them, because, being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them.
Nevertheless, if any one should ask of me how comes it that the Church has attained such greatness in temporal power, seeing that from Alexander backwards the Italian potentates (not only those who have been called potentates, but every baron and lord, though the smallest) have valued the temporal power very slightly—yet now a king of France trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from Italy, and to ruin the Venetians—although this may be very manifest, it does not appear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory.
Before Charles, King of France, passed into Italy,19 this country was under the dominion of the Pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke