of Trent, whose sittings were not finally closed until eighteen years later, when it had completed that bulwark which still constitutes a stronghold of the Roman church. Extirpation of heresy henceforward became the pervading principle of the papacy, and the engrossing dogma of its zealots; the object for which councils deliberated, pontiffs admonished, legates intrigued. For an end so sanctified no means were accounted base. When argument failed threats were at hand. From reason an appeal lay to the rack. Thus was the wavering power of the Keys restored or confirmed over much of Europe, and an alliance was effected between political and spiritual despotism for their mutual maintenance and common defence. The success which crowned these new efforts far exceeded any that mere mundane aims had ever attained. The re-influx of Catholicism was in some instances more signal, as it was more inexplicable, than had been the recent spread of the Reformation.[*53] Although fatal to freedom of thought, its influence proved highly favourable to morals. The revival of religion was attended with a happy reformation of manners, after examples emanating from high places. The sins, or at least the scenes, that had disgraced the Borgian and Medicean courts no longer met the eye, but were replaced by a semblance of ascetic virtue. The new religious orders, being of more rigid rule, tended by precept and example to restore discipline, and to purify, at least externally, the cup and the platter. Prelatic luxury was curtailed, brazen vice retired from public view, and the free exercise of papal nepotism was finally restrained by Pius V., who, in 1567, prohibited the alienation by his successors of church property or jurisdictions. But in these themes our narrative has no part. The battles of orthodoxy were chiefly fought beyond the Alps; the reformed morality of the papal court was exampled in its own capital: in neither had Urbino any near interest. [Footnote *51: The Theatines were a congregation of Clerks Regular, founded by Gaetano Tiene, a Venetian nobleman, in 1524. They are under the rule of S. Augustin. S. Gaetano Tiene died in 1547. In 1526 Matteo di Basso of Urbino founded a reform of Franciscan Observants, giving his followers a long-pointed hood, which he believed to be of the same shape as that worn by S. Francis. These friars became known as Cappuccini or Capuchins. At first they were merely a company of hermits devoted to the contemplative life. They remained, in fact, under the Observants till 1617. They are now a separate order governed by a general. They live in absolute poverty.] [Footnote *52: The Inquisition was revived by a Bull of Sixtus IV. in 1478. Two years later it was reinstated in Spain by the Catholic kings. In 1526 it was established in Portugal; but it was only introduced into Italy in 1546, at Naples, and came into Central Italy only with many restrictions.]