Pius IV. had wasted the greater part of his later life in bed, neglecting business, entertaining his leisure with buffoons and good companions, eating much and drinking more.  Pius V., on the contrary, carried the habits of the convent with him into the Vatican, and bestowed the time he spared from devotion upon the transaction of affairs.  He was of choleric complexion, adust, lean, wasted, with sunken eyes and snow-white hair, looking ten years older than he really was.

Such a Pope changed the face of Rome, or rather stereotyped the change which had been instituted by Cardinal Borromeo.  ’People, even if they are not really better, seem at least to be so,’ says the Venetian envoy, who has supplied me with the details I have condensed.[64] Retrenchments in the Papal establishment were introduced; money was scarce; the Court grew meaner in appearance; and nepotism may be said to have been extinct in the days of Pius V. He did indeed advance one nephew, Michele Bonelli, to the Cardinalate; but he showed no inclination to enrich or favor him beyond due measure.  A worn man, without ears, marked by the bastinado, frequented the palace, and stood near the person of the Pope, as Captain of the Guard.  This was Paolo Ghislieri, a somewhat distant relative of Pius, who had passed his life in servitude to Barbary corsairs and had been ransomed by a merchant upon the election of his kinsman.  No other members of the Papal family were invited to Rome.

[Footnote 64:  Tiepolo, op. cit. p. 172.]

Pius V., while living this exemplary monastic life upon the Papal throne, ruled Catholic Christendom more absolutely than any of his predecessors.  As the Papacy recognized its dependence on the sovereigns, so the sovereigns in their turn perceived that religious conformity was the best safeguard of their secular authority.  Therefore the Catholic States subscribed, one after the other, to the Tridentive Profession of Faith, and adopted one system in matters of Church discipline.  A new Breviary and a new Missal were published with the Papal sanction.  Seminaries were established for the education of ecclesiastics, and the Jesuits labored in their propaganda.  The Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index redoubled their efforts to stamp out heresy by fire and iron, and by the suppression or mutilation of books.  A rigid uniformity was impressed on Catholicism.  The Pope, to whom such power had been committed by the Council, stood at the head of each section and department of the new organization.  To his approval every measure in the Church was referred, and the Jesuits executed his instructions with punctual exactness.