More than once he narrowly escaped martyrdom as the reward of his temerity; and when the poignard of an assassin struck him, his legend relates that he uttered the celebrated epigram: _Agnosco stilum Curiae Romanae_.
[Footnote 150: In the Treatise on the Inquisition, _Opere_, vol.iv.

p.
53.

Sarpi, in a passage of his _Letters_ (vol.ii.p.

163), points out why the secular authorities were ill fitted to retaliate in kind, upon these Papal proscriptions.] Sarpi protested, not without good reason, that Rome was doing her best to extinguish sound learning in Italy.

But how did she deal with that rank growth of licentious literature which had sprung up during the Renaissance period?
This is the question which should next engage us.