Pius IV. exercised against the nephews of Paul the most cruel revenge, advised to it, it is said, by the King of Spain, Philip II., the implacable enemy of the Caraffa. The Queen of Navarre was summoned by this pope to appear at Rome within six months, under the usual penalties of excommunication, deprivation, and degradation: menaces almost as ridiculous as they were criminal, the only effect of which was to irritate the court of. France. But the pontificate of Pius is especially remarkable for the termination of the council of Trent, which had lasted eighteen years, from 1545 to 1563. The doctrinal decisions of this council do not concern us: we shall say something of its legislative decrees.
The council of Trent pronounces, in certain cases, excommunication, deposition and deprivation, against kings themselves. It ascribes to bishops the power to punish the authors and the printers of forbidden books, to interdict notaries, change the directions of testators, and apply the revenues of hospitals to other uses. It renders the marriages of minors, without the consent of parents, valid: it permits ecclesiastical judges to have their own decisions against laymen executed, by seizure of goods and imprisonment of person; it screens from the secular jurisdiction all the members of the clergy, even those who have only received simple tonsure; it desires that criminal proceedings against bishops should be judged only by the pope; it authorises the pope to depose non-resident bishops, and appoint successors to them; it subjects in fine its own decrees to the approval of the sovereign pontiff, whose unbounded supremacy it recognizes. Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and Julius III., never aspired to a more absolute theocracy, more subversive of all civil authority and of all social principle.³⁰⁷ In consequence, they determined in France, that the council of Trent, infallible in its dogmas, was not so in its legislation; and not to be surprised into it, they published neither its legislation nor dogmas: the States of Blois in 1570, and of Paris in 1614, opposed themselves warmly to this publication, demanded by the popes, and solicited even by the clergy of France; for we are obliged to avow, that since 1560 the larger proportion of this body did not cease, whatever they may say to the contrary, to confound its interests with those of the court of Rome; and if it appeared for a while to detach itself from it, by the Five Articles of 1682, of which we shall shortly treat, it has since amply repaid by compliances and connivance, a step into which peculiar circumstances had led it.