Note 314 — Front matter (continued 6)

It is, however, true that the hostile Italian biographer, Gregorio Leti (Vita di Sisto Quinto, 3 vols., 1693), who tells this must be read with discretion; and we must use equal discretion in reading Tempesti's Storia della Vita e Geste di Sisto V. (1754), which is inspired by a contrary determination to praise Sixtus. I need recommend only the full and generally judicious biography of Sixtus which we owe to Baron de Hübner (Sixte Quint, 3 vols., 1870), remarking that in it the panegyrical tendency is more conspicuous than the critical. For a smaller biography M.A.J. Dumesnil's Histoire de Sixte-Quint (1869) is excellent.