attitude of domination and resistance. This
effort it made by reforming the ecclesiastical hierarchy, defining
Catholic dogma, and carrying on a war of extermination against the
twofold Liberalism of Renaissance and Reformation.

That reactionary movement against the progress of free thought which
extinguished the Italian Renaissance and repelled the Reformation, has
formed the subject of the two preceding volumes of my work. It could not
have been conducted by the Court of Rome without the help of Spain. The
Spanish nation, at this epoch paramount in Europe, declared itself
fanatically and unanimously for the Catholic Revival. In Italy it lent
the weight of arms and overlordship to the Church for the suppression of
popular liberties. It provided the Papacy with a spiritual militia
specially disciplined to meet the exigencies of the moment. Yet the
center of the reaction was still Rome; and the Spanish hegemony enabled
the Roman hierarchy to consolidate an organism which has long survived
its own influence in European affairs.

VI.

After the close of the Great Schism Rome began to obey the national
impulses of the Italians, entered into their confederation as one of the
five leading powers, and assumed externally the humanistic culture then
in vogue. But the Church was a cosmopolitan institution. Its interests
extended beyond the Alps, beyond the Pyrenees, beyond the oceans
traversed by Portuguese and Spanish navigators. The Renaissance so far
modified its structure that the Papacy continued politically to rank as
an Italian power. Its headquarters could not be removed from the Tiber,
and by the tacit consent of Latin Catholicism the Supreme Pontiff was
selected from Italian prelates. Yet now, in 1530, it began to play a new
part more consonant with its mediaeval functions and pretensions. Rome
indeed had ceased to be the imperial capital of Europe, where the
secular head of Christendom assumed the crown of Empire from his peer
the spiritual chieftain. The Eternal City in this new phase of modern
history, which lasted until Vittorio Emmanuele's entrance into the
Quirinal in 1870, gave the Pope a place among Catholic sovereigns. From
his throne upon the seven hills he conducted with their approval and
assistance the campaign of the Counter-Reformation. Instead of
encouraging and developing what yet remained of Renaissance in Italy,
instead of directing that movement of the self-emancipating mind beyond
the stage o