[1] For Sarpi's advice to the Doge, see Bianchi Giovini, vol. i.
pp. 216, et seq. The document is given fully in the Lettere di F.
P. S., Firenze, 1863, vol. i. pp. 17, et seq.; also in Machi,
Storia del Consiglio dei Dieci, cap. xxiv., where the bull of
excommunication is also given.


The Republic utterly refused to yield, and now, in 1606, Pope
Paul launched his excommunication and interdict. In meeting them,
the Senate took the course laid down by Sarpi. The papal Nuncio
was notified that the Senate would receive no paper from the
Pope; all ecclesiasties, from the Patriarch down to the lowest
monk, were forbidden, under the penalties of high treason, to
make public or even to receive any paper whatever from the
Vatican; additional guards were placed at the city gates, with
orders to search every wandering friar or other suspicious person
who might, by any possibility, bring in a forbidden missive; a
special patrol was kept, night and day, to prevent any posting of
the forbidden notices on walls or houses; any person receiving or
finding one was to take it immediately to the authorities, under
the severest penalties, and any person found concealing such
documents was to be punished by death.

At first some of the clergy were refractory. The head of the
whole church establishment of Venice, the Patriarch himself, gave
signs of resistance; but the Senate at once silenced him. Sundry
other bishops and high ecclesiastics made a show of opposition;
and they were placed in confinement. One of them seeming