The Republic had always jealously guarded
against any transference of temporal power from prince to prelate, and
many events which seemed linked in a chain that might lead to the most
deplorable results had succeeded to the election of Camillo Borghese as
Paul V; the desire evidently manifested by Clement during his latter
days to encroach on the perquisites and possessions of the minor Italian
States was crystallizing into a fixed purpose of ecclesiastical
aggrandizement on the part of the new Pope.
"He was brandishing Saint Peter's sword before he had been knighted,"
remarked the Signor Antonio Querini, who was deeply interested in all
disputes between Church and State.
"But not before he had received strenuous training," responded the
grave, clear voice of the friar. "For five years he hath held office as
Auditor of the Apostolical Chamber, the style of which is written thus,
_'Universal Executor of censures and sentences recorded both in Rome and
abroad'_--a duty which he may be said to have discharged more faithfully
than any of his predecessors, as one cannot recall in any previous fifty
years as many thunderbolts and monitions as were launched during those
five years of his office!"
Some romance could but attach to the unswerving judicial attitude of a
friar who had friends in high favor at the Court of Rome--who had known
a Bellarmino and a Navarro, and yet pursued, unchanging, the calm tenor
of his critical way.
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