Successive Popes made, indeed, a show of respecting the liberties of the Republic.

On material points, touching revenue and State-administration, they felt it wise to concede even more than complimentary privileges; and when Paul V.encroached upon these privileges, the Venetians were ready to resist him.

Yet the quarrels between the Vatican and San Marco were, after all, but family disputes.
The Venetians at the close of the sixteenth century proved themselves no better friends to spiritual freedom than were the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

Their political jealousies, commercial anxieties, and feints of maintaining a power that was rapidly decaying, denoted no partiality for the opponents of Rome--unless, like Sarpi, these wore the livery of the State, and defended with the pen its secular prerogatives.

Therefore, when the Signory published Clement VIII.'s Index, when copies of that Index were sown broadcast, while only an edition of sixty was granted to the Concordat, authors and publishers felt, and felt rightly, that their day had passed.