[Footnote 133:  Fra Fulgenzio’s Vita di F. Paolo, p. 42.  Venetian Dispatches in Mutinelli’s Storia Arcana, vol. iii. p. 67.]

[Footnote 134:  The treatise which Sarpi translated was Gerson’s Considerations upon Papal Excommunications.  Gerson’s part in the Council of Constance will be remembered.  See Creighton’s History of the Papacy, vol. i. p. 211.]

Yet we must not forget that, during the first years of the seventeenth century, the Venetian conflict with Papal absolutism, considered merely as a test-case in international jurisprudence, was one of vitally important interest.  When we reflect how the Catholic Alliance was then engaged in rolling back the tide of Reformation, how the forces of Rome had been rallied by the Tridentine Council, and how the organism of the Jesuits had been created to promulgate new dogmas of Papal almightiness in Church and State, this resistance of Venice, stoutly Catholic in creed, valiant in her defense of Christendom against the Moslem, supported by her faithful churchman and accomplished canonist, was no inconsiderable factor in the European strife for light and liberty.  The occasion was one of crucial gravity.  Reconstituted Rome had not as yet been brought into abrupt collision with any commonwealth which abode in her communion.  Had Venice yielded in that issue, the Papacy might have augured for itself a general victory.  That Venice finally submitted to Roman influence, while preserving the semblance of independence, detracts, indeed, from the importance of this Interdict-affair considered as an episode in the struggle for spiritual freedom.  Moreover, we know now that the presumptuous pretensions of the Papacy at large were destined, before many years had passed, to be pared down, diminished and obliterated by the mere advance of intellectual enlightenment.  Yet none of these considerations diminish Sarpi’s claim to rank as hero in the forefront of a battle which in his time was being waged with still uncertain prospects.[135] In their comparatively narrow spheres Venice and Sarpi, not less than Holland, England, Sweden and the Protestants of Germany, on their wider platform at a later date, were fighting for a principle upon which the liberty of States depended.  And they were the first to fight for it upon the ground most perilous to the common adversary.  In all his writings Sarpi sought to prove that men might remain sound Catholics and yet resist Roman aggression; that the Roman Court and its modern champions had introduced new doctrine, deviating from the pristine polity of Christendom; that the post-Tridentine theory of Papal absolutism was a deformation of that order which Christ founded, which the Apostles edified, and which the Councils of a purer age had built into the living temple of God’s Church on earth.

[Footnote 135:  Sarpi’s correspondence abundantly proves how very grave was the peril of Papal Absolutism in his days.  The tide had not begun to turn with force against the Jesuit doctrines of Papal Supremacy.  See Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 4-12, on these doctrines and the counter-theories to which they gave rise.  We must remember that the Papal power was now at the height of its ascension; and Sarpi can be excused for not having reckoned on the inevitable decline it suffered during the next century.]