the freest use of both the spiritual and the material sword. He reigned somewhat more than four years, and died specially recommending to the assembled cardinals whom he had called about him the Inquisition, which he had re-established and armed with new and more terrible powers!

It is a noteworthy indication of the efficacy of the spirit of the time in fashioning the characters and qualifications of the Popes, thus causing that tendency observable in their history to group themselves into series, that the man who succeeded to Paul IV. also deserves to be ranked among "the zealous Popes," although it is impossible to conceive two men more completely contrasted in temperament, character, opinions, and habits. This successor to the ferocious bigot Caraffa was Giovanni Angelo Medici, no recognised relative of the great Florentine family of that name, though doubtless the unknown adventurer, Bernardino Medici, who settled in Milan, and there acquired a small fortune as a farmer of the taxes, was a member of it. This Bernardino had two sons, Giovanni Angelo, who became Pope, and Giangiacomo, who, beginning life as a "gentleman's gentleman," found means subsequently to thrust himself into positions yet more incongruous than that of own brother to a Pope! His first essay towards "bettering himself" was to become a bravo. He hired himself to certain persons of high position in Milan as an assassin to murder a certain Visconti, which he duly accomplished. Thereupon his employers, desirous of making away with him too, sent him with a letter to the governor of the castle of Mus, on the Lake of Como, the tenor of which

was an order to that functionary to put the bearer to death. But Giangiacomo, conceiving certain suspicions as to the nature of his errand, opened the letter, and having thus obtained an accurate comprehension of the nature of the position, formed his plans for making himself master of it with all promptitude. He collected a band of desperadoes like himself, presented himself at the castle, and having by means of his letter obtained admittance, overpowered the governor and his garrison, seized and held the castle for himself; and and commenced life as an independent chieftain, supporting himself and his men by raids on the Milanese, the Venetians, and the Swiss in the true spirit of an old border moss-trooper! Getting tired of this after a while, he assumed the "white cross," and entered into the service of the Emperor, who made him Marquis of Marignano, and sent him to conduct the siege against Siena. In the imperial service he distinguished himself as the right man in the right place. As prudent as audacious, and as implacable as either, he was fortunate in all his undertakings, and did thoroughly the work he was sent to do. There was not a tree in the vicinity of Siena on which he had not caused some wretch, who had attempted to convey provisions into the leaguered city, to be hung; and it was calculated that five thousand persons had been put to death by his orders! Such was the worthy whose rising fortunes formed a stepping-stone for his clerical brother to the Papacy. For when the Marquis of Marignano married an Orsini, who was the sister-in-law of the infamous Pier Luigi Farnese, the connection obtained for his brother a cardinal's hat!

Giovanni Angelo, however, must have well seconded his fortune by his own merit. He is found constantly employed in the government of the different cities of the ecclesiastical States, and everywhere winning golden opinions by his prudence, ability, and the goodness of his disposition. Paul IV. alone could not endure him; and it is intelligible enough that the contrasted nature of the two men must have made them antipathetic to each other; and when Caraffa mounted the throne, his destined successor deemed it prudent to absent himself from Rome. He lived at Milan or at the baths near Pisa, in both which places he beguiled his exile with literary occupations, and in the employment of his means in works of beneficence on a scale which, in either place, obtained for him the title of "father of the poor!"

Such was the man who followed the terrible Caraffa in the Papal throne. But the striking contrast between the two men was completed even in their personal appearance. "Picture to yourself," says Ranke, drawing as usual from the Venetian ambassador, "an old man of extreme corpulence, but so active withal that he arrives at his country villa before the dawn of day. Serene of countenance, bright of eye, conversation, the pleasures of conviviality, and witty discourse are his favourite recreations. As soon as ever he is recovered from a dangerous illness we find him on horseback, and out at the favourite house which he had occupied when a cardinal, briskly running up and down the stairs as he chuckled to himself, 'No, no, no, we are not going to die yet!' He was as easy, as simple in his manner, as

affable, as accessible to all, as his predecessor had been the reverse of all this. And although the sentence of death passed by him on the infamous nephews of Paul IV., whom their uncle himself had been forced to drive from Rome and to deprive of all employment, showed that he could be severe when his duty required it, he was to the utmost of his power kind and indulgent to all. He hated the Inquisition, blamed the monkish narrowness and hardness of its proceedings, and very rarely attended any of its sittings. But he did not dare'* to attack it! He used to say that he understood nothing about it; that he could not call himself a theologian; and in fact he left it with all the power that Paul IV. had attributed to it."

It would not be easy to conceive a more striking testimony to the change that had come over the spirit of the times, than that statement that the Pope, little as he liked it, dared not to stretch out his hand against the ark of the Inquisition! The Church had become once again a Church militant. Wicliff, Luther, and the consequences of their work had done the Church this altogether inestimable service. The days of struggle, of competition, had come back again with all their purifying, animating, arousing properties. Therefore it was that easy-going, jovial-tempered Pius IV. dared not move a finger against the Inquisition; and therefore that, though his natural temper and disposition would have tended to make of him a second, more kindlytempered, more refined, more conscientious Leo X., it was still, as the Venetian ambassador tells us, "the

* These are the words of Ranke.

inmost and dearest thought and desire of his heart to exert all his power for the good of the Church;" therefore he "hopes, by the grace of God, to accomplish some good in the world."

The election of the Cardinal Medici, however, as Pius IV. was, as that of his predecessor may be said to have been, a pis aller, resulting from the same difficulties as those which had perplexed the former Conclave but a few days previously, arising from the opposing interests of the Imperialists and the French parties. Of course these were complicated by a host of personal sympathies and antipathies, and were further intensified by the newly arisen necessity of thinking also of the fitness of the man chosen for the duties to be entrusted to him.

It was soon seen that the Conclave was, under these circumstances, likely to be a long one. And "you must know," writes the conclavist who has left us a narrative of this Conclave, "that it is customary in the Conclave, when it is clearly seen that the election will be a long business, for the cardinals to give each other a good number of votes, not with any intention of arriving at a real election, but merely as a complimentary distinction, and a means of showing to the outside world that the persons so honoured were held in consideration by their colleagues."* It thus came to pass that the Cardinal di Cueva, who was a man of pleasing manners

It will be observed, that the conclavist who writes this contemplates the number of the votes given in each abortive attempt at an election being perfectly well known as a matter of course outside, despite the burning of the voting papers and the sworn secrecy of the Conclave.