[142] The original letter, printed by Dejob, op. cit. p. 491, is signed by Giustiniano Finetti, who seems to have been a professor of medicine in the Roman University. His son, a youth of sixteen, complained that the students had demanded and obtained leave to recite a certain 'lettione che era carnavalesca d'ano et de priapo,' adding that they were in the habit of holding debates upon the thesis that (LATIN: 'res sodcae erant praeferendae veneri naturali, et reprobabant rem veneream cum feminis ac audabant masturbationem.') The dialogue which the students obtained leave publicly to recite was probably similar to one that might still be heard some years ago in spring upon the quays of Naples, and which appeared to have descended from immemorial antiquity.
[143] The Latin text is printed in Renouard's Imprimerie des Aldes, p. 473.
[144] As Sarpi says: 'Of a truth the extraordinary rigor with which books are hunted out for extirpation, shows how vigorous is the light of that lantern which they have resolved to extinguish.' Lettere, vol. i. p. 328.
[145] See Renouard, op. cit. pp. 442-459, for Paulus Manutius's life at Rome.
[146] op. cit. pp. 184-216.
[147] Sarpi's Works, vol. iv. p. 4.
[148] Sarpi, Discorso, vol. iv. p. 25, on Bellarmino's doctrine. Sarpi's Letters, vol. i. pp. 138, 243. Sarpi says that he and Gillot had both had their portraits painted in a picture of Hell and shown to the common folk as foredoomed to eternal fire, because they opposed doctrines of Papal omnipotence. Ibid. p. 151.
[149] On this point, again, Sarpi's Letters furnish valuable details. He frequently remarks that a general order had been issued by the Congregation of the Index to suppress all books against the writings of Baronius, who was treated as a saint, vol. i. pp. 3, 147, ii. p. 35. He relates how the Jesuits had procured the destruction of a book written to uphold aristocracy in states, without touching upon ecclesiastical questions, as being unfavorable to their theories of absolutism (vol. i. p. 122). He tells the story of a confessor who refused the sacraments to a nobleman, because he owned a treatise written by Quirino in defense of the Venetian prerogatives (vol. i. p. 113). He refers to the suppression of James I.'s Apologia and De Thou's Histories (vol. i. pp. 286, 287, 383).
[150] In the Treatise on the Inquisition, Opere, vol. iv. p. 53. Sarpi, in a passage of his Letters (vol. ii. p. 163), points out why the secular authorities were ill fitted to retaliate in kind, upon these Papal proscriptions.
[151] See Dejob, De l'Influence, etc. Chapter III.