also. The emissaries of His Holiness begged hard that, at least,
appearances might be saved; that the Republic would undo some of
its measures before the interdict was removed, or at least would
seem to do so, and especially that it would withdraw its refusals
before the Pope withdrew his penalties. All in vain. The
Venetians insisted that they had committed no crime and had
nothing to retract. The Vatican then urged that the Senate should
consent to receive absolution for its resistance to the Pope's
authority. This the Senate steadily refused; it insisted, "Let
His Holiness put things as before, and we will put things as
before; as to his absolution, we do not need it or want it; to
receive it would be to acknowledge that we have been in the
wrong." Even the last poor sop of all was refused: the Senate
would have no great "function" to celebrate the termination of
the interdict; they would not even go to the mass which Cardinal
Joyeuse celebrated on that occasion. The only appearance of
concession which the Republic made was to give up the two
ecclesiastics to the French Ambassador as a matter of courtesy to
the French king; and when this was done, the Ambassador delivered
them to the Pope; but Venice especially reserved all the rights
she had exercised. All the essential demands of the papacy were
refused, and thus was forever ended the papal power of laying an
interdict upon a city or a people. From that incubus,
Christendom, thanks to Father Paul and to Venice, was at last and
forever free.

The Vatican did, indeed, try hard to keep its old claim in being.
A few years after its defeat by Fra Paolo, it endeavored to
reassert in Spain the same authority which had been so humbly
acknowledged there a few years before. It was doubtless felt that