But to his idealism was largely due that league which, directed against the Turk, issued in one of the most memorable checks to the Ottoman arms, the battle of Lepanto.

Gregory XIII. succeeded him immediately before the massacre of St. Bartholomew.  It was rather the pressure of his surroundings than his personal character that gave his pontificate a spiritual aspect.  An honourable care in the appointment of bishops and for ecclesiastical education were its marks on this side.  He introduced the Gregorian Calendar.  He was a zealous promoter of war, open and covert, with Protestantism, especially with Elizabeth; his financial arrangements were effective and ingenious.  But he failed to obtain control over the robber bands which infested the Papal States.

Their suppression was carried out with unexampled severity by Sixtus V. Sixtus was learned and prudent, and of remarkable self-control; he is also charged with being crafty and malignant.  Not very accurately, he is commonly regarded as the author of much which was actually due to his predecessors; but his administration is very remarkable.  Rigorous to the verge of cruelty in the enforcement of his laws, they were themselves commonly mild and conciliatory.  He was energetic in encouraging agriculture and manufactures.  Nepotism, the old ingrained vice of the popes, had been practised by none of his three immediate predecessors, though he is often credited with its abolition.  His financial methods were successful immediately, but really accumulated burdens which became portentously heavy.

The treatment of public buildings in Rome by Sixtus V., his destruction of antiquities there, and his curious attempts to convert some of the latter into Christian monuments, mark the change from the semi-paganism of the times of Leo X. Similarly, the ecclesiastical spirit of the time opposed free inquiry.  Giordano Bruno was burnt.  The same movement is visible in the change from Ariosto to Tasso.  Religion had resumed her empire.  The quite excellent side of these changes is displayed in such beautiful characters as Cardinal Borromeo and Filippo Neri.

III.—­The Counter Reformation:  First Stage

Ever since the Council of Trent closed in 1563, the Church had been determined on making a re-conquest of the Protestant portion of Christendom.  In the Spanish and Italian peninsulas, Protestantism never obtained a footing; everywhere else it had established itself in one of the two forms into which it was divided—­the Lutheran and the Calvinistic.  In Germany it greatly predominated among the populations, mainly in the Lutheran form.  In France, where Catholicism predominated, the Huguenots were Calvinist.  Calvinism prevailed throughout Scandinavia, in the Northern Netherlands, in Scotland, and—­differently arrayed—­in England.