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 content with the recovery of his territory, he demanded submission on all ecclesiastical questions. Venice was to surrender its claims to nominate to bishoprics and benefices, to entertain appeals in ecclesiastical cases, and to tax or try the clergy. Freedom of trade was also demanded, with other minor concessions. It seems almost surprising that the Venetians, who had no great cause to fear the Pope's military or naval strength, and knew that he was beginning to quarrel with the King of France, should have yielded. In fact this resolution was only adopted by a bare majority in the Council, and they guarded themselves by a secret protest as respected their ecclesiastical concessions. The Pope's successors soon found that non ligant foedera jacta metu. Venice never permanently recovered her possessions in the Romagna; but most of her territorial losses in other quarters were regained by the Treaty of Noyon in 1516. A blow unconnected with Italian politics, and against which war and diplomacy were powerless, had nevertheless been struck by the diversion to Lisbon of her gainful Oriental traffic, consequent upon the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope. A brilliant period in letters and the arts lay yet before her; she was still to war with the Turk in Cyprus and the Morea; but she soon ceased to rank as a first-class Power.

Absolution was formally granted to Venice on February 24, 1510, and Julius thus became openly detached from the League of Cambray. The incident marks the definitive consolidation of the Papal States; for although districts were occasionally lost and others occasionally added during the agitations of the following confused years, such variations were but temporary, and it was long ere the papal territory was finally rounded off by the acquisition of Ferrara and Urbino. From his own point of view Julius had done great things. By dexterous diplomacy and martial daring he had preserved or recovered or augmented Alexander's conquests, and given no suspicion of any intention of alienating them for the benefit of his own family. He was now, what so many Popes had vainly sighed to be, master in his own house, and a considerable temporal sovereign. Yet, if he was at all accessible to the feelings with which he has been usually credited, he must have reflected with remorse that this end had only been accomplished by allying himself with foreigners for the humiliation, almost the ruin, of the only considerable Italian State. He might naturally wish to repair the mischief he had done by humbling the foreigners in their turn. Other causes concurred,—his dread of the preponderance of the French in Northern Italy, his grief at the subjugation of his own city of Genoa by them; above all, it must be feared, his desire to aggrandise the Church by annexing the dominions of the Duke of Ferrara, who was protected by France. Alfonso of Ferrara had been a useful ally in the Pope's attack upon Venice, but he had declined to follow his example in making peace with her; he was personally obnoxious as Alexander VI's son-in-law; and his salt-works at Comacchio competed with