a victory should not be restricted to the ruins of a single city. On receiving the news of the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 he broke out into loud jubilation, saying that now “the serpent was slain which with its poison had sought to destroy the whole world.” His successor, =Innocent X.=, A.D. 1644-1655, though vigorously protesting against the Peace of Westphalia (§ 153, 2), was, owing to his abject subserviency to a woman, his own sister-in-law, reproached with the title of a new _Johanna Papissa_. =Alexander VII.=, A.D. 1655-1667, had the expensive guardianship of his godchild Christina of Sweden (§ 153, 1), and fanned into a flame the spark kindled by his predecessor in the Jansenist controversy (§ 156, 5), so that his successor, =Clement IX.=, A.D. 1667-1670, could only gradually extinguish it. =Clement X.=, A.D. 1670-1676, by his preference for Spain roused the French king Louis XIV., who avenged himself by various encroachments on the ecclesiastical administration in his dominions. =Innocent XI.=, A.D. 1676-1689, was a powerful pope, zealously promoting the weal of the church and the Papal States by introducing discipline among the clergy and attacking the immorality that prevailed among all classes of society. He unhesitatingly condemned sixty-five propositions from the lax Jesuit code of morals. Against the arrogant ambassador of Louis XIV. he energetically maintained his sovereign rights in his own domains, while he unreservedly refused the claims of the French clergy, urged by the king on the ground of the exceptional constitution of the Gallican church. =Alexander VIII.=, A.D. 1689-1691, continued the fight against Gallicanism, and condemned the Jesuit distinction between theological and philosophical sin (§ 149, 10). =Innocent XII.=, A.D. 1691-1700, could boast of having secured the complete subjugation of the Gallican clergy after a hard struggle. He too wrought earnestly for the reform of abuses in the curia. Specially creditable to him is the stringent bull “_Romanum decet pontificem_” against nepotism, which extirpated the evil disease, so that it was never again openly practised as an acknowledged right.--Continuation, § 165, 1.