n his monarchy
or of the father in his, household, are denominated and denounced as
_Ratio Status_. The impugner of Papal absolutism in civil, as well as
ecclesiastical affairs, is accounted _ipso facto_ a heretic.[148] It
would appear at first sight as though the clause in question had been
specially framed to condemn Machiavelli and his school. The works of
Machiavelli were placed upon the Index in 1559, and a certain Cesare of
Pisa who had them in his library was put to the torture on this account
in 1610. It was afterwards proposed to correct and edit them without his
name; but his heirs very properly refused to sanction this proceeding,
knowing that he would be made to utter the very reverse of what he meant
in all that touched upon the Roman Church.

[Footnote 147: Sarpi's Works, vol. iv. p. 4.]

[Footnote 148: Sarpi, _Discorso_, vol. iv. p. 25, on Bellarmino's
doctrine. Sarpi's _Letters_, vol. i. pp. 138, 243. Sarpi says that he
and Gillot had both had their portraits painted in a picture of Hell and
shown to the common folk as foredoomed to eternal fire, because they
opposed doctrines of Papal omnipotence. _Ibid._ p. 151.]

This paragraph in the statutes of the Index had, however, a further and
far more ambitious purpose than the suppression of Machiavelli,
Guicciardini, and Sarpi. By assuming to condemn all political writings
of which she disapproved, and by forbidding the secular authorities to
proscribe any works which had received her sanction, the Church obtained
a monopoly of popular instruction in theories of government. She
interdicted every treatise that exposed her own ambitious interference
in civil affairs or which maintained the rights of temporal rulers.[149]
She protected and propagated the works of her servile ministers, who
proclaimed that the ecclesiastical was superior in all points to the
civil power; that nations owed their first allegiance to the Pope, who
was divinely appointed to rule over them, and their second only to the
Prince, who was a delegate from their own body; and that tyrannicide
itself was justifiable when employed against a contumacious or heretical
sovereign. Such were the theories of the Jesuits--of Allen and Parsons
in England, Bellarmino in Italy, Suarez and Mariana in Spain, Boucher in
France.

[Footnote 149: On this point, again, Sarpi's _Letters_ furnish valuable
details. He frequently remarks that a general order had been issued by
the Congregation of the Index t