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transcribed word for word from a MS. volume still existing at Rome, containing anecdotes of the time of Sixtus V. by some, though not cotemporary, Wraxall, who had gathered up all the floating traditions and current stories of a preceding age.

Three Popes, Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., passed like shadows during one year over the Papal throne. The weary Conclave renewed its reluctant sittings. The momentous times allowed no repose to the contending factions. Yet something like an understanding took place between Montalto, the representative of the Cardinals created by Sixtus V. (the creatures of the late Pope usually formed a powerful body in the next conclave)—and the Spanish interest. Santorio, Cardinal of Sanseverina, a stern zealot for the cause of the League and of Spain, a man who always leaned to the severest and most violent opinions, the life and soul of the Inquisition, was the idol and the hope of the Spanish party. In his MS. autobiography still extant, Santorio speaks of the famous day of St. Bartholomew, that day of joy to Catholics.' He was yet in the prime of life; the tiara seemed actually settling upon his brows. All was prepared by Olivarez; thirtysix voices, the majority of two-thirds in the Conclave, necessary for the election, were pledged to his support. The morning came, the Conclave was closed for the election. Montalto and Madrucci, the heads of the two opposite parties, now united, appeared to conduct Santorio from his cell. According to custom, when the election is considered secure, the cell was immediately plundered by the servants. Thirty-six Cardinals accompanied him to the Capella Paolina; his opponents already began to entreat his forgiveness; he announced his intention of assuming the name of Clement, as expressive of his forgiveness of all his enemies.

But the name did not work its effect: some began to feel misgivings, to tremble at the severity of Santorio. The younger Cardinals were unwilling to impose his austere yoke upon their necks. His opponents, his personal enemies, began to gather together. They met in the Sistine Chapel to the

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number of sixteen. One voice alone was wanting for the exclusion. Yet some among them began to waver, to shrink from the consequences of their opposition. But there was no less irresolution in Santorio's party. There was a stir, a commotion, a whispering; they began to count the voices, as though in doubt. The bold man was wanting who should dare to express the sentiments entertained by many. At length Ascanio Colonna took courage. He belonged to the Roman baronage, which dreaded the inquisitorial zeal of Sanseverina. He cried aloud, God will not have Sanseverina, neither will Ascanio Colonna !' He passed from the Paolina to the Sistine Chapel. Others who dared not openly, secretly followed the example of Colonna. When the scrutiny took place, only thirty votes appeared for the candidate. Sanseverina had come to the conclave in perfect security; he already grasped the high-prized object of his ambition; he had to pass seven hours in the mortal agony between the fulfilment of his proud hopes and the degrading bitterness of rejection; now feeling himself the lord of the world, now a subject. It was decided at length-he retired to his plundered cell. The following night,' he writes in his autobiography, was more miserable than the most distressing instant of my life. The load of affliction on my soul, my inward anguish, incredible as it may sound, wrung from me a bloody sweat!' Santorio knew the Conclave too well to encourage any further hope; once again he was named by his partisans, but without success.2

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The King of Spain had purchased the support of Montalto and the party of the late Pope's adherents for his own nomi

The passage from Sanseverina's memoirs concerning this Conclave, quoted in the appendix, is very curious. He assigns the motive either of animosity, jealousy, or personal ambition, which induced each of his several opponents to resist his claim, or by defection to prevent his election. In his bitterness he attributes their perfidy to the obligations which most of them owed to him. Madrucci, the head of the Spanish party, played him false, from the hope he himself entertained of the pontificate. One of the causes assigned for Colonna's hatred is very singular: 'Si ricordava del Talmud impedito da me contra li Giudei.' Sixtus V. had been favourable to the Jews, and this probably relates to some proposition for the destruction of the Talmud; but one would not expect to find the Talmud thus influencing the election of a Pope.

nation of Sanseverina, by renouncing the exclusion of the Montalto party. The Cardinal Aldobrandino had been put in nomination, as a supernumerary candidate, with Santorio. He was of an exiled Florentine family. His father had been professor of civil law; he had five sons, and the father had serious apprehensions that he would not be able to give Hippolito, the youngest, the education which his talents seemed to deserve. The boy was taken into the service of the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, rose to the prelacy, to the cardinalate. During a mission into Poland he had conferred a signal service on the house of Austria by interfering to deliver the Archduke Maximilian from captivity. Aldobrandino became Pope, and took the name which Santorio had announced as his own, Clement VIII.

Clement was a man of remarkable method in business, and strictly regular in all the ceremonial of the Church. Every morning he performed the mass himself, every evening the Cardinal Baronius heard his confession. The daily guests at his table were twelve poor people. He laboured assiduously at the affairs of the see all the week; his relaxation on the Sunday was conversation on religious subjects with some of the more learned monks.

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He conducted the two great events of his reign with consummate dexterity and moderation, the reunion of France to the Roman See by the absolution of Henry IV., and the incorporation of Ferrara with the temporal dominions of the Pope. Under Clement,' observes Mr. Ranke, the Papacy appears under its proper and praiseworthy character, as the mediator, the pacificator of Europe.' The peace of Vervins may chiefly be attributed to the influence of Clement VIII. The feud within the Jesuit order, and the collision of that body with other monastic orders, were matters of scarcely less importance to the interests of Catholicism. Power had its usual consequences struggles within the body, envy and animosity without. The Jesuits, it has been said, were almost exclusively Spanish in their origin; of the twenty-five who

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composed the general congregation, eighteen were Spaniards; the three first generals of the order were of Spanish birth. Gregory XIII. seems to have felt some jealousy and apprehension lest this powerful engine should be less at the command of the Pope than of the King of Spain. By his influence Mercuriano, an Italian, became the fourth general. Mercuriano was a weak man, governed by those around him; factions grew up between the older members in the Spanish, and the younger in the foreign interest. Mercuriano was succeeded by Acquaviva, a Neapolitan, who united the courage and perseverance of a Spaniard with the address and subtlety of an Italian. The King of Spain determined on a visitation of the order, and named for that purpose Manriquez, Bishop of Carthagena. A general congregation was likewise threatened, and the generals of the Jesuit order,' observes Mr. Ranke, 'hate a congregation as much as the Popes a general council.' Acquaviva averted the first danger by suggesting to Sixtus V. that Manriquez was a bastard, and Sixtus had a singular but insuperable aversion to bastards. The general congregation was likewise delayed, but during Acquaviva's absence the consent for its convocation was obtained from Clement VIII. Acquaviva met the trial, which embraced his whole administration of the affairs of the order, with unbroken courage, and conducted it with consummate address. He made some well-timed concessions; the privileges claimed by the Jesuits of examining heretical books, and the surrender of all estates and even benefices into the hands of the society by all those who entered the order. The first of these privileges clashed with the powers of the Inquisition, the second with the civil law. He gave a reluctant assent to the triennial election of the general, the sexennial meeting of the congregation. In all other respects he came forth triumphant. The collision of the Jesuits with the Dominicans in Spain tended at once to weaken their authority in that country, and to throw them, as it were, on the rest of Europe. The Dominicans watched with jealousy the rapid growth of this rival order. The In

quisition seized on a provincial and some of his brethren, who were accused, by a malcontent member of the body, of concealing the heretical opinions of some of their order. The affair, it might be supposed, created an extraordinary sensation in Spain. A dark rumour spread abroad that the Jesuit order had been found guilty of heretical pravity. This was one of the chief reasons which induced the King of Spain to urge a visitation of the order, the measure averted by the dexterity of Acquaviva. At a somewhat later period real differences of religious belief arose between the Jesuits and the Dominicans. The Jesuits revolted from the tenets of Thomas Aquinas, and embraced those of Molina on the mysterious subjects of grace and free will. This was strictly in character. The austere and bigoted and more illiterate Dominicans adhered to the severe and definite dogmas; the Jesuits, learned, subtle, pliant, inclined to the latitude of the milder and more moderate opinions. By the action of these and other causes, from an exclusively Spanish the Jesuits became, to a certain degree, a Papal, but, even more, a French power. This is, no doubt, the secret of their re-admission into France by Henry IV., who appalled his old Protestant friends, and alarmed even many of his warmest Catholic partisans, by his appointment of the Jesuit Cotton as his confessor. His own light speech, that he would rather have them for his friends than his enemies, was, no doubt, as true as it was characteristic; but there were deeper grounds for this change in the policy of France.

This agitation in the Jesuit body lasted till the accession of Paul V. On the death of Clement, Leo XI. succeeded-to wear the tiara only twenty-six days. Aldobrandino and Montalto, the partisans of the two last Popes Clement and Sixtus, suddenly united, and anticipating the intrigues of Spain, elevated to the Papal throne the Cardinal Borghese. Paul V. attributed this unexpected event to the special and immediate intervention of the Holy Ghost. Even the Roman court, accustomed to such alterations, were astonished at the total change in the demeanour and bearing of Paul V. Paul had

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