Adrian  was  a  Dutch  Ximenes.  He  had  the  same
passionate  desire  for  the  Beformation  of  the  Church,  and
the  same  ideas  of  how  such  Beformation  could  be  brought
about.  He  prized  the  ascetic  life ;  he  longed  to  see  the
monastic  orders  and  the  secular  clergy  disciplined  in  the
strictest  way ;  he  had  a  profound  admiration  for  Thomas
Aquinas,  and  especially  for  that  side  of  the  great  School-
man's teaching  which  represented  the  ideas  of  St.  Augustine.
He  so  exactly  reproduced  in  his  own  aspirations  the
desires  of  the  Spanish  Beformers,  that  Cardinal  Carvajal,
who  with  the  grave  enthusiasm  of  his  nation  was  engaged
in  the  quixotic  task  of  commending  the  Spanish  Beforma-
tion to  the  authorities  in  Bome,  desired  to  take  him  there
as  an  indispensable  assistant.  He  was  also  in  full
sympathy  with  the  darker  side  of  the  Spanish  Beforma-
tion. During  his  sojourn  in  Spain  he  had  become  one  of
the  heads  of  the  Inquisition,  and  was  firmly  opposed  to
any  relaxation  of  the  rigours  of  the  Holy  Office.  With
Adrian  in  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  the  Emperor  and  the
leaders  of  the  Spanish  Church  might  hope  to  see  their
type  of  a  reformation  adopted  to  .cure  the  ills  under  which
the  Church  was  suffering.
The  new  Pope  did  not  lack  sympathisers  in  Italy
when  he  began  his  task  of  cleansing  the  Augean  stables
without  turning  the  torrent  of  revolution  through  them.
