Kings at strife with the Catholic Alliance, honest Christians defending the prerogatives of their commonwealth, erudite historians and jurists who disapproved of substituting Popes in Rome for God in heaven, might be massacred or kidnapped by ruffians red with the blood of their nearest relatives and carrying the condemnation of their native States upon their forehead.

According to the post-Tridentine morality of Rome, that morality which the Jesuits openly preached and published, which was disseminated in every prelate's ante-chamber, and whispered in every parish-priest's confessional, enormous sins could be atoned and eternal grace be gained by the merciless and traitorous murder of any notable man who savored of heresy.

If the Holy Office had instituted a prosecution against the victim and had condemned him in his absence, the path was plain.
Sentence of excommunication and death publicly pronounced on such a man reduced him to the condition of a wild beast, whose head was worth solid coin and plenary absolution to the cut-throat.

A private minute recorded on the books of the Inquisitors had almost equal value; and Sarpi was under the impression that some such underhand proceeding against himself had loosed a score of knives.

But short of these official or semi-judicial preliminaries, it was maintained upon the best casuistical authority that to take the life of any suspected heretic, of any one reputed heterodox in Roman circles, should be esteemed a work of merit creditable to the miscreant who perpetrated the deed, and certain, even should he die for it, to yield him in the other world the joys of Paradise.