One of the first acts of his reign had been to condemn four of the Caraffeschi--Cardinal Caraffa, the Duke of Palliano, Count Aliffe and Leonardo di Cardine--to death; and this act of justice ended forever the old forms of domestic ambition which had hampered the Popes of the Renaissance in their ecclesiastical designs.

His brother, the Marquis of Marignano, died in 1555; and this event opened for him the path to the Papacy, which he would never have attained in the lifetime of so grasping and ambitious a man.[35] With his next brother, Augusto, who succeeded to the marquisate, he felt no sympathy.[36] His nephew Federigo Borromeo died in youth.

His other nephew, Carlo Borromeo, the sainted Archbishop of Milan, remained close to his person in Rome.[37] But Carlo Borromeo was a man who personified the new spirit of Catholicism.

Sincerely pious, zealous for the faith, immaculate in conduct, unwearied in the discharge of diocesan duties, charitable to the poor, devoted to the sick, he summed up all the virtues of the Counter-Reformation.

Nor had he any of the virtues of the Renaissance.