alyzed the energy of critical
investigation; but it also involved the closing of public libraries to
scholars. The Vatican could not afford to let the light of science in
upon its workshop of forgeries and sophistications.

[Footnote 134: Dejob, _op. cit._ p. 50. Also his _Muret_, pp. 223-227.]

[Footnote 135: Dejob, _De l'Influence_, p. 49.]

[Footnote 136: Id. _op. cit._ pp. 96-98.]

A voice of reasonable remonstrance was sometimes raised by even the most
incorruptible children of the Church. Thus Bellarmino writes to Cardinal
Sirleto, suggesting a doubt whether it is obligatory to adhere to the
letter of the Tridentine decree upon the Vulgate.[137] Is it rational,
he asks, to maintain that every sentence in the Latin text is
impeccable? Must we reject those readings in the Hebrew and the Greek,
which elucidate the meaning of the Scriptures, in cases where Jerome has
followed a different and possibly a corrupt authority? Would it not be
more sensible to regard the Vulgate as the sole authorized version for
use in universities, pulpits, and divine service, while admitting that
it is not an infallible rendering of the inspired original? He also
touches, in a similar strain of scholar-like liberality, upon the
Septuagint, pointing out that this version cannot have been the work of
seventy men in unity, since the translator of Job seems to have been
better acquainted with Greek than Hebrew, while the reverse is true of
the translator of Solomon. Such remonstrances were not, however,
destined to make themselves effectively heard. Instead of relaxing its
severity after the pontificate of Pius IV., the Congregation of the
Index grew, as we have seen, more rigid, until, in the rules digested by
Clement VIII., it enforced the strictest letter of the law regarding the
Vulgate, and ratified all the hypocrisies and subterfuges which that
implied.

[Footnote 137: This very interesting and valuable letter is printed by
Dejob in the work I have so often cited, p. 391.]

Under the conditions which I have attempted to describe, it was
impossible that Italy should hold her place among the nations which
encouraged liberal studies. Rome had one object in view--to gag the
revolutionary free voice of the Renaissance, to protect conservative
principles, to establish her own supremacy, and to secure the triumph of
the Counter-Reformation. In pursuance of this policy, she had to react
against the learning and the culture of the classica