authority?  Would it not be more sensible to regard the Vulgate as the sole authorized version for use in universities, pulpits, and divine service, while admitting that it is not an infallible rendering of the inspired original?  He also touches, in a similar strain of scholar-like liberality, upon the Septuagint, pointing out that this version cannot have been the work of seventy men in unity, since the translator of Job seems to have been better acquainted with Greek than Hebrew, while the reverse is true of the translator of Solomon.  Such remonstrances were not, however, destined to make themselves effectively heard.  Instead of relaxing its severity after the pontificate of Pius IV., the Congregation of the Index grew, as we have seen, more rigid, until, in the rules digested by Clement VIII., it enforced the strictest letter of the law regarding the Vulgate, and ratified all the hypocrisies and subterfuges which that implied.

[Footnote 137:  This very interesting and valuable letter is printed by Dejob in the work I have so often cited, p. 391.]

Under the conditions which I have attempted to describe, it was impossible that Italy should hold her place among the nations which encouraged liberal studies.  Rome had one object in view—­to gag the revolutionary free voice of the Renaissance, to protect conservative principles, to establish her own supremacy, and to secure the triumph of the Counter-Reformation.  In pursuance of this policy, she had to react against the learning and the culture of the classical revival; and her views were seconded not only by the overwhelming political force of Spain in the Peninsula, but also by the petty princes who felt that their existence was imperiled.

Independence of judgment was rigorously proscribed in all academies and seats of erudition.  New methods of education and new text-books were forbidden.  Professors found themselves hampered in their choice of antique authors.  Only those classics which were sanctioned by the Congregation of the Index could be used in lecture-rooms.  On the one hand, the great republican advocates of independence had incurred suspicion.  On the other hand, the poets were prohibited as redolent of paganism.  To mingle philosophy with rhetoric was counted a crime.  Thomas Aquinas had set up Pillars of Hercules beyond which the reason might not seek to travel.  Roman law had to be treated from the orthodox scholastic standpoint.  Woe to the audacious jurist who made the Pandects serve for disquisitions on the rights of men and nations!  Scholars like Sigonius found themselves tied down in their class-rooms to a weariful routine of Cicero and Aristotle.  Aonio Paleario complained that a professor was no better than a donkey working in a mill; nothing remained for him but to dole out commonplaces, avoiding every point of contact between the authors he interpreted and the burning questions of modern life.  Muretus, who brought with him to Italy from France a ruined moral reputation with a fervid