In June 1551, the Commissariat of the Holy Office having become vacant, Michele was spontaneously and unanimously chosen to fill the station. Cardinal Carafa treated him with the utmost familiarity. It is unnecessary to add, that he was most assiduous in the discharge of his new duties. Among other exploits, we are indebted to the Spanish biographer for an account of the recovery of a relapsed heretic, condemned to the flames, the learned and celebrated Sixtus Senensis. The zeal of the commissary,' Fuenmayor - adds, ' was marvellous both in reducing those 'who erred in the faith and in chastising the 'incorrigible*.'

In 1555 Cardinal Carafa was elected to the tiara under the name of Paul IV.†; and, at a season which claimed all the energy and vigilance of the pillars of popery, the unprecedented powers were committed to Michele, of settling questions of faith, and absolving or condemning by his own authority. The new pontiff designed to reward his faithful

* Fol. 10.

+ This individual, when cardinal, was one of the nine who, under the sanction of the living pope, in 1537, drew up the celebrated Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, which himself, when raised to the papal throne, put in his own Index of condemned books.-See Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, &c., pp. 48, 49.

servant with the bishopric of Nepi and Sutri ; and upon his declining that preferment, conferred the purple upon him with the title of Alessandrino, with reference to the city nearest to his birth-place. This, Michele said, was taking him out of purgatory to put him into hell. But higher honours, and in one respect the highest, awaited the commissary. He was appointed and named Supreme Inquisitor a title and prerogative, which he was both the first and the last to bear, the popes having ever after reserved that distinction to themselves *. The alacrity of the cardinal was naturally increased by the fresh stimulus of such an extraordinary trust and honour.

As an illustration of the extent and proceedings of the most unrighteous of all tribunals, it deserves to be added, from other sources than the biographers, with whom we are immediately concerned, that a kindred spirit to that of Michele was found in Felice Peretti, eventually Pope Sixtus V., who was made Inquisitor-General at Venice by Paul IV., at the beginning of his pontificate, and, at the recommendation of Michele, under

* At present the pope is prefect,—a cardinal secretary,—then the other cardinals of the congregation, consultors,―first compagno, fiscal, advocate of the guilty, with others,-and last the qualificators.

whom he was to act. He made himself acceptable to his superior by his indefatigable and ferocious zeal; and there are two letters, with a memorial of seventeen articles, from Alessandrino, for his direction, in the biographer of Sixtus V., Gregorio Leti, who, from his general conformity with the representations of a manuscript life of that pontiff in the author's possession, appears to have executed his task, particularly as documents are concerned, with quite as much, if not more, fidelity, than the more modern panegyrical and ostentatious biographer, Tempesti. This sub-inquisitor proceeded with such ill-considered and intemperate zeal, that, after a long altercation with the authorities of the republic, he was advised, and obliged, to flee *.

In 1559 a pope of the family of the Medici was elected under the name of Pius IV. Alessandrino was promoted under this pontificate, in 1561, to the bishopric of Mondovi in Piemonte, a neglected place, and, as it is said, of depraved morals, being in the vicinity of heretics. This of course is the language of papal heretics. About to visit his new charge, he proceeded to it by way of Genoa, and was

Parte i. lib. iii. ed. Amstel. 1721, or Farneworth's partial translation, book ii. The letters are dated 1557 and 1558.

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mortified, that the secular power was tardy in assisting him by human holocausts to castigate the heretics. He returned by Milan to Rome. Here he resumed his inquisitorial solicitudes; and his opinion was much consulted and deferred to, during the sitting of the last assembly of the Tridentine Council.

It happened in 1563 that the pope meditated and proposed advancing two youths of noble extraction to the cardinalate. Alessandrino remonstrated with great liberty of speech, by which he drew upon himself a high degree of papal resentment; and when, after the election, which was carried into effect, the parties gratified returned him thanks as concurring in it, he honestly declined the offering, and declared the truth. Towards the close of this pontificate, the emperor Maximilian and other princes of Germany urged, for avoiding greater evils, the marriage of priests. The vacillating pontiff was dissuaded from the concession by his stern inquisitor. He likewise withstood the head of the church in his wish to substitute, as his legate at Avignon, in the place of Alessandro Farnese, Charles de Bourbon, since, from his heretical connexions, he would be likely to be indulgent to heresy. The offence

of the pope was greatly inflamed by this series of contradiction, and he not only dismissed the inquisitor from his apartments in the palace, but abridged his inquisitorial authority. At this time, 1564, being sixty years of age, he was so much afflicted by a complaint of some standing, strangury, that he turned all his thoughts to his own dissolution, and an epitaph which he had prepared for himself. He however recovered, and was on the point of returning to his episcopate, when the seizure of his baggage by corsairs, on its way to Genoa, and a fresh attack of his disease, together with the entreaties of his brother inquisitors to that purpose, prevailed upon him to continue for the present in Rome -an occurrence, which throws his biographers into devout astonishment at the mysteries of Providence-for at this very juncture, December the 9th, 1565, Pius the Fourth died.