03).]

[Footnote 131: It was usual at this epoch to send Protestant
publications from beyond the Alps in bales of cotton or other goods.
This appears from the Lucchese proclamations against heresy published in
_Arch. Stor._ vol. x.]

[Footnote 132: I may mention that having occasion to consult
Savonarola's works in the Public Library of Perugia, which has a fairly
good collection of them, I found them useless for purposes of study by
reason of these erasures and Burke-plasters.]

[Footnote 133: Dejob, _op. cit._ p. 43.]

During the period of the Counter-Reformation it was the cherished object
of the Popes to restore ecclesiastical and theological learning. They
gathered men of erudition round them in the Vatican, and established a
press for the purpose of printing the Fathers and diffusing Catholic
literature. But they were met in the pursuance of this project by very
serious difficulties. Their own policy tended to stifle knowledge and
suppress criticism. The scholars whom they chose as champions of the
faith worked with tied hands. Baronio knew no Greek; Latini knew hardly
any; Bellarmino is thought to have known but little. And yet these were
the apostles of Catholic enlightenment, the defenders of the infallible
Church against students of the caliber of Erasmus, Casaubon, Sarpi! An
insuperable obstacle to sacred studies of a permanently useful kind was
the Tridentine decree which had declared the Vulgate inviolable. No
codex of age or authority which displayed a reading at variance with the
inspired Latin version might be cited. Sirleto, custodian of the Vatican
Library, refused lections from its MSS. to learned men, on the ground
that they might seem to impugn the Vulgate.[134] For the same reason,
the critical labors of all previous students, from Valla to Erasmus, on
the text of the Bible were suppressed, and the best MSS. of the Fathers
were ruthlessly garbled, in order to bring their quotations into
accordance with Jerome's translation. Galesini takes credit to himself
in a letter to Sirleto for having withheld a clearly right reading in
his edition of the Psalms, because it explained a mistake in the
Vulgate.[135] We have seen how Latini's Cyprian suffered from the
censure; and there is a lamentable history of the Vatican edition of
Ambrose, which was so mutilated that the Index had to protect it from
confrontation with the original codices.[136] This dishonest dealing not
only discouraged students and par