from a private lawsuit, in the Chronicon Farsense, (Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 637, &c.,) a copious extract from the
archives of that Benedictine abbey. They were formerly accessible to
curious foreigners, (Le Blanc and Mabillon,) and would have enriched the
first volume of the Historia Monastica Italiae of Quirini. But they are
now imprisoned (Muratori, Scriptores R. I. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 269) by
the timid policy of the court of Rome; and the future cardinal yielded
to the voice of authority and the whispers of ambition, (Quirini,
Comment. pars ii. p. 123-136.)]

[Footnote 72: I have read in the collection of Schardius (de Potestate
Imperiali Ecclesiastica, p. 734-780) this animated discourse, which was
composed by the author, A.D. 1440, six years after the flight of Pope
Eugenius IV. It is a most vehement party pamphlet: Valla justifies and
animates the revolt of the Romans, and would even approve the use of a
dagger against their sacerdotal tyrant. Such a critic might expect the
persecution of the clergy; yet he made his peace, and is buried in the
Lateran, (Bayle, Dictionnaire Critique, Valla; Vossius, de Historicis
Latinis, p. 580.)]

[Footnote 73: See Guicciardini, a servant of the popes, in that long and
valuable digression, which has resumed its place in the last edition,
correctly published from the author's Ms. and printed in four volumes in
quarto, under the name of Friburgo, 1775, (Istoria d'Italia, tom. i. p.
385-395.)]

[Footnote 74: The Paladin Astolpho found it in the moon, among the
things that were lost upon earth, (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv. 80.) Di vari
fiore ad un grand monte passa, Ch'ebbe gia buono odore, or puzza forte:
Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece) Che Constantino al buon Silvestro
fece. Yet this incomparable poem has been approved by a bull of Leo X.]

[Footnote 75: See Baronius, A.D. 324, No. 117-123, A.D. 1191, No. 51,
&c. The cardinal wishes to suppose that Rome was offered by Constantine,
and refused by Silvester. The act of donation he considers strangely
enough, as a forgery of the Greeks.]

[Footnote 76: Baronius n'en dit guerres contre; encore en a-t'il trop
dit, et l'on vouloit sans moi, (Cardinal du Perron,) qui l'empechai,
censurer cette partie de son histoire. J'en devisai un jour avec le
Pape, et il ne me repondit autre chose "che volete? i Canonici la
tengono," il le disoit en riant, (Perroniana, p. 77.)]

While the popes established in Italy their