central power of the
first magnitude like France might have conducted with fair prospect of
success. In the meantime what Sarpi called the Diacatholicon, that
absolutist alliance of Rome, Spain and Austria, supported by the
Inquisition and the Jesuits, accepted by the states of Italy and firmly
rooted in some parts of Germany, invaded even those provinces where the
traditions of independence still survived. After 1610 the Jesuits
obtained possession of France; and though they did not effect their
re-entrance into Venice, the ruling classes of the Republic allowed
themselves to be drugged by the prevalent narcotic. Venice, too, was
fighting for her life in the Adriatic and the Levant, while her nobles
became daily more supine in aristocratic leisure, more papalizing in
their private sympathies. Thus the last years of Sarpi's life were
overclouded by a deep discouragement, which did not, indeed, extinguish
his trust in the divine Providence or his certain belief that the right
would ultimately prevail, but which adds a tragic interest to the old
age of this champion of political and moral liberty fallen on evil days.

I have thought it well to preface what I have to say about Sarpi with
this forecast of his final attitude. As the Italian who most clearly
comprehended the full consequences of the Catholic Revival, and who
practically resisted what was evil for his nation in that reactionary
movement, he demands a prominent place in this book. On his claims to
scientific discoveries and his special service rendered to the Venetian
Republic it will suffice to touch but lightly.

Sarpi's father was short of stature, brown-complexioned, choleric and
restless. His mother was tall, pale, lymphatic, devoted to religious
exercises and austerities. The son of their ill-assorted wedlock
inherited something of both temperaments. In his face and eyes he
resembled his mother; and he derived from her the piety which marked his
course through life. His short, spare person, his vivid, ever-active
intellect testified to the paternal impress. This blending of two
diverse strains produced in him a singular tenacity of fiber. Man's
tenement of clay has rarely lodged a spirit so passionless, so fine, so
nearly disembodied. Of extreme physical tenuity, but gifted with
inexhaustible mental energy, indefatigable in study, limitless in
capacity for acquiring and retaining knowledge, he accentuated the type
which nature gave him by the sustained