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view he raised one of his nephews, Carlo, to the Cardinalate, and bestowed on two others the principal fiefs of the Colonna family. The Colonnas were by tradition Ghibelline. This sufficed for depriving them of Palliano and Montebello. Carlo Caraffa, who obtained the scarlet, had lived a disreputable life which notoriously unfitted him for any ecclesiastical dignity. In the days of Sixtus and Alexander this would have been no bar to his promotion. But the Church was rapidly undergoing a change; and Carlo, complying with the hypocritical spirit of his age, found it convenient to affect a thorough reformation, and to make open show of penitence. Rome now presented the singular spectacle of an inquisitorial Pope, unimpeachable in moral conduct and zealous for Church reform, surrounded by nephews who were little better than Borgias. The Caraffas began to dream of principalities and scepters. It was their ambition to lay hold on Florence, where Cosimo de' Medici, as a pronounced ally of Spain, had gained the bitter hatred of their uncle. But their various misdoings, acts of violence and oppression, avarice and sensuality, gradually reached the ears of the Pope. In an assembly of the Inquisition, held in January 1559, he cried aloud, Reform! reform! reform!' Cardinal Pacheco, a determined foe of the Caraffeschi, raised his voice, and said, Holy Father! reform must first begin with us.' Pallavicini adds the remark that l'aul understood well who was meant by us. He

immediately retired to his apartments, instituted a searching inquiry into the conduct of his nephews, and, before the month was out, deprived them of all their offices and honors, and banished them from Rome. He would not hear a word in their defence; and when Cardinal Farnese endeavored to procure a mitigation of their sentence, he brutally replied, If Paul III. had shown the same justice, your father would not have been murdered and mutilated in the streets of Piacenza.' In open consistory, before the Cardinals and high officials of his realm, with tears streaming from his eyes, he exposed the evil life of his relatives, declared his abhorrence of them, and protested that he had dwelt in perfect ignorance of their crimes until that time. This scene recalls a similar occasion, when Alexander VI. bewailed himself aloud before his Cardinals after the murder of the Duke of Gandia by Cesare. But Alexander's repentance was momentary; his grief was that of a father for Absalom; his indignation gave way to paternal weakness for the fratricide. Paul, though his love for his relatives seems to have been fervent, never relaxed his first severity against them. They were buried in oblivion; no one uttered their names in the Pope's presence. The whole secular administration of the Papal States was changed; not an official kept his place. For the first time Rome was governed by ministers in no way related to the Holy Father.

Paul now turned his attention, with the fiery

ECCLESIASTIcal reform.

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passion that distinguished him, to the reformation of ecclesiastical abuses. On his accession he had published a Bull declaring that this would be a principal object of his reign. Nor had he in the midst of other occupations forgotten his engagement. A Congregation specially appointed for examining, classifying, and remedying such abuses had been established. It was divided into three committees, consisting of eight Cardinals, fifteen prelates, and fifty men of learning. At the same time the Inquisition was rigorously maintained. Paul extended its jurisdiction, empowered it to use torture, and was constant in his attendance on its meetings and autos da fé.1 But now that his plans for the expulsion of the Spaniards had failed, and his nephews had been hurled from their high station into the dust, there remained no other interest to distract his mind. Every day witnessed the promulgation of some new edict touching monastic discipline, simony, sale of offices, collation to benefices, church ritual, performance of clerical duties, and appointment to ecclesiastical dignities. It was his favorite boast that there would be no need of a Council to restore the Church to purity, since he was doing it. And indeed his

'Pallavicini, in his history of the Council of Trent (Lib. XIV. ix. 5), specially commends Paul's zeal for the Holy Office:-' Fra esse d'eterna lode lo fa degno il tribunal dell' inquisizione, che dal zelo di lui e prima in autorità di consigliero e poscia in podestà di principe riconosce il presente suo vigor nell' Italia, e dal quale riconosce l'Italia la sua conservata integrità della fede : e per quest' opera salutare egli rimane ora tanto più benemerito ed onorabile quanto più allora ne fu mal rimeritato e disonorato.'

• See Luigi Mocenigo in Rel. degli Amb. Veneti, vol. x. p. 25.

measures formed the nucleus of the Tridentine decrees upon this topic in the final sessions of the Council. Under this government Rome assumed an air of exemplary behavior which struck foreigners with mute astonishment. Cardinals were compelled to preach in their basilicas. The Pope himself, who was vain of his eloquence, preached. Gravity of manners, external signs of piety, a composed and contrite face, ostentation of orthodoxy by frequent confession and attendance at the Mass, became fashionable; and the Court adopted for its motto the Si non caste tamen caute of the Counter-Reformation.1 Aretino, with his usual blackguardly pointedness of expression, has given a hint of what the new régime implied in the following satiric lines:

Caraffa, ipocrita infingardo,

Che tien per coscienza spirituale

Quando si mette del pepe in sul cardo.

Paul IV. brought the first period of the transition to an end. There were no attempts at dislodging the Spaniard, no Papal wars, no tyranny of Papal nephews converted into feudal princes, after his days. He stamped Roman society with his own austere and bigoted religion. That he was in any sense a hypocrite is wholly out of the question. But he made Rome hypocritical, and by establishing the Inquisition on a firm basis, he introduced a reign of spiritual terror into Italy. At his death

Roma a paragone delli tempi degli altri pontefici si poteva riputar come un onesto monasterio di religiosi' (op. cit. p. 41).

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the people rose in revolt, broke into the dungeons of the Inquisition, released the prisoners, and destroyed the archives. The Holy Office was restored, however; and its higher posts of trust soon came to be regarded as stepping-stones to the Pontifical dignity.

The successor of Paul IV. was a man of very different quality and antecedents. Giovanni Angelo Medici sprang, not from the Florentine house of Medici, but from an obscure Lombard stem. His father acquired some wealth by farming the customs in Milan; and his eldest brother, Gian Giacomo, pushed his way to fame, fortune, and a title by piracy upon the lake of Como.1 Gian Giacomo established himself so securely in his robber fortress of Musso that he soon became a power to reckon with. He then entered the imperial service, was created Marquis of Marignano by the Duke of Milan, and married a lady of the Orsini house, the sister of the Duchess of Parma. At a subsequent period he succeeded in subduing Siena to the rule of Cosimo de' Medici, who then acknowledged a pretended consanguinity between the two families. The younger brother, Giovanni Angelo, had meanwhile been studying law, practising as a jurist, and following the Court at Rome in the place of prothonotary which, as

1 In my Sketches and Studies in Italy I have narrated the romantic history of this filibuster.

• Soranzo: Alberi, vol. x. p. 67. Pius IV. adopted the arms of the Florentine Medici, and spent 30,000 scudi on carving them about through Rome. See P. Tiepolo, Ib. p. 174.