to a narrow chamber filled with
vitiated and exhausted air.[144]

[Footnote 144: As Sarpi says: 'Of a truth the extraordinary rigor with
which books are hunted out for extirpation, shows how vigorous is the
light of that lantern which they have resolved to extinguish.'
_Lettere_, vol. i. p. 328.]

Similar deductions may be drawn from the life of Paolo Manuzio in Rome.
He left Venice in 1561 at the invitation of Pius IV., who proposed to
establish a press 'for the publication of books printed with the finest
type and the utmost accuracy, and more especially of works bearing upon
sacred and ecclesiastical literature.'[145] Paolo's engagement was for
twelve years; his appointments were fixed at 300 ducats for traveling
expenses, 500 ducats of yearly salary, a press maintained at the
Pontifical expense, and a pension secured upon his son's life. The
scheme was a noble one. Paolo was to print all the Greek and Latin
Fathers, and to furnish the Catholic world with an arsenal of orthodox
learning. Yet, during his residence in Rome, no Greek book issued from
his press.[146] Of the Latin Fathers he gave the Epistles of Jerome,
Salvian, and Cyprian to the world. For the rest, he published the
Decrees of the Tridentine Council ten times, the Tridentine Catechism
eight times, the _Breviarium Romanum_ four times, and spent the greater
part of his leisure in editing minor translations, commentaries, and
polemical or educational treatises. The result was miserable, and the
man was ruined.

[Footnote 145: See Renouard, _op. cit._ pp. 442-459, for Paulus
Manutius's life at Rome.]

[Footnote 146: _op. cit._ pp. 184-216.]

It remains to notice the action of the Index with regard to secular
books in the modern languages. I will first repeat a significant passage
in its statutes touching upon political philosophy and the so-called
_Ratio Status_: 'Item, let all propositions, drawn from the digests,
manners, and examples of the Gentiles, which foster a tyrannical polity
and encourage what they falsely call the reason of state, in opposition
to the law of Christ and of the Gospel, be expunged.' This, says Sarpi
in his Discourse on Printing, is aimed in general against any doctrine
which impugns ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the civil sphere of
princes and magistrates, and the economy of the family.[147] Theories
drawn from whatever source to combat Papal and ecclesiastical
encroachments, and to defend the rights of the sovereign i