circumstances.  He had witnessed the rise and progress of Protestant revolt in Germany.  He had observed the stirrings of a new and sincere spirit of religious gravity, an earnest desire for ecclesiastical reform in his own country.  He had watched the duel between France and Spain, during the course of which his predecessors Alexander V. and Julius II. restored the secular authority of Rome.  He had seen that authority humbled to the dust in 1527, and miraculously rehabilitated at Bologna in 1530.  He had learned by the example of the Borgias how difficult it was for any Papal family to found a substantial principality; and the vicissitudes of Florence and Urbino had confirmed this lesson.  Finally, he had assisted at the coronation of Charles V.; and when he took the reins of power into his hands, he was well aware with what a formidable force he had to cope in the great Emperor.

Paul III. knew that the old Papal game of pitting France against Spain in the peninsula could not be played on the same grand scale as formerly.  This policy had been pursued with results ruinous to Italy but favorable to the Church, by Julius.  It had enabled Leo and Clement to advance their families at the hazard of more important interests.  But in the reign of the latter Pope it had all but involved the Papacy itself in the general confusion and desolation of the country.  Moreover, France was no longer an effective match for Spain; and though their struggle was renewed, the issue was hardly doubtful.  Spain had got too firm a grip upon the land to be cast off.

Yet Paul was a man of the elder generation.  It could not be expected that a Pope of the Renaissance should suddenly abandon the mediaeval policy of Papal hostility to the Empire, especially when the Empire was in the hands of so omnipotent a master as Charles.  It could not be expected that he should recognize the wisdom of confining Papal ambition to ecclesiastical interests, and of forming a defensive and offensive alliance with Catholic sovereigns for the maintenance of absolutism.  It could not be expected that he should forego the pleasures and apparent profits of creating duchies for his bastards, whereby to dignify his family and strengthen his personal authority as a temporal sovereign.  It is true that the experience of the last half century had pointed in the direction of all these changes; and it is certain that the series of events connected with the Council of Trent, which began in Paul III.’s reign, rendered them both natural and necessary.  Yet Paul, as a man of the elder generation filling the Papal throne for fifteen years during a period of transition, adhered in the main to the policy of his predecessors.  It was fortunate for him and for the Holy See that the basis of his character was caution combined with tough tenacity of purpose, capacity for dilatory action, diplomatic shiftiness and a political versatility that can best be described by the word trimming.  These qualities enabled him to pass with safety through perils that might have ruined a bolder, a hastier, or a franker Pope, and to achieve the object of his heart’s desire, where stronger men had failed, in the foundation of a solid duchy for his heirs.