He returned to Ferrara in 1604, and in 1605 carried the compliments of that now Pontifical city to Paul V.in Rome on his election to the Papacy.

Upon this occasion Cardinal Bellarmino told him that he had inflicted as much harm on Christendom by his _Pastor Fido_ as Luther and Calvin by their heresies.
He retorted with a sarcasm which has not been transmitted to us, but which may probably have reflected on the pollution of Christian morals by the Jesuits.

In 1612 Guarini died at Venice, whither he was summoned by one of his innumerable and interminable lawsuits.
Bellarmino's censure of the _Pastor Fido_ strikes a modern reader as inexplicably severe.

Yet it is certain that the dissolute seventeenth century recognized this drama as one of the most potent agents of corruption.

Not infrequent references in the literature of that age to the ruin of families and reputations by its means, warn us to remember how difficult it is to estimate the ethical sensibilities of society in periods remote from our own.[183] In the course of the analysis which I now propose to make of this play, I shall attempt to show how, coming midway between Tasso's _Aminta_ and Marino's _Adone_, and appealing to the dominant musical enthusiasms of the epoch, Guarini's _Pastor Fido_ may have merited the condemnation of far-sighted moralists.