The opportunity was not long in coming. In the concluding years of the sixteenth century men attained to power in central Europe, whose youth had been trained under the influences of the Catholic revival. Already by the efforts of Philip II. and S. Carlo Borromeo, with the assistance of the Inquisition, the movement in favour of Protestantism in Spain and Italy had been crushed, and heresy driven back behind the Alps and the Pyrenees. In 1587 Sigismund, the son of John of Sweden and Catherine Jagellon, was elected to the throne of Poland. [Sidenote: =The Counter-Reformation in Poland.=] Sigismund was a staunch Catholic, and owed his election to the efforts of the Catholics. He at once set himself to restore Poland to Catholicism. He used the royal patronage, which was extremely extensive in Poland, in favour of Catholics only. He called the Jesuits to his assistance, supported them with money, and encouraged the sons of the nobility to attend their schools. In disputed questions as to the right to the ecclesiastical buildings he used the influence of the crown in favour of the Catholics, and was so successful in this, that it is said that Dantzig was the only town of importance in Poland where the Protestants retained the use of the parish church. Thus in a few years the whole of the official classes became Catholic; while large country districts, especially in Livonia and Lithuania, were won back to the old faith by the efforts of the Jesuit missionaries. [Sidenote: =In Germany.=] In Germany recourse was had to still stronger measures, for in virtue of the principle of the religious peace of Augsburg of 1555 it was held that every ruler had the right of dictating the religion of his subjects. Accordingly at Christmas 1595, the bishop of Bamberg issued an edict banishing from the diocese all who refused to receive the Eucharist according to the Catholic rite. Emboldened by his success, the bishop of Paderborn followed his example a few years afterwards, and established and endowed a Jesuit college in his cathedral city. In the first years of the new century the electors von Bicken and Schweikard of Mainz, Ernest and Ferdinand of Köln and Lothaire of Trier, partly by governmental pressure, partly by personal influence, restored Catholicism permanently in the three archbishoprics of the Rhine. [Sidenote: =In Styria.=] But it was in south Germany that the greatest results were obtained. In 1596 Ferdinand, the cousin of the emperor Rudolf II., came of age, and succeeded to the duchies of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, formerly held by his father the archduke Charles. Ferdinand was a man of resolute will and deep religious convictions, which had been developed by his Jesuit teachers into something little short of fanaticism. He looked upon the restoration of Catholicism as the special work of his life, and kneeling before the shrine of Loretto the year after his accession, he solemnly swore to eradicate Protestantism from his hereditary