Thus Bellarmino writes to Cardinal Sirleto, suggesting a doubt whether it is obligatory to adhere to the letter of the Tridentine decree upon the Vulgate.[137] Is it rational, he asks, to maintain that every sentence in the Latin text is impeccable?
Must we reject those readings in the Hebrew and the Greek, which elucidate the meaning of the Scriptures, in cases where Jerome has followed a different and possibly a corrupt authority?
Would it not be more sensible to regard the Vulgate as the sole authorized version for use in universities, pulpits, and divine service, while admitting that it is not an infallible rendering of the inspired original?
He also touches, in a similar strain of scholar-like liberality, upon the Septuagint, pointing out that this version cannot have been the work of seventy men in unity, since the translator of Job seems to have been better acquainted with Greek than Hebrew, while the reverse is true of the translator of Solomon.

Such remonstrances were not, however, destined to make themselves effectively heard.

Instead of relaxing its severity after the pontificate of Pius IV., the Congregation of the Index grew, as we have seen, more rigid, until, in the rules digested by Clement VIII., it enforced the strictest letter of the law regarding the Vulgate, and ratified all the hypocrisies and subterfuges which that implied.
[Footnote 137: This very interesting and valuable letter is printed by Dejob in the work I have so often cited, p.

391.] Under the conditions which I have attempted to describe, it was impossible that Italy should hold her place among the nations which encouraged liberal studies.

Rome had one object in view--to gag the revolutionary free voice of the Renaissance, to protect conservative principles, to establish her own supremacy, and to secure the triumph of the Counter-Reformation.