Protestant and Catholic branches of the
Christian faith, with the eventual goal of
bringing Protestants back under papal au-
thority within the traditional church. To
this end, he founded the Congregation of
the Holy Office, also known as the Roman
Inquisition, in order to try cases of heresy.
During his tenure, the Society of Jesus, or
Jesuits, was established in order to teach
Catholic doctrine to students, carry out
the Catholic Reformation in Europe, and
enforce the church’s missionary activities
in the new colonies of Asia and the Ameri-
cas. (For one, Paul decreed that Native
Americans should not be taken as slaves.)
Taking more direct action, Paul allied the
Papacy with Emperor Charles V in his
campaigns to smash the Schmalkaldic
League of Protestant German princes.
Determined to return Rome to its role
as a leading city of the arts and scholar-
ship, Paul hired Michelangelo Buonarroti
to paint the giant fresco known asThe Last
Judgmenton a wall of the Sistine Chapel.
Paul ordered the renovation of ancient
monuments in Rome, such as the Castel
Sant’ Angelo and the Roman monuments
of the Capitoline Hill. He was also respon-
sible for the building of the massive
Palazzo Farnese in central Rome, a mag-
nificent Renaissance palace that currently
houses the embassy of France. Like other
Renaissance popes, however, Paul saw the
Papacy as an opportunity to enrich and
empower his close relatives, who received
appointments in the church, land, and
other property.
SEEALSO: Paul IV; Reformation, Catholic;
Reformation, Protestant
Paul IV ...........................................
(1476–1559)
Pope of the Catholic Church from 1555
until 1559. A zealous reformer of the
church, Paul took the Papacy in a direc-
tion away from what he saw as the dan-
gerous humanist secularism of the Renais-
sance. Born as Giovanni Carafa, in the
town of Capriglio in the Campagna re-
gion, he belonged to a noble family that
counted cardinals and high church offi-
cials among its members. He was trained
in Latin and Greek but rejected the hu-
manist teachings of the Renaissance, in-
stead following the philosophies of medi-
eval Scholasticism. He was ordained as a
priest in 1505 and shortly afterward made
bishop of the town of Chieti. He was ap-
pointed archbishop of Brindisi, a port
town on the Adriatic Sea, in 1518, and in
1536 he was appointed as a cardinal. He
became the archbishop of Naples in 1549
and in 1555 was elected pope as Paul IV.
Paul was a harsh disciplinarian who
had poor relations with the Catholic rulers
of Europe, including the Habsburg emper-
ors and the king of Spain. He spared little
effort in enforcing a strict and sweeping
reform of the church. He had monks,
priests, and cardinals tried for minor in-
fractions and sentenced to prison and to
slave galleys, and banished church officials
from other towns who had taken up the
easy court life in the city of Rome. He was
fervently opposed to the presence of Jews
in Rome and decreed in 1555 the building
of the city’s ghetto, a walled compound
whereRomanJewswereforcedtoliveand
work.
To prevent opposing opinion and he-
retical views from spreading to the public,
he established in 1559 theIndex Librorum
Prohibitorum, or Index of Forbidden
Books, a list of volumes (including all
books and tracts written by Protestants)
that were henceforth banned to Catholics.
Paul had little regard for the work of gen-
eral church councils, however, and failed
to convene the Council of Trent, whichPaul IV