The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

INTRODUCTION. xliii
inroads of Protestanism, or to drive it out where it had akeady
obtained a footing. Pius V., who opposed the enemies of the
Church witli all his power, did not live to see the issue of the
embittered struggle.
Whilst this most violent battle was being fought within
the limits of Christendom, the Church was at the same time
being threatened by the gravest danger from without by
Islam, the inveterate enemy of the name of Christ. The
Papacy has a special claim to glory for having, even at this
moment of greatest trouble, kept true to its old tradition of
being the guardian and shield of Christendom and its civiliza-
tion against the approach of danger from the east.
Even during the period of the Renaissance the Holy See
had preserved the ideal of the Crusades with regard to the
increasingly threatening attack of the infidel, and, in propor-
tion to its material power, had done far more towards the
repulse of the terrible enemy than any other power in Europe.^
From Nicholas V. to Paul III. most of the Popes had taken the
lead whenever it was a question of protecting or defending
Christendom and the civilization of the west against the power
of Islam.
The Holy See was the originator and the active supporter
of all the coalitions directed against the Turks, ^ while all the
attempts to rouse Christendom to a common enterprise against
the infidel found in it a warm ally. Even during the stormy
period of the apostasy from the faith, Paul III. succeeded in
1538 in forming a league between the Emperor and Venice
to avert the Turkish danger. It was only when the powerful
maritime Republic concluded a peace with the Porte in 1540,
that other grave religious and political troubles arose for the
Popes, and drove the thought of the Crusades into the back-
ground. 2
Twenty-five years now passed without any concerted attack
^ See previous volumes of this work.
^ The opinion of Herre, Europaische Politik im Cyprischen
Krieg, I., Leipsic, 1902, 30.
* See Vol. XL of this work, p. 272,