Note 10 — Chapter XVIII

This interdict was imposed by only the local ecclesiastical authorities; but the period in which it occurred renders desirable and interesting a mention of the controversy (then fresh in men’s minds) between Paul V and the Republic of Venice, in which the papal interdict on a state or commonwealth was deprived (1606) of its power as a weapon of the papal authority. A full account of this episode, in which the chief figure was the celebrated Fra Paolo Sarpi, is given by Andrew D. White in his “Fra Paolo Sarpi,” in Atlantic Monthly, xciii (1904), pp. 45–54, 225–233. Cf. Ranke’s Lives of the Popes (Foster’s translation, London), ii, pp. 110–130, and iii, 123, 124; and Alzog’s Universal Church History (Pabisch and Byrne’s translation, Cincinnati, 1878), iii, pp. 365, 366.