to slavery every person who furnished the Saracens with arms, iron, or timber for shipping. But though the powers of the Church often struck down remorselessly those who dared to resist the edicts of the successor of St. Peter, the desire of gain and the daring character of the maritime nations often counteracted the most dreadful anathemas of the Vatican. Venice was by far the greatest delinquent; her proud and rapacious merchants, on various occasions, openly resented this interference with their commercial pursuits, and evaded whenever it suited their purpose the observance of the Bulls. The trade with the Levant was too valuable to be relinquished on threats of temporal or even of eternal punishment, and this, too, when urged by an authority often too weak to carry into effect its threats. Hence, while other and weaker nations had occasionally to submit, the Venetians, conscious of their power, resisted with such success the Papal edicts that they at last obtained licences to trade with whomsoever they pleased, and even with the hated followers of Muhammed.
Its futility. It is curious now to reflect upon the bitter animosity which prevailed among the Christians against the followers of the Crescent, and on the extreme though vain measures adopted to prevent commercial intercourse with them. When, in 1288, the famous Raymund Lully propounded his scheme for the reduction of the Holy Land, he insisted on a prohibition of all dealings with Egypt, and asserted that in six years only of such abstention from trade the Egyptians would become so impoverished as to be easily vanquished; he also urged the expediency
