The result of this failure of the conciliar principle at Basel was that Nicholas V. inaugurated a new age for the Papacy in Rome.  I have already described the chief features of the Papal government from his election to the death of Clement VII.  It was a period of unexampled splendor for the Holy See, and of substantial temporal conquests.  The second Council of Pisa, which began its sittings, in 1511 under French sanction and support, exercised no disastrous influence over the restored powers and prestige of the Papacy.  On the contrary, it gave occasion for a counter-council, held at the Lateran under the auspices of Julius II. and Leo X., in which the Popes established several points of ecclesiastical discipline that were not without value to their successors.  But the leaven which had been scattered by Wyclif and Hus, of which the Council of Constance had taken cognizance, but which had not been extirpated, was spreading in Germany throughout this period.  The Popes themselves were doing all in their power to propagate dissent and discontent.  Well aware of the fierce light cast by the new learning they had helped to disseminate, upon the dark places of their own ecclesiastical administration, they still continued to raise money by the sale of pardons and indulgences, to bleed their Christian flocks by monstrous engines of taxation, and to offend the conscience of an intelligent generation by their example of ungodly living.  The Reformation ran like wild-fire through the North.  It grew daily more obvious that a new Council must be summoned for carrying out measures of internal reform, and for coping with the forces of belligerent Protestantism.  When things had reached this point, Charles V. declared his earnest desire that the Pope should summon a General Council.  Paul III. now showed in how true a sense he was the man of a transitional epoch.  So long as possible he resisted, remembering to what straits his predecessors had been reduced by previous Councils, and being deeply conscious of scandals in his own domestic affairs which might expose him to the fate of a John XXIII.  Reviewing the whole series of events which have next to be recorded, we are aware that Paul had no great cause for agitation.  The Council he so much dreaded was destined to exalt his office, and to recombine the forces of Catholic Christendom under the absolute supremacy of his successors.  The Inquisition and the Company of Jesus, both of which he sanctioned at this juncture, were to guard, extend, and corroborate that supreme authority.  But this was by no means apparent in 1540.  It is a character of all transitional periods that in them the cautious men regard past precedents of peril rather than sanguine expectations based on present chances.  A hero, in such passes, goes to meet the danger armed with his own cause and courage.  A genius divines the future, and interprets it, and through interpretation tries to govern it.  Paul was neither a hero nor a man of genius.  Yet