If we compare the spirit indicated by these efforts in the first half of
the sixteenth century with that of the earlier Renaissance, it will be
evident that the Italians were ready for religious change. They sink,
however, into insignificance beside two Spanish institutions which about
the same period added their weight and influence to the Catholic
revival. I mean, of course, the Inquisition and the Jesuit order. Paul
III. empowered Caraffa in 1542 to re-establish the Inquisition in Rome
upon a new basis resembling that of the Spanish Holy Office. The same
Pope sanctioned and confirmed the Company of Jesus between the years
1540 and 1543. The establishment of the Inquisition gave vast
disciplinary powers to the Church at the moment when the Council of
Trent fixed her dogmas and proclaimed the absolute authority of the
Popes. At the same time the Jesuits, devoted by their founder in blind
obedience--_perinde ac cadaver_--to the service of the Papacy,
penetrated Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the transatlantic
colonies.

The Pope who succeeded Clement VII. in 1534 was in all ways fitted to
represent the transition which I have indicated. Alessandro Farnese
sprang from an ancient but decayed family in the neighborhood of
Bolsena, several of whose members had played a foremost part in the
mediaeval revolutions of Orvieto. While still a young man of
twenty-five, he was raised to the Cardinalate by Alexander VI. This
advancement he owed to the influence of his sister Giulia, surnamed La
Bella, who was then the Borgia's mistress. It is characteristic of an
epoch during which the bold traditions of the fifteenth century still
lingered, that the undraped statue of this Giulia (representing Vanity)
was carved for the basement of Paul III.'s monument in the choir of S.
Peter's. The old stock of the Farnesi, once planted in the soil of Papal
corruption at its most licentious period, struck firm roots and