READING HALL THE DOORS OF WISDOM

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

PAUL V. (1605-1621)

CHAPTER IX.

Paul V’s Efforts for the Pacification of Western Europe and Italy. Religious Conditions in Switzerland and Disturbances in the Grisons.

Henry IV entertained great hopes that the election of Paul V. would help him to realize his ambitious schemes. They were no more destined to be fulfilled than were the fears with which the elevation of the Borghese Cardinal filled the cabinet of Madrid.

The French efforts to win over the new Pope to a neutrality hostile to Spain, in fact to an even closer adhesion to France’s anti-Habsburg manoeuvres, could not make an impression on a man like Paul V, for the Pope was resolved, a fact that did not escape the French ambassador, to govern solely for the good of Christendom, without seeking his own advantage, and with absolute impartiality. To this end peace between the Catholic Powers was indispensable, and Paul V considered it a sacred duty to collaborate with all who worked for its maintenance. If Henry IV nevertheless hoped that the Pope would support his plans, his expectation was based, on the one hand, on the political inexperience of the new pontiff, and, on the other, on the prestige which France had recovered in Rome. The last conclaves had shown the enormous change that had taken place in this respect.

The general favour which Henry’s astute envoy, Bethune, had won in Rome was clearly revealed at the latter’s departure (June 6th, 1605), for the event became a triumph for France. The Pope, who had learned to esteem Bethune whilst still a Cardinal, showed him extraordinary honour at his departure. Although he also gave tokens of his favour to the Spanish ambassador, the duke of Escalona, at this very time, and granted him, for Philip III, an extension of the heavy ecclesiastical revenues deriving from the Cruzada, the Subsidio and the Excusado, the Spaniards were nevertheless very jealous for they could not help feeling that their ascendancy in Rome had declined enormously. For this result their ambassador, the duke of Escalona, a, man of no capacity, was not a little to blame. In 1606 Escalona was superseded by the marquis of Aytona.

With a view to maintaining and increasing France’s prestige in Rome, Bethune’s successor, Charles de Neufville, seigneur of Alincourt and son of the minister Villeroi, made magnificent and sumptuous preparations, such as had never been witnessed on similar occasions. He announced his intention to spend forty thousand ecus over and above the money put at his disposal by the king. By displaying the utmost pomp, Alincourt hoped to promote a happy solution of the difficult problems which Henry IV. had set him. Among other things there was question of paving the way for an alliance between the smaller Italian States and the Pope, which would be aimed against the Spaniards. Whilst these plans of Henry IV were maturing, the struggle between Paul V and Venice broke out which, at one time, threatened to lead to an alliance between Rome and Madrid. As a consequence of the selfish and untrustworthy attitude of the Spaniards, Henry IV escaped that peril; in fact it became even possible for him to play the role of a mediator. Nevertheless, the compromise of June, 1607, which was due to the skill of Cardinal de Joyeuse, was of a kind that satisfied neither Venice nor the Pope. If his mediation in the struggle with Venice added to Henry’s prestige, he also lost many sympathies thereby. In Rome this became very evident; it was generally believed that Paul V had begun to lean rather more towards the Spanish side. None the less, since Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, seemed to draw ever closer to him, Henry IV hoped that the anti-Habsburg league of the Italian States, which he had fathered, would be further strengthened by the Pope’s adhesion. However, it soon became apparent that neither Paul V nor the republic of St. Mark could be induced to enter into any definite agreement. In September, 1608, the French envoy in Venice reported the existence of a possibility of a close alliance with Spain of the Pope, Venice and Tuscany. Even so when a month later Henry tentatively suggested to Venice the formation of a French-Italian offensive alliance, with a view to an attack on Spanish Lombardy, he imagined that he could secure the Pope’s concurrence by the promise of a principality for the Borghese family. Calculations of this kind were based on a complete misunderstanding of Paul V’s character. The duke of Escalona knew by experience how little the Pope was susceptible to wiles of this kind. In 1605, when he wished to secure a certain marriage dispensation, the duke made a promise of territorial possessions for the Pope’s nephew. To this suggestion the Pope indignantly replied that he was not prepared to sell the Supreme Pontificate. Nor was there any foundation for the opinion which prevailed at the French court, namely, that Paul V’s feelings were wholly pro-Spanish. The Borghese Pope was very far from considering the resumption of the political game in which so many of his predecessors of the Renaissance period had become involved. Though politically inexperienced, it nevertheless never entered his mind still further to strengthen the Spanish preponderance in Italy with which all Italians bore most reluctantly, and which the Holy See itself had cause to resent, owing to the constant encroachment of Spain on the sphere of the Church. But if the idea of a complete surrender to Philip III was far from his mind, that of falling in with the dangerous political aspirations of Henry IV was no less so. For Paul V, the fulfilment of his duty to the Church and the protection of Christendom stood in the front line, and to this end he sought to eliminate with complete impartiality, the differences between the two chief Catholic Powers which had so long warred against each other, to the very great injury of the Church. Like Clement VIII he too hoped for a reconciliation of France and Spain by means of a matrimonial alliance. Already by the end of 1605 he took tentative steps towards this end. Owing to the jealousy with which both cabinets watched the conduct of the Holy See, he had to act with the utmost caution, lest he should appear to each of the two Powers as an agent of the opposite party.

In April, 1606, the Jesuit, Pere Coton, for whom Henry IV cherished a high regard, suggested a double alliance between the houses of Habsburg and Bourbon; namely, that of the Dauphin with the eldest daughter of Philip III, and that of the Spanish heir with the eldest daughter of Henry IV; the latter would have for dowry the succession to Navarre, and the Spanish Infanta the provinces of Flanders. However the Spanish cabinet could not be induced to approve an arrangement the realization of which was greatly desired by the king of France. The discussions came to an end in July, 1607. Nevertheless Paul V went on making propaganda in favour of an understanding between Paris and Madrid by means of matrimonial alliances. Cardinal Barberini who, during his term of office as nuncio in Paris, had devoted his energy to the elimination of the Franco-Spanish rivalry, rightly interpreted the feelings of Paul V by making a supreme attempt towards that end shortly before his departure. In September, 1607, on the occasion of the recent birth of Don Carlos, Barberini suggested a matrimonial alliance between that prince and Christina, third daughter of Henry IV. The shrewd French monarch fell in with the proposal with remarkable alacrity even though he modified it somewhat in his own interest. Don Carlos and Christina were to receive from Spain the Low Countries as an hereditary fief, though in practice with complete independence, whilst the northern Provinces of the Netherlands were once more to be united to the southern ones. There is no need to explain in detail the advantages for France of a combination of this kind. To render the plan acceptable to the Pope, Henry IV pointed to the advantages that would result from it for Christendom. The sole cause of France’s jealousy of Spain was the latter’s presence in Flanders; if this obstacle were removed the king’s only interest would be to defend, in conjunction with the ruler of Spain, the heritage of the young couple, and to fight the Dutch Calvinists who, even in the interior of France, gave Henry trouble enough. All this Villeroi explained in detail to Roberto Ubaldini who, in 1607, succeeded Barberini in the French nunciature. An alliance without a territorial dowry, as had so often been demonstrated, would have no tangible effect, whereas the marriage of Don Carlos and Christina, with Flanders as dowry, would lead to a strong and lasting friendship between France and Spain. In order to win over to his plan the childless Governor-General of the Low Countries, the archduke Charles, Henry IV held out to him the perspective of his support in a question which, in view of the peace pourparlers with the Dutch, that fervent Catholic prince had particularly at heart, namely, complete freedom for the Catholics of Holland to practise their religion. In reality, however, the king of France, whose aims were purely political, had no intention whatever to tackle that difficult question. Notwithstanding the pressing exhortations of the Pope, the French delegates at the peace conference definitely took the side of the intolerant Dutchmen. The grave misgivings with which the Holy See viewed the latest proposals of Henry IV were fully justified. The worth of his promise to help the Spaniards, at a later date, to overthrow Holland, was shown by the conclusion, in January, 1608, of an offensive and defensive alliance between France and the United States of the Netherlands. At Madrid this doubledealing roused such indignation that the Spanish envoy in Rome was instructed to lodge a strong protest with the Pope against the conduct of Henry. For all that, the Spanish cabinet was resolved to go on with the marriage treaty. On March 30th, the Spanish Privy Council examined the French proposals which had been transmitted to it from Rome at the beginning of February, and, on the advice of Lerma, decided to send as envoy to Paris a person of eminence and distinction. The choice fell on a Grandee of Spain who was also a distant relation of the French king, namely the Marquis of Villafranca, Don Pedro de Toledo. It was thought that this haughty and rough warrior, with his bluff speech and manner, was best qualified to force the king to bow to Spain’s conditions of a marriage which, as was generally known, Henry was most anxious to be arranged. Toledo was instructed to open the discussions with a strongly worded protest against the Franco-Dutch alliance and only to mention the marriage plan if Henry himself broached it. Preparations on a purposely grand scale were made for the embassy and the presents which Toledo was to offer to the French king were ostentatiously displayed; they were magnificent Andalusian horses, together with costly harness. In order to draw general attention to the embassy, its dispatch was purposely delayed. The idea was to raise a suspicion in the minds of Henry’s confederates that the king of France was irrevocably resolved to become reconciled to Spain, even though it meant abandoning his Dutch allies. The extent to which the scheme proved successful is shown by the anxiety which seized the duke of Savoy, the German Protestants, the English, and, most of all, the Dutch. To a Dutch protest the French envoys replied that marriages of this kind could take place between the children of powerful kings; none the less they were empowered to assure them that their ruler would not enter into an alliance with any prince in the wide world if by so doing he would injure the Dutch State and his long-standing friendship with its people. This assurance was honestly meant, but it by no means allayed the fears of the Dutch. Not for a moment did Henry contemplate a loosening of his alliance with Holland seeing that it was for him a guarantee of the effective conclusion of the marriages and the separation of Flanders from Spain.

All the efforts of Paul V, through Ubaldini, to induce the French king to renounce his alliance with the Dutch Calvinists proved in vain. Whereas at the beginning of March, 1608, Henry still acknowledged the promise made by him to help the Spaniards to subjugate the Dutch, and excused its withdrawal by pleading that Rome had failed to send him a reply, at the end of the same month he openly told the nuncio that under no circumstances would he go to war with the powerful Dutchmen. The Bourbon fancied that somehow he would induce the Spaniards to fall in with his ideas, notwithstanding his dealings with Holland. He sought to allay the fears of the Madrid cabinet by every means in his power. Once the two dynasties were allied by double marriage ties, and the separation of Flanders from Spain was effected, everything else would follow of its own accord, for then the ruler of France would of necessity greatly desire that the Dutch should be subject to his daughter and son-in-law; in this way, too, the Catholic religion would be re-established in those provinces. It would seem that, as a matter of fact, Henry was prepared to promise, by a secret clause, to assist Spain in the conquest of Holland as soon as he could feel assured on the one point which, in his mind, outweighed everything else, namely the separation of Flanders from Spain. As early as March 4th, 1608, Ubaldini had reported to Cardinal Borghese as follows: “I perceive that though Villeroi refuses to say so openly, he nevertheless wishes it to be understood that the king would accept the marriages and the separation of Flanders even with the condition attached to them of an alliance against Holland”. Consequently the logical policy of papal diplomacy in Madrid should have been to press for an abandonment of the demand for an immediate rupture with Holland. If Paul V failed to do so, it was because in his anxiety to remain neutral he was afraid lest he should give the Spaniards an impression that he was a champion of the French if, in addition to the partition of Flanders, he also suggested to them the shelving of the resolve to subdue the Dutch Calvinists.

Meanwhile, on July 19th, 1608, Toledo arrived at Fontainebleau, the summer residence of the king of France. He was escorted by a numerous suite. This fact confirmed Henry in his opinion that the Spaniards were in earnest and sincerely meant to accept his proposals. His very first confidential talk with Toledo, on July 21st, completely disillusioned him. Toledo was a complete novice in the diplomatic craft. With soldierly directness he made straight for the main point, viz. the rupture of the Franco-Dutch alliance. There ensued some very painful and heated discussions. When Henry sought to give a friendlier turn to the conversation by inquiring which marriages Toledo was empowered to negotiate, the latter answered that though the Pope’s proposals in this matter had met with a favourable reception in Spain, he himself was neither commissioned nor empowered to negotiate any marriage whatever. Ubaldini could scarcely fail to realize that after such a beginning there was little prospect of a successful mission. None the less he decided to play the part of an intermediary.

When Paul V learned of the turn affairs had taken, his surprise was all the greater as he had entertained high hopes for the success of the matrimonial transactions. To these hopes he had given expression on the occasion of the first audience of the marquis de Breves, the successor of Alincourt, July 21st, 1608. His surprise was as great as his annoyance when, on August 5th, Breves informed him of the rough manner in which Toledo had begun a mission fraught with such possibilities for the good of Christendom. The Pope showed very great excitement. Toledo’s statement that it was Henry who had proposed the marriage he qualified as nothing less than impudent, since he was in a position to testify before the whole world that Cardinal Barberini and he, the Pope, for the good of Christendom, had suggested the discussions in question. For the rest, Paul V. expressed a hope that his skilful Parisian envoy would succeed in steering Toledo into different channels as well as in pacifying the king, whose irritation was fully justified. He trusted the ruler of France and promised to urge Philip III. and the archduke Albert to make peace with the Dutch as speedily as possible, so long as they guaranteed the free practice of the Catholic religion.

With a view to giving a better turn to the pourparlers between Spain and France, Paul V, on August 22nd, 1608, proposed to the French envoy to transfer the discussions to Rome where Breves and Aytona would be able to conduct them under his own eyes and with better prospects of success. Henry IV, however, mistrusted Paul V. and would not agree to the suggestion. Ubaldini’s efforts yielded no result though he applied all his diplomatic skill to the discovery of a middle course between the French and Spanish proposals. Paul V, who until then had entertained a strong hope of a happy solution of the question, now begun to fear that his desire of a rapprochement between France and Spain would be thwarted by the resistance of Henry IV and that French support would strengthen the Dutchmen’s determination to reject the Spanish demand for the free practice of the Catholic religion in the territory of the federated Netherlands. In order to allay the misgivings and the annoyance of the Pope, and for fear of forfeiting his goodwill, the French king had recourse to all the petty tricks of which he was a consummate exponent. Thus the nuncio in Paris was overwhelmed with attentions. For the same reason Cardinal Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, was dispatched to Rome as the king’s special envoy. His mission was to do homage to the Pope in Henry’s name. The ceremony was carried out with great pomp on November 27th, 1608. It came as a bitter disappointment to Paul V that the proposed marriages, from which he hoped for a close rapprochement between France and Spain, had no better result than to drive those two countries still further apart.

The Pope’s annoyance was increased by a fresh dispute with Venice in which the Spanish and the French ambassadors sought to mediate, each in his own way and for his own selfish end. To all this must be added the circumstance that the twelve years’ truce which, with the help of French mediation, was concluded between Spain and Holland, on April 9th, 1609, at Antwerp, contained no clause in regard to freedom for the practice of the Catholic religion. Thus the Catholics of Holland, who constituted more than half the population of the country, were left a prey to further persecution by the Calvinists. In the treaty, Spain not only renounced all claims to protect the Dutch Catholics, but recognized the independence of the united provinces of Holland and granted them the right to trade with all overseas countries which were not immediately under. Spanish suzerainty.

This shameful truce with Holland was a deep humiliation for Philip III: it was a revelation of the decline of Spain as a world power, a decline which thereafter nothing could check. This fact was at last realized even by the politically inexperienced Pope whom Henry IV, with his wonted duplicity, had deceived in regard to the role played by him in the transaction. Time and again the king succeeded in dispelling Paul V’s misgivings by a semblance of agreement with Rome’s intentions. The excessive optimism of the beginning vanished completely. “At one time”, the Pope remarked in September, 1609, “the Spaniards maintained their position by arrogance. At present they have lost that manner. They are the object of universal contempt and what respect they still commanded has been completely forfeited through the Dutch armistice by which they themselves owned to their helplessness”.

Meanwhile, in consequence of the death, on March 25th, 1609, of the childless John William of Jülich-Cleve-Berg, political tension became so acute that the most perilous complications were to be feared. Once again war threatened between France and Spain, as well as a most grievous injury to the cause of Catholicism in the North-West of Germany and in the Low Countries.

A number of claimants competed for the inheritance of the Lower-Rhine duchy, the possession of which was of the utmost importance from the political, strategic and ecclesiastical point of view. In accordance with the constitution of the empire, Rudolph II decreed that until the question of succession had been decided, the government of the territories should be carried on by the widowed duchess and her counsellors, under the supreme direction of imperial plenipotentiaries. Heedless of this decree, two of the Lutheran competitors, viz. the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine, Philip Louis of Neuberg, seized the principality which, at least outwardly, was still Catholic though in matters of religion it had long been undermined by the new teaching which the weak-minded John George had allowed to penetrate into his territory. The Elector of Brandenburg hoped for foreign help for the assistance, that is, of Holland, England, and France. He claimed British assistance in the name of the interests of the Netherlands, the Protestant religion and common liberty. This German prince begged the French king for effective help inasmuch as none of the other claimants could compare with the house of Brandenburg as regards traditional affection for France. Henry IV was only too glad of such an opportunity for meddling in the internal affairs of Germany as well as for leaguing himself with its Protestant princes for the purpose of preventing this territory on the Lower Rhine from getting into the power of the House of Habsburg. He promptly assured the Elector of Brandenburg of his assistance, advising him at the same time to begin by placating the count of Neuburg. As early as June, 1609, Brandenburg and Neuburg came to terms as to a provisional joint government of the territories they had seized. Thereupon the emperor threatened Brandenburg and Neuburg, the so-called princes in possession, with the ban of empire, at the same time charging the archduke Leopold to occupy the territories in his name. These the emperor intended to bestow upon the Elector of Saxony who also had a claim to them. On July 23rd, the archduke Leopold succeeded in occupying Jülich, the chief fortified place, but in view of the small forces at his disposal, it was very doubtful whether he would be able to hold the position. The decision of the whole question lay so completely with Henry IV that the Cardinal Secretary of State, Borghese, could write to the nuncio in Paris that peace and war were in the hands of the King of France.

As soon as he had learnt of the death of the duke of Cleve, Paul V had sent an urgent request to the Emperor Leopold II, to the Elector of Mayence and to duke Maximilian of Bavaria, not to suffer the territories, temporarily without a head, to fall into Protestant hands. When it transpired that the French king favoured the settlement of non-Catholic princes on the Lower Rhine, the Paris nuncio, Ubaldini, was instructed to deter the king from such a policy, and to press on him the interests of Catholicism. Ubaldini preached to deaf ears. If he pointed to the strengthening of the French Huguenots which must inevitably result from Henry’s conduct, he was told that it would be even more dangerous if the duchy of Jülich were to fall into the power of the Spaniards. If he dwelt on the injury which would surely be inflicted on Catholicism in the duchy itself if Brandenburg and Neuburg were to get it into their hands the king would tax the nuncio with exaggeration; besides, he alleged, the princes in question had promised not to introduce any changes in religion; that he, the king, would not prevent the emperor from looking after Catholic interests, but he was determined not to allow religion to be used as a cloak for the political aims of the house of Habsburg. The attitude of his counsellors did not differ from that of the king. When Ubaldini complained of the assistance which France gave to the Protestant pretenders, Villeroi made counter-accusations against the action of the nuncio of Cologne who was said to have exhorted the Estates of Jülich and Cleve to remain loyal to the house of Habsburg. Ubaldini replied that all that the nuncio had done was to stand up for Catholic rule in Jülich and Cleve; the Holy See had the concord of the Catholic Powers quite as much at heart as the extirpation of heresies. The chief source of all evils, Ubaldini declared, was the jealousy of the Catholic Powers which blinded them to such a degree that they would rather have a whole province fall into Protestant hands than allow even one town to get into the power of a rival. France would be the very first to experience the harm caused by every fresh innovation in matters of religion. Eventually Villeroi came back to his earlier proposal, that of an amicable settlement of the Jülich dispute by means of a Franco-Spanish marriage.

Such a solution was in complete harmony with the views of Paul V who, from the first, had but one aim in mind in the whole affair, namely the well-being of the Church. To this end it was just as imperative to prevent the outbreak of a fresh war between the two chief Catholic Powers as it was to save the duchies of the Lower Rhine from passing into Protestant hands. The Pope was indifferent as to which of the various claimants the rich inheritance might eventually fall to his one anxiety was that he should be a Catholic. In his eagerness for a happy settlement, the Pope had more than once spoken in this strain to Breves, the French envoy in Rome, and he had also sent instructions to this effect to the Paris nuncio. If at first Paul V favoured a decision of the dispute by the emperor whose intention it was to bestow the duchies on a Catholic prince, though not one of the house of Habsburg, it was because he hoped to preserve those territories from Protestantizing influences and at the same time to satisfy Henry IV. In this respect his calculations miscarried for the Protestant princes acted promptly and seized the territory. As for the emperor, he had neither the power nor the will to take a decisive measure. Maximilian of Bavaria also hesitated. The French king turned a deaf ear to all the representations of the Pope whilst he jealously watched lest there should be any increase of the power of the emperor or the Spaniards. If he could not secure the heritage of the Lower Rhine for France, he unhesitatingly preferred its passing into the hands of the Protestants rather than those of a Habsburg claimant.

Notwithstanding the studied impartiality of the Pope, Henry was for ever afraid lest the Curia should swerve towards his opponents. To prevent this he spared neither astute representations, nor offensive and threatening remarks. Breves, the French ambassador in Rome, roundly told Paul V that he ough to look for nuncios who depended wholly on him and not such as served the king of Spain better even than his own envoys. Breves even endeavoured to make the Pope believe that the policy of France, in the Jülich question, was really in the interests of the Church’s liberty, for the union of the duchies to Spain would increase that State’s power to such a degree that the Popes would be reduced to being no more than the chaplains of the Spanish king. When in the autumn of 1609 Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld set out for Rome, to receive the red hat, he was commissioned to remind the Pope, in energetic terms, of his duties as the impartial and common father of all Christians, and to tell him quite unequivocally that even if he were eventually to favour the Spanish plans in regard to Jülich, that action would not prevent the king of France from supporting the interests of the two princes in possession. If the Pope mentioned the injury that would accrue to the Church, the Cardinal was to point out that the Elector of Saxony, whose claims had the support of the emperor, was also a Protestant. There was no question whatever of religion; the whole thing was an attempt to secure the triumph of those who were least entitled to it over those whose claim was the strongest. The king was not at all averse to peaceful means, but when an attempt was made to turn these purely worldly disputes into a war of religion, His Majesty would be compelled to take risks in common with his friends, and he would do so with as much magnanimity and determination as he had shown on former occasions. A month later the French ambassador in Rome received similar instructions: If the Pope, so he was told, turned the conversation to the question of Jülich, he was to bring pressure to bear on him by insisting, in the most forceful manner, on the king’s will in this matter. “If I find”, so the instructions dated November 29th declared, “that people are not straight with me, or that they seek to deceive me, I shall act on behalf of my friends and allies and in defence of their righteous cause, with as much energy as I have ever shown, since, thanks be to God! I possess the courage and the strength as well as the means to give them adequate support.”

In the given situation there seemed to remain but one way, one that the tireless Ubaldini had pursued for some time already, namely that of settling the question of Jülich amicably by means of a Franco-Spanish marriage. A fresh proposal by the indefatigable nuncio, about the middle of November, was to the effect that the French king, with the consent of Spain as well as that of the emperor, should buy a strip of the Jülich inheritance bordering on the Spanish Netherlands and bestow it as her dowry upon his daughter Christina whom it was proposed to marry to Don Carlos. This plan met with so favourable a reception not only in Paris but in Madrid also, that there seemed to be every prospect, through the mediation of the Pope, of settling the dispute by this means. However, a fresh complication occurred before the Pope could do anything in the matter.

A criminal passion of the almost sexagenarian French king for the fifteen year old wife of the prince de Condé threatened “to set the war ball rolling”. In order to shelter the princess from Henry’s ceaseless pursuit, Condé took her to Brussels, on November 29th, 1609. The affair now assumed great political importance inasmuch as Henry feared lest his nephew, Condé, should put himself at the head of all the discontented elements in France and that Spain should use him as a tool against himself, for the prince was the next heir to the throne after Henry’s sons by his marriage with Marie de Medicis and the legitimacy of these was called in question by many people. To the frenzy of love, to which fuel was added by the sentimental letters of the light-headed and vain princess whom the governor, archduke Albert, refused to surrender, there were now added political and dynastic interests, all of which combined to inflame the warlike disposition of the king. When Prince Christian of Anhalt, the real founder of the Protestant Separate League of the Union, and the most determined opponent of the Habsburgs, came to Paris in December, as ambassador of the Palatinate, he found Henry prepared to turn the little war for Jülich into a mighty struggle against the power of the house of Habsburg. On January 22nd, 1610, the king explained his plan to the Dutch ambassador: it was to make a sudden attack on Spain from three different points. Henry conducted similar negotiations with the German Protestant princes and with the ambitious duke of Savoy. However, these discussions, owing to mutual distrust, proved exceedingly arduous and failed to yield really satisfactory results. The alliance concluded with the crafty Savoyard in April, 1610, “was not fully worked out in all its details and stood in need of expansion through the adhesion of other Italian States”. As to the use of the modest offer of the Protestant Union, Henry would only announce his decision after he had assured himself of the concurrence of Holland. Here also his hope of a definite alliance proved abortive; as for England and Venice, in that quarter Henry met with a lukewarmness that must have given him food for much thought. None the less, the danger of the outbreak of a big war was growing, for the extensive warlike preparations of Henry were met with counter-armaments by the emperor, by Spain and by the Catholic princes of Germany.

Henry IV did not fail to realize the risks he was taking both for himself and for his beloved France. Consequently, even in the midst of his preparations, he was still undecided, whether or no to attempt the venture. In April the duke of Epernon summed up the state of the king’s mind in these words : “We want it and we want it not; we do it and we do it not”. Henry’s uncertainty was increased by the weakness of the archduke Albert who, in order to avoid war, granted a free passage to the army whose object it was to drive his brother out of Jülich. In these circumstances the French king might well cherish the hope that he would succeed in compelling the Spaniards, by diplomatic pressure alone, to comply with his demands.

Ever since the appearance of these complications Paul V had been indefatigable in his efforts to prevent a conflict between the two principal Catholic Powers. Even though, for reasons we can understand, he refrained from examining the details of Henry’s unworthy love intrigue, he nevertheless did his utmost to bring about a reconciliation between Conde and the king. In his endeavours for a peaceful solution of the Jülich-Cleve question, he went as far as he could go. War, he was convinced, was the greatest of evils; hence he was prepared to consent to a temporary occupation of the duchy by the Protestants if thereby a peaceful settlement could be arrived at. Above all the Pope sought to use his influence on Henry himself. In a Brief of January 22nd, 1610, he urgently pressed him to preserve the peace by pointing to the dangers of war. The tireless Ubaldini made similar representations. The task was not a light one. Again and again Henry insisted that the affair of the Jülich heritage was a political, not a religious question; did not the emperor himself favour the claims of the Lutheran Elector of Saxony? The concessions for the protection of the Catholics on the Lower Rhine, which Rudolph II might obtain from that pretender, he himself could secure just as easily from Brandenburg and Neuburg, on this point he could give the Pope his word as a king. Ubaldini countered this reasoning by pointing out that even if such was not his intention, Henry would still injure the Catholic religion, because his support would give to the Protestant princes the power and the opportunity to proceed not only against the neighbouring principalities but also to oppress the Catholics of the duchies. How could the king prevent these things, seeing that experience was there to show that no Protestant prince tolerated the Catholic religion in his territory? For these reasons the Pope could do no other than to approve and to praise the Catholic League which was being formed in Germany.

The French Cabinet did its utmost to restrain Paul V from extending his support to the archduke Leopold and from participating in the Catholic League. It greatly dreaded such an intervention of the Pope, all the more as already in August, 1609, when the Spanish ambassador had depicted to him, in the most vivid colours, the plight of the Catholics of Austria, the Pope had gone so far as to declare that he would help with all the money he possessed if there was question of using steel against the heretics. On mature reflection, however, the Pope could not help seeing that, in view of the weakness of the Catholic party in Germany, a war of religion would be a desperate risk, one which the Julich heritage was not worth. Towards the end of November, Paul V assured the French ambassador, Breves, of his eagerness for a peaceable solution of the affair of Julich. Breves rejoined that this statement was contradicted by information he had to the effect that His Holiness was working for an entente against the princes in possession, in conjunction with the emperor, Spain, the archduke Albert and the Catholic Electors, and that he had promised half a million scudi to archduke Albert who had been chosen as head of the league. Paul V gave the envoy to understand that he was not so liberal as that with the goods of the Church; all that was true in the report was that the ecclesiastical princes of Germany did discuss the creation of a league; this he could not dissuade them from doing, but the only contribution he would make would be his prayers. However, the Pope’s waiting policy became more difficult when, at the close of 1609, an embassy from the three ecclesiastical Electors and a representative of Maximilian of Bavaria, Giulio Cesari Crivelli, earnestly begged for financial assistance for the league. When the Spanish envoy, Francisco de Castro, added his prayers to the request, the Pope promised an annual contribution of 200,000 ducats. For all that, the negotiations of the deputies of the league did not prosper in accordance with their wishes; in the end all they obtained was some indefinite promises. Though he praised their intentions, Paul V made no secret of his fear of the emperor’s jealousy when the latter discovered that he had been left out of the Catholic league; as for monetary assistance, the exhaustion of the papal finances made it very difficult. The clever counter-action of the French ambassador clinched the matter, for he successfully instilled the suspicion into the mind of the careful and parsimonious Pontiff that under the cloak of religion, the league, as well as Maximilian, were pursuing selfish interests. Breves began by representing to the influential Cardinal Lanfranco that the Spaniards were anxious to see the Pope at the head of the league in order to make of him a tool of their ambitious plans, and, in the event of his committing himself still further, to empty his treasury, notwithstanding their protestations to the contrary. The French envoy made similar representations to the Pope who retorted that he had no thought of putting himself at the head of the league; however, should a war of religion break out, he would come to the rescue of the German Catholics by levying a tenth from the Italian clergy. At the same time Breves sought to win over the Cardinal Secretary of State, Borghese, who was in receipt of an annual pension from France, for the concurrence, by the Holy See, in his king’s anti-Spanish intrigues in Italy, by pointing out how favourable the occasion was for securing the kingdom of Naples for the house of Borghese. Breves even dared to make similar insinuations to the Pope himself. The occasion was propitious, he explained in the first days of February, 1610, for the people of Naples were stretching out their hands towards someone who would rescue them and the Italian princes eagerly longed to shake off the foreign yoke; yet the Pope was not doing as much as he might. He ought to give more thought to his posthumous reputation!

As a matter of fact the ferment in Naples was strong enough. And as in that city, so over all Italy, resentment against the Spaniards was rising. In Rome itself there prevailed strong resentment because of their usurpations in the Church’s own domain. Hence it was not altogether impossible that the French instigations would get a hearing. The Spanish envoy, Castro, was so much afraid of such a result that he counselled his sovereign to keep the Pope in check by giving him cause to fear Spain’s entering into a league with the Roman princes. Nevertheless, in spite of all Breves’ efforts to induce the cautious Pontiff to swerve from the path of neutrality, his hopes in this respect were frustrated. Even though Cardinal Borghese lent an ear to the French insinuations, at least for a time, he lacked sufficient influence to force a decision of any kind. In his higher policy Paul V acted with complete independence; he had no intention whatever to fall in with France’s anti-Spanish plans in Italy, for he was fully aware that the interests of the Church imperatively demanded the maintenance of peace. Hence nothing was to be feared as much as warlike complications of any kind. On the other hand, what the Calvinists and the revolutionary agitators hoped to win by means of a war is revealed by their confidential statements. “Our hope”, Sarpi wrote, “is in war alone; from it alone can come our salvation”. By this the sacrilegious priest meant not only the downfall of the house of Habsburg, but likewise the end of the papacy. The imagination of one of his accomplices already pictured the Roman See, that great beast, nearing its end in Italy. Du Plessis-Mornay, too, cherished an assured confidence that the impending war would bring about the destruction of that Babylon. “A single spark”, he boasted, “will set all Europe on fire” .

Paul V, fully conscious of the seriousness of the situation, most earnestly remonstrated with the French ambassador against a war the consequence of which would be a fresh menace to Christendom on the part of the Turks as well as an increase of protestantism. All his nuncios, he declared, had been instructed to work for peace with the emperor, the king of Spain, and the archduke Albrecht. Let Henry wait for the result of these efforts. Breves replied that his sovereign could not abandon the rightful heirs of Jülich, nor could he suffer that, under the protection of the Spaniards, Conde should give himself out as the legitimate heir to the crown. The Pope ought to intervene in this affair and bring the Spaniards to reason; it should, however, be done at once, for Henry would not put off, the war and so give his enemies time to prepare.

On April 24th, 1610, Paul V thoroughly discussed with Cardinals Lanfranco, Borghese, Millini and Barberini both the situation and the measures with which they might cope with it. It was decided to send two extraordinary nuncios to the kings of France and Spain respectively, with mission to dissuade the two monarchs from opening hostilities, so as to give the Pope time for a friendly mediation. The next day the decision was submitted to a consistory of the Cardinals. Breves had instructed Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld to oppose the dispatch of a nuncio to France; but to Spain, as the aggressor, a nuncio should be sent with mission to induce her to make reparation for her misdeeds. After the consistory, Breves made representation in this sense to the Pope himself, and that in the most pressing manner. At the very least let him dispatch the nuncio destined for Spain fourteen days before the French one, so that the latter may find the Spanish answer on his arrival. Paul V replied that though he had no firm assurance from the cabinet of Madrid, he nevertheless felt sure that he would obtain from it such concessions as would ensure peace; in particular he hoped for the extradition of Conde. Besides this Breves demanded that the archduke Leopold should evacuate Julich, that the dispute over the succession to the inheritance be submitted to arbitration, and that negotiations be started with a view to reimbursing his sovereign for his expenditure on armaments.

Whilst the Pope, by the dispatch to France of the archbishop of Nazaret, Domenico Rivarola, and of the archbishop of Chieti, Ulpiano Volpi, to Spain was working for a peaceable settlement of the quarrel between the two chief Catholic Powers which was taking an increasingly threatening turn, Ubaldini exerted himself to the same end in Paris. From Henry he always had to hear the identical assertions; that the question of Julich was one of politics; that religion had nothing to do with it. It so happened that at this very moment the king was in a position to make capital out of a statement of Rudolph II which had given great pain to the Pope. Henry also laid stress on the commission with which he had charged his envoys to Schwabisch Hall; they were instructed to demand from Brandenburg and Neuburg a promise not to molest the Catholics of Jülich-Cleve. Though by these means Henry sought to convince the nuncio that his support of the two Protestant princes would secure rather than injure Catholic interests, Ubaldini let him see that he was by no means reassured; the history of the last thirty years had proved only too clearly what efforts and promises of this kind were worth. Ubaldini also pointed out that if the king expected the Curia to believe that he really had at heart the best interests of the Catholic religion, he must credit the Pope with similar intentions and not look upon the protection which the Holy See extended to the German Catholics as a favour shown to the house of Habsburg. As on former occasions, Ubaldini strove once again to make an impression on Henry by pointing to the dangerous repercussions of a war on the internal condition of France where a good deal of discontent still subsisted among the nobility and where the Huguenots were only waiting for an opportunity to extort further concessions, and thus to bring about the creation of a State within the State. All was in vain: Henry repeated that he was irrevocably resolved to join his army on May 15th. After this audience, which took place on April 14th, Ubaldini presented himself once more before the king, on the twenty-seventh, in order to hand to him a Brief in which the Pope again exhorted Henry to refrain from war. When the king reaffirmed his pacific intentions, Ubaldini replied that his majesty was joking, for the facts betrayed all too clearly his determination to break with Spain. To a fresh recital of the grounds which made for the preservation of peace, the king gave the cynical answer that there was no way out except the immediate surrender of the princess of Conde, the submission of her husband, or his expulsion from Spanish territory. To leave nothing undone, Ubaldini strove in this audience to induce a change in the king’s mind by considerations of high politics. Even if Henry’s experience in the art of war, as well as his good fortune, so Ubaldini argued, were to give him the victory over the well-known valour of the Spanish infantry, it would be a barren victory inasmuch as his own allies, namely, the Dutch and the English, would eventually prefer to see Flanders under Spanish rather than under French domination. In a supreme appeal to the political sense of the king, Ubaldini uttered the prophetic words: “The common interests of the European Powers demand the maintenance of equilibrium between France and Spain to such a degree that they would never suffer the destruction of one of these two States, and they would always ally themselves with the weaker of the two”.

On May 7th, 1610, the nuncio handed to the king yet another letter from the Pope, explained the purpose of the mission of Barberini and Rivarola, and made a supreme effort to turn Henry from his purpose of proceeding against Jülich by marching through Belgium.

Henry once again denied that this would lead to a rupture with the archduke Albert as well as with Spain. As a proof of his pacific disposition he allowed Ubaldini to see the text of the request to archduke Albert for free transit through Jülich. The king raised no objection to the mission of Rivarola though he roundly declared that after May 20th the envoy would find him in camp, for the forward march of his army could be no longer postponed. None the less another delay did occur and Ubaldini hoped that Rivarola would find Henry still in Paris. However, on May 14th the dagger of Ravaillac put an end to the life of the fifty-seven year old king, the most popular ruler that France ever had. Thus were all schemes upset.

DEATH OF HENRY IV.

At Brussels and at Madrid the news of the death of Henry IV was felt like the lifting of a heavy weight. “The news”, so Cabrera wrote in his diary, “is looked upon as a miracle wrought by Heaven itself, seeing that it occurred at a time when on all sides one saw nothing but armaments and everybody wondered where the king and his army would strike the first blow. I trust that this death will give Christendom a prolonged period of peace”. Paul V spoke in similar terms to the Belgian envoy. On the other hand, in the consistory of May 26th, he lamented the fact that so richly endowed a ruler should have met with such an end, and recommended the soul of the deceased to the prayers of all. “May God grant to his successor”, the Pope concluded, “to resemble the holy king St. Louis, not in name only but in conduct also”. The nuncio was at once instructed to see to it that Louis XIII was given a Catholic education and was preserved from all contact with the religious innovators. To the French hierarchy the Pope recommended the preservation of tranquillity within the realm, for this was of the greatest importance for the progress of the restoration of religion.

The Pope had no wish to see the power of France diminished, for in such an eventuality the Spaniards would have been in a position to do what they liked in Italy. Hence the regent, Marie de Medicis, could count on the strong support of Paul V. The Pope, who was always anxious for the preservation of peace, must have been extraordinarily gratified by the change which now occurred in France’s foreign policy. True, the request so strongly urged by the nuncio, Ubaldini, and by the extraordinary envoy, Rivarola, who had arrived meanwhile, namely, that the enterprise against Jülich should be dropped, was not to be fulfilled. However, there could be no question of a big war against Spain at a time when the king was a child and the regent a foreigner. As a matter of fact the daughter of the Medici had always been of the opinion that the mutual hostility between the two chief Catholic powers had not only done grievous harm to religion, but to the interests of her family as well. So it became possible, in that same year, 1610, through the intervention of the Florentine ambassador and the papal nuncio, to begin negotiations with a view to a matrimonial alliance between the houses of Bourbon and Habsburg; and, notwithstanding manifold obstacles, they progressed favourably. On April 30th, 1611, an agreement was signed at Fontainebleau, by the terms of which Louis XIII was to become affianced to the daughter of Philip III, the Infanta Anna Maria, and the Infante Philip engaged to Isabella of France, Henry IV’s eldest daughter. At the same time, for the welfare of Christendom and for the preservation of the Catholic faith, both Powers entered into a ten years’ defensive league directed against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. On account of the Huguenots these conventions were kept secret for a time; they were only made known to the Grandees of the Court on January 26th, 1612; on March 25th they were published officially and celebrated with pomp, in Paris, at the beginning of April.

Nothing could have given the Pope keener satisfaction than an alliance of this kind, which would give a fresh turn to French policy. Towards the close of April, 1612, the French ambassador in Rome solicited a special audience in which he prayed for the Pope’s blessing for the engaged people. Paul V had never appeared so radiant as on that day. He hoped that a further result of the marriage would be an accretion of strength to the Catholic party in France as against the Gallicans.

The months immediately following were to cause Paul V grave anxiety for the peace of Italy, to the preservation of which he attached the utmost importance. Close upon the death of Henry IV warlike disturbances began to menace in the peninsula when the governor of Milan, Fuentes, threatened to punish duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy for entering into a league with the King of France. On this occasion the Pope’s exhortations to peace were assisted by the death of Fuentes. In the following year the restless Savoyard planned an attack on Geneva and the canton of Vaud, but in view of the attitude of the Bernese he did not dare to carry his design into execution. Paul V had emphatically dissuaded him from the dangerous undertaking, because, in the first instance, he rightly mistrusted the Savoyard; and, on the other hand, because he did not wish to see the peace disturbed in any way. From a similar motive, he had done all in his power to prevent a rupture between the courts of Turin and Madrid.

On December 21st, 1612, Francesco IV, duke of Mantua, died, at the early age of twenty-seven, leaving an only daughter, Maria, as yet an infant. When the news reached Rome the college of Cardinals had just assembled for the Mass of Christmas day. Cardinal Ferdinand Gonzaga communicated it at once to the Pope and forthwith hastened to Mantua to take up the reins of government. The grave fears which the ambitious duke of Savoy occasioned him were soon to be realized. Charles Emmanuel put forward some long-standing claims, in particular, he demanded for his niece, Maria, the right of succession to the marquisate of Montferrat, which was famous for its fertility. He failed in this effort; in consequence, in the last week of April, 1613, he seized the greater part of the marquisate, with the exception of Casale, the important capital city. That stronghold remained in the power of the Gonzagas, and Carlo Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, garrisoned it with French troops.

Tuscany and Venice took the part of the duke of Mantua. Like France, they too believed in the existence of an understanding between the Savoyard and Spain. The abovenamed Powers did all they could to win over the Pope to their side and to induce him to put himself at the head of an Italian league. However, Paul V confined himself to exhortations to peace and the dispatch of Innocenzo de Massimis to Milan and Turin. He rejected the request of the Venetians and the duke of Mantua to allow them to raise recruits in the pontifical states. All the eloquence of Breves, the French ambassador, proved unavailing with Paul V who retained vivid memories of all that had happened at the time of his struggle with Venice.

When Philip III also declared himself against the Savoyard, the latter was forced to give way. For a moment peace seemed secure. However, whilst the duke of Mantua was demobilizing in earnest, Charles Emmanuel had recourse to subterfuges. When Spain threatened an armed attack, he accepted the uneven struggle (September, 1614). In official documents, as well as in poetical effusions, he had it described as a war for Italy’s liberation from the dictatorship of Spain. France, Venice, and the Pope all strove for an accommodation, but in vain. The peace signed at Asti, on June 21st, 1615, as a result of French intervention, remained a dead letter.

To this war in Upper Italy another came to be added at the close of 1615, when Venice, whose relations with Austria had become increasingly strained, more particularly by reason of certain pirates, the Uskoks, who had settled on the Dalmatian coast, took up arms against the archduke Ferdinand of Stiria. The superiority of power lay with the republic of St. Mark, but the Austrian offered an obstinate resistance. After a two years’ struggle, peace was at last re-established thanks to the efforts of Paul V, who contributed to the happy issue by the dispatch to Upper Italy of the archbishop of Bologna, Ludovisi, as well as to the action of the nuncios of Madrid and Paris. The treaty concluded at Madrid on September 26th, 1617, re-established peace between Spain and Savoy on the one hand, and on the other between Ferdinand, the emperor, and Venice. The archduke undertook to expel the Uskoks whose business was piracy, and to hand over to Venice the conquered territory; but the controversy in regard to free navigation in the Adriatic remained in suspense. Charles Emmanuel, on his part, was compelled to restore his conquests, whilst his claims to Montferrat were indefinitely adjourned by being referred to the judgment of the emperor. The Pope actively promoted the execution of the peace, the conclusion of which had not been generally expected. For all that the situation in Upper Italy remained insecure and it was to be still further complicated by the troubles in the Grisons.

The change of nuncios undertaken by Paul V, in 1606, had also affected Switzerland. Count Giovanni della Torre, who had completed ten years as nuncio in Lucerne, was given a successor on June 7th, 1606, in the person of the bishop of San Severo, Fabrizio Verallo who, however, was himself recalled two years later in consequence of his elevation to cardinalate. His immediate successor was Ladislao d’ Aquino, bishop of Venafro, who in his turn was replaced, in 1613, by Lodovico di Sarego, bishop of Adria.

Ladislao d’ Aquino’s official report at the conclusion of his term of office, and a memorandum which he drew up for the information of his successor give an interesting picture not only of his work, plans and intentions, but also of ecclesiastical conditions in the country as well as of the importance of the post he was about to vacate. The importance of the Swiss nunciature was due to its vast extent and to the geography of the country. It included not only all the Catholic parts of Switzerland, but, since the bishoprics of Bale and Constance were likewise joined to it, it also embraced Upper Alsace, Breisgau and part of Suabia. It extended, moreover, as far as the Vintschgau, which belonged to the jurisdiction of the bishop of Chur, and to the Tessin and the Valtellina which were respectively parts of the dioceses of Milan and Como.

POSITION IN SWITZERLAND.

Since Switzerland was contiguous to Italy, and its mountain passes commanded the communications with Germany, the Holy See was exceedingly concerned for the preservation of the Catholic faith in that country. In this respect the nuncios had been so successful, chiefly owing to the self-sacrificing labours of the bishops, the Capuchins and the Jesuits, during the reign of Pius V, that out of the thirteen cantons properly so called seven, that is Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Solothurn and Fribourg, had remained loyal to the ancient Church. In the cantons of Glarus and Appenzell the Catholics had maintained themselves in considerable numbers; in Wallis the Catholic restoration was as yet only beginning and in the Grisons a majority of the population had accepted the new religion; Bern, Zurich, Bale and Schaffhausen had become entirely Protestant. The hope at one time entertained of winning these four cantons back to the Church had completely vanished when Aquino relinquished his nunciature in 1613. Generally speaking, Protestants and Catholics were about equally strong in Switzerland. The numerical majority of the Catholic cantons was neutralized by the greater extension of the territory of the Protestant ones, as well as by their superiority in population and natural resources, and even in their military strength, for the warlike valour of the Catholic cantons had sunk to a low level. The Catholics were aware of their peril, hence they sought to make up for what they lacked in strength by extraordinary activity and great willingness to make sacrifices.1 The nuncios, who encouraged them by every means in their power, gladly paid tribute to their zeal. The testimony which Ladislao d’ Aquino gives to the Swiss Catholics in his report of 1613, is as honourable as could be imagined: “They frequent church and the sacraments”, he writes, “and they honour the priest sin all sorts of ways, far more than is done anywhere else”. Aquino enumerates with profound satisfaction the adherents of the Holy See in Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Fribourg. Almost all personages of mark, who were for the most part adherents also of the Spanish party, were fervent Catholics and in close contact with the nuncios. In Solothurn alone the representatives of the Holy See had failed to establish intimate contact with the leading personalities. The cause was, here as elsewhere, that the adherents of the French party took up an unfriendly attitude towards the nuncios. In the Catholic part of Appenzell-Innerhoden, where none of the important people cherished French sympathies, all gave proof of loyal attachment to the Holy See.

Aquino specially impressed on his successor the necessity of cultivating good relations with the Catholic Swiss. He counselled him to make as much allowance as possible for the love of liberty and for the self-confidence of the Swiss, as well as for their other characteristics. Among these was the bad habit, one not exclusively peculiar to the Swiss, of having pensions and gifts bestowed upon them by foreign Powers. Aquino was of opinion that such a means of exercising influence, of which Spain and France especially made use, should not be neglected by the nuncio if he would attain his end, at least when there was question of important affairs.

Aquino’s further counsels are evidence of the shrewd Italian’s anxiety to fall in, as much as possible, with local manners and customs. The nuncio, he insists, must show courtesy towards the Swiss, shake hands as the custom of their country demands, and see to it that the personnel of the nunciature behave politely towards all and sundry, especially when walking through the town, when they should salute people, raise their hats and so forth. Special courtesy should be shown to persons of a more exalted position. These people have a mistaken notion that the Italians look down with contempt on the Swiss and that they have but little respect and esteem for their senators. This urbanity must not be artificial. The nuncio must always preserve his personal dignity. With regard to the slowness and formality with which business is transacted in Switzerland, no sign of annoyance should escape him; on the contrary, he ought to manifest his delight at such local customs; in this way the goodwill of the Swiss is secured and they settle down to business. Aquino counsels a study of Swiss history; the nuncio should allude to, and praise, their victories and their battles, quoting from their own historians ; in this way confidence is won and they begin to look upon the representative of the Holy See as almost one of their own.

Though the nuncio has his private chapel, it is advisable that he should frequently assist at Mass and at sermons in church. On great feasts, and at processions, this is indispensable. Let him carefully watch over the conduct of his servants. The Swiss are pious people and are easily shocked even by slight faults of the servants, for they watch them closely, and what in others they would deem but little sins, that in them they judge to be grievous ones. Much drinking and frequent meals, Aquino continues, is a common practice with all northern peoples, in fact it is quite natural, owing to the cold of the climate. Hence frequent banquets and feastings are part of Swiss life also. The nuncio cannot escape the abuse already introduced by his predecessors in office of inviting a few of the gentlemen every week, more especially on feast days. He should do this especially at the beginning of his nunciature; he must, of necessity invite to his table, by degrees, all the gentlemen of the Lesser Council, and after them those of the Great Council. Many courses and divers wines must be served, according to Swiss taste. On the occasion of the meeting of the Diet all the deputies must be invited, a few at a time. On these occasions it is imperative to make a great display, else the gentlemen would not feel honoured, and on no account must the nuncio rise from table before three hours have gone by. The first toast goes to the person who holds the highest rank; when this has been drunk, the others follow, in due order, in honour of every one of the guests. Aquino advises the nuncio to entertain in like manner the Jesuits, the Capuchins, the Canons, and other clergy of some position, so as to win their goodwill; at table many things may be learnt which he would not get to know by any other means. If individual representatives of any of the Cantons happen to be in the city, they should be given an invitation. The gentlemen are most anxious to ascertain whether the privileges granted to them -by the Holy See are to be in any way curtailed. Hence the nuncio should be most careful of what he says and show an inclination to extend them still further. Let him praise the Swiss, but with discretion. It is particularly useful to praise their good government and to prophesy for them both greatness and eternal endurance. Written answers must always be courteous. If a letter remains unanswered, it is taken as a grievous insult. When the nuncio is approached on matters of business, he must not forthwith give a negative answer, nor unduly raise the hopes of the client, if he is not very sure of his affair. The Swiss are prone to take a courteous answer for a promise.

On the occasion of the marriages of people of position, Aquino goes on, the nuncio’s presence is invited, but as a rule he does not put in an appearance. On the other hand, he is bound to send the bride a gift, usually a ring. There are other occasions, and they are of frequent occurrence, when the nuncio is bound to make gifts. “For some gentlemen I have obtained a knighthood of the Golden Spur”, Aquino relates. “This gives them great pleasure, especially if one adds the further gift of a gold chain, or a gold medal. However if the distinction is bestowed on too many people it loses its value”.

Though he pays tribute to the religious feelings displayed by the Swiss Catholics, Aquino was by no means blind to the shadows in his picture of the condition of the country. One of the darkest was the unwarrantable meddling of the secular power with affairs that appertained to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. However, in this respect Aquino thought he could see some improvement since he had pointed out to the Swiss, with charity and kindliness, the wrongfulness of their conduct as well as the risk they ran of incurring ecclesiastical penalties.  “They justify their claims”, Aquino adds, “by the numberless papal privileges which were granted to them at a time when they defended the Catholic faith of their country, sword in hand, at a time also when they were lacking the assistance of their bishops and other prelates. At that period things had come to such a pass that the various governments submitted a formula of faith (professio fidei) to the priests which they had to swear to. In this way they secured numberless rights of collation, and as for the appointment to canonries, it was an ancient right of theirs. In addition they are the patrons of all churches and convents, as the successors, so they declare, of the house of Austria. Now patronage, as understood by them, means tutelage and usufruct. On this point I have done all I could to make them see what genuine patrons of churches and monasteries may do and are bound to do, and my efforts have not been fruitless. The fact that their forbears have frequently punished members of the clergy I have shown to have been a usurpation consequent on the inability or unwillingness of the bishops to take action, because they were themselves hard pressed by the heretics and because there were no nuncios in the country; in a word, owing to circumstances that no longer exist. At present the governments are in the habit of turning to me when it is necessary to punish a cleric”

Violations of ecclesiastical jurisdiction were all too common in other countries also, but what was wholly peculiar to Switzerland was that in certain cantons, such as Schwyz and Appenzell, an idea prevailed that parish priests could be removed ad nutum.

The moral conduct of the Swiss parochial clergy could be considered as very satisfactory on the whole; the only thing that Aquino would have liked to see abolished was the habit of the priests to visit public houses, owing to the manifolds inconveniences of this custom of the country. All the nuncios are loud in their praise of the eminent services rendered by the Jesuits and Capuchins. “The Jesuits”, Aquino writes, “have vast and imposing colleges at Constance, Lucerne, Fribourg, and Pruntrut. They combine the work of educating youth, preaching, and the administration of the sacraments with an exemplary conduct. I can only testify that they display the same activity as in Italy and in other countries, and that they are indeed the staunchest support that poor Germany still has. But for their unfailing zeal, that country would be in an even more serious plight than it is at the moment”. At Lucerne the Jesuits displayed heroic charity during the great epidemics of 1611 and 1616. Among the many friends of the Fathers in that city an outstanding figure was that of the town clerk, Renward Cysat, to whose pen are due almost all the more important official documents of that period.

With regard to the execution of the religious restoration of Switzerland, the Capuchins attained an importance greater even than that of the Jesuits. Their Province continued to spread in Switzerland as in Swabia and Breisgau. Thus foundations arose at Sursee (1606), Biberach (1606), Freiburg (1609), Neuenburg on the Rhine, Kienzisheim (1613), Thann (1613), Engen (1616), Rottenburg (1616), Bremgarten (1617), Altkirch (1617), Radolfzell (1617), Uberlingen (1618). In all these places the lowly sons of St. Francis worked with wonderful results for the renewal of the Christian life, the strengthening of the ancient faith and the repression of innovations in matters of religion. The latter point was the special care of the missionary Province which Paul V founded at the very gates of Geneva, by separating it from the Province of Lyons. The convents of Gex, Roche, Thonon and Saint-Julien also formed part of the new Province.

As regards the old Orders, the union of the reformed Benedictine Abbeys, which had already been effected under Clement VIII, had proved successful. At its head stood the Abbey of St. Gall, whose abbot, Bernard Muller, distinguished himself by his attachment to the Holy See. Under his guidance the monastery gained fresh lustre. The monasteries of Muri Rheinau, Engelberg and Einsiedeln were likewise presided over by excellent superiors who were learned, pious and charitable and spent themselves in labouring for the service of God and the well-being of their flock. The affluence of pilgrims to the miraculous image of Einsiedeln Aquino could only compare to what took place at Loreto. The nuncio also did all he could to bring about the affiliation to the Swiss Benedictine Congregation of the Abbey of Dissentis which had become relaxed.

Paul V failed in his endeavours to unite the Swiss Cistercians in a reformed Congregation because the monks feared to offend their General who resided in France. As a matter of fact in these monasteries discipline was sound, in some it was even very strict. In this respect Wettingen, which since 1594 possessed an excellent abbot in the person of Peter Schmied, was not excelled by any Benedictine monastery. St. Urban and Altenryf were reformed by Aquino. The Premonstratensians gave the nuncio but little to do; they lived retired lives, in accordance with their Rule. But things were all the worse with the Franciscans Conventual. Aquino gave it as his opinion that it would be better if these had not so many convents, for all had departed from their Rule and were an occasion of scandal. It was more difficult to reform one of their monasteries than a hundred abbeys. Aquino took from them the supervision of the convents of nuns of their Order because they tolerated too many abuses. The convents of nuns, which failed especially in the observance of the enclosure, gave the nuncio much trouble, but in this quarter also he had many consolations. A particularly inspiring spectacle was the reform carried through by Elizabeth Spitzlin in the convent of Pfanneregg, near Watwil, in Toggenburg. From there the reform soon spread to other convents, encouraged as it was by Ladislao d’ Aquino. The above-named nun, who strongly recalls the personality of Charitas Pirkheimer, occupies an honourable rank among the leading figures of the Catholic restoration in Switzerland.

It was the good fortune of Catholic Switzerland that its dioceses were without exception presided over by excellent bishops. Here foremost mention must be made of the bishopric of Bale, so sorely tried by the religious divisions. Its bishop saw himself compelled to reside at Pruntrut whilst his Chapter was at Freiburg, in Breisgau. At the death of the distinguished bishop of Bale, Jacob Christoph Blarer (April 18th, 1608) Paul V urged the election of a successor no less zealous for the salvation of souls. He had his wish, for Wilhelm Rink von Baldenstein, who was elected on May 19th, was in every respect a worthy successor. He displayed so much energy in carrying into effect the ecclesiastical reform that the Pope repeatedly expressed his highest satisfaction.4 But in Alsace the zealous bishop saw his efforts grievously hindered by the caesaro-papalism of the Austrian authorities as well as by other disturbances. The nuncio Aquino speaks of Rink von Baldenstein as an excellent prelate, remarkable, in particular, by the fact that he visited his diocese in person. Paul V gave 11,000 florins for the seminary which the bishop founded at Pruntrut. The bishop of Bale had under him a number of parishes in districts which had become Protestant. He took much trouble in order to bring these back to the true faith, and notwithstanding the opposition of the Bernese, he was able to register some splendid successes. Aquino, too, did all he could to foster conversions, but he counselled prudence, for many went under instruction and accepted alms, only to withdraw again. “At Lucerne”, he reports, “I have maintained many converts at my own expense, and have had them instructed by the Jesuits; others I recommended to the abbeys, when my means proved inadequate. The foundation at Thonon, on the lake of Geneva, renders good service and many converts repair thither”. Aquino planned the erection of similar houses in other localities also, but the outbreak of the plague prevented his doing so. He very earnestly recommended this work to his successor and advised him to set aside a fund for the support of converts from the contributions of the monasteries.

Aquino took particular interest in the bishopric of Lausanne which, in consequence of the religious divisions, was now confined within the boundaries of the Canton Fribourg. He appointed as its vicar-general the excellent Anton von der Weyd who accomplished an immense amount of good. At the suggestion of the nuncio, Weyd visited the contiguous parts of the Canton Solothurn where, for 150 years, no visitation had been held. The visitation produced immense results, Aquino reported to Rome. He urged that the restoration of the bishopric of Lausanne should be the first care of his successor. In 1615, the bishop of Lausanne, Johann von Watteville, held a visitation of the city of Solothurn.

The Holy See was not a little anxious over the turn of affairs in Wallis where the determination of the bishop of Sitten, Adrian von Riedmatten, to carry through the Catholic reform and restoration, met with every imaginable opposition. Sitten and Leuk, in particular, opposed the restoration of religious unity and in this they were strongly backed by Bern. One of the greatest difficulties of the bishop was the shortage of priests. This want was yet further increased when he had to remove priests living in concubinage. A measure of assistance was rendered by several self-sacrificing parish priests and chaplains of Lucerne, but their own country could not spare them for an indefinite length of time. For this reason the Holy See and the nuncio did all they could in order to secure the dispatch of the Jesuits to Wallis. To Paul V’s great joy these efforts proved successful; in 1610, two residences were founded, each with two Fathers, one in Amen and another in Siders. Opposition was not lacking. As early as 1605, a pamphlet, crammed with the vilest calumnies, was published at Leuk against the Jesuits and the Capuchins. Most opportune for the Protestants was the support of the French ambassador, Eustache de Roche (1607-1611), who definitely took the part of the innovators. He even went so far as to threaten with death the two Capuchins whom bishop Adrian had summoned to Sitten. When Adrian, who after all was the lord of Sitten, announced his intention of getting a Jesuit to preach at the first Mass of one of the Canons, the magistrates forbade assistance at the sermon under pain of forfeiture of civil rights. But the heretics could not prevent the growth of the Jesuit schools at Arnen and Siders: by 1613 the former numbered 180 pupils. The reform of the clergy also progressed. Again and again Paul V expressed to bishop Adrian his recognition and praised the pastoral zeal displayed by him. As a matter of fact the bishop could lay himself down to die with the consciousness that he had laid a strong foundation for ecclesiastical reform (October 7th, 1613). This was all the more important as in the struggle for the secular power, which broke out under his successor, Hildebrand II. Jost, the Catholics sided with the Protestants against the bishop. The Pope did all he could to support the bishop of Sitten and praised him for the favour he showed to the Capuchins and the Jesuits who, since 1615, had extended their preaching activities as far as Sitten. In 1620, Paul V suggested the holding of a diocesan synod.

The anxiety of the Swiss for their freedom resulted in their invariably taking up an unfriendly attitude towards the bishop of Constance who was also a prince of the German empire. In every one of his rulings they saw an infringement of their rights and privileges. When the efforts of Lucerne to obtain a bishop of its own had proved unavailing, a special commission was set up in that city in 1605, for the purpose of carrying through the reform decrees of Trent. However, the unfriendly dispositions towards the bishop of Constance remained. All the efforts of bishop Jacob Fugger to induce the Swiss to accept the decisions agreed upon at the reform synod held at Constance in 1609, proved unavailing. Full concord between the Catholic localities was, however, secured when Fugger re-established Catholic worship at a place called Muhlheim, which came under the jurisdiction of the episcopal court of Frauenfeld. Fugger displayed similar zeal in other localities of the Thurgau. His example was followed in their territories by the abbots of St. Gall and Rheinau. Zurich showed great resentment at these proceedings and strove to induce its co-religionists to enter into a closer alliance against the Catholics, so much so that the latter were forced to arm in self-defence. The risk of open hostilities between Protestants and Catholics in Switzerland, which threatened again and again, largely owing to Spanish and anti-Spanish alliances, became imminent, not in the Confederacy itself, but in the mountain district adjoining its south-eastern frontier, the republic of Rhatia.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century only the Romance population of the inhabitants of the Grisons were still true to the ancient faith, whereas the major part of the population of the Gotteshausbund, especially those of the Engadine and the Zehn-Gerichtenbund, had embraced Protestantism. In the so-called Untertanenlanden, viz. the Valtellina and the counties of Bormio and Chiavenna, by far the greatest part of the population had remained Catholic, but the innovators were making great efforts to spread their errors. In the episcopal city of Chur no Catholics were left except such as lived at the episcopal Curia.

The religious contrasts in the Grisons were further sharpened by the agitation of local political parties and the interference of neighbouring Powers, which aimed at the domination of the valleys and passes which, in the North, led to the Tirol, and, in the South, to Italy. Spain and Austria on the one hand, France and Venice on the other, competed for predominance in the mountains of Rhaetia. The former Powers were supported by the Catholics, the latter by the Protestants. Conditions such as these greatly hindered the action of John V Flugi, bishop of Chur since 1601, a man sincerely attached to the Church, and who, to the joy of Clement VIII and Paul V, was determined to undertake the ecclesiastical reform of his diocese. His ordinances for the clergy of his diocese published on June 7th, 1605, were an earnest of the energy with which he was resolved to proceed.

However, the bishop of Chur soon found that it was utterly impossible to carry out his plans for a reform which included the foundation of an ecclesiastical seminary and the celebration of a diocesan synod, because the preachers succeeded in rendering him so odious, as an alleged partisan of Spain, that in 1607 he was forced to flee to Feldkirch. Paul V and his nuncios did all they could for him, but his enemies persisted, for their aim was to bring about a final expulsion of the energetic bishop. Better days only dawned for him when the nuncio Aquino took up his cause. Aquino succeeded in inducing the French envoy to change his mind and to become reconciled to Flugi whom, until then, he had persecuted as a partisan of Spain. In 1610 Flugi was able to return to his episcopal residence, but the persecution by the preachers abated only for a short time. At their instigation the city council of Chur forbade all citizens to take part in Catholic worship in the cathedral. At Christmas, 1611, detectives were appointed for the purpose of discovering whether among the worshippers at the cathedral there were not some burghers of Chur in female attire!

Whilst no Catholic burgher was tolerated in the bishop’s own city, the Protestants, by the use of force, founded communities of their own wherever a few reformed inhabitants were found among a Catholic population. When Flugi sought to defend the Catholics, his enemies decided on his arrest; he prevented capture by flight, May 27th, 1612. Once again the episcopal residence at Chur was seized and plundered. A decree of the Three Leagues forbade, under pain of death, attendance at the Jesuit schools. Only in the autumn of 1614 was the bishop enabled to return to Chur; but he saw himself so hampered in his work that he resolved either to resign his office or to take a coadjutor. However, nothing came of these plans, though Rome had approved them. Flugi, whose position in Chur was exceedingly precarious, now as before, was resolved to work for a renewal of the religious life at least in the other parts of his diocese. In this spirit he visited the Sargans, the Wahlgau and Feldkirch. In the latter place, as well as at Meran, he helped the Capuchin foundations. Gladly would he have called the Jesuits into his diocese, but the Protestant pressure made this impossible. Religious conditions in the Grisons grew steadily worse. Only the handful of priests from the Swiss College at Milan could be truthfully called shepherds of souls; the others led a definitely scandalous life. In 1620 archduke Leopold reported to the papal nuncio that the first official act of those parish priests who were chosen by the people, without the concurrence of the bishop, was to take wives unto themselves.4 In such conditions the Catholic laity were bound to lose the faith in ever increasing numbers. The Protestant propaganda, fed by Geneva, made capital of so deplorable a state of things. Already in 1617, Bishop Flugi had written to his brother Andrea that in the territory of the Three Leagues the last state was apparently getting worse than the first. In the following year, at the same time as the revolution in Bohemia led to the outbreak of the great war within the empire, catastrophe befell the land of Rhaetia.

In 1617 the Spanish party, under the leadership of the energetic Rudolph Planta, had succeeded in preventing the renewal of the alliance with Venice and in compelling the Venetian envoy, Padavino, to leave the country. Informal tribunals inflicted severe penalties on the leaders of the Venetian-Protestant party. At the beginning of 1618, the latter succeeded in bringing about a popular rising against the Hispanophils. The agitation was headed by the preachers who were indefatigable in exciting the populace, both by the spoken and the written word. “The papal lords must be destroyed by fire and sword”, Vulpius declared. Instigated by him and by another preacher, the passionate George Tenatsch, of Samaden, the inhabitants of the Lower Engadine rose in the summer of 1618 and plundered Rudolph Planta’s castle at Zernetz. Wild bands threw themselves upon the  traitors  in the Valtellina, in Chiavenna and Bergell. At Bergell they seized the aged landamman, Zambra, and at Sondrio the learned archpriest, Nicholas Rusca, and dragged them both to Thusis. In the words of a contemporary Italian, the criminal court which sat there from August, 1618, until January, 1619, “condemned, proscribed, robbed, banished without legal form or proof, and solely according to the caprice or suggestion of the preachers”. Zambra was executed and Rusca, on a simple suspicion, was tortured to death. On Bishop Flugi a sentence of deposition and death was pronounced. At the end of October, 1619, at Davos, another tribunal which is sufficiently characterized when we say that it entered into epistolary correspondence with Frederic V, the rebel king of Bohemia, inflicted yet more fines and decreed the expulsion from the Valtellina of the Capuchins and all foreign priests.

THE MASSACRE OF THE VALTELLINA.

This government by terror, and even more so the murder of Rusca, who was held in veneration as one of the pillars of the ancient faith, raised the indignation of the Catholics of the Valtellina to the highest pitch. They were in a majority, and had long been chafing under the oppression, the arbitrariness and the religious tyranny of the federal government. In these circumstances it was not difficult for Feria, the governor of Milan, through the intermediary of a knight of the name of Jacob Robustelli, a kinsman of Planta, and other exiles, to induce the people of the Valtellina, who were by language and race always in sympathy with Milan and who now feared the worst for their religious future to massacre nearly all the Protestants in Tirano, Teglio, and Sondrio (July 19th-23rd, 1620).

In this dreadful Massacre of the Valtellina the Spaniards disguised their purely political aims under the cloak of religion. The fact that the shortest as well as the most commodious road from Milan to the Tirol led through the Valtellina made it supremely important for Spain to make sure of the magnificent valley of the Adda. As long as the duke of Lerma wielded paramount influence in Madrid, warlike projects of this kind stood but little chance of realization. But when the favourite was compelled to withdraw from court, in the autumn of 1618, the military party in Madrid gained the upper hand. It could point out that the impending termination of the truce with the Netherlands made it imperative to get hold of the Adda valley at any price, so as to establish a military link between the Spanish possessions in Italy with the German-Habsburg lands, and thereby secure an uninterrupted line of operations. If the plan succeeded, the republic of St. Mark, that determined and irreconcilable enemy of the Habsburgs, would be cut off from all communication with the Protestants in Switzerland and Germany. Spanish diplomacy cherished the hope of winning over Paul V. to its plans in view of the constant tension in the relations between the Pope and the republic. It was thought that the Holy See could not but ardently desire to see the suppression of heresy at the very gates of Italy. But Paul V saw through the Spanish schemes.

However much Philip III’s ambassador in Rome protested that the purpose of the warlike project against the Grisons was the deliverance of the Catholics of the Valtellina and the preservation of Upper Italy from the contamination of heresy, the Pope detected the political motives; from the first he took up a negative attitude towards Spain's demands for his co-operation in the undertaking. After the massacre, he avoided any expression that could have been construed into an approval of the most recent events in the Valtellina. When the Catholic Cantons of Switzerland begged the Pope for money to help them to bar with armed troops the passes by which the Protestants were hastening to the assistance of the Grisons, they obtained nothing, even though the nuncio Sarego supported their request. In like manner, when the French diplomats joined their efforts to those of the Venetians, in the hope of inducing the Holy See to assist the Valtellina and to take steps hostile to Spain, their efforts proved futile. Paul V declared to the Venetian ambassador that, however much he regretted Spain’s intervention, he could nevertheless take no action since in that case it would seem as if the Holy See wished to take the Protestant Leagues under its protection ; that he took no part in the transaction either by sympathy or counsel, and still less by any monetary contribution. To the French nuncio Bentivoglio, the Secretary of State wrote as early as August 8th, 1620, that on numerous grounds the Pope was firmly resolved not to meddle with the Valtellina question. Paul V’s circumspection in this matter is shown by the fact that when, in September, 1620, a Capuchin came to Rome, in the name of the people of the Valtellina, to beg for a few thousand scudi for the purpose of procuring chalices and vestments, all he got was indulgences and spiritual favours, but never a scudo in cash.

Paul also frowned on a project which had been mooted at an early date, namely that of handing over the strong places of the Grisons to the Pope as to a disinterested party, and to man them with pontifical troops, for the leading principle of his policy was rigid abstention from any interference that might sow the seeds of conflict. His prudence was justified inasmuch as owing to the invasion by Spanish-Austrian troops, the affair of the Valtellina quickly assumed a most alarming character. Should France and Venice unite for war on Spain, there was reason to fear the repercussion of such an occurrence in Germany, for in that event the emperor was bound to lose the support of Spain. Paul V was ready to mediate both in Paris and in Venice, with a view to preventing the outbreak of hostilities. He was, however, doubtful whether he would succeed in restraining the French government from a hostile move against Spain. He did not live to see the further development of the affair.

to win over the Protestants, by means of concessions, to the common cause and by reconstructing the Catholic League, to subject it to his imperial master. How far Klesl was prepared to yield is shown by his conduct in the most important of all the questions then pending between Catholics and Protestants—the question, namely, of the imperial dioceses which the latter had illegally seized. To the demand of the Protestant administrator of the archbishopric of Magdeburg for investiture, or a corresponding indult, as well as the grant of a seat and a vote at the Diet, Klesl was so far willing to accede as to consider the grant of an indult for a few years, subject to certain conditions. This meant nothing else but the temporary legalizing of the robbery of Church property and a breach in the ecclesiastical Reservation which was so closely linked to the religious peace of Augsburg.

The earliest as well as the most decided opponent of these plans of Klesl’s was duke Maximilian of Bavaria who took the field against him on the occasion of the Diet convened at Ratisbon for the summer of 1613. He rejected every concession to the Protestant administrators of dioceses, whether it consisted in an indult of investiture or in the grant of a seat and vote at the Diet which was so frequently demanded; for these men could not be considered as having any legal right. If the Protestant administrators of dioceses were given seat and vote at the Diet, Maximilian insisted, the Protestants would have in the council of princes the majority they already possessed in the councils of the cities, and would not fail to use it for the complete oppression of the Catholics. Maximilian was equally opposed to any change in the constitution of the Catholic Defence League which was his very own creation and of the leadership of which he would allow no one to deprive him. It was to be expected that the duke of Bavaria would seek to make his influence felt in Rome on these questions as against the designs of Klesl.

Already then, as later on, it was said that Paul V, together with the Jesuits and the Catholic Estates of empire, were determined to abrogate the religious peace of Augsburg and to open a war of extermination against the adherents of the new faith. There never was question of this. However strongly the Holy See, the Jesuits and the rest of the Catholic polemists protested in point of fact, against the numerous violations of the rights of the Church which were implied in the religious settlement of Augsburg, they never questioned the validity of the agreement as a political and civil treaty of peace. It is true that the Holy See had not positively sanctioned the agreement of 1555, but tolerated it in practice as the less of two evils. For the same reason Paul V even went a step further when he counselled its maintenance. Repeatedly, especially in the years 1610 and 1611, he expressed himself in the sense that “in these times, which were already sufficiently troubled and difficult, the religious and the civil peace should not be jeopardized, nor should any cause or occasion be given for open war and rebellion within the holy empire”. For the year 1612 we have several proofs that Paul V directed the electors to preserve the religious peace. Nothing was further from the circumspect and cautious Pontiff than a desire to provoke warlike complications, for he was well aware that the Catholics were the weaker party in the empire, so that it would have been most imprudent to tamper with the religious peace of Augsburg. The Pope shrank from the responsibility of giving the signal for the outbreak of a war of the issue of which he was afraid. This, and consideration for the House of Habsburg, were the decisive factors in the attitude of reserve which the Pope adopted towards the League. However much he approved of a Catholic Defence League as such, he gave it his support hesitatingly and cautiously, and in 1611 he roundly declared he would not contribute a penny if the Catholics were to undertake anything against the Protestants which would be at variance with the religious peace. However, this peace should have been observed not alone by the Catholics but likewise by the Protestants. For this reason the Pope condemned those concessions which broke the ecclesiastical Reservation; hence also he utterly condemned Klesl’s policy of compromise. Cardinal Carlo Madruzzo, who was appointed apostolic legate for the Diet of Ratisbon, was directed in his instruction of March, 1613, to exert himself to the utmost so as to prevent the grave damage to the Catholic cause which was bound to arise from such a policy. In this Instruction Klesl’s policy is subjected to the severest criticism. The emperor’s counsellors, it says, think of political conditions and the advantage of the moment rather than of the glory of God, the preservation of the Catholic religion and the true welfare of the State. From worldly motives and through thinking only of the present moment, they devise various political schemes which they then seek to force upon other Catholics. They flatter themselves that by so doing they deprive the Catholics of nothing, whilst they satisfy their opponents, and thus assure the longed-for peace. Anyone who sees deeper, the Instruction goes on, knows from experience that no one has done more grievous harm to all Catholics and to the Catholic religion than those politicians who want to stand well with all parties. Hence, at the coming Diet, the legate’s duty will be to oppose by every means the plans of Klesl which consider only the passing moment, and which, though seemingly acceptable, are in reality most injurious. The legate should get the Catholics to oppose a united resistance. On the Catholic side no one bestirred himself more than Maximilian of Bavaria. He besought the emperor, the nuncio Marra and the legate Madruzzo, not to yield in the matter of the grant of an indult to the administrator of Magdeburg. Were they to yield on this point they would never be able to answer for it to the Pope whose still existing rights in Germany would be most grievously injured, nor to the Catholics who would be threatened with the direst disaster. When the nuncio ascertained that some Catholic Estates took up a completely negative attitude on the matter, he set down all the arguments against it in a memorial addressed to the emperor. At one time Klesl hoped to win over to his view the Elector of Mayence, and even the legate himself, to whom he tried to represent the whole thing as a purely political question and one in which no danger lurked for religion. But Madruzzo was not to be taken in. He replied to Klesl, on July 24th, that the grant of an indult of investiture to the Protestant administrator of Magdeburg was contrary to Canon Law, to the laws of empire, and in particular, to the religious peace, and that it would encourage Protestants to seize yet more bishoprics and monasteries and other Church property. He could not sanction concessions of this kind, all the more as on this point the Pope had marked down a clear line of conduct for him. When the indult, against the grant of which Madruzzo worked with all his might, was eventually refused, Klesl made futile efforts to soothe the Catholics who were still irritated against him. From Bavaria he had to listen to bitter reproaches; but what was of far greater importance was that the annoyance of the Catholics brought about a revulsion of feeling against the whole imperial policy of moderation. That policy failed utterly at the Diet of Ratisbon, for, notwithstanding all the advances on the  imperial side, an agreement could not even be reached with the Calvinist party of the Palatinate. With the declaration, which was a mockery of every principle of constitutional law and right, that they refused to bow to majority decisions, not only in matters of religion, but in all other questions also, the Calvinist party formally refused obedience to the constitutions of the empire. The party finally protested against a decision of the Diet of empire granting a subsidy of thirty months for the war against the Turks which had been passed by the Estates which still remained loyal to the emperor and which, besides the Catholics, included Saxony and Darmstadt from the Lutheran party. The Palatine Calvinist party could dare to behave thus because, through the Union’s alliances with England (April 7th, 1612) and Holland (May 6th, 1613) they had strong foreign support. How blinded Klesl must have been when he hoped to bring about a compromise with such a people!

Paul had left Klesl in no uncertainty as to how much he condemned his policy of compromise. Cardinal Madruzzo was commissioned to inform him that the Pope did not merely disapprove any concession in the matter of the Protestant administrator of Magdeburg, but that he forbade it in virtue of his supreme authority: Klesl’s arguments were futile nor could questions of religion be handled according to the principles of raison d’état. When Klesl attempted  to plead the concessions of former emperors, he was told through Cardinal Borghese, that these clearly proved the exact opposite inasmuch as every concession hitherto granted had done extraordinary harm to religion; if worse were not to follow all further concessions must be avoided as much as possible. Out of regard for the person of the influential minister, Paul V allowed him almost at the same date to retain all the benefices he had held until then, viz. the dioceses of Vienna and Wiener-Neustadt, the post of provost of the Chapter of St. Stephen at Vienna, and the parish of Oberhollabrunn.

Whilst the agreement with the Protestants, at which Klesl had aimed, was thus utterly wrecked, his plan for a reconstruction of the League which was directed against the growing influence of Bavaria and which had the support of Schweikart, the Elector of Mayence, made a great step forward at a League meeting of the time, for on that occasion it definitely came under the influence of the emperor.

Paul V, in his anxiety to avoid offending either the emperor or the League, had always viewed with displeasure Austria’s exclusion from the Catholic federation, and as early as 1609, at the request of the Spanish ambassador, he had taken steps for the admission of the Habsburgs into the League. His efforts to settle the disputes between Maximilian and the Elector of Mayence, Schweikart, had, however, been in vain. How greatly the Pope regretted this discord was seen at the beginning of 1613, in the discussions with the archbishop of Bamberg, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, who had come to Rome to do homage in the emperor’s name. Notwithstanding the intrigues of the Austrian party, the envoy obtained a promise from Paul V that he would continue, and that for a period of three years, the subsidy which he had previously guaranteed. However, the suspicion spread by the same party, to the effect that Maximilian had other views than the safeguarding of religion and the interests of the emperor, continued to make a strong impression upon the Pope and the Roman Cardinals.

In October, 1613, before he had learnt of the reconstruction of the League at its latest assembly, Paul V had informed the Count of Collalto, whom the emperor had dispatched to Rome, that he was prepared to co-operate in any effort which would induce the Catholic League to obey the emperor and which would guarantee that the subsidy he had promised to it would be spent on the war against the Turks. On the part of Rome, therefore, Klesl had nothing to fear as regards the League, except that it did not approve the eligibility of Protestants for membership which had been agreed to at its last meeting. Eventually he succeeded in completely conciliating the Pope. In pursuance of his policy of conciliation, and notwithstanding his failure at the Diet of Ratisbon, he now began to make propaganda for it in Rome. His letter of September 1st, 1614, to Cardinal Borghese shows how cleverly he proceeded: “If I were in Rome”, he wrote, “and could describe the situation in Germany, His Holiness and the Sacred College would be far better informed. The nuncios are often mistaken for they have no access to State secrets”. For the rest he was ready to do the will of His Holiness in all things, as he had repeatedly declared.

These assurances, however, were belied by Klesl’s attitude with regard to the appointment of a successor to Matthias, a question which was coming more and more into the foreground, since the emperor had no children. The uncertainty of the succession gravely jeopardized not only the interests of the House of Habsburg and those of the empire, but the welfare also of the Catholic Church, for the Union was planning, not only the exclusion of the Habsburgs, but the utter extirpation of the Catholics of Germany, even if the whole constitution of the empire were to crumble in the process. Consequently, ever since the day of the emperor’s election, Paul V, the Austrian archdukes and, subsequently to the Diet of Ratisbon the ecclesiastical Electors also, had insisted on some decisive measure with regard to the succession. All the above-named had in view, as their candidate for the Habsburg Hereditary States as well as for the empire, the archduke Ferdinand who was head of the line of Stiria and in the flower of his age. The papal nuncio favoured this candidature, which was not only strongly opposed by most of the Protestants, but, to the painful surprise of many, by Spain also, for the reason that Philip III imagined that he had some hereditary claims to Bohemia and Hungary. A further delay was caused by Klesl’s insistence on the necessity of first concluding an agreement —a “Composition’’, that is—between the religious parties which opposed each other with such bitter hostility, an issue which he hoped to arrive at through his diplomatic skill and his little tricks. However, he lacked the necessary resolution which might have caused his policy of conciliation to triumph; nor did he wholly belong to any one party. Hence, in view of his hesitation and indecision, it was inevitable that sooner or later he should lose control of events.

Archduke Maximilian, in his great anxiety for the future of the House of Habsburg, insisted with the utmost determination on a prompt settlement of the succession. The slackness with which Klesl proceeded in this all-important affair roused him to fierce indignation, so much so that he accused him of being actuated by the lowest motives. More and more the idea took root in the fiery archduke’s mind that Klesl was a traitor and an enemy of the dynasty. There can be no doubt that Maximilian went too far in his interpretation of the very tortuous paths and the somewhat obscure policy of Klesl. Not a few of Klesl’s arguments for a delay of a settlement of the succession were not without solid grounds. Thus it was sound reasoning when he insisted on the necessity of first arriving at an understanding with Spain, and of preparing the ground in Germany and Bohemia.

It would be difficult to prove that Klesl’s slackness in so important a matter, which his habitual energy makes all the more astounding, had its roots in a traitorous disposition of mind. Nor does it seem just to imagine that he allowed himself to be prompted by the fear that an early settlement of the succession would rob him of the unlimited influence which up till then he had exercised over the emperor Matthias. It would rather seem that, from patriotic motives, Klesl wanted an agreement between the various parties to take precedence over all else, an attitude that does credit rather to his heart than to his political sense.

Already in 1614 Rome had failed to find in Klesl’s attitude to the question of the succession the necessary clarity, and had warned him not to yield in the matter of granting a vote to the Protestant administrator of the diocese of Magdeburg, for no evil may be done for the sake of a good result.

In July, 1614, and in June, 1615, Paul V had urged the ecclesiastical Electors to hasten the election of a king of the Romans. In August, 1615, through the nuncio, he exhorted Klesl, now that peace had been made with the Turks and affairs had been settled in Bohemia, to add to his fame by settling the question of the succession. A Brief to the same purport was despatched to the ecclesiastical Electors on October 27th, 1615.

Whilst the number of the opponents of Klesl, whose blunt and rough manner hurt many and whose tongue spared no one, grew even at the imperial court, the weak and indolent Matthias remained unshaken in his confidence in him. To this circumstance Klesl owed it that, though the gravest accusations and the worst suspicions had been voiced against him in his capacity as leader of the imperial policy, especially by archduke Maximilian, Paul V, in a consistory of April 11th, 1616, proclaimed his elevation to the cardinalate which, at the emperor’s intervention, had already taken place in secret on December 2nd, 1615. The chamberlain Ludovico Ridolfi was charged with the presentation of the red biretta; he also brought the Golden Rose to the empress. In the same consistory Klesl was given the office of Protector of Germany.

Thus did the son of the Viennese baker attain the highest degree of ecclesiastical honours. He had now reached the peak of his fortune and occupied a position similar to that once held by Wolsey in England and, later on, by Richelieu in France. As in the case of those two men so in him also, the Statesman overshadowed the Churchman. The letter he wrote to the emperor as soon as his elevation was made public, is characteristic evidence of this change: “Early this morning,” he wrote on April 20th, 1616, “the Rome courier brought me letters of congratulation from Cardinal Borghese and many other Cardinals in as much as their Lord had proclaimed me a Cardinal on the 11th April. God knows that this gives me no pleasure. But in order to conform with your Majesty’s will, and because the evil tongues of wicked people drive me to it, it has to be; for it is impossible for a Roman emperor to show greater favour to a Churchman. But your Majesty’s favour, affection, and true confidence are worth more to me than the papacy itself.”

Paul V had charged Ridolfi to urge Klesl by word of mouth in the matter of the succession. This anxiety for a speedy settlement of the question also found expression in a Brief dated May 6th, 1616, of which Ridolfi was the bearer. On the same day similar Briefs were likewise dispatched to the ecclesiastical Electors.

On June 19th, 1616, Klesl wrote to the Pope in answer to the Brief of May 6th, and the message of Ridolfi. “Though the whole College of Cardinals,” he writes, “especially those named by Paul V, were greatly beholden to the Pope, none were more so than he himself, whom His Holiness had singled out from among all men for so great an honour, and on whom his fatherly affection had bestowed so many graces and favours. There was not a man living who was more anxious to live and die according to the wishes and desires of the Pope than himself, seeing that he had more grounds for it than any other man.” Klesl then goes on to state, in emphatic terms, his wish to satisfy the Pope in the question of the succession. There follows an exhaustive account of the various stages of the affair. He ends by saying that as much as in him lay, and as far as the parties would follow his lead, he would work day and night in order to satisfy the Pope. But as long as Spain refused to desist from its demands, little could be hoped for, inasmuch as the emperor would never go against Philip III, since such action would upset the whole House of Habsburg. “There is, therefore, no other remedy,” he says in conclusion, “but your Holiness’ personal authority and intervention. But there is no time to lose, for the emperor is old and often ailing. Your Holiness will gather from this report where the difficulty lies, and what it is that ties my hands; hence I am not to blame. But if I get the necessary support I shall not fail, with God’s grace, to do my best in order to fulfil your Holiness’ will.”

This letter crossed a Brief of June 25th, which once more urged the speeding up of the business. At the same time the Pope wrote to Maximilian. On December 16th, 1616, Paul V. sent yet another exhortation to the emperor and to Klesl. Despite the Pope’s insistence, Klesl nevertheless set to work in this question of the succession with almost pedantic caution and easy-going deliberation. Again and again he insisted that his efforts for the election of a king of the Romans would yield no result without the compromise— the so-called “Composition”—with the Protestants. The irritation, not to say the despair, of the impetuous Maximilian was steadily growing. In the autumn he dispatched to Klesl Eustace von Westernach, Knight-Commander of the Teutonic Order, with instructions roundly to tell the Cardinal that he must set to work and execute what he promised by word of mouth and in writing, even on his eternal salvation; if he refused, the archduke would be compelled to look on him as the worst enemy, nay, as the destroyer of the House of Habsburg, and to take every possible means to defend it against such a danger.

Until then Klesl had shown himself a master in the art of evading a solution of the question of the succession. It was a heavy blow for him when, in the spring of 1617, an agreement with Spain became a certainty. By this means the archdukes Maximilian and Ferdinand thought they would force the cunning fox from his last hiding-place. When Klesl attempted further evasion they threatened to remove him by force. On his part the Spanish ambassador told the Cardinal that he would complain to the Pope. At last Klesl saw himself compelled to yield, at least to the extent of convoking the Bohemian Diet for August, 1617. The two archdukes had made up their minds to seize Klesl by force should he fail to abide by this time limit which was still further reduced when the emperor fell seriously ill at the end of April, 1617. In consequence Klesl was forced to give his consent to the convocation of the Bohemian Estates for June 5th. The emperor’s proposal was to the effect, that in view of his approaching old age as well as the renunciation of his brothers Maximilian and Albert, the succession in Bohemia should be settled in such wise that his adopted son, the archduke Ferdinand, should be “accepted” (not elected), proclaimed and crowned. When the Protestant opposition had been sufficiently intimidated, Ferdinand was almost unanimously accepted as king of Bohemia on June 6th. Paul V hailed the event with the greatest joy. Ferdinand, having promised to ratify, after the emperor’s death, the rights and privileges of Bohemia, among which was the “Letter of Majesty”, was crowned on June 19th. Shortly before these events Paul V had once more pressed Klesl in the matter of the succession in the empire. The affair was carried a step further when, at the beginning of August, the emperor journeyed to Dresden, to visit the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg, in company with Ferdinand, his brother Maximilian and Klesl. On this occasion the Elector promised to attend, anywhere and at any time, a Diet of the Electors to be convoked by Matthias, and to take part in the election of a king of the Romans. Candlemas-day, 1618, was agreed upon as the date of the Diet. Klesl had succeeded in getting the “Composition”, or compromise with the Protestants, placed on the agenda of the Diet, for the Cardinal clung to his idea of the necessity of concessions to the latter.

That Klesl was chiefly guided by political consideration and gave but little evidence of having any solid principles where religious questions were concerned, is shown by his efforts to bring about a marriage between the archduke Ferdinand and the Protestant widow of the former Elector of Saxony. The Cardinal, who in this matter also acted merely as a politician, hoped to win the support of the Protestants as soon as it became known that the princess was free to follow her religion at court and to have her preacher with her. However, a man like Ferdinand was not to be won over by a scheme which did not square with the laws of the Church and which would endanger his life’s work—the Catholic restoration in Stiria.

The election of Ferdinand as king of Bohemia was a heavy blow for the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, who, in his suit for the hand of the daughter of the king of England, had spoken of the crown of Wenceslaus as his own future possession. The Union now decided that at any rate Ferdinand, whom the Protestants detested because of his strict Catholic attitude in Central Austria, should not ascend the imperial throne; in their desperation they even went the length of inviting their bitterest opponent, viz. Maximilian of Bavaria, to accept that dignity. However, at Munich this was seen to be “A Calvinist trap” the aim of which was to stir up enmity between Bavaria and Austria and the Catholic Powers, and, by delaying the election of Ferdinand, which could scarcely be prevented, to secure a long imperial vicariate for the Palatine. In the spring of 1618, Ferdinand’s chances were favourable. The meeting of the electoral Diet seemed assured and his election, for which five votes had been made sure of, could not be prevented even by the Palatine and Brandenburg, when all of a sudden new difficulties arose. Curiously enough they originated at the court. Their author was Klesl, the man of “impenetrable craft”, of which the Vienna nuncio had spoken already in 1610.

Once again Klesl showed himself a master in the art of temporizing and of postponing a decision. In view of a declaration of the Elector of Brandenburg, the Diet of princes convoked at Ratisbon for Candlemas-day was postponed till May 28th. Then it was given out that the travelling expenses of the emperor to Ratisbon must first be provided by means of a Spanish subsidy. For a while discussions on this point sank into the background in consequence of the meeting of the Hungarian Diet, at which, as a sequel to a compromise between the government and the Estates, Peter Pazmany, since May 16th, 1616, archbishop of Gran and primate, secured, on May 16th, 1618, the proclamation of Ferdinand as king of Hungary. Meanwhile, Klesl, despite Paul V’s earnest warnings, went on intriguing against the princes’ Diet, and in so doing, he did not shrink from deceit. That the Cardinal, as was maintained by archduke Maximilian and by many people in Bavaria, was actually a traitor and in collusion with the Hungarian opposition, is neither likely, nor has any proof been discovered up to the present time. But it is a fact that, by his intrigues, he succeeded in delaying the opening of the electoral Diet for which the archduke Maximilian was pressing with the utmost zeal, long enough to make its assembly impossible owing to the outbreak of revolution in Bohemia. Ferdinand and Maximilian were now obliged to concentrate their attention on the preservation of the crown of Bohemia rather than on obtaining that of Germany.

In view of the fact that even in regard to the Bohemian rebels Klesl stood for a policy of temporizing, and thus rendered joint energetic action impossible, Ferdinand and Maximilian decided to put a stop to the “impenetrable intrigues” of the Cardinal-minister by having him arrested and taken into the Tyrol, on July 20th, 1618. In Rome such an issue had been feared for some time. In April the Pope had adjured Klesl not to put off any longer the opening of the Diet of the Electors inasmuch as the delay might lead to the worst consequences for his own person.

In a secret consistory of August 6th, 1618, Paul V. communicated to the Cardinals the report of the Vienna nuncio on the arrest of Klesl, at the same time expressing his regret that violent hands should have been laid on a Cardinal and a bishop in his own residence. A commission of Cardinals was appointed to devise on the measures to be taken in this matter. Obviously the injury done to the dignity of a Cardinal could not be condoned, but neither could king Ferdinand be offended, for on him all Catholic hopes were centred. In consequence Paul V proceeded with great caution and mildness. He acknowledged the report of the emperor Matthias in a Brief of August 13th in which he refers the emperor to an oral message of the nuncio. A no less carefully worded Brief addressed to Ferdinand and Maximilian was to the same effect. The nuncio demanded that the archdukes should seek absolution of the censures they had incurred by arresting Klesl and to state their grievances against him. When this demand elicited no reply, Fabrizio Verospi was dispatched to Vienna as nuncio extraordinary, in February, 1619. He was also charged to hear what Klesl had to say. Thereupon Ferdinand yielded. He not only sought absolution from the censures, he also handed over Klesl to the papal envoy. Under the most stringent safeguards, Verospi escorted the Cardinal to the monastery of St. Georgenberg near Schwaz, in the Tyrol, where he was kept in close confinement. Klesl, nevertheless, felt greatly relieved. In a letter of October 7th, 1619, he thanked the Pope for sending Verospi and surrendered himself wholly to the will of His Holiness.

(3.)

Whilst in consequence of the quarrel between the Habsburg brothers the Catholic cause suffered heavy losses in Austria and several dioceses in North Germany were likewise lost to the Church, in other parts of the empire the Catholic restoration was able to register considerable successes which promised to compensate the Church for the loss of several extensive territories. One splendid triumph for the ancient Church was the profession of the Catholic faith, first privately in July, 1613, and publicly in the following year, of the Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm von Neuburg. Paul V had encouraged the intentions of the Neuburger with the grant of ecclesiastical revenues. After his reception, he expressed his thanks and obligation to Maximilian I for his share in the conversion, at the same time as he granted the necessary dispensation, owing to kinship, for the marriage of the convert with Magdalen, the sister of the duke of Bavaria. As early as January, 1614, the Pope instructed the nuncio of Cologne to confer with Wolfgang Wilhelm on the subject of the Catholic restoration in his territory. The latter, at the death of his father, availed himself of his right of reform, slowly at first, but later on with increasing determination. In 1617, the Catholic faith was proclaimed as the religion of the country and the activities of all preachers were terminated. Already at the close of 1613 the first Jesuits had been called to Neuburg, and before long the grammar school and the court church were handed over to them.5Owing to the shortage of priests, the Jesuits, to whom Paul V assigned, in 1617, the monastery of Eschenbrunn which the Protestants had seized, and the Capuchins, had to do most of the work of the restoration of the Catholic religion in all the remaining districts of the territory of Pfalz-Neuburg. To this end they employed the means then universally in use: a general invitation to come back to the Church, adequate instruction, and, as a last remedy in regard to the obstinate, expulsion from the country. The conversion of the Count Palatine, Wolfgang Wilhelm, was all the more important for the repression of Protestantism in the empire, inasmuch as he drove a wedge into the Union and prevented the duchies of the Lower Rhine from passing completely into the hands of the Protestants. The Protestant attempt to destroy the ancient Church in the territory of the Lower Rhine had failed.

It was of no less consequence for North-Western Germany that, at the death of the Elector of Cologne, Ernest (February 17th, 1612) he was succeeded by his nephew, the strictly Catholic-minded Ferdinand of Bavaria, at Cologne in March, and at Munster in April. It was due to the prudence and energy of this man that the restoration of religious unity, which his predecessor had begun, was completed in the diocese of Munster. Where Protestantism had struck deeper roots obstinate resistance was, of course, not wanting, but in many localities, where the majority of the people were sunk in ignorance rather than in heresy, it was not difficult to bring whole parishes back to the Church. Owing to the scarcity of good priests, men, that is, of irreproachable conduct, it proved much more difficult to bring about the internal restoration of the Church which was being pursued at the same time. In addition to his vicar-general, Johann Hartmann, a man full of circumspection and a former pupil at the Germanicum, Ferdinand had chiefly recourse to the services of the Jesuits whose school at Munster was gaining an increasing influence in the more cultivated circles. Like the Jesuits, the Capuchins, who had come to Munster in 1612, also enjoyed the bishop’s support. In the following year Ferdinand also founded at Munster a convent of the Franciscans of the strict observance.

In Paderborn also it was of supreme consequence that, with the help of Paul V, it had become possible, in 1612, to give to the aged Dietrich von Fürstenberg, in the person of Ferdinand, a coadjutor who had both the power and the will successfully to carry through the Catholic restoration without heeding the protests of his Protestant neighbours. Fürstenberg, who had hoped that his nephew would be chosen, had needed repeated warnings from the Pope  before he became reconciled with Ferdinand’s appointment. But once the election had become an accomplished fact he passed, in conjunction with his coadjutor, all the necessary measures for carrying out the Catholic reform and restoration. In this respect great services were rendered by the Capuchins who had come to Paderborn in 1612, and even more so by the Jesuits who were indefatigable in their efforts to revive the Catholic spirit by means of sermons, devotions, processions and confraternities. The school of philosophy and theology founded by Dietrich at Paderborn in 1614, and enriched with the usual privileges by Paul V, was opened two years later and entrusted to the Jesuits. It was destined to become an intellectual centre and a seed plot of the Catholic faith for the diocese, as well as a strong point from which apostles could sally forth to reconquer the surrounding territories.

In the archdiocese of Cologne also the Jesuits and the Capuchins were the chief agents of the Catholic reform. A proof of the Elector Ferdinand’s support of the Jesuits at Cologne may be seen in the magnificent church of the Assumption, an edifice still completely on Gothic lines, of which the nuncio Albergati laid the foundation stone in 1618. The city council of Cologne gave powerful support to the Catholic cause generally and to the Jesuits in particular, for its members realized that their work had not only a religious value, but a social and civic one as well. In 1613 a few Jesuits of Cologne went to Essen. At Neuss, in 1615, Ferdinand assigned to them the Franciscan convent, but in this matter he proceeded with so much violence that Paul V had to rebuke him. In like manner the seminary of Cologne, erected in 1615, for the establishment of which the Pope had already urgently pressed in 1611, was confided by the Elector to the sons of St. Ignatius. At the suggestion of Paul V, the Capuchins came to Cologne in 1611; in 1615 they made a foundation at Essen, and in 1618 another at Bonn.

The Catholic reform was in some measure hindered in consequence of the conflicts which Ferdinand had had with the nuncio Coriolano Garzadoro being repeated under his successor, Attilio Amalteo. Antonio Albergati, who succeeded Amalteo in 1610, also had many difficulties with the archiepiscopal curia. Nevertheless during his eleven years’ tenure of the nunciature, he was able to display so fruitful an activity that the rapid and vigorous rise of Catholic life in the archdiocese of Cologne was in a large part due to him. Albergati’s friend, the indefatigable Franciscan Nicholas Wiggers, likewise accomplished a vast amount of good; he established at Cologne the confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament which was confirmed by Paul V in 1611.

In 1611 the Protestants caused a rising in the wealthy and powerful imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle. They stormed the Jesuit college. The Catholic population found itself in such straits that, in 1612, the Elector Ferdinand appealed to the Pope on their behalf. A complete revulsion occurred in 1614 when Spinola the Spanish general enforced the penalties inflicted by the emperor and restored the Catholic city council. By this means the old imperial city was saved for the Church. In 1615 the Jesuits began the erection there of a new college, and soon after, that of a fair-sized church. The Capuchins had been accommodated in the old monastery of St. Servatius.

In the diocese of Treves Lothar von Metternich pursued with undiminished zeal his work for ecclesiastical regeneration. Outstanding features of his activity were his visitation of parishes, the reform of the Benedictine abbey of St. Maximin, and the Capuchin foundation at Treves. As “founder and a most lavish benefactor of the Capuchin Fathers”, the Elector laid the foundation, in 1617, of their church there. His help enabled them at a later date to found a house also at Cochem, on the Moselle. Paul V did not fail to support Metternich’s efforts for the reform. He styled him the pattern of a bishop.

As regards Church reform, the Elector of Mayence, Johann Schweikart, was completely in line with the Council of Trent. The reform, which ended by triumphing over very great difficulties, found expression in the Church ordinance of 1615 and its supplementary articles of 1617. At this time the property of the Catholic Church in the archdiocese was fairly secure. At the very outset of Paul V’s pontificate Schweikart had successfully carried out the Catholic restoration in the domain of Konigstein. The Pope repeatedly praised his zeal in special Briefs. But it was only by degrees that he overcame the difficulties he had to encounter when he undertook to bring back to the Catholic Church the various localities of the county of Rieneck which were the joint property of the Elector of Mayence and the lord of Hanau. Even more arduous was the Catholic restoration of the Eichsfeld, partly owing to its distance from the archiepiscopal residence; but there also the goal was eventually reached by means of frequent visitations, the appointment of sound Catholic officials, and through the Jesuits, who had a college and a school at Heiligenstadt.2In other parts also of the diocese Schweikart made use of the Jesuits for the internal strengthening of the ancient Church. At Mayence he built a large school for them; in 1612 he established them in his winter residence at Aschaffenburg, and at Erfurt he protected the Fathers from hostile attacks. The Elector enabled the Capuchins to found a convent at Mayence in 1612, and another at Aschaffenburg in 1620.

Paul V resolved to take advantage of a rising at Frankfort on the Main, and the fear of the impending imperial punishment, to recover for the Church a town which had for the most part gone over to Protestantism. With this purpose in mind he requested, in 1615, the Elector of Mayence, who had been appointed imperial commissary for the purpose of quelling the rising, to take steps that the practice of the Catholic religion, which had been unduly circumscribed, should enjoy complete freedom and that the Jesuits should be allowed to open a college in the city. The Pope also wished to make it possible for the Capuchins to make a foundation in the old imperial city. The Jesuits did not succeed in establishing themselves at Frankfort and the Capuchins were only able to do so in 1626. With regard to the convocation of a provincial council by the archbishop of Mayence, the Holy See, in view of the troubled times, requested the Cologne nuncio, in 1609, to send in a report. In 1614 Albergati was instructed to hold visitations at Mayence, Cologne and Bamberg.

The newly-appointed bishop of Spire, Philip Christoph von Sotern, was early pressed by Paul V. to reform his cathedral chapter. Subsequently he supported Sotern’s labours in the cause of the restoration with so much energy that the bishop was able to write that the Pope’s memory would remain for ever in benediction in the diocese. In 1606 the zealous bishop of Worms, Wilhelm von Effern, called a few Jesuits into his diocese. The Cologne nuncio praised their work and protected them against the violent attacks which they had to encounter. Johann Friedrich von Schwalbach, who had been elected abbot of Fulda in 1606, enjoyed the strong support of Paul V in his plans for a reform. In 1608 an extremely laudatory Brief was sent to the aged, highly deserving bishop of Wurzburg, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn. In the following year the Pope commissioned him to watch over the interests of the Church on the occasion of the election of a bishop for the vacant see of Bamberg. Owing to the fact that duke Maximilian also gave his attention to the matter, and with the help of the dean of the chapter, Johann Christoph von Neustetter, a former pupil of the Germanicum, the choice fell, on July 23rd, 1609, on the excellent Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen.

The new bishop of Bamberg undertook at once, with burning zeal, the internal as well as the external renewal of his diocese which had been utterly neglected by his unworthy predecessor, Gebsattel, so that already in 1610 Paul V sent him an expression of his highest satisfaction. In the spring of 1611, Johann Gottfried ordered a general visitation of the diocese which was carried out with great circumspection under the personal supervision of Friedrich Forner, his vicar-general. In the same year the bishop called the Jesuits to Bamberg. On the occasion of his journey to Rome, as imperial envoy for the purpose of doing homage to the Pope (at the close of 1612), he seized the opportunity to give an account of his diocese. As efficacious remedies against prevailing evils he mentioned the following: the celebration of diocesan synods, the revival of rural deaneries and the establishment of confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin. All these ideals Johann Gottfried carried into effect. Himself the pattern of what a priest ought to be, he gave to his court an almost monastic character. He personally visited a large part of his diocese, built several churches, one large hospital and a seminary for poor students. As the Rhenish Jesuit Provincial reported to the Pope in 1615,2 ecclesiastical conditions in the diocese of Bamberg had undergone a complete transformation. When on September 13th, 1617, Julius Echter closed his tired eyes, Johann Gottfried was put at the head of the diocese of Wurzburg also. He presided over both dioceses until 1622, and during that time he reformed the Benedictine monasteries in them.

In 1612 the splendid bishop of Eichstatt, Konrad von Gemmingen, was given a successor of like character. In the teeth of the opposition of the cathedral chapter, he summoned the Jesuits to Eichstatt. They took charge of the seminary and, together with the Capuchins, zealously devoted themselves also to pastoral work outside the city.

The diocese of Ratisbon also underwent a complete renewal at the hands of the excellent bishop Wolfgang von Hausen (1600-1613) who zealously visited his diocese and arranged for missions to be given by Jesuits and Capuchins. He was no less keen on the improvement of public worship than on the reform of the monasteries. His successor, Albert, Freiherr von Torring, continued his work in the same spirit.

Among the promoters of the Catholic restoration mention must be made of archduke Leopold who, though he allowed political questions to distract him from his pastoral duties, nevertheless did much for Church reform during the time he occupied the see of Passau, and later on also at Strassburg. For the purpose of maintaining ecclesiastical discipline, he instituted a diocesan council in both bishoprics. At Passau he encouraged a Capuchin foundation and built a magnificent college for the Jesuits. His activity in the diocese of Strassburg was repeatedly acknowledged by Paul V. Later on, when he neglected his ecclesiastical duties for the pursuit of politics, he was sharply reprimanded in a Papal Brief. Subsequently Leopold applied himself exclusively to the government of his dioceses and from that time onwards Paul V had every reason to be satisfied with his work. In 1614 the archduke ordered a general visitation which led to a sensible improvement in the religious condition of Alsace. In 1614 the Jesuits were given a college at Hagenau and in 1615 a residence at Schlettstatt. Above all Leopold furthered the principal Jesuit establishment at Molsheim. The church adjoining the college, which was consecrated in 1618, is a splendid proof of his liberality; next to the Jesuit church in Cologne it is the largest and most important Gothic edifice of the seventeenth century on German soil. Simultaneously with the consecration of this imposing edifice, the college, with Paul V’s consent, was given the status of an academy.

In the extensive diocese of Constance the devout bishop Johann Georg von Hallweil had energetically striven, in the first years of the seventeenth century, to raise ecclesiastical discipline, but his reign was too brief (1601-1603) to enable him to remove the numerous abuses which had crept in under his predecessor. This was the task which the noble Jakob Fugger set himself. He was elected on January 27th, 1604, and his reforming zeal was repeatedly encouraged by Paul V. He clearly saw that the spread of heresy could only be stopped by means of a thorough reform of the clergy, hence in the autumn of 1609, he held a diocesan synod the statutes of which were put into the hands of the clergy, in book form, in the following year. Here excellent rules were laid down for the pastoral ministry, preaching, catechizing, and clerical life generally. The synod divided the diocese into four districts each of which, in addition to the deans, was to have its own visitor who, as well as the deans themselves, was to be subject to two visitors general residing at Constance. The bishop took a personal share in the work of visitation and he was assisted by his coadjutor, Jakob Mirgel, a former pupil of the Germanicum.

Owing to the fact that most of the monasteries of the old Orders had lost sight of their original purpose—Weingarten alone, under its excellent abbot, Georg Wegelin, forming an exception—the new reformed Orders stepped into the breach in the diocese of Constance also. To the college which the Jesuits already possessed at Constance another was added in 1620, at Freiburg in Breisgau. Bishop Fugger favoured the Jesuits wherever he could, but he had perhaps even closer relations with the Capuchins in whose church at Constance he chose his last resting place. During his reign the number of Capuchin convents in the different parts of the diocese rose to twenty-one. Jesuits and Capuchins distinguished themselves especially during the plague of 1611, when they devoted themselves with the utmost zeal, day and night, to the bodily and spiritual welfare of the sick.

It is strange that so zealous a bishop as Fugger was in all Church matters, should have refused to comply with the duty of personally reporting in Rome. The Swiss nuncio, Ladislao d’Aquino, suspected that this was due to national antipathy towards the Italians. It may have been so; but a no less weighty reason was the heavy expense of such a journey and the dangers which an absence of some length entailed for the diocese in such troublous times. For the rest Fugger repeatedly sent delegates to report in his place, and Rome refrained from blaming his conduct.

The Curia found itself greatly embarrassed when the long­standing quarrel of the hot-headed archbishop of Salzburg, Wolfgang Dietrich von Raitenau, with Maximilian of Bavaria, became so acute that in the autumn of 1613 the duke overthrew his opponent by violent measures. The excitement caused in Rome by Maximilian’s action was at first very great. The older Cardinals were for stern measures against the duke of Bavaria who, nevertheless, found a keen defender in the person of Cardinal Millini. On Millini’s proposal, Antonio Diaz was dispatched to Salzburg as nuncio extraordinary, with mission to inquire into the affair, the first reports of which had borne a strong party colour. Diaz prevailed on Maximilian to hand over to him the captive bishop, but he himself treated him with the utmost harshness, compelled him on March 7th, 1612, to resign his see, and forthwith had him taken back to prison. Whilst in prison Raitenau wrote a detailed account of the harsh treatment he had been subjected to, declared that the accusations of his enemies, with the exception of his unlawful liaison with Salome Alt, were calumnies, complained bitterly of Diaz, and demanded a fresh inquiry by the bishops of Seckau and Lavant. However the document was intercepted and given to the nuncio. Before his departure, the latter handed over the prisoner to Mark Sittich von Hohenems who had been elected archbishop in the meantime. Though the brothers of Wolf Dietrich strove desperately to get him set at liberty, all their efforts failed owing to the opposition of Mark Sittich who feared for his position and who, contrary to what had been agreed, detained his unhappy predecessor in strict confinement at Hohensalzburg until the day of his death, January 16th, 1617.

The archbishop began his reign with a general visitation which brought to light deplorable conditions among the clergy. Improvement was bound to be slow, and Mark Sittich, who proceeded with great harshness, obtained no more than an outward conversion of the Protestants in the archdiocese. The latter were particularly numerous in the Pongau. With a view to carrying out the Tridentine decrees, Mark Sittich published, in 1616, a number of excellent ordinances and, in order to make stricter vigilance over the clergy practicable, he divided the archidiaconate of Salzburg into seven deaneries. The archbishop himself set a good example to the clergy for he said Mass almost daily and preached frequently. He also sought to strengthen the spiritual life by the introduction of the Forty Hours’ Prayer and the Roman Rite, by the establishment of numerous confraternities, by favouring the Capuchins and by means of pilgrimages and processions. For the formation of good priests Mark Sittich built a college which, later on, in keeping with his plan, developed into a university and was entrusted to the Benedictines. Thus from the ecclesiastical standpoint, Mark Sittich was the very antithesis of his predecessor though he resembled him in his love of magnificence and building on the big scale; to the latter passion the castle and park of Heilbronn and the cathedral of Salzburg owe their origin. This magnificent church, which at the time of Raitenau’s fall was hardly begun, and of which Mark Sittich laid the foundation stone for a second time in 1614, was now built, not as a rotunda, as had been planned by the celebrated pupil of Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi, but with a nave, on the model of the Gesú in Rome. The mighty structure erected by the Lombard, Santino Solari, which is wholly instinct with the spirit of the Roman baroque, was roofed in by the time of Sittich’s death in 1619, and the facade had reached half its height. To Sittich, who found his last resting place in the cathedral, belongs the glory of having created Germany’s most remarkable sacred edifice of the first half of the seventeenth century. Probably the most important and most deserving bishop of Germany of that period was, besides Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen of Bamberg and the aged Echter von Mespelbrunn, the bishop of Augsburg, Henry V von Knoringen. Richly endowed, energetic, deeply pious, conscientious, an indefatigable worker and burning with zeal for the Catholic cause, Henry devoted all his energy to establishing religious unity in his vast diocese and recalling clergy and people alike to discipline and order. He started his work of restoration in the second year of his reign by publishing a strong mandate on the subject of religion, and his efforts culminated in the reform decrees promulgated at the diocesan synod of 1610. He went on building on the foundation thus laid, by regular visitations of the parishes and by numerous ordinances for the secular and regular clergy and the people. In all this he was effectively assisted by the Jesuits, the Capuchins and the Franciscans, to all of whom he was a generous benefactor.

The bishop, who had made his studies with the Jesuits of Dillingen, is the founder of their university in that town. He also contributed to the erection of a new church, which in its lay-out and structure resembles the church of St. Michael at Munich. He consecrated it in 1617. In 1614 he had established a Tridentine seminary and confided its direction to the Jesuits. The statutes breathe the same spirit as those of the papal seminary of Dillingen. The praise which Paul V, in 1612, bestowed on his pastoral solicitude was all the more deserved as he had proved the first and most loyal supporter of Maximilian in the latter’s efforts for the formation of the Catholic Defence League.

Maximilian I, the greatest of all Bavaria’s rulers, had the defence of Catholic interests in the empire quite as much at heart as the promotion of the Catholic reform in his own territory. For this Paul V rewarded him with valuable privileges, heaped ecclesiastical dignities and revenues upon his brother Ferdinand, and overlooked many things in the internal ecclesiastical policy of the duke. However much, as a practical politician, he may have studied his own advantage, Maximilian’s Catholic sentiments nevertheless sprang from a most genuine conviction. In his recommendation to his son he states that the first and noblest duty of a ruler is to promote the glory of God, the Catholic religion, and the salvation of the souls of the subjects whom God has committed to him and for whom he will have to give an account at the last day. Maximilian’s ecclesiastical policy, which was both detailed and comprehensive, was dictated by his lively sense of duty. The purpose for which he strove, namely the preservation of the unity of the faith and the promotion of the religious and moral life of his subjects was, in the main, fully realized. On the other hand the duke was on dangerous ground when he enforced compliance with the laws of the Church by police measures and even appointed special spies to that effect. It was also a serious matter that Maximilian claimed for the State sovereign rights in Church matters which went far beyond the concessions of the Concordat, and when he at times seriously encroached on the jurisdiction of the bishops. If here there is question of very debatable government measures, Maximilian’s merits in respect to the moral improvement of a sadly neglected clergy and people stand out all the more conspicuously. In this respect the most important measure was the introduction all over the country of a systematic teaching of religion for which the excellent catechisms of Canisius were used.

The duke himself set his subjects the very best example. In contrast to the repulsive spectacle presented by most Protestant princely courts of the time, the conduct of the court of Munich was exemplary. It reacted on the capital, of which it has been said that it sheltered, at that time, one of the most strictly moral populations of Christendom.

The religious life, of which the congregations of our Lady and splendid processions were characteristic manifestations, was fostered with indefatigable zeal by the Jesuits. Their colleges at Ingolstadt and Munich reached the apex of their splendour at that time. The Capuchins devoted themselves to the great mass of the population. They, like the Jesuits, stood in close relation with the court. The Jesuit Buslidius was the duke’s confessor. The duke also held in high regard the Capuchin Lorenzo of Brindisi, who rendered valuable service to him in matters connected with the League. More than once the duke served Lorenzo’s mass. Yet another Capuchin, Giacinto of Casale, was destined to play an important role in the life of Maximilian. This remarkable man, together with Lorenzo of Brindisi, had been appointed a missioner in Germany by Paul V. He laboured there in 1606 and 1607 and thus came into relations with the imperial House of Habsburg. In 1613 he was again despatched to Germany in the suite of the Cardinal legate, Madruzzo, when he made the acquaintance of Maximilian and introduced the Capuchins at Ratisbon. The latter had already settled at Rosenheim in 1606. Maximilian founded a convent for them at Landshut in 1610, and at Straubing in 1614. Other convents were founded at Wurzburg in 1615, and at Gunzburg in 1616. In 1609 a convent of the Jesuit Sisters founded by Mary Ward for the education of girls was established at Munich. They eventually became known as “the English Ladies”.

The old Orders also awoke to a new life. In 1617 Paul V appealed to Maximilian with regard to the reform of the Bavarian Augustinians. In 1620, on the initiative of the Holy See, the Bavarian Franciscans were subjected to a thorough reform. In a Brief of February 23rd, 1620, to Maximilian, the Pope expressed his satisfaction at the result.

In the Tyrol also the religious life underwent a renewal similar to that which had taken place in Bavaria. Here also besides the prince bishops of Brixen and Trent, Andreas von Spaur and Carlo Madruzzo, it was the ruling prince, Maximilian, Grand­master of the Teutonic Order, who assured the triumph of the Catholic reform and restoration. All the reports that reached Rome about Maximilian’s life and dispositions could but justify the highest hopes. The Augustinian, Mander, who visited him in 1608, described him as the true ideal of a Catholic prince. Such praise was not undeserved. Though many a measure of Maximilian’s may not have been compatible with the letter of Canon Law, there can be no doubt that he strove for the best both for the Church and for his subjects. Hence Paul V repeatedly praised the Grand­master’s zeal for the progress of religion in his territory. As in Bavaria, so in the Tyrol, the encroachments of the State on the sphere of the Church, which were largely the result of circumstances, were attenuated by the devout sense of the prince who did not content himself with the enjoyment of the dignity and the revenues of a Grand-master but who lived accordingly, and even composed a prayer-book.

A remarkable characteristic of Maximilian, and one altogether singular in view of the acute religious feeling of the time, was a certain toleration towards heretics. Thus, in the year before his death, he appointed an anabaptist as his surgeon. He also protested against a decree of the synod of Brixen which would have forbidden the sick to call in a physician who did not profess Catholicism. Hence in dealing with heretics Maximilian would use external pressure only as a secondary means. Solid instruction and the example of good priests he considered to be the noblest, as well as the most effective means, for bringing about a Catholic renewal. His rule, so far as the Tyrol is concerned, proved decisive as regards that revival. The change in the clergy is shown by the reports of visitations which took place regularly after the reform synod of 1603. Year by year these documents bear witness to increasing improvement. Among the people that spirit now asserted itself to which the Tyrol owes its world-wide reputation as a staunch Catholic country. On all sides churches and chapels were either being erected or restored; the Easter Sepulchre, the crib at Christmas came into use in churches and private houses; after 1615 the custom spread of ringing a second bell after the evening Angelus to summon the people to pray for the departed; attendance at sermons and catechetical instructions and participation in confraternities, pilgrimages and processions became general; the recitation of the rosary established itself as a household practice ; and the reception of the sacraments increased.

The newly reformed Orders took a prominent part in this transformation. Maximilian’s biographers justly praise the Jesuits for their incredible zeal in the sphere of education as well as in the pastoral ministry. The higher education was almost exclusively in their hands. The Grand-master built a fine Grammar school for the fathers at Innsbruck, and heaped all manner of favours on the college. He likewise made every effort to settle the Society at Hagenau, Ensisheim, Freiburg in Breisgau and at Trent. The widow of archduke Ferdinand, Anna Catharina, received sympathetic support from Paul V for her religious foundations in the capital of the Tyrol. Close to the convent of the Servite Nuns she erected the so-called “Regelhaus”. Thither she withdrew in company with her younger daughter, in order to live the life of the Servite Tertiaries under the name of Anna Juliana. In 1614, she founded a monastery of Servite Friars in the new part of the town of Innsbruck. In recent years a suitable monument has been erected over her tomb in the church of the convent. In 1621, the Innsbruck Servites took charge of the famous place of pilgrimage of Waldrast. From the Tyrol they spread over almost all the crown lands of the Habsburg Hereditary States and from there they penetrated as far as the Rhine. Three Provinces of the Order, with nearly thirty monasteries, sprang from the foundation of the pious archduchess.

Maximilian kept up such close relations with the Capuchins of Innsbruck that he almost looked upon himself as one of them. His energy and liberality enabled him, notwithstanding all kinds of difficulties, to found a Capuchin convent at Meran, in 1616. There the Fathers took complete charge of religious instruction; they also introduced the Good-Friday night procession, which had been established at Brixen in 1609, and which was soon imitated in other places. In conjunction with the bishop of Chur, Johann Flugi von Aspermont, Maximilian charged the Capuchins with the care of the people of the Vintschgau whose faith was in danger. Maximilian likewise lent help at the foundation of the Capuchin convent of Neumarkt, in the valley of the Adige. At Ala the Order had already established itself in 1606.

Notwithstanding the numerous religious communities which established themselves in these various places, other localities also suffered from a crying need of priests; thus, for instance, in 1607 Bruneck had as yet no priest of its own. This state of affairs moved Spaur, bishop of Brixen, in 1607 to found a seminary for priests. In 1618 the bishop of Trent, Carlo Madruzzo, in whose diocese the dearth of priests was likewise keenly felt, confided his recently restored seminary to the Somaschi whom he had summoned from Pavia, and at a later date he also called the Capuchins into his episcopal city. The bishop of Brixen repeatedly begged for good priests from the papal seminaries of Rome, Dillingen and Graz. Paul V showed himself a generous supporter of these and similar institutions. German ecclesiastical history records with gratitude the regular subsidies granted by him to the seminaries of Braunsberg, Fulda, Prague, Vienna and Olmutz. Paul V’s aims in regard to Germany are defined in the Instruction of the nuncio Caetani, under date October 20th, 1607; viz. publication of the reform decrees of Trent by the bishops or by provincial councils, such as had been held in 1569 at Salzburg and Liege; restoration of clerical discipline, chiefly by means of visitations and the granting of benefices to worthy candidates only; the training of such men in the seminaries; removal of abuses in cathedral chapters; observance of the concordat; abolition of pluralism; removal of Protestants from the courts of Catholic princes; prohibition for the subjects of bishops (prince-bishops) to send their children to non-Catholic schools; assiduous teaching of religion to the people. Though so comprehensive a programme was not by any means everywhere carried out in its fullness, one may nevertheless say, on looking back, that during the reign of the Borghese Pope, very considerable progress was realized in respect of the ecclesiastical and religious renewal of Germany.

(4.)

Whereas within the empire the government of the emperor Matthias showed a willingness for wide concessions to the Protestants, in Bohemia, on the contrary, it endeavoured to protect the ancient Church from the encroachments of the religious innovators. In the dispute on the interpretation of the “Letter of Majesty” and the “Compromise” of 1609, the government withstood the Protestants and promoted, slowly but consecutively, the Catholic reform and restoration, which had also the fervent support of the excellent archbishop of Prague, Johann Lohelius, the provost of Leitmeritz, Johann Sixt von Lerchenfels,  the Jesuits and the Capuchins. The stronger the Catholic defence became the more violent also became the Protestant attack. Wherever the adherents of the ancient faith were in a minority, as, for instance, at Braunan, they saw themselves exposed to insults and rowdy demonstrations of every kind, so that many families migrated elsewhere. The Protestants grew bolder because a small but resolute party of nobles, led by count Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, stood by them and they also enjoyed the support of the Calvinists of the empire. This assistance was prompted less by religious motives than by political ones, for Thurn and his followers, as well as the German Calvinists, aimed before all else at the downfall of the House of Habsburg.

In view of the Bohemian disputes, the calculated vagueness of Rudolph II’s religious legislation was simply disastrous. When at the end of 1617 and the beginning of 1618, both the government and the archbishop of Prague showed a determination to put an end to the propaganda of the heretics by the way in which they tackled the question of the erection of a Protestant church at Braunau and Klostergrab, which had remained undecided for six years, Thurn and his confederates saw their aim, viz. the setting up of a Calvinistic aristocratic republic, seriously threatened; hence they judged they could wait no longer. The count’s scheme was to drive the Estates to a step which must necessarily lead to open revolt. Thus came about, on May 23rd, 1618, the murderous attempt on the Catholic lieutenants of the emperor Matthias known as the defenestration of Prague—(Prager Fenstersturz)—an attempt which failed as such but which fully accomplished its purpose, which was to create an irreparable breach. The Protestants of Silesia and Austria at once showed their sympathy with the outbreak in Bohemia. The head of the Union, the Calvinist Elector Palatine, Frederick V, judged the moment favourable for seizing the crown of St. Wenceslaus and for turning the Bohemian rising into the starting point of a great war of annihilation against the House of Habsburg. To this end allies were sought even abroad, but owing to France and England adopting a policy of neutrality, the Dutch States General thus left to themselves could do nothing. Negotiations with the ambitious Carlo Emmanuele, duke of Savoy, who had long meditated the destruction of the Habsburg-Spanish Power, yielded at first no result. For all that, the action of the rebels had gravely jeopardized Catholic interests. What their aims were was quickly shown by the expulsion of the archbishop of Prague and the abbot of Braunau, and that of the Jesuits from Bohemia and Moravia. Thus, from the very outset, the struggle took on the character of a war of religion. Consequently, despite the adverse state of his finances, Paul V granted the emperor Matthias’ request, which had the very warm support of Cardinal Borja, for a monthly war subsidy of 10,000 florins for a period of six months. Even more important was the action of Paul V when he used his influence with Louis XIII to prevent the French government from exploiting the revolt in Bohemia to the emperor’s disadvantage.

With the death of the emperor Matthias, on March 20th, 1619, the last barrier fell before the Bohemian rebels and their friends. Ferdinand’s declaration, by which he bound himself to maintain all privileges and prescriptions of former kings, hence also the “Letter of Majesty”, was answered by Thurn’s invasion of Moravia: the revolt spread rapidly. Because of the declaration, the Estates of Upper Austria and the Protestants of Lower Austria refused to do homage to Ferdinand. At the beginning of June, Thurn stood before Vienna. He was too late, however, to take the city and the successes of Buquoy and Ferdinand’s defence measures compelled him to beat a hasty retreat into Bohemia. Thereupon Ferdinand, with quick decision, hastened to Frankfort to secure the imperial crown. The party of the Palatine did its utmost to prevent it or at least to obtain a prorogation of the day of the election which had been fixed for July 20th.

How much depended on prompt action was quickly recognized in Rome also. Hence on April 6th, 1619, Paul V. wrote to the ecclesiastical Electors urging them to speed up the imperial election. He repeated his request in August 3 and at the same requested the Elector of Mayence to take immediate counsel with the newly elected emperor on the means of defending the severely threatened Church of Germany. The Pope’s piety had prompted him before this to have recourse to prayer. Public prayers were recited in Rome. On April 23rd Paul prayed at the tomb of St. Peter for help for Germany. Great was his joy, therefore, when, on August 28th, news reached Rome that Ferdinand had been elected Roman emperor of the German nation. When he announced the event to the Cardinals he said that the extraordinary piety of the emperor elect and his outstanding devotion to the Apostolic See, justified the highest hopes for the Catholic Church. In a Brief to Philip III of Spain, the Pope also gave vent to his satisfaction. The long letter of congratulation which he wrote to the new emperor was couched in the most cordial terms. On the same day the Pope held a service of thanksgiving for the happy issue of the election in the Pauline chapel of the Quirinal, in presence of the Cardinals. Cardinal Borghese, as protector of Germany, was the celebrant of the Mass. The German colony celebrated the event with loud demonstrations of joy.

However, the immediate future brought to the emperor days of heavy anxiety. His election was scarcely an accomplished fact when news reached Frankfort that the Estates of Bohemia had formally deposed him “as a pupil of the Jesuits and an arch-enemy of the religion of the gospel”, and that they had chosen the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, as King of Bohemia. Ferdinand’s position grew rapidly more and more critical; the representatives of the territories adjacent to Bohemia approved his deposition; in Moravia a regular persecution of Catholics set in and the Protestants of Upper Hungary threw in their lot with the grand-duke of Transylvania, Bethlen Gabor, who, relying on the help of the Turks, and supported by the Protestants of Austria, was advancing on Vienna at the head of an army.

Beset as he was by so many dangers, Ferdinand had early looked for allies. Besides the assistance of the king of Spain, it was of the utmost consequence for the emperor that Maximilian of Bavaria, fully realizing that the existence of the Danubian State of the Habsburgs as well as the future of the Catholic Church in the empire were at stake, decided to go to the assistance of Ferdinand. The decision was taken in October, 1619, during the emperor’s stay at Munich on his return journey from Frankfort. In the covenant into which they entered on that occasion, the emperor guaranteed to Maximilian the absolute and supreme direction of the League which had become disintegrated in 1616, but which now rose to a new life. Ferdinand further promised to the duke of Bavaria, in return for military aid, full compensation for his expenses and for any losses of men or goods that he might incur, by means of the cession of Austrian territory. An oral agreement also held out to Maximilian the prospect of the Palatinate. With his wonted decision Maximilian at once saw to the necessary military and financial preparations for the struggle. This he did at two assemblies of the League at Wurzburg, in December, 1619, and February, 1620. The rejuvenated League included, from among the ecclesiastical Estates, the occupants of the three Rhenish archbishoprics, Mayence, Treves and Cologne, likewise, the dioceses of Bamberg, Wurzburg, Worms, Spire, Strassburg, Eichstatt, Salzburg, Augsburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn, Munster, Liege, Constance, Freising and Passau; the abbeys of Fulda, Ellwangen, Salmansweiler and Odenheim, and four Swabian prelates, and among the secular Estates, besides Bavaria, Pfalz-Neuburg, Leuchtenberg, the imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle, and Burgundy. Meanwhile Bavarian diplomats were busily engaged in Paris, Madrid and Rome in raising troops or money.

Already in December, 1618, Paul V had spontaneously promised to the League a subsidy of 200,000 florins, payable within three years, as well as the revenue of ecclesiastical tithes. Not long after, when Cardinal Borja requested the Pope, in the name of the king of Spain, to raise the monthly subsidy which he had granted to emperor Matthias, Paul V declared that in view of his adverse financial position he was unable to do this and he clung to this decision even though the Cardinal gave full vent to his impetuous temperament to his face. When Borja referred to the treasure of the Church which lay in the vaults of the castle of St. Angelo and which could be touched when there was question of an emergency of this kind, Paul V replied that the present case was not one in which these monies could be touched. These and other expressions of opinion show that Rome considerably underestimated the gravity of the situation. However, Maximilian and Ferdinand did not weary of imploring the Pope’s help with so much insistence, that before long the Curia grew so seriously alarmed about the future that it was decided to drop a plan for a big enterprise against the Turks which had been contemplated at the beginning of 1618.

The emperor also prayed for help from Rome. At the beginning of October, 1619, Ferdinand dispatched Freiherr Max von Trauttmansdorff to Rome to represent to the Pope the difficulty and danger of his position. The attack of the Calvinists, the envoy explained, was directed against the Church; they openly proclaimed that as soon as they should have defeated the Catholics in Germany, they would turn against Italy, to put an end to the papacy. For these reasons he prayed that Paul V would grant him, for the duration of the war, a monthly subsidy of 100,000 florins instead of the 10,000 he had contributed until then and that he would also grant him a loan of 1,000,000 kronen from the treasury in the castle of St. Angelo. Trauttmansdorff was further bidden to press the Pope to induce the Italian princes to lend help and to call into being a league of all the Catholic princes of Europe. The envoy was instructed to proceed in all these questions according to the advice of Cardinal Borja, the Protector of Germany and in the eventuality of Paul V taking up a negative attitude, he was to ask to be heard by the College of Cardinals. Lastly Trauttmansdorff was instructed to ask the Pope whether, in view of the desperate state of affairs, it would not be permissible to depart slightly from the strictness of the law and to grant to the Austrian Estates the “right of reform” in order to withdraw them from their alliance with the rebels and so to save the Catholics of that country from utter extinction.

In the audience of an hour and a half which Trauttmansdorff had with the Pope on his arrival, the latter declared that as Supreme Head of the Church he could not give his assent to a concession of that kind, but that he would exercise discretion in the matter. As for raising the monthly subsidy from 10,000 to 100,000 florins, Paul V answered that his debts amounted to 18,000,000 scudi. Though the expenses for the maintenance of the court had been considerably cut down, the usual alms nevertheless demanded 120,000 scudi annually, and he had promised 200,000 to the League. The treasure in St. Angelo, according to existing laws, he could only touch in the eventuality of the Pontifical States being directly threatened, nor was it so considerable as people imagined. To bring about a union of the Catholic princes, particularly those of Spain, France and Poland in a vast League, would demand lengthy preliminary negotiations; for the rest, if the emperor requested her help, Spain would do as much as if she belonged to a league; as for France, she thought she was doing a great deal if she remained neutral, and from her it would hardly be possible to get anything more.

Though Trauttmansdorff failed in his immediate purpose, he had hopes for the future. On his advice, on December 24th, 1619, Ferdinand made another appeal to the Pope and in so doing he was able to point to the renewed threat to his capital on the part of the rebels. Thereupon the Pope decided, at the beginning of 1620, besides proclaiming a universal jubilee to obtain God’s help “against the enemies of the Catholic faith in Germany” to levy, for a period of three years, a tenth on all ecclesiastical benefices in Italy, which was calculated to yield a sum of 200,000 scudi, and to double the monthly subsidy of 10,000 scudi as from March. On February 7th, 1620, Paul V informed the emperor that the nuncios in Spain and France had received appropriate instructions with regard to promoting a general league, though these were to be kept as secret as possible. Meanwhile, the Pope prayed, let the emperor apply himself with all his might to beating down the insurrection.

At the very time when Paul V was being thus pressed for help by Ferdinand II, baron Giulio Cesare Crivelli and the dean of the chapter of Augsburg, Zacharias von Furtenbach, arrived in Rome on April 11th, 1620, as envoys of Maximilian and the League, for a like purpose. Although Paul V saw in the League one of the chief means for the preservation of the Catholic religion in Germany and placed great hopes on the duke of Bavaria, since he had thrown in his lot with the emperor, his financial situation, and the fact that he had just promised to double the subsidy guaranteed to Ferdinand II, made it exceedingly difficult for the Pope to listen to this new request. He therefore sought to gain time by making the grant of help dependent on the opening of hostilities. In the end the representatives of the League succeeded in obtaining from the Pope a subsidy which far exceeded that promised to the emperor. This was owing to an assurance of considerable sums which the king of Spain had given to Ferdinand II. Crivelli was given 100,000 scudi, the result of the tenth imposed on twelve religious Orders of men and which the court of Vienna had confidently hoped to get. Finally the Pope gave leave to all German bishops to impose a tenth on all benefices, a tax which was expected to yield 1,500,000 florins. It was the Pope’s intention that the big sums granted to the League should likewise benefit the emperor. This was realized at least indirectly in that the League exerted itself to the upmost for its own safety as well as for the cause of Ferdinand.

To these considerable subsidies of the Pope must also be added the very great help which his nuncios gave in Madrid and in Paris, and that with such success that both Spain and France held out the prospect of military assistance against the insurgents.

What had Frederick V and his friends to oppose to these forces? The most disastrous thing of all for them was the pitiable attitude of the Union, rich in words but poor in deeds; its hesitation made it so much easier for the Dutch States General and for cautious James I of England to refuse immediate help. The republic of St. Mark also met the rebellious Bohemians’ urgent requests for help with a refusal. It was a no less heavy blow to them that the hope of joint support by all Protestants was dashed by the irreconcilable opposition between Calvinists and Lutherans. Satisfactory reassurances with regard to the retention of confiscated Church property and the pledge of the Lausitz won over even the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg, to the support of the emperor. The negotiations on these questions had been conducted by the landgrave Louis V of Hessen- Darmstadt who had fallen out with the Calvinist line of Kassel. During a visit to Rome, in March, 1619, the prudent conduct of Paul V had not indeed won Louis back to the ancient faith, as many Protestants feared, but it had nevertheless freed him from the worst prejudices against the papacy. Thus Frederick V was mainly thrown upon the Calvinist grand-duke of Transylvania, Bethlen Gabor, who, in August 25th, 1620, had had himself elected rival king of Hungary, and upon the Turks and the Bohemians. In Bohemia, however, very bad conditions prevailed in every respect, especially militarily and financially, and these deteriorated still further owing to the mistakes of the personally incompetent king who was totally ignorant of the language and customs of the country. Already in December, 1619, on the advice of his court preacher Scultetus, Frederick V had abandoned the cathedral of St. Vitus, at Prague, a sanctuary adorned with the art of two centuries, to the Calvinist iconoclasts. By his subsequent measures for the establishment of the reformed confession, he incurred the odium not only of the Catholics but also that of the Utraquists and the Lutherans of the empire. The feudal aristocracy of Bohemia, which had provoked the insurrection, saw its hopes unfulfilled and grumbled at seeing the most important posts going to foreigners.

Heedless of the perils threatening from outside and the anarchical conditions which had made headway in Prague itself, the pleasure-loving Palatine spent the winter in riotous living. His fate was decided on the day on which the shrewd duke of Bavaria succeeded in severing the Union from him. The French government rendered substantial service at this juncture. At the close of 1619, the emperor dispatched count Wradislav von Fürstenberg to France to beg for armed assistance against a danger that threatened all princes, in view of the republican tendencies of the Calvinists.

At the moment, not only the fate of the House of Habsburg, but that of the ancient Church depended, in large measure, on the attitude adopted by France. In the final decision, which turned out to be in favour of the Catholic cause, the papal nuncio Bentivoglio saw a true miracle and a manifest intervention of Providence. In conjunction with the confessor of Louis XIII, the Jesuit Arnould and the Catholic party, he had done his utmost to win over the son of Henry IV. It is true that armed help such as Spain gave, was not guaranteed, but France nevertheless declared her opposition to the Bohemian pretender. Letters were written to the princely members of the Union, with a view to inducing them to leave that body, and a great embassy was dispatched to Germany to make propaganda for the cause of the emperor. The Calvinists were not prepared for a blow of this kind and from such a quarter. The embassy, which was headed by the duke of Angouleme, intimidated the Union to such an extent that by an agreement with the League signed at Ulm on July 3rd, 1620, it completely broke with Bohemia. Thus was a brilliant victory won before a shot was fired and Frederick defeated even before battle was joined. With his rear thus guarded, Maximilian was able, at the end of July, to proceed against the rebels in Austria, to compel them to do homage, and from thence to set out on his march against Bohemia. The army, whose principal standard was decorated with a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, included among other princely personages the young duke Virginio Orsini, of Rome. A number of Jesuits and Capuchins and the Spanish Carmelite Dominic a Jesu Maria accompanied the army as chaplains.

In the autumn of 1620 destruction threatened the rebels from three sides. Whilst the Spanish-Netherlandish army under Spinola invaded the Palatinate and the Elector of Saxony penetrated into the Lausitz, the armies of the emperor and the League advanced jointly against Bohemia. On November 8th a decisive battle was fought on the Weissenberg, West of Prague. The decision of the war council to attack the fortified positions of the Bohemians was, to a great extent, the result of the eloquence of Dominic a Jesu Maria whom everybody venerated as a Saint. Exhibiting an image of the Blessed Virgin Alary, which the Calvinists had mutilated, he spoke in burning accents in support of Maximilian’s and Tilly’s proposal to attack at once, promising the protection of all the Saints whose octave was being kept that day. Within an hour the defeat of the rebels was complete and Frederick V in full flight.

Immediately after the battle, even before Prague had opened its gates, the handful of Catholics still remaining in the city hastened out into the camp in order to congratulate the duke of Bavaria and Buquoy and to beg them to occupy Prague and restore the old religion. “Such was their joy that some of them spent the whole of the following night in prayer.” When the army entered the town, the Catholics almost fought among themselves as to who should be the first to greet the duke of Bavaria. Whereas only a short while ago the Catholic faith was regarded as the religion of the lowest classes and one that a nobleman should be ashamed to belong to, many Calvinists and Lutherans now walked about with a Breviary or a rosary in their hands, or sought safety in some convent, both for their persons and their goods. The preachers lay in hiding; they no longer dared openly to stand up for their tenets; on the contrary, by abject submissiveness to the authorities, they sought to obliterate the memory of their share in the rebellion. The pastor of the church of the Tein and administrator of the “lower consistory”, Dikastus, who had crowned the winter king, now declared him an enemy of the country and prayed for the emperor’s victory, and these sentiments he expressed in all his sermons.

Not only in Prague but elsewhere also the victory of the Weissen Berg was rightly interpreted as a victory of the old religion and a defeat of Protestantism. As a matter of fact, here there was question not merely of preserving the Bohemian crown for Ferdinand, but also of the future of the Catholic Church in the territories of the Habsburgs and in the empire.

How keenly the Catholic party realized the decisive significance of the war in Bohemia was evidenced by the public prayers which had been ordered all over Germany at the opening of the campaign, and by the fervour with which the people took part in them. At Augsburg all the churches were frequented by such crowds, and the devotion of the worshippers was so great, that the Protestants were struck with astonishment. In the Society of Jesus several thousand Masses and many prayers were offered every week for a happy issue of the war. If the whole Catholic world thus celebrated the downfall of “the Calvinist monarchy” in Bohemia, joy was particularly great in Rome. Maximilian, who had contributed more than anyone else to the triumph, announced it to Paul V by a special courier who arrived in the Eternal City on December 1st, 1620: “I myself came indeed and saw, but God conquered,” wrote the noble duke.

Paul V who, on January 24th, 1620, had headed, on foot, a procession of intercession from St. Maria sopra Minerva to the German national church, had followed the Bavarian duke’s progress with tense interest. He fully realized that the defeat of the Bohemian rebels meant “an incalculable weakening of the power of the Protestants in Germany”. As soon as the first news was confirmed by the arrival of Maximilian’s courier, Paul hastened to his favourite church of Sta. Maria Maggiore where he prayed for a whole hour before the miraculous picture of the Cappella Paolina, giving thanks to God for so signal a victory which could not fail to prove of the utmost advantage to the Catholic religion in Germany.

The public thanksgiving was fixed for December 3rd. Notwithstanding the unfavourable weather the Pope again took part in the procession from the Minerva to the Anima. There the joyful psalm Exaudiat te Dominus was sung, prayers were recited and at the conclusion, Paul V. said the Mass of thanksgiving at the high altar, in the presence of all the Cardinals, even those being present who might have been excused either by age or infirmities, of all the prelates and officials of the court, the governor of the city, the envoys of the emperor and those of France, Venice and Savoy. At the conclusion of the ceremony the Pope granted a plenary Indulgence. At night a feu de joie was fired from the castle of St. Angelo and the houses of ambassadors and Cardinals were illuminated.

The date of December 3rd likewise appears on the letters of congratulation addressed to Maximilian and to the emperor. In these the Pope points out the importance of the victory for the spread of the Catholic faith. “Even as the rebellion of Bohemia”, the Pope writes, “was at one time a source of many troubles in Germany, so will the subjugation of the Bohemians bring back the other insurgents to obedience.” In another letter to the emperor, dated December 19th, 1620, the Pope said he could not find words with which to express his joy. At the same time, through the imperial envoy, Prince Savelli, he urged Ferdinand to exploit his success to the utmost, to the advantage of the Catholic religion. This aim he should keep before his eyes during the forthcoming discussions at Prague with the dukes of Bavaria and Saxony. In view of the fact that the Elector Johann Georg had shown signs of an inclination to return to the Church, Ferdinand should do his best to encourage him. If difficulties arose because of confiscated Church property, the Pope would try to find ways and means to overcome them. As regards the Palatinate, he was wholly in favour of its being bestowed on the duke of Bavaria. A suggestion of Paul V that advantage should be taken of Spinola’s successes in the Palatinate, Ferdinand II deemed inopportune and he refused to act on it, so that, for the time being, the Catholic restoration was limited to the localities conquered by the Spanish General.

There is an element of tragedy in the fact that Paul V, whose iron constitution had been equal, until then, to every exertion, should suddenly feel his strength waning at the moment when he had reached the climax of his pontificate. Towards the end of 1620, in his sixty-ninth year, the infirmities of age made themselves felt, though this did not hinder him from carrying out the duties of his office. On January 11th, 1621, he created a number of cardinals, and on the 16th he imposed the red hat on five of the new members of the Sacred College.

Now, as before, the Pope paid frequent visits to the churches both within and without the city; thus he visited St. Sebastian’s on January 20th, and on the 21st St. Agnes’ without the walls. On the occasion of the latter visit he suffered a slight stroke. He sought to allay the anxiety of his suite by holding himself erect by sheer will-power, but a fresh stroke which he suffered on Sunday, the 24th, whilst saying Mass, led to his death four days later. At the  obsequies Gasparo Palloni pronounced the funeral oration. The mortal remains of the Pope were temporarily laid to rest in St. Peter’s. A year later they were transferred, at the expense of Cardinal Scipio Borghese, to the magnificent Cappella Paolina in St. Maria Maggiore where Paul V had  erected a sepulchral monument for himself in his own lifetime.

There was universal recognition in Rome of the unwearying zeal and activity of the Borghese Pope, of his spotless moral conduct, his strict justice, his splendid care for the provisioning of Rome and the magnificent buildings with which he had enriched the City. But the long pontificate of fifteen years and eight months had none the less given rise, in the widest circles, to a desire for a change. This wish was all the stronger as the favours and the liberality of the Pope had been almost wholly limited to his own family. The whole world, says Cardinal Orsini, was weary of the amiable but empty promises of the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Borghese, and dislike for the latter had still further increased since the last promotion of Cardinals. The radiance which the victory of the Weissenberg shed on the last days of Paul V came as a compensation for the many anxieties which the situation in Germany had caused him during his long pontificate. There was nothing the Borghese Pope feared so much as the issue of an armed conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants of Germany, for since the unsatisfactory termination of his own struggle with Venice he had grown exceedingly timorous. He displayed the greatest caution and did his utmost to avoid a collision of this kind, and only reluctantly did he consent to support the emperor and the League. When the course of events compelled him to intervene, an almost miraculous concatenation of events brought about a complete change in a short time. Splendid vistas opened for the Catholic restoration which Paul V had always systematically promoted, according as he was able, in Germany as much as in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Poland. His sepulchral monument was already completed, hence the most important and most pregnant event of his pontificate could no longer be recorded on it. The reliefs and inscriptions of the monument pay a just tribute to Paul V’s labours on behalf of peace, for by the neutrality which he successfully observed between the Habsburg and the Bourbons he rendered a permanent service to Catholic interests. Very appropriately also the inscriptions praise Paul V’s solicitude for the Church and its temporal possessions, for his share in safeguarding Hungary against the Turks and for the works of art with which he enriched eternal Rome.

CHAPTER X.

Catholic Reform and Restoration in France—Bérulle and his Oratory—The Ursulines and the Visitation —Francis de Sales and Frances de Chantal—Revival of Catholicism in the Spanish Netherlands.

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES