and a larger selection, from the originals in the Vatican,
appeared in Theiner's _Annals of Gregory XIII_. The letters written
under Pius V. are beyond the limits of that work; and Theiner, moreover,
has omitted whatever seemed irrelevant to his purpose. The criterion of
relevancy is uncertain; and we shall avail ourselves largely of the
unpublished portions of Salviati's correspondence, which were
transcribed by Chateaubriand. These manuscripts, with others of equal
importance not previously consulted, determine several doubtful
questions of policy and design.

The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their
prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many
years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most
valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the
period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided
Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly
confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet
dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the
attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and
system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the
Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to
serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature
Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and established by
violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of princes in
Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be intolerant.
In France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and under the
German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical force had
been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that remained to it
in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism was fast
dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute, and
Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that they
could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict
it. Trusting to the maxim, "Bellum Haereticorum pax est Ecclesiae," they
insisted that liberty should extend to those whom the Reformers would
have exterminated.[7] The Polish Protestants, in spite of their
dissensions, formed themselves into one great party. When the death of
the last of the Jagellons, on the 7th of July 1572, made the monarchy
elective, they were s