She interdicted every treatise that exposed her own ambitious interference in civil affairs or which maintained the rights of temporal rulers.[149] She protected and propagated the works of her servile ministers, who proclaimed that the ecclesiastical was superior in all points to the civil power; that nations owed their first allegiance to the Pope, who was divinely appointed to rule over them, and their second only to the Prince, who was a delegate from their own body; and that tyrannicide itself was justifiable when employed against a contumacious or heretical sovereign.

Such were the theories of the Jesuits--of Allen and Parsons in England, Bellarmino in Italy, Suarez and Mariana in Spain, Boucher in France.
[Footnote 149: On this point, again, Sarpi's _Letters_ furnish valuable details.

He frequently remarks that a general order had been issued by the Congregation of the Index to suppress all books against the writings of Baronius, who was treated as a saint, vol.i.pp.

3, 147, ii.p.

35.
He relates how the Jesuits had procured the destruction of a book written to uphold aristocracy in states, without touching upon ecclesiastical questions, as being unfavorable to their theories of absolutism (vol.i.p.