ion 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.]

A passage from Sarpi's correspondence may be cited, as sounding the
keynote to all his writings in this famous controversy. 'I imagine,' he
writes to Jacques Gillot in 1609, 'that the State and the Church are two
realms, composed, however, of the same human beings. The one is wholly
heavenl