of sixty-six to steer the ship of the Church through troubled waters and
in very altered circumstances. He had witnessed the rise and progress of
Protestant revolt in Germany. He had observed the stirrings of a new and
sincere spirit of religious gravity, an earnest desire for
ecclesiastical reform in his own country. He had watched the duel
between France and Spain, during the course of which his predecessors
Alexander V. and Julius II. restored the secular authority of Rome. He
had seen that authority humbled to the dust in 1527, and miraculously
rehabilitated at Bologna in 1530. He had learned by the example of the
Borgias how difficult it was for any Papal family to found a substantial
principality; and the vicissitudes of Florence and Urbino had confirmed
this lesson. Finally, he had assisted at the coronation of Charles V.;
and when he took the reins of power into his hands, he was well aware
with what a formidable force he had to cope in the great Emperor.

Paul III. knew that the old Papal game of pitting France against Spain
in the peninsula could not be played on the same grand scale as
formerly. This policy had been pursued with results ruinous to Italy but
favorable to the Church, by Julius. It had enabled Leo and Clement to
advance their families at the hazard of more important interests. But in
the reign of the latter Pope it had all but involved the Papacy itself
in the general confusion and desolation of the country. Moreover, France
was no longer an effective match for Spain; and though their struggle
was renewed, the issue was hardly doubtful. Spain had got too firm a
grip upon the land to be cast off.

Yet Paul was a man of the elder generation. It could not be expected
that a Pope of the Renaissance should suddenly abandon the mediaeval
policy of Papal hostility to the Empire, especially when the Empire was
in the hands of so omnipotent a master as Charles. It could not be