y the Council of Trent--The Roman Congregation of the
Index--Final Form of the Censorship of Books under Clement
VIII.--Analysis of its Regulations--Proscription of Heretical
Books--Correction of Texts--Purgation and Castration--Inquisitorial
and Episcopal Licenses--Working of the System of this Censorship in
Italy--Its long Delays--Hostility to Sound Learning--Ignorance of
the Censors--Interference with Scholars in their Work--Terrorism of
Booksellers--Vatican Scheme for the Restoration of Christian
Erudition--Frustrated by the Tyranny of the Index--Dishonesty of
the Vatican Scholars--Biblical Studies rendered nugatory by the
Tridentine Decree on the Vulgate--Decline of Learning in
Universities--Miserable Servitude of Professors--Greek dies
out--Muretus and Manutius in Rome--The Index and its Treatment of
Political Works--Machiavelli--_Ratio Status_--Encouragement of
Literature on Papal Absolutism--Sarpi's Attitude--Comparative
Indifference of Rome to Books of Obscene or Immoral
Tendency--Bandello and Boccaccio--Papal attempts to Control
Intercourse of Italians with Heretics.

In pursuing the plan of this book, which aims at showing how the spirit
of the Catholic revival penetrated every sphere of intellectual
activity in Italy, it will now be needful to consider the two agents,
both of Spanish origin, on whose assistance the Church relied in her
crusade against liberties of thought, speech, and action. These were the
Inquisition and the Company of Jesus. The one worked by extirpation and
forcible repression; the other by mental enfeeblement and moral
corruption. The one used fire, torture, imprisonment, confiscation of
goods, the proscription of learning, the destruction or emasculation of
books. The other employed subtle means to fill the vacuum thus created
with spurious erudition, sophistries, casuistical abominations and
false doctrines profitable to the Papal absolutism. Opposed in temper
and in method, the one fierce and rigid, the other saccharine and
pliant, these two bad angels of Rome contributed in almost equal measure
to the triumph of Catholicism.

In the earlier ages of the Church, the definition of heresy had been
committed to episcopal authority. But the cognizance of heretics and the
determination of their punishment remained in the hands of secular
magistrates. At the end of the twelfth century the wide diffusion