The quarrel began by the Pope's laying claim to the royalties of Ceneda, which the Venetians resisted. Papal exemptions from tithes formed the second grievance; while two laws, forbidding the alienation of church property or the building of churches without the sanction of the magistrates, were regarded by the pope as offensive and insulting acts on the part of the republic; and, lastly, the Venetians took from the papal authorities two clergymen whom the latter had imprisoned.

Such were the chief grounds of quarrel. The pope certainly triumphed in the end, although many modern writers have averred the contrary. The dignity of the holy see was doubtless much compromised by the way in which the victory was gained; still, gained it was without a doubt. Paul V. laid Venice under an interdict. The authorities took such care, that no effect of it was visible. Service went on, and holydays were observed as usual; the three orders of Theatins, Capuchins, and Jesuits retiring from the city. Paul tried to raise a war; but the friendship of France for Venice, which had declared for Henry IV. when all the rest of the Catholic world was against him, intimidated Spain. The warlike attempts came to nothing. Yet, in the end, Cardinal Joyeuse was sent from France to Venice. The republic gave up to the nuncio the two prisoners, saving its dignity by a childish and ineffectual protest; and, secondly, consented to receive absolution, only it was to be private. The

Jesuits were not, however, allowed to return, and Lerma's administration in Spain being of the Dominican party, the pope could not enforce it. Furthermore, the republic suspended the laws of which the pope had complained; and so the matter ended.

But the important thing to be observed is the existence of the strong anti-papal spirit in Venice, which enabled the republic to give the pope so much trouble, while it conducted its opposition with an unusually dignified firmness. This spirit certainly seems to connect itself with those good men of Paul the Third's day, of whom we have been recently speaking. After the sack of Rome and the taking of Florence and the troubles of Milan, Venice was for some years the abode of all the learned men and theologians of Italy, and it was likely the seed they had sown should spring up afterwards, when their meetings and reunions had long ceased. The espousal of Henry the Fourth's cause by the Venetian republic betokens somewhat of an antipapal spirit, and a hatred or fear of the disloyal principles openly taught by the Jesuits and the great majority of the Roman doctors. This was before the end of the sixteenth century. It was in 1606 that the actual triumph of the anti-papal party took place, in the election of the Doge Donato. The principles which had long struggled beneath the surface, wielding and agitating the undercurrents of the state, now emerged, and from the ducal throne guided the whole republic. The language used of and to the pope was

quite in accordance with the doctrines of Contarini, somewhat exasperated by long suppression and disappointment, which had likewise weakened the lively regard for the unity of the Church which had been a special badge of Contarini's school. Yet the friends of Leonardo Donato and Paolo Sarpi might legitimately consider Contarini to have been their prophet and doctor.

The character of Paolo Sarpi, contrasted with that of Contarini, shows how opinions (and so the holders of them) become debased when held for any length of time in a party way, and speaking without a legal mouth. Ranke, in condemning as an exaggeration the idea that Paolo Sarpi was a protestant, says, "it would be difficult to define to what form of Christianity he was inwardly attached; it was one often held in those times, especially by men who had devoted themselves to the physical sciences, a religion bound by none of the established systems, original, speculative, but neither absolutely defined nor completely worked out." From this it would follow, and did actually follow, that the spirit of complacent indifference in Paolo Sarpi was stirred up to a vehement and bitter hatred of authority, as interfering with and controlling his literary eclecticism; and with a system not afraid, as an authoritative system never is, of its conclusions, witnessing against a temper of mind so unhappy and so little penetrated with true religious feeling. It is said of him that the most determined and irreconcileable

hatred towards the secular influence of the papacy was probably the only passion he ever cherished, and that it was whetted by the refusal of a bishopric, attended by some mortifying circumstances. Thus what had been belief, pious, energetic, pure, obedient, quick-spirited, hopeful, in Contarini, became literary opinion, cold, lifeless, unpractical, unreal, scholastic, disobedient, in Sarpi. It exemplifies the natural degeneracy of unauthoritative schools within. a Church. Faith has ever a tendency to become attenuated into mere opinion where it has not supernatural "coigns of vantage" whereto it may cling. The public acts of the Church in teaching, or devotion, or ascetic observance, are alone those coigns of vantage. There is no instance of an unauthoritative school beginning well, which did not end badly, if it was not incorporated into the system of the Church, either by tacit approval or public recognition. The history of the papacy and its relations with the religious orders is full of exemplifications of this.

It is to be feared that we have among ourselves some characters analogous to that of Paolo Sarpi; especially among the most thoughtful and intelligent of the laity. There are men who feel an ill-tutored and impatient weariness of verbal controversies, and see nothing providential, either in the way of trial or chastisement, in the doubt and uncertainty which attaches in these days to every religious system. They arrive at their religious notions, not so much from having found their way thither by modest and

unobtrusive works, from holy practice being guided to sound doctrine, but rather propelled by the discomfort of unsettled opinions on grave subjects, which will intrude even into the library of the man of letters. They have tried in the balance of reason, and by the test of revelation, the unreal system of impulses, sentiments, and motives, which was so long considered as the exclusive representative of the Gospel, and it has been found wanting, hollow, wordy, cheerless, self-contemplative, morbid, inconsistent, feverish, delusive. They have next examined the claims put forward on behalf of the Church, and in defence of her authority, mysterious gifts, and supernatural prerogatives. But they have been disappointed and petulant, that a claim of authority is put forward, and yet definite and distinct certainty, if not infallibility, is not given in reward for the submission of the intellect. They are out of humor at discovering that these prerogatives, so great in name, so soothing in sound, are clouded over, and that we have to fight through baffling mists, in order to find and identify the springs. They do not see moral discipline in this, or a divine chastisement, of which the sinful divisions of Christendom give a mournfully sufficient explanation. The result is a kind of literary suspension between England and Rome. So much is involved in joining the latter, that they have not boldness enough for it. It is that which keeps them back, not allegiance to their English mother. Added to which is a recoil in