Day after day the Senate sat, in solemn state, to hear its delinquencies
rehearsed in the words of Paul V, by the graphic pen of his Excellency
Agostino Nani, Ambassador from the Republic to the Holy See, with
ceaseless repetitions of demand on the part of the Sovereign Pontiff;
with ceaseless repetitions of refusal, most deferently couched, from the
courtly representative of the offending power; with threats of that most
dread compeller of obedience which none but a sovereign pontiff may
wield; and very clearly phrased, that all might understand, the
declaration in the words of his Holiness himself, that he had determined
to "mortify the over-weening audacity of the secular rulers of the
world."
With a patience which bore its fruit in a more rigid determination to
conquer, they listened, also, to many violent speeches from the Nuncio,
explanatory of papal authority, founded upon the dicta of a Gregory,
"_That none may judge the Pope. That all princes should kiss the feet of
the Pope_," and invariably sustained by this axiom of Mattei, delivered
as a refrain--so sure were the college of its repetition, "I am Pope
here; I want no replies, only obedience," and the reiterated assertion
that "Christianity depends upon the acceptance in its entirety of the
doctrine of papal supremacy, and that he has heard much of the vaunted
piety of the Venetian Republic, of which he fails to find evidence.
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