or inspiration.  We find the most unlikely candidates, Caraffa and Peretti, attributing their elevation to the direct influence of the Holy Ghost, in the consciousness that they had slipped into S. Peter’s Chair by the maladroitness of conflicting factions.  The upshot, however, of these uninfluenced elections generally was to promote a man antagonistic to his predecessor.  The clash of parties and the numerical majority of independent Cardinals excluded the creatures of the last reign, and selected for advancement one who owed his position to the favor of an antecedent Pontiff.  This result was further secured by the natural desire of all concerned in the election to nominate an old man, since it was for the general advantage that a pontificate should, if possible, not exceed five years.

[Footnote 51:  This does not mean that the Spanish crown had not a powerful voice in the elections.  See the history of the conclaves which elected Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., Clement VIII., in Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 31-39.  Yet it was noticed by those close observers, the Venetian envoys, that France and Spain had abandoned their former policy of subsidizing the Cardinals who adhered to their respective factions.]

The personal qualities of Carlo Borromeo were of grave importance in the election of a successor to his uncle.  He had ruled the Church during the last years of Pius IV.; and the newly-appointed Cardinals were his dependents.  Had he attempted to exert his power for his own election, he might have met with opposition.  He chose to use it for what he considered the deepest Catholic interests.  This unselfishness led to the selection of a man, Michele Ghislieri, whose antecedents rendered him formidable to the still corrupt members of the Roman hierarchy, but whose character was precisely of the stamp required for giving solidity to the new phase on which the Church had entered.  As Pius IV. had been the exact opposite to Paul IV., so Pius V. was a complete contrast to Pius IV.  He had passed the best years of his life as chief of the Inquisition.  Devoted to theology and to religious exercises, he lacked the legal and mundane faculties of his predecessor.  But these were no longer necessary.  They had done their duty in bringing the Council to a favorable close, and in establishing the Catholic concordat.  What was now required was a Pope who should, by personal example and rigid discipline, impress Rome with the principles of orthodoxy and reform.  Carlo Borromeo, self-conscious, perhaps, of the political incapacity which others noticed in him, and fervently zealous for the Catholic Revival, devolved this duty on Michele Ghislieri, who completed the work of his two predecessors.

Paul IV. had laid a basis for the modern Roman Church by strengthening the Inquisition and setting internal reforms on foot.  Pius IV., externally, by his settlement of the Tridentine Council, and by the establishment of the Catholic concordat, built upon this basis an edifice which was not as yet massive.  Carlo Borromeo and the Jesuits during the last pontificate prepared the way for a Pope who should cement and gird that building, so that it should be capable of resisting the inroads of time and should serve as a fortress of attack on heresy.  That Pope was Michele Ghislieri, who assumed the title of Pius V. in 1566.