ROME, THE ESCORIAL, AND VERSAILLES
bol of the decomposition of those energies which the time had struggled to unite. Neither from within nor from without did there come to him the saving hand that could have given order to the chaos which he himself was, and which he sought to spread everywhere he set foot on the road between Naples and Oxford. Nor could the seven years which he spent in prison induce this former mendicant friar to return to the Church. On the pyre he turned his face away from the crucifix. Thus the Inquisition, after a long and patient trial, gave another widely influential martyr to that anarchy which calls it- self liberty.
The spirit of Luther no less than that of Loyola compelled the Popes to be on their guard and to proceed on their way uprightly, proof against the inquiries of tlic woild. Since the days of baroque art there have been no wicked Popes, and few one would hesitate to num- ber among the good. Paul V (1605-1621) a Borghese, wore the tiara as earnestly as did Clement VIII and defended its claims to the verge of sternness. Though his mind was fully awake, he dreamed once again the dream of the unity of power; and the most determined opponent he met in this effort was Paolo Sarpi, a Catholic, a priest and a religious. The Pope was embroiled with all his Italian neighbours, particularly with Venice. Questions concerning jurisdiction, the levy- ing of taxes upon the clergy by the Republic, the damage done to the Venetian printing presses by the growing number of forbidden books, Papal disfavour to liturgical tomes published by the city's famous ed- itors: these and other matters which concerned more deeply the rights of the Church were the reasons why the conflict arose between a too-aggressive Curialism and an arrogant state church.
Councillor to the Republic in religious matters was the Servite monk Sarpi, author of a history of the Council of Trent which is rich in both esprit and malice. A man of calm intellect who had studied logic with the help of the rising natural sciences, he was one of the friends and teachers of the young Galileo. He fought against the ex- cesses of the Papal power which, he maintained, had during the course of time made boundless inroads into the rights of the episcopal office and of civic independence. As a vigorous defender of secular au- thority, which in his view was subservient within its own sphere to no other sovereign save God alone, he encountered Roman theory as
THE
