Sixtus turned impatiently toward Spain and encouraged the designs of Philip. On July 15, 1588, he signed a treaty with the League and Spain, and the new alliance promised the complete eradication of heresy from France. The failure of the Armada and the Pope's habitual distrust of Philip clouded the alliance for a time, but Henry III. was not willing to accept the Pope's terms for a transfer of his affections. Sixtus was especially eager to have the decrees of the Council of Trent published in France. To this the Gallican clergy objected, and Henry himself declared that he would publish them only "salvis juribus regis et regni": a phrase which Sixtus, to use his own words, "cursed." Even when, to the Pope's extreme anger, Henry had the Duke and the Cardinal of Guise assassinated, Sixtus remained too irresolute to derive advantage from the King's remorse or apprehension, though the Spaniards and the League gained ground at Rome. Henry III., indeed, entered into alliance with the Protestant Henry against the League, and Sixtus was content to issue a fresh threat of excommunication against the Huguenot.
But the assassination of the King in August (1589) simplified the situation, and Sixtus definitely allied himself with Spain and the League against Henry IV.: a very natural, but equally impolitic, decision. Venice recognized Henry, and the Pope at first recalled his Nuncio from Venice and then, hearing the success of the new King, ordered him to return. Sixtus was beginning to appreciate the situation, and, when the Duke of Luxemburg came to Rome to tell of Henry's willingness to reconsider his religious position, he was amiably received. The Spaniards made a last violent struggle, and even threatened to arraign the Pope for heresy before a General Council, but Sixtus now saw his way clearly. Throughout the year 1590 he braved the threats of the Spaniards and watched the progress of Henry IV., but the struggle against Spaniards and Jesuits was too exacting for a man of his years and he succumbed to fever on August 24th.
Sixtus must unhesitatingly be included among the great Popes, but it is perplexing to read, as one often does, that he was "one of the greatest of the Popes." The work he accomplished in five years is far greater than most of the Popes achieved, or would have achieved, in twenty years, and at least the greater part of his reform-work in Rome and Italy was of considerable value. Yet even here we must not overlook his defects: he transgressed his own regulations when he would gratify his affections, he enforced reforms with harshness and violence, and he greatly lessened the value of his economic work by hoarding a vast sum for the purpose (apparently) of conducting a visionary grand campaign against Turks and heretics. His political attitude was, as I have shown, injudicious and irresolute. Both in character and statesmanship he falls far short of the greater Popes, and it is, perhaps, some indication of the evil plight of the Church that Sixtus V. should be the ablest man it could produce in a century of grave and persistent danger.
FOOTNOTES:
[312] See Dr. G.H. Putnam's Censorship of the Church of Rome (2 vols., 1907), i., 168.
[313] See, besides the work of Pallavicini already quoted, Paolo Sarpi's Istoria del Concilio Tridentino.
[314] It is, however, true that the hostile Italian biographer, Gregorio Leti (Vita di Sisto Quinto, 3 vols., 1693), who tells this must be read with discretion; and we must use equal discretion in reading Tempesti's Storia della Vita e Geste di Sisto V. (1754), which is inspired by a contrary determination to praise Sixtus. I need recommend only the full and generally judicious biography of Sixtus which we owe to Baron de Hübner (Sixte Quint, 3 vols., 1870), remarking that in it the panegyrical tendency is more conspicuous than the critical. For a smaller biography M.A.J. Dumesnil's Histoire de Sixte-Quint (1869) is excellent.
[315] December 5, 1586.
[316] Bull Quum Sicut, May 28, 1586. Bull Quum Alias, December 17, 1585.
[317] Recent Popes had established what was, in effect, a system of life assurance. A large money-payment secured an income for life out of the proceeds of certain taxes. Sixtus multiplied these Monti (as the funds were called) in order to obtain a large sum of money at once, and he thus mortgaged the resources of the Holy See. Ranke, whose chapters on Sixtus are amongst his best, heavily censures the Pope's finance.