Leopold von Ranke. History of the Popes: Their Church and State, Volume 1. E. Fowler, trans. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966 (originally published 1901).
The Protestant Reformation was one of the great crises of Western history. For a thousand years before that time, the Roman Catholic Church had been a central force perhaps the central force giving shape to Western civilization. But early in the sixteenth century, Rome was challenged more fundamentally and forcefully than ever before. Within a generation, half of Europe had fallen out of the Roman orbit, and it might well have seemed that the rest would, in one way or another, follow. But by mid century, the Church had marshalled its energies and forces in the Counter Reformation. While Protestantism survived in Northern Europe, it was effectively eradicated in the South, and both the Catholic Church and a Catholic culture survived.
Leopold von Ranke, in his History of the Popes, made a close survey of the leading figures of the Counter Reformation their character as individuals, how and why they adopted the policies they did, how they put those policies into action, and with what effect. As the title suggests, it is in the broad sense a political history, not a religious or intellectual history. Ranke is not concerned with the broad sweeps of opinion that brought Protestantism into being, but with how the critical leaders of the opposition to Protestantism the Popes, and other leaders of the Counter Reformation such as Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits responded to the changing situation and the new challenges they confronted.
Ranke's is thus a history of complexities, and often contradictions, rather than one of sweeping and impersonal historical forces. He shows, for example, that some of the Counter Reformation Popes, by their predispositions of character, or even by deliberate acts of policy, ensured the survival...