for palaces by Michael Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts,
mosaics, and gems just dug up from among the ruins of ancient
temples and villas, these things were the delight and even the
serious business of their lives. Letters and the fine arts
undoubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. But when the
great stirring of the mind of Europe began, when doctrine after
doctrine was assailed, when nation after nation withdrew from
communion with the successor of St. Peter, it was felt that the
Church could not be safely confided to chiefs whose highest
praise was that they were good judges of Latin compositions, of
paintings, and of statues, whose severest studies had a pagan
character, and who were suspected of laughing in secret at the
sacraments which they administered, and of believing no more of
the Gospel than of the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different
class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, men
whose spirit resembled that of Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman
Pontiffs exhibited in their own persons all the austerity of the
early anchorites of Syria. Paul the Fourth brought to the Papal
throne the same fervent zeal which had carried him into the
Theatine convent. Pius the Fifth, under his gorgeous vestments,
wore day and night the hair shirt of a simple friar, walked
barefoot in the streets at the head of processions, found, even
in the midst of his most pressing avocations, time for private
prayer, often regretted that the public duties of his station
were unfavourable to growth in holiness, and edified his flock by
innumerable instances of humility, charity, and forgiveness of
personal injuries, while at the same time he upheld the authority
of his see, and the unadulterated doctrines of his Church, with
all the stubbornness and vehemence of Hildebrand. Gregory the
Thirteenth exerted himself not only to imitate but to surpass