[Footnote 21:  See Sarpi, p. 249.]

[Footnote 22:  Charles, at this juncture, was checkmated by Paul through his own inability to dispense with the Pope’s co-operation as chief of the Catholic Church.  So long as he opposed the Reformation, it was impossible for him to assume an attitude of violent hostility to Rome.]

The opposition of the Farnesi to Paul’s scheme for restoring Parma to the Holy See in 1549, broke Paul III.’s health and spirits.  He died on November 10, and was succeeded by the Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte, of whose reign little need be said.  Julius III. removed the Council from Bologna to Trent in 1551, where it made some progress in questions touching the Eucharist and the administration of episcopal sees; but in the next year its sessions were suspended, owing to the disturbed state of Southern Germany and the presence of a Protestant army under Maurice of Saxony in the Tyrol.[23] This Pope passed his time agreeably and innocently enough in the villa which he built near the Porta del Popolo.  His relatives were invested with several petty fiefs—­that of their birthplace, Monte Sansovino, by Cosimo de’Medici; that of Novara by the Emperor, and that of Camerino by the Church.  The old methods of Papal nepotism were not as yet abandoned.  His successor, Marcello II., survived his elevation only three weeks; and in May 1555, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa was elected, with the title of Paul IV.  We have already made the acquaintance of this Pope as a member of the Oratory of Divine Love, as a co-founder of the Theatines, as the organizer of the Roman Inquisition, and as a leader in the first sessions of the Tridentine Council.  Paul IV. sprang from a high and puissant family of Naples.  He was a man of fierce, impulsive and uncompromising temper, animated by two ruling passions—­burning hatred for the Spaniards who were trampling on his native land, and ecclesiastical ambition intensified by rigid Catholic orthodoxy.  The first act of his reign was a vain effort to expel the Spaniards from Italy by resorting to the old device of French assistance.  The abdication of Charles V. had placed Philip II. on the throne of Spain, and the settlement whereby the Imperial crown passed to his brother Ferdinand had substituted a feeble for a powerful Emperor.  But Philip’s disengagement from the cares of Germany left him more at liberty to maintain his preponderance in Southern Europe.  It was fortunate for Paul IV. that Philip was a bigoted Catholic and a superstitiously obedient son of the Church.  These two potentates, who began to reign in the same year, were destined, after the settlement of their early quarrel, to lead and organize the Catholic Counter-Reformation.  The Duke of Guise at the Pope’s request marched a French army into Italy.  Paul raised a body of mercenaries, who were chiefly German Protestants[24]; and opened negotiations with Soliman, entreating the Turk to make a descent on Sicily by sea.  Into