However, at the time in which the honours of beatification were being prepared for Rita, the world and the Church were enduring only minor afflictions, and the aspect of affairs would have been still more serene but that the question of the succession to the extinct House of Mantua was giving rise to some hostile movements in Italy, and that the rebellious Calvinists were causing civil discord in France. Still, compared with the past, those were times of peace, of gentleness, and of religion. In the East, in fact, the infidel Amurath IV., sunk in debauchery, had lost the taste for war and conquest. The Emperor Frederick V., in the West, was keeping the heretics in subjection and preparing the way to restore to the Church the rights and property they had usurped. Italy had no longer to tolerate those wandering troops of armed men of which we have elsewhere spoken, who, however they may have bargained to bring help, were much more accustomed to bring ruin and mourning in their train; nor was there that multiplicity of Governments, each as ambitious and tyrannical as it was insignificant. Cascia, too, although fallen from its primitive splendour, was yet at peace, as was the rest of the Pontifical dominions. The arts were flourishing and gaining new lustre in this time of tranquillity. But what is of most importance is good order, religious and moral, and the Council of Trent had brought back order into the bosom of Christianity, and there it continued to rule. At that time the chair of Peter was occupied by Urban VIII., whose virtue, learning, and illustrious enterprises have made his name immortal. Before ascending the Papal throne he had governed the Church of Spoleto with great edification and splendid success, and there he had every facility for inquiring into Rita's virtues and miracles, and the antiquity and fame of the veneration paid to her. God afterwards so disposed it that he should take upon himself the government of the Universal Church, and should co-operate in the fulness of power in exalting our saint. It is true that she had already been beatified by the people from the time of her death, but in strict truth and in accordance with the sacred Canons, it did not belong, nor does it belong, to the people to declare anyone saint or blessed, for the oracle of the Apostolic See is needed. For Jesus Christ alone sanctifies in the Church triumphant, as He teaches in the Book of Leviticus, where He says, 'I am the Lord who sanctifies them,' and so in the Church militant it is the prerogative of His Vicar on earth, the Roman Pontiff, to set the seal of his approval on sanctification and publish it to the world.