Spain, and the empire into a general acceptance of
the positions finally laid down by the Council of Trent, whereby the
pope's ecclesiastical authority was not impaired, but rather
strengthened.

On his death, he was succeeded by one of the more rigid school, Pius V.
(1563-1572). This pope continued to maintain the monastic austerity of
his own life; his personal virtue and piety were admirable; but, being
incapable of conceiving that anything could be right except on the exact
lines of his own practice, he was both extremely severe and extremely
intolerant; especially he was, in harmony with Philip of Spain, a
determined persecutor.

But to his idealism was largely due that league which, directed against
the Turk, issued in one of the most memorable checks to the Ottoman
arms, the battle of Lepanto.

Gregory XIII. succeeded him immediately before the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. It was rather the pressure of his surroundings than his
personal character that gave his pontificate a spiritual aspect. An
honourable care in the appointment of bishops and for ecclesiastical
education were its marks on this side. He introduced the Gregorian
Calendar. He was a zealous promoter of war, open and covert, with
Protestantism, especially with Elizabeth; his financial arrangements
were effective and ingenious. But he failed to obtain control over the
robber bands which infested the Papal States.

Their suppression was carried out with unexampled severity by Sixtus V.
Sixtus was learned and prudent, and of remarkable self-control; he is
also charged with being crafty and malignant. Not very accurately, he is
commonly regarded as the author of much which was actually due to his
predecessors; but his administration is very remarkable. Rigorous to the
verge of cruelty in the enforcement of his laws, they were themselves
commonly mild and conciliatory. He was energetic in encouraging
agriculture and manufactures. Nepotism, the old ingrained vice of the
popes, had been practised by none of his three immediate predecessors,
though he is often credited with its abolition. His financial methods
were successful immediately, but really accumulated burdens which became
portentously heavy.

The treatment of public buildings in Rome by Sixtus V., his destruction
of antiquities there, and his curious attempts to convert some of the
latter into Christian monuments, mark the change from the semi-paganism
of the times of Leo X. Similarly, the e