and indissolubility of this marriage. Henry is excommunicated if he persists in the divorce. The monarch appeals to a general council on the matter; the English clergy decide, that the pope has no authority over Great Britain: the parliament gives him the title of supreme head of the church. Thus is completed a schism it Would have been so much the more easy to avoid, as the king abhorring the name of heretic, and emulous of the glory of being a very zealous catholic, had written against Luther, and obtained from Leo X. the title of defender of the faith. Henry, cut off from the church, fell to persecuting alike the partisans of the pope and the Lutherans.

Paul III. who reigned from 1534 to the end of the year 1549, confirmed the excommunication of Henry, convoked the council of Trent, approved the new institution of the Jesuits, and was the first author of the bull, "In c?na Domini". Those who appeal from the decrees of the pope to a general council, those who favour the appellants, those who say that a general council is superior to a sovereign pontiff; those who, without consent from Rome, exact from the clergy contributions for the necessities of the state; the civil tribunals which presume to try bishops, priests, those who are only tonsured, or monks; chancellor, vice-chancellors, presidents, counsellors, and, attorney-generals, who decide ecclesiastical causes: all those, in fine, who do not admit the omnipotence of the Holy See and the absolute independence of the clergy, are anathematized by this bull, which, published for the first time on holy Thursday, of the year 1536, was to be so published annually on the same day: it is on this account, therefore, denominated: In coena Domini; for the practice of thus publishing it every year at Rome was established in despite of the just remonstrances of sovereigns.

We shall here render homage to certain cardinals and prelates who addressed to Paul III. some very judicious, though very useless remonstrances.304305

"You are aware," they say, "that your predecessors were

"willing to be flattered. It was unnecessary to de-

"sire it, they would have been sufficiently so without

"exacting it; for adulation follows princes as a sha-

"dows follows a body, and to this day the throne is

"difficult of access to uncompromising truth. But,

"in order to secure themselves the better from its

"intrusion, your predecessors surrounded them-

"selves with skilful doctors, whom they commanded

"not to teach duties, but to justify caprices. The

"talents of these doctors were to be exercised,

"in discovering every thing to be lawful which pre-

"sented itself as agreeable. For instance they have

"declared the sovereign pontiff absolute master of

"the benefices of Christendom; and, as a lord has

"the right of selling his domains, that so, they con-

"clude, the head of the church can never be guilty

"of simony, and that in affairs relating to benefices,

"simony can only exist when the seller is not pope.

"By this, and similar reasoning, they have arrived

"at the sweeping conclusion they were to demon-

"strate, to wit, that, that which is pleasing to the

"pope is always lawful to him. Behold, holy fa-

"ther, the remonstrating cardinals add, behold the

"indubitable source from whence have issued as

"from the wooden horse, all the abuses, and all the

"plagues which have afflicted the church of God."

Paul III. had destined for his grandson, Octavius Farnese, the States of Parma and Placentia: Charles V. who intended to unite them to the duchy of Milan, was threatened with the heaviest censures. Afterwards the pontiff wished for Parma for the Holy See, and they say, died of grief when he learned that Octavios was on the point of obtaining this duchy.

Julius III. by agreement with the emperor, refused the investiture to Farnese; but the king of France, Henry II. protected the duke, and sent him troops. At this news Julius excommunicated the king of France, and threatened to place the kingdom under interdict. Henry was not terrified; he forbade his subjects from taking money to Rome, or addressing themselves to others than the usual prelates in ecclesiastical matters. This firmness softened the holy father, who even laboured to reconcile the emperor with the king of France.

After Marcellus II. who reigned but twenty-one days, John Peter Caraffa, was elected pope, who took the name of Paul VI.:

"Although he was se-

"venty nine years old," says Muratori,

"his head

"was an epitome of Mount Vesuvius near which he

"was born. Overbearing, passionate, cruel, inflex-

"ible, his zeal for religion, was without prudence,

"and without bounds. His savage look, his eyes

"hollow, but sparkling and inflamed, presaged a

"a severe and sullen government. Paul neverthe-

"less began with acts of clemency and liberality

"which seemed to belie the apprhensions which

"his character had inspired: he so lavished

"favors and courtesies, that the Romans erected

"a statue to him in the capitol. But his natural tem-

"per soon returned, burst the banks, and verified the

"most unfortunate forebodings."

Family interests made him the enemy of Spain: he not only persecuted the Sforzi, the Columnas, and other Roman families attached to this power, but he entered into a league with France to deprive the Spaniards of the kingdom of Naples. The cardinal of Lorain and his brother, the duke of Guise, led Henry II. into this league in spite of the constable, Montmorenci. But the cardinal Pole, minister of Mary, Queen of England, and wife of Philip the Spaniard, had the address to make the French monarch sign a truce of five years with the court of Madrid. Paul is enraged; his nephew, the cardinal Caraffa, comes to France to complain of the treaty they have presumed to make with Spain, without the knowledge of the Court of Rome. The duke of Alba, viceroy of Naples is dessous of lulling this quarrel; he sends a delegate to the pope, whom the pope imprisons. This outrage compels the viceroy to take arms; he makes himself master in a short time of a great part of the ecclesiastical state. Alarmed at the progress of the duke of Alba, tbe court of France sends an army of twelve thousand men against him, commanded by the duke of Guise. But, in the mean time the French lose the battle of Saint Quentin: to repair this loss, they are obliged to recall Guise and his troops, and the pope is compelled to negotiate with the viceroy.

Charles V. in uniting the imperial crown to that of Spain and of the Two Sicilies, had obtained, not only in Italy, but in Europe, a preponderance vainly disputed by Francis I. The abdication of Charles, in 1556, divided his power between his brother Ferdinand, who became emperor, and his son, Philip II. who reigned over Spain and Naples. But, in spite of this division, this house was nevertheless, during the greatest part of the sixteenth century, that which most justly excited the jealously of the sovereign pontiffs; and Paul IV. in declaring war against him, was led into it by the general policy of the Holy See, as much as by family interests and personal resentments. He refused to confirm Ferdinand's election to the empire, and maintained that Charles V. had no power to abdicate this dignity without the approbation of the Court of Rome306 Frederick had the good sense to dispense with the pope's concurrence, and the succeeding emperors followed his example. The most certain means of restraining the pontifical power within just bounds was, to suppress in this way, the forms and ceremonies which had so importantly contributed to extend it.

Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary in 1558 on the British throne, was disposed by the circumstances of her accession to favor catholicity. The impetuous Paul, mistook the prudence of this queen for weakness and fear: he replied to the ambassador of Elizabeth, that she was but a bastard, and that England was but a fief of the Holy See; that the pretended queen ought to commence by suspending the exercise of her functions, until the Court of Rome had sovereignly pronounced on her claims. A bull declared that all prelates, princes, kings and emperors, who fall into heresy, are, by the act itself, deprived of their benefices, states, kingdoms and empires, which belong to the first catholic who may wish to make himself master of them, and that the said heretical princes or prelates never can resume them. From this moment Elizabeth no longer hesitated to establish the English schism; she embraced, favoured, and propagated heresy: we must blame her no doubt; but how can we excuse a pope whose violence led him to such extremities, and who refrained not from participating in the conspiracies framed against the authority and even life of this sovereign? When after four years reign this pontiff died, the Romans broke his statue and cast it into the Tiber; scarcely could his body be secured from the fury of the populace: the prison of the Inquisition was burned; Paul had made a terrible use of this detestable tribunal, and he reproached with severity the German princes for their indulgence towards heretics.

Pius IV. exercised against the nephews of Paul the most cruel revenge, advised to it, it is said, by the King of Spain, Philip II., the implacable enemy of the Caraffa. The Queen of Navarre was summoned by this pope to appear at Rome within six months, under the usual penalties of excommunication, deprivation, and degradation: menaces almost as ridiculous as they were criminal, the only effect of which was to irritate the court of. France. But the pontificate of Pius is especially remarkable for the termination of the council of Trent, which had lasted eighteen years, from 1545 to 1563. The doctrinal decisions of this council do not concern us: we shall say something of its legislative decrees.

The council of Trent pronounces, in certain cases, excommunication, deposition and deprivation, against kings themselves. It ascribes to bishops the power to punish the authors and the printers of forbidden books, to interdict notaries, change the directions of testators, and apply the revenues of hospitals to other uses. It renders the marriages of minors, without the consent of parents, valid: it permits ecclesiastical judges to have their own decisions against laymen executed, by seizure of goods and imprisonment of person; it screens from the secular jurisdiction all the members of the clergy, even those who have only received simple tonsure; it desires that criminal proceedings against bishops should be judged only by the pope; it authorises the pope to depose non-resident bishops, and appoint successors to them; it subjects in fine its own decrees to the approval of the sovereign pontiff, whose unbounded supremacy it recognizes. Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and Julius III., never aspired to a more absolute theocracy, more subversive of all civil authority and of all social principle.307 In consequence, they determined in France, that the council of Trent, infallible in its dogmas, was not so in its legislation; and not to be surprised into it, they published neither its legislation nor dogmas: the States of Blois in 1570, and of Paris in 1614, opposed themselves warmly to this publication, demanded by the popes, and solicited even by the clergy of France; for we are obliged to avow, that since 1560 the larger proportion of this body did not cease, whatever they may say to the contrary, to confound its interests with those of the court of Rome; and if it appeared for a while to detach itself from it, by the Five Articles of 1682, of which we shall shortly treat, it has since amply repaid by compliances and connivance, a step into which peculiar circumstances had led it.

Pius V. had been grand inquisitor under Paul IV.; he continued to act the part when pope: no pontiff has burned more heretics, or persons suspected of heresy, at Rome than he. Among the victims of his zeal we observe many learned men, and especially Palearius, who had compared the Inquisition to a poignard directed against men of letters; "sicam districtam in jugula litteratorum." A bull of Pius V. against certain propositions of Michael Baius, was the first signal of a long and melancholy quarrel. This pope in renewing and amplifying the bull of Paul III. "In c?na Domini," commanded it to be published on holy thursday throughout all the churches; previously it had been fulminated only at Rome:308 it may be said, that Pius V. wished to arm against the Holy See the remnant of the Catholic princes, and to condemn them to the alternative of renouncing the independence of their crowns or the faith of their ancestors.

The remonstrances were universal; Philip II. the most superstitious of the kings of this period, forbade under severe penalties the publication of this bull in his states. By another bull Pius excommunicated Elizabeth: an anathema at least superfluous, and which produced no other consequence than the execution of John Felton, who had ventured to placard this sentence in London. A league entered into between the Pope, Spain, and Venice, against the Turks, was successful: Don John of Austria, rendered himself illustrious by the victory of Lepanto; and the pope was not afraid to apply to this warrior, the bastard of Charles V. these words of the Gospel: "There was a man sent from God, and this man's name was John." Finally, by the power which he said he held from God, and in character of pastor charged with examining into the claim of those who had merited extraordinary honours by their superior zeal for the Holy See, Pius V. decreed the title of grand duke of Tuscany to Cosmo de Medicis. The emperor remonstrated in vain: Cosmo with his new title had himself crowned at Rome, and took the oath at the hands of the pope. But that which is most remarkable here is, the reasons assigned to Maximilian by the cardinal Commendon to justify this pontifical act: Commendon said, that the pope had deposed Childerick, invested Pepin, transferred the empire of the East into the West, appointed the electors, confirmed and crowned the emperors; from whence he concludes that the pope is the distributor of thrones, of titles, and in some sort, the nomenclator of princes, as Adam had been that of animals.

We shall here remark that the same Pius V. who, to avenge some articles of the Catholic faith, armed Christian against Christian, wrote to the Persians and to the Arabs, that in spite of the diversity of worship, a common interest ought to unite Europe and Asia to combat the Mussulmans. This apparent contradiction should surprise no one: we know that in religious dissensions, hatred is proportionately lively as the sentiments recede least from each other.

Gregory XIII. crowned pope the 25th of May, 1572, three months before the too celebrated St. Bartholomew's day, no sooner heard of this massacre than he caused cannon to be discharged, and kindled fires, for joy: he returned thanks to heaven in a religious ceremony; and history records a picture which attested the formal approbation bestowed by the pontiff on the assassins of Coligny: "Pontifex Colignii necem probat." In 1584, Gregory also sanctioned the league, on the exposé of the Jesuit Mathieu, who was deputed to Rome for this purpose. "For the rest," writes this Jesuit, "the pope does not think it proper to attempt the life of the king; but if they can secure his person, and give him those who will hold him in rein, he will approve it much." Gregory even avoided signing any writing which the league could take advantage of; he assisted them only with the 'small money' of the Holy See, said the Cardinal of Este: now this money consisted of indulgences.

The dissensions which distracted France at this time had without doubt various causes, but among them the abolition of the 'pragmatic' and the establishment of the concordat were not sufficiently noted. On one side, so fatal an alteration in the discipline, in scaring people's minds, had disposed them to receive new doctrinal opinions disapproved by the court of Rome; on the other, the ultramontane maxims that the concordat had introduced, and that Catherine de Medicis had propagated, inspired sentiments of intolerance in those who remained in the communion of the Holy See: the 'pragmatic' would have preserved France both from heresy and from persecuting zeal. Under the reign of the concordat, these two seeds of discord, rendering each other fruitful, had enveloped with their horrible fruits, the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. The new interests which the concordat gave to the clergy of France, rendered them devoted to the court of Rome, and weakened more and more the ties which ought to have held them to the state. They applied themselves so to the maintenance and renewal of the maxims of the middle age, that Gregory ventured, in this enlightened age, a new publication of the decree of Gratian; but the pope, in reforming the calendar, performed a service which the people separated from the Romish communion had, for a long time, the folly not to profit by.

The successor of Gregory was the too famous Sixtus V., a sanguinary old man, who knew how to govern his states only by punishments, and who, without advantage to the Holy See, reanimated by bulls the troubles which disturbed other kingdoms. He professed a high esteem for Henry IV. and for Elizabeth; he excommunicated both, but in some measure for form sake alone, and because such a step seemed required in his pontifical character. He detested and dreaded Philip II.: he wished to take the kingdom of Naples from him; he supported him against England. A solemn bull gave Great Britain to Philip, declared Elizabeth a usurper, a heretic, and excommunicated; commanded the English to join the Spaniards to dethrone her, and promised rewards to those who should deliver her to the catholics to be punished for her crimes. Elizabeth with the same ceremony excommunicated the pope and the cardinals at St. Paul's cathedral in London. Nevertheless Philip failed in his undertaking, and Sixtus was almost as well pleased as Elizabeth at it; he invited this princess to carry the war into the heart of Spain.

Notwithstanding his detestation and contempt of the league, Sixtus launched his anathemas against the king of Navarre and against the prince of Conde, calling them an impious blasted race, heretics, relapsed enemies of God and of religion; loosed their present and future subjects from their oaths of allegiance, finally declaring these two princes and their descendants deprived of all rights, and incapable of ever possessing any principality. This bull commences with the most insolent display of the pontifical power:

"superior to all the potentates of the earth,

"instituted to hurl from their thrones infidel princes,

"and precipitate them into the abyss of hell as the

"ministers of the devil."

The king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. acted like Elizabeth; he excommunicated Sixtus, 'styling himself pope,' and Sixtus applauded this courageous resistance. But these bulls, which their author himself laughed at, did not serve the less as cause of civil wars; the fanaticism they cherished in the catholics, compelled Henry III. to persecute the calvinists the more rigorously, to command them to abjure or quit the kingdom; while, on his part, the king of Navarre found himself compelled to take severe measures against the catholics. Henry III. more than ever distracted between the two parties, had neither the skill nor the power that such a situation demanded. We behold him depriving the king of Navarre of the right of succession to the throne of France, and afterwards throwing himself into the arms of this generous prince. This reconciliation provoked a Monitory, in which Sixtus orders Henry III. to appear at Rome in person, or by Attorney, within sixty days, to give an account of his conduct, and declares him excommunicated if he do not obey. We must conquer, said the king of Navarre to Henry III. whom this anathema had terrified, we must conquer: if we are beaten we shall be excommunicated and harassed again and again. These censures had preserved so little of their ancient power, that a bishop of Chartres said, they were without force at this side of the mountains, that they froze in passing the Alps. The poignard of James Clement was more efficacious. Henry III. fell beneath the blows of the assassin: and, if we may believe the league, Sixtus V. was in an extacy at so daring an enterprise, compared it to the incarnation of the word and the resurrection of Jesus.

If it were necessary to explain the policy of this pontiff we would say, that his real enemy, the rival whom he wished to overthrow, was Philip, whom he did not excommunicate, and against whom he dared not do any thing openly: circumstances did not permit it. Sixtus hoped, no doubt, that the commotions excited in England, and kept up in France by pontifical anathemas, would extend further and lead to some result fatal to Philip. This display of the papal supremacy, exhibited against the kings of Navarre and of England, more truly menaced him who, governing Spain, Portugal, Belgia, the Two Sicilies, and a part of the new world, surpassed in riches and in greatness every other potentate. To declare Great Britain a fief of the Roman church, was to renew abundantly the pretensions of the church over the kingdom of Naples; and, when the pope erected himself into a sovereign arbiter of kings, he gave it plainly to be understood, that an error or a misfortune might suffice to draw after it the fall of the most powerful.

Unhappily, the catholicity of Philip was impregnable; Henry IV. was satisfied in defending himself against Spain, Queen Elizabeth preferred securing her own throne to disturbing those of others, and Sixtus finally died too soon.309

After him Urban VII. reigned but thirteen days, Gregory XIV. but ten months, and Innocent IX. but eight weeks. Gregory had sufficient time to encourage the leaguers, notwithstanding, to excommunicate Henry IV., and to levy at a great expense an army of brigands, who ravaged some of the provinces of France.

Clement VIII., the last pope of the 16th century, having ordered the French to choose a king catholic in name and in deed, the sudden Catholicism of Henry turned the tables on the court of Rome, the league, and the intrigues of Spain. The pope preferred absolving Henry to seeing him reign and prosper in defiance of the Holy See. In truth, the representatives of the king, Perron and d'Ossat, lent themselves very complaisantly to the ceremonies of the absolution;310 and they had not much difficulty in obtaining the suppression of the formula: "We reinvest him in his royalty." But the absolved prince took a decisive measure against the pretensions of the court of Rome, in securing to the Protestants, by the Edict of Nantes, the free exercise of their religion and full enjoyment of their civil rights. When the catholic clergy came to require of him the publication of the decrees of the council of Trent, he evaded the proposition with that ingenious and easy politeness which distinguished the manners of the French, and which embellished in those of Henry IV. courage, fortitude and truth. Yet this Henry, publicly adored by the nation, fanaticism proscribed in secret; and the Jesuits, whom the poignards of Barriere and John Chatel had ill served, sharpened that of Ravaillac.

In 1597, Alphonso II. duke of Ferrara, dying without children, Clement resolved to make himself master of this duchy, and made so good a use of his spiritual and temporal arms, that he succeeded in this undertaking to the exclusion of Cesar d'Este, the heir of Alphonso. This pope and his predecessors have been often reproached, since the death of Julius II. with a vacillating policy, and an extreme fickleness in their enmities and alliances. Let us not mistake these charges for proofs of unskilfulness; they evidence only the difficulties of the circumstances, and the state of weakness, in which the the schism of Avignon, the progress of heresy, and the ascendancy of some princes, had placed the Holy See. If during the sixteenth century the chair of St. Peter has been almost continually occupied by skilful pontiffs, this age also presents to us seated on most of the thrones, celebrated sovereigns, whose virtues, talents, or energetic characters, severally recommended them to the historian: for example, Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, in England; Louis XII. Francis 1. and Henry IV. in France; Charles V. and Philip II. in Spain. None of our modern eras has been more fertile in memorable men in all pursuits. And yet the court of Rome renounced none of its pretensions; it upheld the traditions of its ancient supremacy; it continued to speak in the language of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. What more could she do in the midst of so many formidable rivals? It was doing much to weather the tempests and preserve herself for better times. But these times did not come, and the popes of the seventeenth century, far inferior to those of the sixteenth, to Julius II. to Leo X. and to Sixtus V. have suffered even the hope to be lost of ever re-establishing in Europe the pontifical authority.

Among the numerous writings published in the course of this century on the liberties of the Gallican church, that of Peter Pithou in 1504 is particularly distinguished. Comprised in eighty-three articles, it has the form and has almost obtained the authority of a code; for, we find it not only quoted in pleadings but in the laws themselves.311 The pragmatic of St Louis in tbe thirteenth century, the Vergers Dream in the fourteenth, the pragmatic of Charles VII. in the fifteenth, Pithou's treatise in the sixteenth, and the Four Articles in 1682, present, among the French, an unbroken tradition of the soundest doctrine on the limits of the pontifical office.