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 voracious appetite and unsparing industry. His abdication, although it has often been regarded with surprise, was the most natural act, and the moment for it well chosen. In the Netherlands it was accompanied by a touching and impressive ceremony (October 25, 1555), when, in the midst of a splendid assembly at Brussels, the Emperor with tears explained his reasons, recounted his labours, and gave his last exhortation; and then solemnly invested his son with his Northern provinces. Milan and Naples had been previously handed over. On January 16, 1556, Charles resigned his Spanish kingdoms and Sicily. Shortly afterwards he gave up the Franche-Comté. He made over to his brother all his imperial authority, though his formal renunciation of the Empire was not accomplished until 1558. Free at last he set sail for Spain (September 17, 1556) and made his way to the monastery at Yuste. Here he took a constant interest in the political affairs of the time, and occasionally intervened by way of advice and influence. After two years of rest, broken by increasing infirmity, he closed his life in 1558; too soon to see the seal set upon his labours by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis.

Julius III had concluded on March 24, 1555, his insignificant career; Marcellus II, his successor, died on April 30; and on May 23 Giampiero CarafFa was elected, and took the title of Paul IV. The ecclesiastical activity of Caraffa, his share in the endeavour to restore pontifical and hierarchical authority in the years previous to his election as Pope, his religious attitude and tendencies do not concern us here. But the spirit shown by CarafFa in the treatment of heretics, and the affairs of the Church, promised little peace if it were to be applied to the complicated political relations of the papal see. What all expected to see was an uncompromising postponement of political expediency to the single object of restoring papal supremacy and ecclesiastical unity. What none could have foreseen was that not only the political interests of the Holy See but also all chances of an effective Catholic reaction were to be sacrificed to the demands of intense personal hatred.

It was known that CarafFa was an enemy of Spain. As a Neapolitan, he detested the alien masters of his native country. In 1547 he had urged upon Paul III an attack on Naples in support of the rising which had then occurred in the kingdom; and it had subsequently required all the influence of Julius to procure his admission to the Archbishopric of Naples. But the overmastering nature of his hatred was not known, and is even now not completely to be explained. If we assume that personal grounds of animosity co-operated with intense hatred of foreign rule, a despairing sense that one last blow must be struck to free the Papacy once and for all from Spanish domination, and a stern conscientious antipathy to those methods of compromise with heretics which had been the chief mark of Charles' action in religious matters-if we assume that all these feelings worked together, each intensifying and exacerbating