CHAPTER II.

RELATIONS WITH THE COURTS OF SPAIN AND FRANCE.

THE world, and the diplomatic world especially, watched with curiosity, if not with anxiety, the Pope's financial transactions. It was asked what his intentions could be, and men could with difficulty believe that he seriously thought of undertaking, as he had often said. he would, a war against the infidels. It was known besides that he was in personal correspondence with Philip II.1

To Philip he had made his first proposals. He did not like Philip, nor was he liked by him. Of this he was aware, but he also knew that the King of Spain was the most powerful of the Catholic princes, the most ardent in the defence of the interests of the Church, which formed the constant and almost unique preoccupation of Sixtus. On this ground they met. He had scarcely been installed in the Vatican, when the Pope spoke to Olivarès, the Catholic King's ambassador, who inspired him with no more sympathy than did his master.

Juan Enrique de Gusman, Count of Olivarès, belonged to one of the great families of Spain, and had married

1 Lorenzo Priuli to the Doge, November 30, 1588.

CHAP. II.]

COUNT OLIVARÈS.

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Doña Maria Pimentel de Fonseca. He was very rich; 1 had figured at the Court of Charles V., and possessed all the confidence of Philip. In his youth he had been a soldier. Lamed by a wound at St. Quentin, he availed himself of this infirmity as an excuse for not appearing at the ceremonies of St. Peter and of the Sistine Chapel, and thus deprived M. de Pisany of his anticipated pleasure of taking precedence over him. His arrival in Rome, which had been announced for some time, had taken place four years before the death of Gregory XIII., in June 1582. It was quite an event. Several vessels of the State escorted the ship which brought him and his numerous suite from Barcelona to Genoa and from Genoa to Civita Vecchia. He disembarked in the latter town with all the honours due to a representative of Spain, accepted the hospitality of Cardinal Farnese at Palo, and, after being admitted to a private, or, as it was then called, a secret audience of the Pope, he made his solemn entry with an extraordinary display of magnificence.

He had taken the palace of the Duke of Urbino 2 in the Corso. The good pensions which, in the name of his king, he distributed among cardinals, prelates, high and petty functionaries, gained him numerous adherents from the outset. Gregory's love for Spain secured for him the first place among the representatives of the great Courts. We may readily imagine that he was surrounded by deferential people, by flatterers as well

1 Besides his revenues as an ambassador, he was said to have 40,000 scudi a year.

2 The palace has been destroyed and replaced by the three Pamfili Palaces, now called the Doria Palace.

as by secret enemies and Italian susceptibilities, while his proud attitude and cold disdain sufficed to break the resistance he might meet with. But we may conceive his anger and mortification when he found the new Pope stopping him short, threatening the Viceroy of Naples with excommunication, and making him feel that a similar fate might befall himself. The struggle was an unequal one. He soon found his unlimited authority roughly and suddenly brought back to narrower limits, more in harmony with the great notion which Sixtus entertained of the dignity of the Papacy. Full of the importance of his mission, and of the supremacy of his sovereign, Olivares was a distinguished diplomatist. He had seen Europe, and knew Rome well; but at first he paid little attention to the monk-pope, who seemed as if he wished to play again the part of Innocent III., and was deceived because he despised him. This error is frequently committed by men who have grown old in the affairs of State when they find themselves suddenly in contact with new men whom they wrongly look upon as parvenus.

Until he knew him better, Olivarès smiled at the Pope's ignorance. He attributed to versatility of

character the rich mine of ideas with which he was gifted, and which, though unripe as yet, even impracticable at times, but ever bold and profound, revealed the man who was rather in trouble as to which way to begin than as to the means of realising his views. Attacked openly, the ambassador tried, not only to defend himself, but to place himself on the

CHAP. II.] LATER FORTUNES OF OLIVARÈS.

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offensive. Long supported by his sovereign, he was only abandoned by him when, passion having carried him beyond the limits of the respect due to the Head of the Church, he placed his king under the necessity of either breaking with Rome or of replacing his ambassador. Even then this disgrace was long coming, and in fact did not prove to be a disgrace. Sixtus V., who had several times urged his recall, had not the satisfaction of being rid of the presence of a man who poisoned his days. Olivares outlived him in his post, and it was only after the death of the Pope that he exchanged his dignity of an ambassador for the Viceroyalty of Naples.

Magnificent in his way of living, spending much, just, severe, and terrible to the Neapolitan aristocracy, Olivares made himself liked by the people as much as a Spanish viceroy could be liked. His compatriots looked upon him as one of the glories of their country, and, in memory of his long stay in Rome, called him the great papelista.' He disappeared from active life soon after the accession of Philip III., owing to some court intrigue.

His son, the celebrated count-duke who in the following century was to be for some time absolute master of the Spanish monarchy, was born in Rome, at the Urbino Palace, and was baptized, as were the numerous other children of Olivarès, in the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata. The splendid career of the favourite of Philip IV. has made people forget the more substantial merit of the father."

1 1 Donato, June 2, 1582.

Sixtus V. and Olivarès could not agree. From the first conversations they had together, an antagonism was born between them. The first year they each tried to hide it, but later it broke out publicly.

The affairs of France, in the mind of the Pope, presented the distressing spectacle of an inextricable confusion. The sympathies of Rome were for Henry III., as legitimate king. Henry of Navarre, the chief of the Huguenots, was excommunicated for being a heretic. But Henry III., who was weak in mind and in character, often showed most equivocal tendencies, and frequently hinted in his correspondence with Rome the possibility of his going over to the camp of the heretics.1 Henry of Bourbon, who was active and brave, gave hopes, on the contrary, of some day returning to Catholicism. If Henry III. were to be worsted in the fight against 'the Béarnais,' the schism of France would be an accomplished fact. If, on the other hand, the latter could be brought to renounce Protestantism, and as a Catholic were to succeed Henry III., the unity of faith and of the kingdom of France would be saved.

Political considerations complicated those of religion. The Guises defended the latter. Alone they had little chance of success, and required the co-operation of the King of Spain, who, undoubtedly a very zealous defender of the faith, perhaps even more zealous in this respect

1 Complaining of the support given to the League by Gregory XIII., he wrote to Cardinal d'Este:-'His Holiness would seem to wish to force me to make use of sovereigns of opposite belief to ours, and to have recourse to extreme and desperate measures to revenge myself of the injury done to me, against what I had believed, and like that inflicted on other princes, the consequence of which was known too late, and when it could not be remedied.' 1585.