The quarrels between the Lutherans and the Calvinists gave hopes to Rome that she might recover her losses.
Leo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Reformation was something more serious than a squabble among some monks about the profits of indulgence-sales, and the papacy set itself seriously at work to overcome the revolters.

It instigated the frightful wars that for so many years desolated Europe, and left animosities which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the Council of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose.

No one can read without a shudder the attempts that were made to extend the Inquisition in foreign countries.

All Europe, Catholic and Protestant, was horror-stricken at the Huguenot massacre of St.Bartholomew's Eve (A.D.

1572).