[Footnote 136:  Lettere, vol. i. p. 312.]

After sixteen months, the quarrel of the interdict was compromised.  Venice, in duel with Islam, could ill afford to break with Rome, even if her national traditions of eight centuries, intertwined with rites of Latin piety, had not forbidden open rupture.  The Papal Court, cowed into resentful silence by antagonism which threatened intellectual revolt through Europe, waived a portion of its claims.  Three French converts from Huguenot opinions to Catholicism, Henri IV., the Cardinal du Perron, and M. de Canaye, adjusted matters.  The interdict was dismissed from Venice rather than removed—­in haughty silence, without the clashing of bells from S. Pietro di Castello and S. Marco, without manifestation of joy in the city which regarded Papal interdicts as illegitimate, without the parade of public absolution by the Pope.  Thus the Republic maintained its dignity of self-respect.  But Camillo Borghese, while proclaiming a general amnesty, reserved in petto implacable animosity against the theologians of the Venetian party.  Two of these, Marsilio. and Rubetti, died suddenly under suspicion of poison.[137] A third, Fulgenzio Manfredi, was lured to Rome, treated with fair show of favor, and finally hung in the Campo di Fiora by order of the Holy Office.[138] A fourth, Capello, abjured his so-called heresies, and was assigned a pittance for the last days of his failing life in Rome.[139] It remained, if possible, to lay hands on Fra Paolo and his devoted secretary, Fra Fulgenzio Micanzi, of the Servites.

[Footnote 137:  Sarpi’s Letters, vol. ii. pp. 179, 284.]

[Footnote 138:  Ibid. pp. 100-102.]

[Footnote 139:  Bianchi Giovini, Vita di Fra P. Sarpi, vol. ii. p. 49.]

Neither threats nor promises availed to make these friends quit Venice.  During the interdict and afterwards, Fulgenzio Micanzi preached the gospel there.  He told the people that in the New Testament he had found truth; but he bade them take notice that for the laity this book was even a dead letter through the will of Rome.[140] Paul V. complained in words like these:  Fra Fulgenzio’s doctrine contains, indeed, no patent heresy, but it rests so clearly on the Bible as to prejudice the Catholic faith.[141] Sarpi informed his French correspondents that Christ and the truth had been openly preached in Venice by this man.[142] Fulgenzio survived the troubles of those times, steadily devoted to his master, of whom he has bequeathed to posterity, a faithful portrait in that biography which combines the dove-like simplicity of the fourteenth century with something of Roger North’s sagacity and humor.[143] Of Fulgenzio we take no further notice here, having paid him our debt of gratitude for genial service rendered in the sympathetic delineation of so eminent a character as Sarpi’s.  A side-regret may be expressed that some such simple and affectionate record of Bruno as a man still fails us, and alas, must ever fail.  Fulgenzio, by his love, makes us love Sarpi, who otherwise might coldly win our admiration.  But for Bruno, that scapegoat of the spirit in the world’s wilderness, there is none to speak words of worship and affection.