and Piacenza were held under a more than doubtful title.  Pier Luigi did not long survive his elevation to the dukedom of Parma.  He was murdered by his exasperated subjects in 1547.  His son, Ottavio, with some difficulty, maintained his hold upon this principality, until in 1559 he established himself and his heirs, with the approval of Philip II., in its perpetual enjoyment.  The Farnesi repaid Spanish patronage by constant service, Alessandro, Prince of Parma, and son of Ottavio, being illustrious in the annals of the Netherlands.  It would not have been worth while to enlarge on this foundation of the Duchy of Parma, had it not furnished an excellent example of my theme.  By this act Paul III. proved himself a true and able inheritor of those political traditions by which all Pontiffs from Sixtus IV. to Clement VII. had sought to establish their relatives in secular princedoms.  It was the last eminent exhibition of that policy, the last and the most brilliant display of nepotistical ambition in a Pope.  A new age had opened, in which such schemes became impossible—­when Popes could no longer dare to acknowledge and legitimize their bastards, and when they had to administer their dominions exclusively for the temporal and ecclesiastical aggrandizement of the tiara.

Nevertheless, Paul was living under the conditions which brought this modern attitude of the Papacy into potent actuality.  He was surrounded by intellectual and moral forces of recent growth but of incalculable potency.  One of the first acts of his reign was to advance six members of the moderate reforming party—­Sadoleto, Pole, Giberto, Federigo, Fregoso, Gasparo Contarini, and G.M.  Caraffa—­to the Cardinalate.  By this exercise of power he showed his willingness to recognize new elements of very various qualities in the Catholic hierarchy.  Five of these men represented opinions which at the moment of their elevation to the purple had a fair prospect of ultimate success.  Imbued with a profound sense of the need for ecclesiastical reform, and tinctured more or less deeply with so-called Protestant opinions, they desired nothing more intensely than a reconstitution of the Catholic Church upon a basis which might render reconciliation with the Lutherans practicable.  They had their opportunity during the pontificate of Paul III.  It was a splendid one; and, as I have already shown, the Conference of Rechensburg only just failed in securing the end they so profoundly desired.  But the Papacy was not prepared to concede so much as they were anxious to grant:  the German Reformers proved intractable; they were themselves impeded by their loyalty to antique Catholic traditions, and by their dread of a schism; finally, the militant expansive force of Spanish orthodoxy, expressing itself already in the concentrated energy of the Jesuit order, rendered attempts at fusion impossible.  The victory in Rome remained with the faction of intransigeant Catholics; and this was represented, in Paul III.’s