Five of these men represented opinions which at the moment of their elevation to the purple had a fair prospect of ultimate success.

Imbued with a profound sense of the need for ecclesiastical reform, and tinctured more or less deeply with so-called Protestant opinions, they desired nothing more intensely than a reconstitution of the Catholic Church upon a basis which might render reconciliation with the Lutherans practicable.

They had their opportunity during the pontificate of Paul III.

It was a splendid one; and, as I have already shown, the Conference of Rechensburg only just failed in securing the end they so profoundly desired.

But the Papacy was not prepared to concede so much as they were anxious to grant: the German Reformers proved intractable; they were themselves impeded by their loyalty to antique Catholic traditions, and by their dread of a schism; finally, the militant expansive force of Spanish orthodoxy, expressing itself already in the concentrated energy of the Jesuit order, rendered attempts at fusion impossible.