ecclesiastical offenders in Venetia, which resulted in the excommunication
of the Republic, and finally in the defeat of St. Peter and the triumph of
St. Mark. Chief among the ecclesiastical offenders mentioned were the
worthy Abbate Brandolino of Narvesa, who was accused, among other things,
of poisoning his own father; and the good Canonico Saraceni of Vicenza,
who was repulsed in overtures made to his beautiful cousin, and who
revenged himself by defaming her character, and "filthily defacing" the
doors of her palace. The abbate was arrested, and the canon, on this
lady's complaint to the Ten at Venice, was thrown into prison, and the
weak and furious Pope Paul V., being refused their release by the Ten,
excommunicated the whole Republic.

In the same year, that is to say 1552, the bane and antidote, Paul the
Pope and Paul Sarpi the friar, were sent into the world. The latter grew
in piety, fame, and learning, and at the time the former began his quarrel
with the Republic, there was none in Venice so fit and prompt as Sarpi to
stand forth in her defense. He was at once taken into the service of St.
Mark, and his clear, acute mind fashioned the spiritual weapons of the
Republic, and helped to shape the secular measures taken to annul the
interdict. As soon as the bull of excommunication was issued, the Republic
instructed her officers to stop every copy of it at the frontier, and it
was never read in any church in the Venetian dominions. The Senate refused
to receive it from the Papal Nuncio. All priests, monks, and other
servants of the Church, as well as all secular persons, were commanded to
disregard it; and refractory ecclesiastics were forced to open their
churches on pain of death. The Jesuits and Capuchins were banished; and
clerical intriguers, whom Rome sent in swarms to corrupt social and family
relations, by declaring an end of civil government in Venice, and
preaching among women disobedience to patriotic husbands and fathers, were
severely punished. With internal safety thus provided for, the Republic