The first of the struggles, in which Venice was called upon to engage in this century, was produced, soon after its opening, by that violent attempt of Pope Paul V, to which we have before alluded, to revive the monstrous and exploded doctrine of papal jurisdiction and supremacy over the temporal affairs of the world (1605). The Venetians had, even in the dark ages, been remarkable for their freedom from the trammels of superstition, and consistent in repelling the encroachments of ecclesiastical power. Upon no occasion would the senate either permit the publication or execution of any papal decree in their territories, until it had received their previous sanction; or suffer an appeal to the court of Rome from any of their subjects, except by their own authority, and through the ambassador of the republic. The jurisdiction of the Council of Ten was as despotic and final over the Venetian clergy as over all other classes in the state; and while ecclesiastics were rigidly excluded from all interference in political affairs, and from the exercise of any civil functions, the right of the secular tribunals to judge them in every case not purely spiritual was a principle, from which the government never departed either in theory or practice. Of all the extravagant privileges claimed by the Romish church for its militia, the exemption of the ecclesiastical body from taxation (unless as the immediate act of the popes) was the only one recognised by the Venetian government; and, to annul this, immunity was a project which had more than once been entertained.
A Venetian Beggar
(Many of these were people in straitened circumstances, who wore a mask to disguise their features.)
With a spirit similar to that which retained the clergy under due subjection, universal religious toleration was a steady maxim of the Venetian senate. The public and peaceable worship of the Mussulman, the Jew, the Greek, the Armenian, had always been equally permitted in the republican dominions; and in later times even the Protestant sects had met in the capital and provinces with a like indulgence. The iniquitous principles of the oligarchical administration forbid us from attributing to its conduct in these respects any higher or more enlightened motive than the interested and necessary policy of a commercial state. But it is a striking proof of the ability and stern vigilance of this government, that, notwithstanding its universal toleration and rejection of ecclesiastical control, no pretence was left for the popes to impugn its zealous fidelity to the Romish church; and that, at a time when all Europe was convulsed by the struggle of religious opinions, Venice alone could receive into her corrupted bosom the elements of discord, without shaking the foundations of her established faith or sustaining the slightest shock to her habitual tranquillity.
The fierce temper with which Paul V seated himself on the papal throne, and the systematic determination of the Venetian senate to submit to no ecclesiastical usurpations, could not fail to bring the republic into collision with so rash and violent a pontiff. Accordingly Paul V had scarcely commenced his reign, when he conceived offence at the refusal of the senate to provoke a war with the Turks, by assisting the Hungarians at his command with subsidies against the infidels. His dissatisfaction with the republic was increased by her obstinacy in levying duty upon all merchandise entering the papal ports in the Adriatic—a matter in which, assuredly, religion was in nowise interested; and it reached its height when the senate passed a law, or rather revived an old one, forbidding the further alienation of immovable property in favour of religious foundations; which indeed, even in their states, were already possessed of overgrown wealth.
At this juncture the Council of Ten, acting upon its established principle of subjecting priests to secular jurisdiction, caused two ecclesiastics, a canon of Vicenza, named Sarraceno, and an abbot of Nervesa, to be successively arrested and thrown into prison, to await their trials for offences with which they were charged. Their alleged crimes were of the blackest enormity: rape in one case; assassination, poisonings, and parricide in the other. The pope, as if the rights of the church had been violently outraged by these arrests, summoned the doge and senate to deliver over the two priests to the spiritual arm, on pain of excommunication; and he seized the occasion to demand, under the same penalty, the repeal of the existing regulations against the increase of the ecclesiastical edifices and property. But the doge and senate, positively refusing to retract their measures, treated the papal menaces with contempt; and Paul V then struck them, their capital, and their whole republic with excommunication and interdict (1606).
The Venetian government endured the anathemas, so appalling to the votaries of superstition, with unshaken firmness. In reply to the papal denunciations of the divine wrath against the republic, they successfully published repeated and forcible appeals to the justice of their cause, and to the common-sense of the world. The general sentiment of Catholic Europe responded to their arguments; and their own subjects, filled with indignation at the unprovoked sentence against the state, zealously seconded their spirit. In private the doge had not hesitated to hold out to the papal nuncio an alarming threat that the perseverance of his holiness in violent measures would impel the republic to dissolve her connection altogether with the Roman see; and the open procedure of the senate was scarcely less bold. On pain of death, all parochial ministers and monks in the Venetian states were commanded to pay no regard to the interdict, and to continue to perform the offices of religion as usual. The secular clergy yielded implicit obedience to the decree; and when the Jesuits, Capuchins, and other monastic orders endeavoured to qualify their allegiance, between the pope and the republic, by making a reservation against the performance of mass, they were immediately deprived of their possessions, and expelled from the Venetian territories.
The pope, finding his spiritual weapons ineffectual against the constancy of the Venetians, showed an inclination to have recourse to temporal arms. He levied troops, and endeavoured to engage Philip III of Spain and other princes in the support of his authority. At the same time, both the Spanish monarch and Henry IV of France, the ally of the republic, began to interest themselves in a quarrel which nearly concerned all Catholic powers, and threatened Europe with commotion. In reality, both sovereigns aspired to the honour of being the arbiter of the difference. But the feint of arming to second the pope, by which Philip III hoped to terrify the republic into submitting to his mediation, had only the effect of determining the senate to prefer the interposition of his rival; and Henry IV became the zealous negotiator between the pope and the republic.
[1606-1615 A.D.]