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Rh on the south, held the States of the Church as in a vice, and thereby dominated the politics of the peninsula. After Henry IV. had taken Paris at the price of a mass, it became possible for the popes to play off the Bourbons against the Habsburgs; but the transfer of favour was made so gradually that the opposition of the papacy to Spain did not become open till just before Clement VIII. passed off the stage. His successor, Leo XI., undisguisedly French in sympathy, reigned but

twenty-seven days—a sorry return for the 300,000 ducats which his election is rumoured to have cost Henry IV. Under Paul V. Rome was successful in some minor negotiations with Savoy, Genoa, Tuscany and Naples; but Venice, under the leadership of (q.v.), proved unbending under ban and interdict: the state defiantly upheld its sovereign rights, kept most of the clergy at their posts, and expelled the recalcitrant

Jesuits. When peace was arranged through French mediation in 1607 the papacy had lost greatly in prestige: it was evident that the once terrible interdict was antiquated, wherefore it has never since been employed against the entire territory of a state.

During the second and third decades of the 17th century the most coveted bit of Italian soil was the Valtelline. If Spain could gain this Alpine valley her territories would touch those of Austria, so that the Habsburgs north of the Alps could send troops to the aid of their Spanish cousins against Venice, and Spain in turn could help to subdue the Protestant princes of Germany in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). From the Grisons, who favoured France and Venice, Spain seized the Valtelline in 1620, incidentally uprooting heresy there by the massacre of six hundred Protestants. Paul V. repeatedly lamented that he was unable to oppose such Spanish aggressions without extending protection to heretics. This scruple was, however, not

shared by his successor, Gregory XV., who secured the consent of the powers to the occupation of the Valtelline by papal troops, a diplomatic victory destined, however, to lead ere long to humiliation. Gregory’s brief but notable pontificate marks nevertheless the high-tide of the counter Reformation. Not for generations had the prospects for the ultimate annihilation of Protestantism been brighter. In the Empire the collapse of the Bohemian revolt led ultimately to the merciless repression of the Evangelicals in Bohemia (1627), and in the hereditary lands of

Austria (1628), as well as to the transference of the electoral dignity from the Calvinistic elector of the Palatinate to the staunchly Catholic Maximilian of Bavaria. In France the Huguenots were shorn of almost all their military power, a process completed by the fall of La Rochelle in 1628. In Holland the expiration of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1621 forced the Dutch Protestants once more to gird on the sword. England, meanwhile, was isolated from her co-religionists. King James I., who had coquetted twenty years previously with Clement VIII., and then had avenged the Gunpowder Plot (1605) by the most stringent regulation of his Roman Catholic subjects, was now dazzled by the project of the Spanish marriage. The royal dupe was the last man in the world to check the advance of the papacy. That service to Protestantism was performed by Catholic powers jealous of the preponderance of the Habsburgs. In view of these antipathies the treaty of 1627 between France, Spain and the pope is but an episode: instructive, however, in that the project, originated apparently by the pope, provided that England should be dismembered, and that Ireland should be treated as a papal fief. The true tendency of affairs manifested itself in 1629, when the emperor Ferdinand II. (1619–1637), at the zenith of his fortunes, forced the Protestant princes of Germany to restore to the Roman hierarchy all the ecclesiastical territories they had secularized during the past seventy-four years. Then France, freed from the fear of domestic enemies, arose to help the heretics to harry the house of Habsburg. Arranging a truce between Poland and Sweden, she unleashed Gustavus Adolphus. Thus by diplomacy as well as by force of arms Catholic France made possible the continued existence of a Protestant Germany, and helped to create the balance of power between Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed within the Empire, that, crystallized in the Peace of Westphalia, fixed the religious boundaries of central Europe for upwards of two centuries.

If it was Richelieu and not the pope who was the real arbiter of destinies from 1624 to 1642, Urban VIII. was usually content. In Italy he supported France against Spain in the controversy over the succession to Mantua (1627–1631). In the Empire he manifested his antipathy to the overshadowing Habsburgs by plotting for a time to carry

the next imperial election in favour of Bavaria. He is said to have rejoiced privately over Swedish victories, and certainly it was unerring instinct which told him that the great European conflict was no longer religious but dynastic. Anti-Spanish to the core, he became the greatest papal militarist since Julius II.; but Tuscany, Modena and Venice checkmated him in his ambitious attempt to conquer the duchy of Parma. Like most of the papal armies of the last three centuries, Urban’s troops distinguished themselves by wretched strategy, cowardice in rank and file, and a Fabian avoidance of fighting which, discreet as it may be in the field of diplomacy, has invariably failed to save Rome on the field of battle.

The States of the Church were enlarged during this period by the reversion of two important fiefs—namely, Ferrara (1598) and Urbino (1631). Increase of territory, so far from filling the papal treasury, but postponed for the moment the progressive pauperization of the people. After annexation, the city of Ferrara sank rapidly

from her perhaps artificial prosperity to the dead level, losing two-thirds of her population in the process. The financial difficulties of Italy were due to many causes, notably to a shifting of trade routes; but those of the papal states seem caused chiefly by misgovernment. Militarism may account for much of the tremendous deficit under Urban VIII.; but the real cancer was nepotism. The disease was inherent in the body politic. Each pope, confronted by the spectre of feudal anarchy, felt he could rely truly only on those utterly dependent on himself; consequently he raised his own

relations to wealth and influence. This method had helped the House of Valois to consolidate its power; but what was tonic for a dynasty was death to a state whose headship was elective. The relations of one pope became the enemies of the next; and each pontiff governed at the expense of his successors. Under Clement VIII. the Aldobrandini, more splendidly under Paul V. the Borghesi, with canny haste under the short-lived Gregory XV. the Lodovisi, with unparalleled rapacity Urban’s Barberini enriched themselves from a chronically depleted treasury. To raise money offices were systematically sold, and issue after issue of the two kinds of monti-securities, which may be roughly described as government bonds and as life annuities, was marketed at ruinous rates. More than a score of years after the Barberini had dropped the reins of power Alexander VII. said they alone had burdened the state with the payment of 483,000 scudi of annual interest, a tremendous item in a budget where the income was perhaps but 2,000,000. For a while interest charges consumed 85% of the income of the government. Skilful refunding postponed the day of evil, but cash on hand was too often a temptation to plunder. The financial woes of the next period, which is one of decline, were largely the legacy of this age of glory.

The common people, as always, had to pay. The farming of exorbitant taxes, coupled as it was too often with dishonest concessions to the tax farmer, made the over-burdened peasantry drink the doubly bitter cup of exploitation and injustice. Economic distress increased the number of highway robberies, these in turn lamed commercial intercourse.

The tale of these glories, with their attendant woes, does not exhaust the history of the papacy. Not as diplomatists, not as governors, but as successive heads of a spiritual kingdom, did the popes win their grandest triumphs. At a time when the non-Catholic theologians were chiefly small fry, bent on