FRA PAOLO. 229 



driven from Venice after they had refused to comply with 

 the statutes passed by the state in contravention and de- 

 fiance of the Pope's interdict. The rancor against him, 

 which resulted in an attempt to assassinate him, and the 

 removal of his remains nine times from place to place be- 

 fore they found safe and permanent sepulture, had not 

 undergone the slightest abatement when the Jesuit Cab- 

 sens, 1 six years after Sarpi's death, wrote his book on the 

 magnet, and with ingenious indirection, proceeded to as- 

 cribe to Leonardo Garzoni, another Jesuit who died in 

 1592, the discoveries of which, as I shall shortly show, 

 John Baptista Porta obtained knowledge directly from 

 Sarpi. 



Garzoni seems to have written, at some indefinite time 

 (but very close to and possibly even after the periods when 

 Sarpi made his researches), a treatise on the magnet which 

 he left uncompleted. His brother, after his death, an- 

 nounced an intention of publishing it, but if he did so, 

 Bertelli 2 (despite a thorough search through all the princi- 

 pal libraries of Italy and especially through those in which 

 Cabaeus found his literary material), has been unable to 

 discover any trace of it. He unearths, however, a book, 

 published in 1642, which says that Garzoni's magnetic dis- 

 coveries were well known, and on no better basis than this, 

 permits himself to accept, without question, the assertion 

 of Cabseus that the whole idea of the field of force origi- 

 nated with Garzoni, and hence, by necessary implication, 

 not with Sarpi. But against the tacit opinion of even so 

 learned a scholar as Father Bertelli, stands the total lack 

 of evidence in favor of Garzoni, and the intense antagon- 

 ism to Fra Paolo characteristic of the Jesuits, in which 

 Cabseus evidently shares. 



While, however, as I have stated, proof of Sarpi's dis- 

 coveries, based on his own writings, is now meagre, it 



1 Philosophia Magnetica. Ferrara, 1629, lib. i., c. xvi. 



2 Mem. sopra Peregrinus, 24. 



