Paul was the name of five popes. PAUL I. (757–767) and PAUL II. (1464–71) were unimportant. PAUL III., Alessandro Farnese, reigned from 1534 to 1549, during a very critical period for the papacy. He was born at Carino in Tuscany in 1468, and was created cardinal-deacon in 1493 by Alexander VI., who had illicit relations with his sister. He showed great powers of diplomacy, and on the death of Clement VII. in 1534 was elected pope. One of his first acts was to give cardinals’ hats to two of his boy-grandsons, and throughout his reign he laboured to advance his sons; but his ambitious schemes to secure Parma and Piacenza to the debauched Pietro Luigi were at length frustrated. Yet in other respects he was a wise pontiff, and he had the prudence to surround his throne with good cardinals like Contarini, Pole, and Sadolet. He convoked a general council to meet at Mantua in 1542, but it did not actually assemble (in Trent) until 1545. The bull of excommunication and deposition which he issued in 1538 against Henry VIII. of England is a late example of the exercise of the temporal power claimed by the mediæval popes. The bull instituting the order of the Jesuits (1540) is important as marking the beginning of the Roman counter-reformation. In the contest of Charles V. with the Protestant League in Germany Paul sent a large force to support the emperor, and he opposed the pacification proposed by him upon the basis of the Interim. And in the struggle between the emperor and Francis I. he tried to trim in order to save the peace of Italy and the interests of his bastards. He died suddenly, November 10, 1549.
PAUL IV., named Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, a member of the noble family of that name, was born in Naples in 1476. His early career was distinguished for ascetic rigour. He was appointed Bishop of Chieti, in which see he laboured most earnestly for the reformation of abuses, and for the revival of religion and morality. With this view he established, in conjunction with several congenial reformers, the congregation of secular clergy called Theatines, and was himself the first superior. He showed himself the most rigorous enemy of heresy, and it was under his influence that Paul III. organised the tribunal of the Inquisition in Rome. On the death of Marcellus II. in 1555, although in his seventy-ninth year, he was elected to succeed. He enforced vigorously upon the clergy the observance of all the clerical duties, and enacted laws for the maintenance of public morality. He established a censorship, was the first to issue a full official Index librorum prohibitorum, and completed the organisation of the Roman Inquisition; he took measures for the alleviation of the burdens of the poorer classes, and for the better administration of justice, not sparing even his own nephews, whom he banished from Rome on account of their corrupt conduct and profligate life. His foreign relations, too, involved him in much labour and perplexity.
He was embroiled with the Emperor Ferdinand, with Philip II. of Spain, with Cosmo, grand-duc of Tuscany. Under the weight of so many cares his strength gave way, and he died, August 18, 1559. His severity had been hateful to the Roman citizens, who hailed the news of his death with delight.