destruction are impending
over all sound arts and sciences.' 'It is my misery,' he groans, 'to
behold the gradual extinction and total decay of Greek letters, in whose
train I see the whole body of refined learning on the point of vanishing
away.[139]

A vigorous passage from one of Sarpi's letters directly bearing on these
points may here be cited (vol. i. p. 170): 'The revival of polite
learning undermined the foundations of Papal monarchy. Nor was this to
be wondered at. This monarchy began and grew in barbarism; the cessation
of barbarism naturally curtailed and threatened it with extinction. This
we already see in Germany and France; but Spain and Italy are still
subject to barbarism. Legal studies sink daily from bad to worse. The
Roman Curia opposes every branch of learning which savors of polite
literature, while it defends its barbarism with tooth and nail. How can
it do otherwise? Abolish those books on Papal Supremacy, and where shall
they find that the Pope is another God, that he is almighty, that all
rights and laws are closed within the cabinet of his breast, that he can
shut up folk in hell, in a word that he has power to square the circle?
Destroy that false jurisprudence, and this tyranny will vanish; but the
two are reciprocally supporting, and we shall not do away with the
former until the latter falls, which will only happen at God's good
pleasure.'

[Footnote 138: See Dejob's _Life of Muret_, pp. 231, 238, 274, 320.]

[Footnote 139: _Op. cit_. pp. 262, 481.]

The jealousy with which liberal studies were regarded by the Church
bred a contempt for them in the minds of students. Benci, a professor of
humane letters at Rome, says that his pupils walked about the class-room
during his lectures. With grim humor he adds that he does not object to
their sleeping, so long as they abstain from snoring.[140] But it is
impossible, he goes on to complain, that I should any longer look upon
the place in which I do my daily work as an academy of learning; I go to
it rather as to a mill in which I must grind out my tale of worthless
grain. Muretus, when he had labored twenty years in the chair of
rhetoric at Rome, begged for dismissal. His memorial to the authorities
presents a lamentable picture of the insubordination and indifference
from which he had suffered.[141] 'I have borne immeasurable indignities
from the continued insolence of these students, who interrupt me with
cries, whistlings, hisses, insults