He also stood firm against nepotism, rebuking his predecessor Pope Pius IV to his face when he wanted to make a 13-year-old member of his family a cardinal and subsidize a nephew from the papal treasury.

[5] By means of the papal bull of 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I of England for heresy and persecution of English Catholics during her reign.

He fasted, did penance, passed long hours of the night in meditation and prayer, traveled on foot without a cloak in deep silence, or only speaking to his companions of the things of God.

As his reformist zeal provoked resentment, he was compelled to return to Rome in 1550, where, after having been employed in several inquisitorial missions, he was appointed to the commissariat of the Holy Office.

On 4 January, a courier from Spain arrived, prompting rumors that King Philip II favoured the election of Cardinal Ghislieri.

As the cardinals conferred with each other more intensely, the number of those who looked to Ghislieri increased, and this led eventually to his election as the new pope on the afternoon of 8 January 1566.

His pontificate saw him dealing with internal reform of the Church, the spread of Protestant doctrines in the West, and Turkish armies advancing from the East.

Aware of the necessity of restoring discipline and morality at Rome to ensure success, he at once proceeded to reduce the cost of the papal court after the manner of the Dominican Order to which he belonged, compel residence among the clergy, regulated inns, and assert the importance of the ceremonial in general and the liturgy of the Mass in particular.

In his wider policy, which was characterized throughout by an effective stringency, the maintenance and increase of the efficacy of the Inquisition and the enforcement of the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent had precedence over other considerations.

[15] Pius V arranged the forming of the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire, as the result of which the Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571) was won by the combined fleet under Don John of Austria.

By the time Pius V ascended the throne, Protestantism had swept over all of England and Scotland, as well as half of Germany, the Netherlands, and parts of France; only Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy remained unswervingly Catholic.

In the first year of his papacy, Pius urged Mary, Queen of Scots to restore Catholicism in her realm, providing funding and sending Jesuit Vincenzo Lauro to Scotland as Nuncio to further this cause.

However, with Mary's Protestant half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, back at the heart of government and her Catholic husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in disfavour, the political circumstances did not prove favourable.

He directed the dismissal of Cardinal Odet de Coligny[18] and seven bishops, nullified the royal edict tolerating the extramural services of the Reformers, introduced the Roman catechism, restored papal discipline, and strenuously opposed all compromise with the Huguenot nobility.

Pius then issued a Papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis ("Reigning on High"), dated 27 April 1570, that declared Elizabeth I a heretic and released her subjects from their allegiance to her.

[21] It is said that in "the time of a great famine in Rome, he imported grain at his own expense from Sicily and France [...]; a considerable part of which he distributed among the poor, gratis, and sold the rest to the public below cost.

[24] Besides In Coena Domini (1568), there are several others of note, including his prohibition of quaestuary (February 1567 and January 1570); condemnation of ideas associated with Michael Baius, a professor of Leuven (1567); reform of the Roman Breviary (July 1568); formal condemnation of homosexual behaviour (dirum nefas) by the clergy (1568);[25] the banishment of the Jews from all ecclesiastical dominions except Rome and Ancona (1569);[26] declaring the primacy of the Lateran over St. Peter's (1569);[27] an injunction against use of the reformed missal (July 1570); the confirmation of the privileges of the Society of Crusaders for the protection of the Inquisition (October 1570); the suppression of the Fratres Humiliati (February 1571); the approbation of the new office of the Blessed Virgin (March 1571); and the enforcement of the daily recitation of the Canonical Hours (September 1571).

From that date onward, the books of ceremonies speak ever more explicitly of the Pope as wearing a red mantle, mozzetta, camauro and shoes, and a white cassock and stockings.

He also immediately commissioned a representative tomb from the sculptor Pierre Le Gros the Younger to be erected in the Sistine Chapel of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

Cardinal John Henry Newman declared that "St. Pius V was stern and severe, as far as a heart burning and melted with divine love could be so ...