[Footnote 49:  The vague reference of all decrees passed by the Tridentine Council to the Pope for interpretation enabled him and his successors to manipulate them as they chose.  It therefore happened, as Sarpi says (’Tratt. delle Mat.  Ben.’ Opere, vol. iv. p. 161), that no reform, with regard to the tenure of benefices, residence, pluralism, etc., which the Council had decided, was adopted without qualifying expedients which neutralized its spirit.  If the continuance of benefices in commendam ceased, the device of pensions upon benefices was substituted; and a thousand pretexts put colossal fortunes extracted from Church property, now as before, into the hands of Papal nephews.  Witness the contrivances whereby Cardinal Scipione Borghese enriched himself in the Papacy of Paul V. The Council had decreed the residence of bishops in their sees; but it had reserved to the Pope a power of dispensation; so that those whom he chose to exile from Rome were bound to reside, and those whom he desired to have about him were released from this obligation.  On each and all delicate points the Papacy was more autocratic after than before the Council.  One of Sarpi’s letters (vol. i. p. 371) to Jacques Leschassier, dated December 22, 1609, should be studied by those who wish to penetrate the ’reserve ed altre arcane arti,’ the ‘renunzie’, ‘pensioni’ and ‘altri stratagemmi,’ by means of which the Papal Curia, during the half-century after the Tridentine Council, managed to evade its decrees, and to get such control over Church property in Italy that ’out of 500 benefices not one is conferred legally.’  Compare the passage in the ’Trattato delle Materie Beneficiarie,’ p. 163.  There Sarpi says that five-sixths of Italian benefices are at the Pope’s disposal, and that there is good reason to suppose that he will acquire the remaining sixth.]

After the termination of the Council there was nothing left for Pius but to die.  He stood upon a pinnacle which might well have made him nervous—­lest haply the Solonian maxim, ’Call no man fortunate until his death,’ should be verified in his person.  During the two years of peace and retirement which he had still to pass, the unsuccessful conspiracy of Benedetto Accolti and Antonio Canossa against his life gave point to this warning.  But otherwise, withdrawn from cares of state, which he committed to his nephew, Carlo Borromeo, he enjoyed the tranquillity that follows successful labor, and sank with undiminished prestige into his grave at the end of 1565.  Those who believe in masterful and potent leaders of humanity may be puzzled to account for the triumph achieved by this common-place arbiter of destiny.  Not by strength but by pliancy of character he accomplished the transition from the mediaeval to the modern epoch of Catholicism.  He was no Cromwell, Frederick the Great, or Bismarck; only a politic old man, contriving by adroit avoidance to steer the ship of the Church