We now come to the Papacy, and there, in extraordinary contrast to the degeneration and decay all around, we find militant vigour and energy. This phenomenon is so remarkable that we must glance back at the perils through which the Papacy had passed. Ever since the fall of the Empire (when the political union of Italy and Germany broke in two) disruptive forces had been at work to break the ecclesiastical union, until at last, in the pontificate of Leo X, Martin Luther affixed his theses concerning indulgences to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, burnt the papal bull, and threw off his allegiance. The North of Europe followed him. The record of the Papacy had been utter failure and worse. It had smeared itself from head to foot with simony, nepotism, and vice; it had cast religion to the winds. No expression of indignation would have been adequate without the sack of Rome. A statesman might well have predicted that all Europe would dismember and suppress the Papacy and adopt a system of national churches. Nevertheless, at the end of the century the Papacy stood erect and vigorous, shorn indeed of universal empire, but reestablished, the Order of Jesus at its right, the Holy Inquisition at its left, draped in piety by the Council of Trent, and hobnobbing on even terms with kings. The process which effected this change is called the Counter-reformation, or the Catholic Reaction. That process was a happy blending of virtue, bigotry, and policy. Borne upward and onward by the forces of reform and conservatism, the Modern Papacy rose triumphant on the ruins of the Papacy of the Renaissance. The same spirit that caused the Reformation in the North started the Catholic Revival in the South. A wave, comparable to the old movement for Church reform in Hildebrand's time, swept over the Catholic Church, and lifted the reformers within the Church into power. The South emulated the North. Catholic zeal rivalled Protestant ardour. Bigotry followed zeal. Moreover, a reformed Papacy found ready allies. The logical consequence of Protestantism was personal independence in religion, and the next logical step was personal independence in politics. Protestant subjects, more especially where their rulers were Catholics, tended to become disobedient; and monarchs, who stood for absolutism and conservatism, found themselves drawn close to an absolute and conservative Pope. The kings of Spain and the Popes of Rome became friends and allies.