Europe had been too long accustomed to the idea of ecclesiastical unity to sit still without some attempt at reconciliation between the Catholics and Protestants. It was hoped that a Council would heal all wounds, smooth all difficulties, and bring back the irrevocable past. The Popes, however, had come to regard Councils as inimical bodies with dangerous tendencies towards investigation and with hostile canons, and were inclined to take the risk of losing the tainted parts of Christendom altogether, rather than make use of so perilous an instrument to recover them. But the Emperor, Charles V, was insistent; his Empire, as well as the Church, was cracked, and in great danger of breaking in two. The Council was convoked, and met at Trent. The primary object was reconciliation; but everybody knew that no reconciliation was possible without radical reforms in the Church, so the papal party played its cards with exceeding wariness. The Lutherans did not attend, and the papal party, in order to forestall practical reforms, plunged into the comparatively safe matter of defining dogma, and defined it in such a way as to fence out all the Lutheran schismatics. The reformers, nevertheless, managed to sandwich in between the definitions of dogma various decrees for the reform of Church discipline. In Catholic theory an Ecumenical Council acts under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; but looking at this Council from a purely secular point of view, it is hard to find other guidance than the quarrelling interests of Pope, bishops, Emperor, Spaniards, French, and Italians. In fact, the Council was twice broken up. The first time the Pope, having taken alarm, declared the Council adjourned to Bologna. The second time the Lutherans, then at war with the Emperor, swooped down near Trent and frightened the Council away. It met again, for the third time. All hope of reconciliation with the Protestants had then passed away, and the Council set to work as a purely Roman Catholic partisan body. A striking change of attitude within the Council showed that since the early sessions the reforming party had won complete control. Paul IV (1555-59), a man of high character, formerly Cardinal Caraffa, head of the Roman Inquisition, had promulgated many edicts concerning reforms; and his successor Pius IV, Giovanni Angelo Medici of Milan (not of the Florentine family) (1559-66), who was Pope during the final sessions of the Council, followed his lead. Pius, a clever man who had received a legal training, instead of wasting efforts in persuading disputatious bishops, first made diplomatic arrangements with the Catholic sovereigns of Spain, France, and Austria, and then secured the embodiment of those arrangements in decrees by the Council. Nothing, however, could have been accomplished without the reforming spirit within the Church; Pius removed obstacles in its way and let it have full play. Stern rules were made against the corrupt practices, which had given Luther his