Of this combination of zeal for religion with hostility to
ecclesiasticism we have striking examples throughout the history
of the Republic. While, in every other European state, cardinals,
bishops, priests, and monks were given leading parts in civil
administration and, in some states, a monopoly of civil honors,
the Republic of Venice not only excluded all ecclesiastics from
such posts, but, in cases which touched church interests, she
excluded even the relatives of ecclesiastics. When church
authority decreed that commerce should not be maintained with
infidels and heretics, the Venetian merchants continued to deal
with Turks, Pagans, Germans, Englishmen, and Dutchmen as before.
When the Church decreed that the taking of interest for money was
sin, and great theologians published in Venice some of their
mightiest treatises demonstrating this view from Holy Scripture
and the Fathers, the Venetians continued borrowing and lending
money on usance. When efforts were made to enforce that
tremendous instrument for the consolidation of papal power, the
bull In Coena Domini, Venice evaded and even defied it. When the
Church frowned upon anatomical dissections, the Venetians allowed
Andreas Vesalius to make such dissections at their University of
Padua. When Sixtus V., the strongest of all the Popes, had
brought all his powers, temporal and spiritual, to bear against
Henry IV. of France as an excommunicated heretic, and seemed
ready to hurl the thunderbolts of the Church against any power
which should recognize him, the Venetian Republic not only
recognized him, but treated his Ambassador with especial
courtesy. When the other Catholic powers, save France, yielded to
papal mandates and sent no representatives to the coronation of
James I. of England, Venice was there represented. When Pope
after Pope issued endless diatribes against the horrors of