It was he who initiated and firmly followed the policy of alliance between the Papacy and the Catholic sovereigns.[33] Instead of asserting the interests of the Church in antagonism to secular potentates, he undertook to prove that their interests were identical.

Militant Protestantism threatened the civil no less than the ecclesiastical order.

The episcopacy attempted to liberate itself from monarchical and pontifical authority alike.

Pius proposed to the autocrats of Europe a compact for mutual defence, divesting the Holy See of some of its privileges, but requiring in return the recognition of its ecclesiastical absolutism.

In all difficult negotiations he was wont to depend upon himself; treating his counselors as agents rather than as peers, and holding the threads of diplomacy in his own hands.