Another Venetian statesman, Jerome Maggi, very learned in archaeology, history, mathematics, and other sciences, hastened his death by his writings. He was appointed by the Venetians a judge of the town of Famagousta, in the island of Cyprus, which was held by the powerful Republic from the year 1489 to 1571. After one of the most bloody sieges recorded in history, the Turks captured the stronghold, losing 50,000 men. Maggi was taken captive and conducted in chains to Constantinople. Unfortunately he whiled away the tedious hours of his captivity by writing two books, _De equuleo_ and _De tintinnabulis_, remarkable for their learning, composed entirely without any reference to other works in the squalor of a Turkish prison. He dedicated the books to the Italian and French ambassadors to the Sublime Porte, who were much pleased with them and endeavoured to obtain the release of the captive. Their efforts unhappily brought about the fate which they were trying to avert. For when the affair became known, as Maggi was being conducted to the Italian ambassador, the captain of the prison ordered him to be brought back and immediately strangled in the prison. The unhappy Jean Lenoir, Canon of Séez, was doomed in 1684 to a life-long servitude in the galleys, after making a public retractation of his errors in the Church of Notre-Dame, at Paris. His impetuous and impassioned eloquence is displayed in all his writings, which were collected and published under the title _Recueil de Requêtes et de Factums_. The titles of some of his treatises will show how obnoxious they were to the ruling powers--e.g., _Hérésie de la domination épiscopale que l'on établit en France, Protestation contre les assemblées du clergé de 1681_, etc. These were the causes of the severe persecutions of which he was the unhappy victim. He was fortunate enough to obtain a slight alleviation of his terrible punishment by writing a _Complainte latine_, in which he showed that the author, although _black_ in name (_le noir_), was _white_ in his virtues and his character. He was released from the galleys, and sent to prison instead, being confined at Saint Malo, Brest, and Nantes, where he died in 1692.