Rom. vi. 412.
possession of Milan. The Republic was accused of being too obliging to Protestants, and her enemies assured the Pope that she had seriously endangered the safety of the Catholic Church by allowing the English ambassador to have an Anglican Church service in his private oratory. The complaints of Clement VIII. and Paul V. were received with stony indifference by the Republic, which never had the slightest respect for Rome. The latter had many causes of complaint. Venice had been granted in former times the privilege of trying priests for ordinary crimes in the ordinary courts, on condition that the Patriarch should sit among the judges. Little by little the Venetian government stretched this privilege to make it apply to all suits whatsoever brought
Rom. vii. 43, notes.
against ecclesiastics, and in most cases the Patriarch was not even represented. It chanced, at the very time when the Pope had
CAMPIELLO DELLE ANCORE
complained of the liberty granted to the English ambassador, that two priests were accused of an abominable crime, and were tried like ordinary delinquents. This encroachment upon the bulls of Innocent VIII. and Paul III. took place just when the Senate was passing a law which greatly restricted the holding of property by the clergy. As if these facts were not enough to show the Pope that the Venetian flock intended to manage its own corner of the Catholic fold in its own way, the government, on the death of the Patriarch, named as his successor a member of the house of Vendramin, and merely announced the fact to the court of Rome, although the old canonical law required that in cases where governments were authorised to appoint their bishops, the latter should be examined and approved by the Pope’s delegates.
Spain took advantage of all these circumstances to bring about a complete rupture between Venice and
Rom. vii. 45, 50-51.