A thoughtful historian tells us that, between the fourteenth century and the nineteenth, Italy produced three great men. As the first of these, he names Machiavelli, who, he says, "taught the world to understand political despotism and to hate it;" as the second, he names Sarpi who "taught the world after what manner the Holy Spirit guides the Councils of the Church;" and as the third, Galileo, who "taught the world what dogmatic theology is worth when it can be tested by science." I purpose now to present the second of these. As a MAN, he was by far the greatest of the three and, in various respects, the most interesting, for he not only threw a bright light into the most important general council of the Church and revealed to Christendom the methods which there prevailed,--in a book which remains one of the half-dozen classic histories of the world,--but he fought the most bitter fight for humanity against the papacy ever known in any Latin nation, and won a victory by which the whole world has profited ever since. Moreover, he was one of the two foremost Italian statesmen since the Middle Ages, the other being Cavour. He was born at Venice in 1552, and it may concern those who care to note the subtle interweaving of the warp and woof of history that the birth year of this most resourceful foe that Jesuitism ever had was the death year of St. Francis Xavier, the noblest of Jesuit apostles. It may also interest those who study the more evident evolution of cause and effect in human affairs to note that, like most strong men, he had a strong mother; that while his father was a poor shopkeeper who did little and died young, his mother was wise and serene. From his earliest boyhood, he showed striking gifts and characteristics. He never forgot a face once seen, could take in the main contents of a page at a glance, spoke little, rarely ate meat, and, until his last years, never drank wine. Brought up, after the death of his father, first by his uncle, a priest, and then by Capella, a Servite monk, in something better than the usual priestly fashion, he became known, while yet in his boyhood, as a theological prodigy. Disputations in his youth, especially one at Mantua, where, after the manner of the time, he successfully defended several hundred theses against all comers, attracted wide attention, so that the Bishop gave him a professorship, and the Duke, who, like some other crowned heads of those days,--notably Henry VIII. and James I.,--liked to dabble in theology, made him a court theologian. But the duties of this position were uncongenial: a flippant duke, fond of putting questions which the wisest theologian could not answer, and laying out work which the young scholar evidently thought futile, apparently wearied him. He returned to the convent of the Servites at Venice, and became, after a few years' novitiate, a friar, changing, at the same time, his name; so that, having been baptized Peter, he now became Paul.