³¹² Richlieu rejected the prayers of Urban VIII. who, in his letters to Louis XIII., to the queen, and to Richlieu himself, ceased not to recommend the complete extermination of the Huguenots. “Cæterum, cùm scias quâ curâ custodiendi sint victoriarum fructus, ne marcescant, nemo est qui ambigat a te reliquis omnes hæreticorum in Gallicâ vineâ stabulantium propediem profligatum iri.” Urb. VIII. Epis, ad principes, ann. 6. f. 10. Aux. Arch. of the Empire. The wars of the Venetians against the Turks, the conspiracy of the Spaniards against Venice, in 1618, the sedition of Mazaniello in Naples, in 1640, and the enterprizes of some of the Roman pontiffs, are in this century the principal events in the annals of Italy. Never was the country more disposed to bear and to extend the dominion of the popes: but the popes failed in the address necessary to draw the full advantage from this disposition: they suffered the fine arts to languish and decay about them, while they grew and flourished elsewhere: in this century the Italians ceased to be the most enlightened people of Europe, a preeminence which they needed, to preserve any share of it, and not suffer themselves to be reduced in all respects to a state of inferiority. The most remarkable popes of the seventeenth century were Paul V. Urban VIII. Innocent X. Alexander VII. Clement IX. Innocent XI. Alexander VIII. and Innocent XII. The republic of Venice had punished with death, without the intervention of the ecclesiastical authority, an Augustine monk convicted of enormous crimes; a canon and an abbot were imprisoned for similar reasons; the senate forbad the encrease, without its permission, either of convents or churches; it prohibited the alienation of lands for the benefit of monks or of the clergy. These acts of independence irritated Paul V.; he excommunicated the doge and the senators, and laid an interdict on the whole republic. He required that within twenty four days the senators, revoking their decrees, should deliver into the hands of the nuncio, the canon and the abbot they had imprisoned. If, after the twenty-four days, the doge and senators persisted in their refusal for three days, the divine functions were to cease, not only in Venice, but through all the Venetian dominions; and, it was enjoined on all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, and others, under pun of suspension, and deprivation of their revenues, to publish and affix in the churches this pontifical decree, which Paul pronounced, as he said, by the authority of God, the apostles, and his own. The Capuchins, the Theatins, and the Jesuits, obeyed the interdict, which was disregarded by the rest of the Venetian clergy as it was by the people. Little attention was paid to the Theatins and Capuchins; but the Jesuits, more powerful and more culpable, were banished for ever. A protest against the anathemas of