French Ambassador at the Council, Cardinal Severina, head of the
Inquisition, Castagna, afterward Pope Urban VII., and Cardinal
Bellarmine, afterward Sarpi's strongest and noblest opponent.

Nor was this all. He was not content with books or conversations;
steadily he went on collecting, collating, and testing original
documents bearing upon the great events of his time. The result
of all this the world was to see later.

He had arrived at middle life and won wide recognition as a
scholar, scientific investigator, and jurist, when there came the
supreme moment of a struggle which had involved Europe for
centuries,--a struggle interesting not only the Italy and Europe
of those days, but universal humanity for all time.

During the period following the fall of the Roman Empire of the
West there had been evolved the temporal power of the Roman
Bishop. It had many vicissitudes. Sometimes, as in the days of
St. Leo and St. Gregory, it based its claims upon noble
assertions of right and justice, and sometimes, as in the hands
of pontiffs like Innocent VIII. and Paul V., it sought to force
its way by fanaticism. Sometimes it strengthened its authority by
real services to humanity, and sometimes by such monstrous frauds
as the Forged Decretals. Sometimes, as under Popes like Gregory
VII. and Innocent III., it laid claim to the mastership of the
world, and sometimes, as with the majority of the pontiffs during
the two centuries before the Reformation, it became mainly the
appanage of a party or faction or family.

Throughout all this history, there appeared in the Church two