great currents of efficient thought. On one side had been
developed a theocratic theory, giving the papacy a power supreme
in temporal as well as in spiritual matters throughout the world.
Leaders in this during the Middle Ages were St. Thomas Aquinas
and the Dominicans; leaders in Sarpi's days were the Jesuits,
represented especially in the treatises of Bellarmine at Rome and
in the speeches of Laynez at the Council of Trent.[1]


[1] This has been admirably shown by N. R. F. Brown in his
Taylorian Lecture, pages 229-234, in volume for 1889-99.


But another theory, hostile to the despotism of the Church over
the State, had been developed through the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance;--it had been strengthened mainly by the utterances
of such men as Dante, aegidio Colonna, John of Paris, Ockham,
Marsilio of Padua, and Laurentius Valla. Sarpi ranged himself
with the latter of these forces. Though deeply religious, he
recognized the God-given right of earthly governments to
discharge their duties independent of church control.

Among the many centres of this struggle was Venice. She was
splendidly religious--as religion was then understood. She was
made so by her whole environment. From the beginning she had been
a seafaring power, and seafaring men, from their constant wrestle
with dangers ill understood, are prone to seek and find
supernatural forces. Nor was this all. Later, when she had become
rich, powerful, luxurious, licentious, and refractory to the
priesthood, her most powerful citizens felt a need of atoning for