o suppress all books against the writings
of Baronius, who was treated as a saint, vol. i. pp. 3, 147, ii. p. 35.
He relates how the Jesuits had procured the destruction of a book
written to uphold aristocracy in states, without touching upon
ecclesiastical questions, as being unfavorable to their theories of
absolutism (vol. i. p. 122). He tells the story of a confessor who
refused the sacraments to a nobleman, because he owned a treatise
written by Quirino in defense of the Venetian prerogatives (vol. i. p.
113). He refers to the suppression of James I.'s _Apologia_ and De
Thou's _Histories_ (vol. i. pp. 286, 287, 383).]

In his critique of this monstrous unfairness Sarpi says: 'There are not
wanting men in Italy, pious and of sound learning, who hold the truth
upon such topics; but these can neither write nor send their writings to
the press.'[150] The best years and the best energies of Sarpi's life
were spent, as is well known, in combating the arrogance of Rome, and in
founding the relations of State to Church upon a basis of sound common
sense and equity. More than once he narrowly escaped martyrdom as the
reward of his temerity; and when the poignard of an assassin struck him,
his legend relates that he uttered the celebrated epigram: _Agnosco
stilum Curiae Romanae_.

[Footnote 150: In the Treatise on the Inquisition, _Opere_, vol. iv. p.
53. Sarpi, in a passage of his _Letters_ (vol. ii. p. 163), points out
why the secular authorities were ill fitted to retaliate in kind, upon
these Papal proscriptions.]

Sarpi protested, not without good reason, that Rome was doing her best
to extinguish sound learning in Italy. But how did she deal with that
rank growth of licentious literature which had sprung up during the
Renaissance period? This is the question which should next engage us. We
have seen that the Council of Trent provided amply for the extirpation
of lewd and obscene publications. Accordingly, as though to satisfy the
sense of decency, some of the most flagrantly immoral books, including
the _Decameron_, the _Priapeia_, the collected works of Aretino, and
certain mediaeval romances, were placed upon the Index. Berni was
proscribed in 1559; but the interdict lasted only a short time, probably
because it was discovered that his poems, though licentious, were free
from the heresies which Pier Paolo Vergerio had sought to fix upon him.
Meanwhile no notice was taken of the _Orlando Furioso_, and a multitude