Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/290

 L^ETARE JERUSALEM

work of unification proceeding at Trent. Both the Emperor and the Council fled.

During a whole decade the work of the Church Fathers made no further progress. Cardinal Marcello Cervini, the ablest man in the College and president of the Council during the first period, became Pope Marcellus II, but reigned only twenty-two days. Everyone remembers his name because of the Mass Palestrina dedicated to him. This luminous hope of all good men, this dream personified of genuine reformation, gave way all too soon to the despotic Cardinal Caraffa, who ascended the throne as Paul IV (15551559) when he was almost eighty years of age. He lacked much that would have enabled him to imitate his model Innocent III; and the rimes had so changed that they lacked everything which would have enabled them to endure another Innocent. His short pontificate finally ended in tragedy. This founder of the Roman Inquisition, this Italian patriot, was driven by his passionate antipathy to Spain and to the Emperor into an alliance with France which encouraged Protestants and even induced Islam to take up the sword against the Catholic master of the Empire. Simi- larly the Pope, who had emphasized most strongly the immaculate majesty of his throne, succumbed to nepotism. The unworthiest of the lot, his nephew Carlo, he made a Cardinal and entrusted with the political business of the Holy See. The Pope himself said that this nephew's arms were up to the elbows in blood. Through him an al- liance between Pope Paul and the French King was arranged, a com- plete breach with Habsburg Spain was effected, and a war was suffered to break out between the ultra-orthodox King Philip II, Lord of Naples, and the ultra-orthodox Pope.

The Duke of Alba, Spain's Governor at Milan, led the Catholic armies of the Escorial against Rome and the Papal States. The Pope's troops included Protestants who scoffed at what they defended physi- cally. Even the Sultan had been petitioned to send aid. But Alba defeated these armed forces as well as their French auxiliaries, proceed- ing very tactfully. Threatened with a second sack of Rome, the Vatican had to accede to a peace. The Spanish General kissed the Pope's foot in his own name as well as in that of the king, assured him of undisputed possession of the Papal States, but compelled him to sever the alliance with France. Italy could no longer escape the

SAINT