expected that he should recognize the wisdom of confining Papal ambition
to ecclesiastical interests, and of forming a defensive and offensive
alliance with Catholic sovereigns for the maintenance of absolutism. It
could not be expected that he should forego the pleasures and apparent
profits of creating duchies for his bastards, whereby to dignify his
family and strengthen his personal authority as a temporal sovereign. It
is true that the experience of the last half century had pointed in the
direction of all these changes; and it is certain that the series of
events connected with the Council of Trent, which began in Paul III.'s
reign, rendered them both natural and necessary. Yet Paul, as a man of
the elder generation filling the Papal throne for fifteen years during a
period of transition, adhered in the main to the policy of his
predecessors. It was fortunate for him and for the Holy See that the
basis of his character was caution combined with tough tenacity of
purpose, capacity for dilatory action, diplomatic shiftiness and a
political versatility that can best be described by the word trimming.
These qualities enabled him to pass with safety through perils that
might have ruined a bolder, a hastier, or a franker Pope, and to achieve
the object of his heart's desire, where stronger men had failed, in the
foundation of a solid duchy for his heirs.

Paul's jealousy of the Spanish ascendancy in Italian affairs caused him
to waver between the Papal and Imperial, Guelf and Ghibelline, parties.
These names had lost much of their significance; but the habit of
distinction into two camps was so rooted in Italian manners, that each
city counted its antagonistic factions, maintained by various forms of
local organization and headed by the leading families.[15] Burigozzo,
under the year 1517, tells how the whole population of Milan was divided
between Guelfs and Ghibellines, wearing different costumes; and it is
not uncommon to read of petty nobles in the country at this period, who