There was a second cause of trouble. In that religious atmosphere
of Venice, monastic orders of every sort grew luxuriantly, not
only absorbing more and more land to be held by the dead hand,
thus escaping the public burdens, but ever absorbing more and
more men and women, and thus depriving the state of any healthy
and normal service from them. Here, too, the Senate thought it
best to interpose a check: it insisted that all new structures
for religious orders must be authorized by the State.

Yet another question flamed forth. Of the monks of every sort
swarming through the city, many were luxurious and some were
criminal. On these last, the Venetian Senate determined to lay
its hands, and in the first years of the seventeenth century all
these questions, and various other matters distasteful to the
Vatican, culminated in the seizure and imprisonment of two
ecclesiastics charged with various high crimes,--among these rape
and murder.

There had just come to the papal throne Camillo Borghese, Paul
V.,--strong, bold, determined, with the highest possible theory
of his duties and of his position. In view of his duty toward
himself, he lavished the treasures of the faithful upon his
family, until it became the richest which had yet risen in Rome;
in view of his duty toward the Church, he built superbly, and an
evidence of the spirit in which he wrought is his name, in
enormous letters, still spread across the facade of St. Peter's.
As to his position, he accepted fully the theories and practices
of his boldest predecessors, and in this he had good warrant; for
St. Thomas Aquinas and Bellarmine had furnished him with