The population, trained already in doctrines of Papal supremacy, were warned that should they remain loyal to a contumacious State, their own souls would perish through the lack of sacerdotal ministrations, and their posterity would roam the world as bastards and accursed.

To traverse this argument of sarcerdotal tyranny, exorbitant in any age of the Latin Church, but preposterous after the illumination of the sixteenth century in Europe, was a citizen's plain duty.

Sarpi therefore supplied an elegant Italian stylist, Giambattista Leoni, with material for setting forth a statement of the controversy between Venice and Rome.

It would have been well if he had taken up the pen with his own hand.

But at this early period of his career as publicist, he seems to have been diffident about his literary powers.