of his ever having thought of it. Affable he may have been, and was, to all, and willing to interest the leading Cardinals in his favour, but we have no reason to suppose he used any other means, though many delays and obstacles arose in the Conclave before the question was decided, and he must have known well for some time how great his chances were, and how they hung suspended in the balance, and might have been easily swayed in either direction. On the contrary, the motives which actuated the Cardinals in their vote appear to have been quite independent of any action of his own in the matter, and were based rather upon the fact that Montalto was only sixty-four years of age, and was of a strong and active constitution, and was a Cardinal "both very able and very holy." He was elected Pope by acclamation.

While the usual homage was being rendered to the newly-elected by the assembled Prelates, Cardinal de Medicis, having forced an opening through the closed gate of the Hall of Conclave, made this proclamation to the people: "I announce to you a great joy, we have for Pope the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal di Montalto, who has assumed the title of Sixtus the Fifth." The new Head of the Church was placed on the gestatorial chair, and borne down in solemn procession, preceded by the Cross and the Cardinals, into the Church of St. Peter's. There he adored the Blessed Sacrament, and proceeding thence to the high altar, after a short secret prayer, intoned the Te Deum. At its close, he removed his tiara, and from the altar steps gave his first solemn benediction to the people. The opening ceremony of his reign concluded by his being carried in procession to the Pontifical apartments in the Vatican.

It is a striking instance of the violence and effrontery of those times, that among the very first visitors who came to present their compliments to the new Pontiff was Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, who had not only within a very short time before assassinated Francis Peretti, the nephew of Sixtus V., out of a guilty passion for his wife, but had on the very day of the election of the new Pope married the woman whom his own act had made a widow.

The

indignant glance of the Pope arrested in the duke's throat his few words of false and insolent congratulation, and he was answered by a reply full of stern and severe dignity. "Duke, be assured that none desires more than ourselves that the life of Paul Giordano should be worthy in the future both of your illustrious blood and of a true Christian noble. As regards what you have done in the past against the house and persons of the Peretti, none can speak more strongly to you than does your own conscience. Be sure at least of one thing, that whilst we willingly pardon you for what you have committed against Francis Peretti and against Felice, Cardinal Montalto, at the same time we shall never be disposed to pardon you what you may plot against Sixtus. Depart at once, banish from your house, and from your states, those bandits that up to now you have harboured and protected. Go, and obey!"

The new Pope had been elected on Wednesday, the 24th of April, 1585; on Wednesday, the 1st of May, he was solemnly crowned, and on the following Sunday he entered into full possession of his holy office, with the usual ceremonial at St. John Lateran. From this moment forward commenced a Pontificate that can scarcely be excelled by any for ability or vigour, though it is not necessary to defend each one of its acts either of internal rule or of external policy. It is one of those Pontificates that fell upon the times of the rise and spread of Protestantism, and we are prepared to find it active and unbending. But the mind of Sixtus embraced the whole range of the varied duties of the Vicar of Christ. It did not expend all its energy on any one branch of public duty to the sacrifice of others. Active and stirring as it was in the line of foreign policy, and of temporal rule at home, it was equally energetic in the less worldly and showy sphere of the internal and spiritual economy of the Church. Thus the Pope particularly strengthened the Church's internal government by fixing the number and titles of the Cardinals, but still more distinctly by defining the exact field of their duties, and dividing the sixty-six Cardinals into fifteen Congregations, each with its own determinate province and powers of action. He sought, too, to stir

up the Catholic Princes and laity to take greater interest in, and to lend greater help to, the spiritual power in the defence and spread of the Church. What he did for the heart and centre of the Catholic system, he did, as occasion required, for all the different parts of the Church and the different countries under her spiritual rule. In some parts of Germany he restored the former discipline in the matter of Communion in only one kind, the permanent custom having been temporarily interrupted by special permission of Pius IV., granted to a few as a mere personal concession.

A short time after this the Pontiff was engaged in settling a point of far more difficult arrangement, his two-fold success in which showed how he could combine tact with firmness, and how versatile were the energies of his mind. A Benedictine church, situated on one of the islands in the vicinity of Venice, had, at the instance of the Doge and Senate, been, several hundred years before, raised to the dignity of an abbey church, with the view of electing always as it Abbot some member of the Venetian nobility. The election, however, was to be left in the hands of the Benedictine Superior at Mantua, and the Abbot was to be a Commendatory of the Holy See. In course of time two noble families of Venice claimed the right of presentation; that of Gradenigo, on the ground that a sort of right of Patronage had been granted by Clement V. to a former member of it, and the other of Trevisani, a family which had actually, for many generations, supplied Abbots of their own name accepted by the Pope. In 1549 the Senate demanded from this latter family the renunciation of all their claims, under pain of sequestration, though they rested them on the decisions of the Court of Rome. John Trevisani, fearing to resist the Senate openly, tried to get his nephew secretly elected, having obtained his acceptance on the part of Rome. But the Senate, already indignant at the assumption by Trevisani himself of the title of "Abbot, by the grace of God and of the Holy Apostolic See," for which they had once before threatened him with exile and confiscation, hearing now of this second step, renewed its decree against

him. His appeal to Rome for protection against this act of contempt for Papal authority involved the Pope in some difficulty, as he had for so long stood on delicate ground with the Republic of Venice, and had lately established fresh terms of mutual good relationship between that State and the Holy See. The Senate had, besides, freely presented him a palace which he had been on the point of buying at Venice for the Papal Nuncio. But when he might have temporised, and sacrificed rights held from the Court of Rome to worldly policy, Sixtus did not hesitate a moment. He summoned to his presence the ambassador of the Republic at Rome, and complaining strongly of the violation of the rights of the Holy See, required that the decrees of the Senate should be immediately annulled, under pain of breaking up all diplomatic relations between Rome and Venice. The Senate, against its general custom, yielded before the firmness of Sixtus. But a short time after, he with great tact preserved a perfectly good understanding with Venice by at once taking up her just complaints against the Knights of Malta, who had for more than thirty years interfered with the Venetian. shipping, and done much damage to the trade of the town. Sixtus wrote to the Grand Master of the Order, and on his refusal to present himself at Rome, required him, as his spiritual subject, to put an immediate end to these hostilities. This resulted in a mutual agreement so satisfactory that the Doge, in the name of the Republic, sent public thanks to the Sovereign Pontiff.

Not less firm was Sixtus in rejecting the false claim of the Duke of Savoy to nominate the Bishops to be consecrated within his dominions. At Besançon, at Lucerne, and in Spain he made the firmness of his spiritual rule to be felt; he extended his watchful care in 1589 to Mexico, in confirming the resolutions of a Provincial Council; he created a new Archbishopric in Japan; he declared the canonisation of three Saints, pronounced St. Bonaventure to be a Doctor of the Church, and founded a College in his name.

But it is when we come to the political acts of this Pope, and the exercise of his temporal power, that we enter on a

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subject of more general interest, and one which stamps this reign as so full of energy and practical wisdom. We cannot, of course, expect Protestants to look with much favour on the political acts of a ruler whose right to exercise any foreign policy at all is an especial grievance to them. Still less can they allow any good in one who was the implacable enemy of Protestantism, and who renewed and confirmed the excommunications formerly pronounced by Pius V. and Gregory XIII. against the royal daughter of Anne Boleyn. Nor will it now be regarded so strong an argument in his favour, as it would have been till comparatively lately, that he espoused with such warmth and with his usual firmness the violated rights of Mary Queen of Scots. But even Protestants may have some admiration left for a Pontiff who, with such unswerving singleness of purpose, with such conscientious sincerity, with such determined energy, kept to that one great work which, at the same time, he fully believed to be the cause of God, namely, the extirpation of heresy and irreligion. In labouring for that, as though it were the one sole object he had before him in life, they must confess he employed no really unworthy means. They may hate the very name of that Inquisition which he considered an engine justly directed against heresy and unbelief. They may laugh at his energetic excommunications as perfectly powerless, though, somehow, very unpleasant results are perpetually following upon them— the deaths of Henry III. of France and Elizabeth of England being far from the most consoling pieces of historical reading, as little as have been of late the death-bed scenes of many of the recent enemies of the Church. But they can scarcely find fault with an uncompromising zeal, which made Sixtus as ready to reject and oppose the demands of Henry III. of France and of Philip II. of Spain, when these trenched on the prerogatives of the Church, as it had enabled him for long to bear with the weakness of the one and cooperate with the vigour of the other. The same strong motive led Sixtus to be equally anxious to be reconciled with Henry IV. of Navarre, when he ceased once more to be