PAUL THE POPE AND PAUL THE FRIAR. A STORY OF AN INTERDICT. BY T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE, AUTHOR OF "FILIPPO STROZZI: A BIOGRAPHY;" "A DECADE OF ITALIAN LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. PREFACE. THE great contest between the Venetian Republic and the Holy See at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was in its results and bearings on the progress and fortunes of Europe, a far more momentous and memorable event than a mere quarrel between two small Italian States. The contemporary world, indeed, felt it to be so, and interested itself proportionably in the vicissitudes of the struggle. Rome had recently emerged from her greater contest with the principles of the Reformation, sorely diminished indeed as to the extent of the countries and populations subjected to her sway, but with renewed strength and a firmer hold, as many have thought, on those that still owned her supremacy. This quarrel with Venice was the first serious collision with any part of her subjects, after the so-called "restoration" of Catholicism; the first trial of her renovated strength against a force which the Popes, in the palmy days of the Church, would have crushed with one blow of the pastoral staff. And the restored and re-invigorated Church was defied |