says of Paul, that "he was elected Pope contrary
to the general expectation and opinion, and
perhaps even contrary to his own. For his
Holiness told me, a little before he died, that he
had never done anything to conciliate the
goodwill of any man, and had never sought the
favour of any one of the cardinals, but rather
the reverse; 'so that,' said he, 'I know not how
they came to elect me pope; and I conclude
that the election of popes is the work of God
himself.' " Another of these Venetian ambassadors,
whose reports to the Venetian senate are
among the most important and instructive
documents for the right understanding of the history
of that time, tells us of Paul the Fourth, that
"his habit is to eat always twice a day. He
chooses to be served very luxuriously; and in
the early days of his reign twenty-five dishes
did not suffice him. He drinks more than he
eats. The wine he uses is strong and generous,
very dark in colour, and so thick that one might
almost cut it. It is called 'mangiaguerra,' and
is grown in the kingdom of Naples. After his
rneal he always drinks malvoisie, which his
courtiers call 'washing his teeth.' " He would
sit for hours, we are told in another place, over
this coarse, heady drink of his own country (the
Caraffas were a Neapolitan family), and brood
over his schemes for the extirpation of heresy
and the restoration of Church power, and his
plans for the humbling of the Spanish
domination. For, the ascendancy of Spain, and the
determination of that "Most Catholic," but
exceedingly shrewd and very despotic monarch,
Charles the Fifth, to admit of no power superior
to or equal with his own in his own dominions,
were the chief obstacles in the way of Paul's
designs, Infinite, accordingly, was his hatred of
Charles, and of everything Spanish. "Never
did he speak," says the above-quoted Venetian
ambassador, "of his Majesty the Emperor and
the Spanish nation, without calling them heretics,
schismatics, accursed of God, the spawn of Jews
and Moors, and the scum of the world, deploring
the ill-fate of Italy, that she should be
subjected to so abject and vile a race." In the
hours that he would sit over his turbid Neapolitan
wine—as much as three hours, sometimes,
the Venetian ambassador declares, from the time
he sat down to table to his rising—his
impetuosity led him to speak freely and without
concealment of important state matters. "The
time had come when the emperor should receive
the chastisement due to his sins, and Italy and
the Church should be delivered from bondage."
"He," the Pope, "would inflict it. He would
deliver Italy. If people would not listen to him,
if they would not assist him, at least posterity
would be forced to confess that an old Italian
on the brink of the grave, who should rather
have sought rest and preparation for death, had
conceived these lofty designs."* The "lofty
designs" were schemes wholly mundane and
political for the abasement of Spanish ascendancy
in Italy, which were to be accomplished by the
aid of France. And the manner in which these
worldly state interests gradually usurped the
place of more legitimate ecclesiastical aims even
in the mind of so zealous, austere, and earnest a
churchman as Paul the Fourth, affords a curious
proof of the inevitable tendency of the ideas and
objects belonging to the temporal prince to over-
ride those more fitly the care of the universal
bishop.
*Ranke, vol. i. book iii.

During the papacy of this fervent believer in
the efficacy of the headsman, the rack, and the
stake, for the attainment of "the greater glory
of God," his intentions and plans for the
purification of Italy from heresy were most
zealously carried out by an inquisitor after
his own heart, whose name became a word of
terror throughout the peninsula. From the
Alps to the Sicilian sea, men looked cautiously
around them, and women crossed themselves at the
name of Fra Michele. This friar Michael Ghislieri
was born of peasant parents near Alessandria, in
the year 1504, and entered a Dominican convent
at a very early age. His intense austerity soon
marked him out for the notice of his superiors.
He, too, was such a man as the Church then
needed. He was very soon made inquisitor;
and Paul the Fourth, seeing that this Michele
was just the man he wanted, made him a
bishop, and then very shortly raised him to
the cardinalate. He was a more single-minded
and one-idea'd man than even his patron and
master, Paul. The Caraffa Pope had notions,
such as they were, of European politics, and
sought to shape them to the ends he had in view
for the advantage of the Church. Ghislieri knew
nothing but what his convent life had taught him,
cared for nothing but "the purity of the faith,"
and had no other conception of securing this,
than the persecution ot every slightest taint
of heresy to the death. This man became
pope as Pius the Fifth—not immediately on the
death of Paul the Fourth—but at the death of
Paul's successor, Pius the Fourth: a moderate and
weak man, who had tried to keep things quiet,
but was found by no means the sort of person
required to pilot the bark of Peter in the
stormy seas she was then navigating. Fra
Michele was made pope in 1566; and then was
seen what might have been expected from a
monk and an inquisitor invested with supreme
power. He instantly began to issue bulls and
ordinances of such severity that those about
him "were continually obliged to repeat to him
that he had to deal with men and not with
angels." As a sample of the sort of means he
planned for securing universal orthodoxy, we
may take a bull he issued, forbidding any physician
who might be called to a patient's bedside,
to visit him for more than three days, unless he
received an attestation that the sick man had
made fresh confession of his sins. For desecration
of the Sabbath, an offender should, for the
first offence, stand the whole of one day before
the church door with his hands tied behind his
back; for the second, be flogged through
the town; for the third, his tongue pierced,
and be sent to the galleys. For blasphemy