THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX. § 1. The Inquisition in Spain 597 § 2. The Inquisition in Italy 600 § 3. The Index of prohibited books 602 § 4. The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation 606 BOOK III. _THE REFORMED CHURCHES._ CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. § 1. _The Limitations of the Peace of Augsburg._ The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) secured the legal recognition of the Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, and consequently within European polity. Henceforward States, which declared through their responsible rulers that they meant to live after the religion described in the _Augsburg Confession_, were admitted to the comity of nations, and the Pope was legally and practically debarred from excommunicating them, from placing them under _interdict_, and from inviting obedient neighbouring potentates to conquer and dispossess their sovereigns. The Bishop of Rome could no longer, according to the recognised custom of the Holy Roman Empire, launch a Bull against a Lutheran prince and expect to have its execution enforced as in earlier days. The Popes were naturally slow to see this, and had to be reminded of the altered state of matters more than once.[1] Of course, the exalted Romanist powers, civil and ecclesiastical, never meant this settlement to be lasting. They intrigued secretly among themselves, and fought openly, against it. The final determined effort to overthrow it was that hideous nightmare which goes by the name of the Thirty Years' War, mainly caused by the determination of the Jesuits that by the help of God _and_ the devil, for that, as Carlyle has remarked, was the peculiarity of the plan, all Germany must be brought back to the obedience of Holy Stepmother Church, and to submission to the Supreme Headship of the Holy Roman Empire--the Supreme Headship becoming more and more shadowy as the years passed. The settlement lasted, however, and remains in general outline until the present. But the Religious Peace of Augsburg did not end the revolt against Rome which was simmering in every land in Western Europe. It made no provision for the multitude of believers in the _Augsburg Confession_, whose princes, for conscience' sake or for worldly policy, remained steadfast to Rome, save that they were to be permitted to emigrate to territories where the rulers were of the same faith as theirs. These Lutherans were to be found in every part of Germany, and were very abundant in the Duchy of Austria. The statement of Faber, the Bishop of Vienna, that the only good Catholics in that city were himself and the Archduke Ferdinand, was, of course, rhetorical; but it is a proof of the numbers of the followers of Luther.[2]