So heavily did he lean on Spain that he was called the chaplain of Philip, but, as the obligations were mutual, and the Catholic king came also to depend more and more upon the spiritual arms wielded by the papacy, it might just as well have been said that Philip was the executioner employed by Gregory.

The {387} mediocrity of his rule did not prevent notable achievement by the Jesuits in the cause of the church.

His reform of the calendar will be described more fully elsewhere.
Gregory XIII offers an opportunity to measure the moral standard of the papacy after half a century of reform.

His policy was guided largely by his ruling passion, love of a natural son, born before he had taken priest's orders, whom he made Gonfaloniere of the church and would have advanced to still further preferment had not his advisers objected.
Gregory was the pope who thanked God "for the grace vouchsafed unto Christendom" in the massacre of St.Bartholomew.

He was also the pope who praised and encouraged the plan for the assassination of Elizabeth.[1] [Sidenote: Sixtus V, 1585-90] In the person of Sixtus V the spirit of Pius V returned to power.
Felix Peretti was a Franciscan and an Inquisitor, an earnest man and a hard one.