In Italy the Republic of Venice, in 1418, followed these examples.

The judicial torture and murder of Antonio de Dominis were not simply for heresy his investigations in the phenomena of light were an additional crime.

In Spain everything like scientific research was crushed out among Christians.

Some earnest efforts were afterward made by Jews and Moors, but these were finally ended by persecution; and to this hour the Spanish race, in some respects the most gifted in Europe, which began its career with everything in its favour and with every form of noble achievement, remains in intellectual development behind every other in Christendom.
To question the theological view of physical science was, even long after the close of the Middle Ages, exceedingly perilous.

We have seen how one of Roger Bacon's unpardonable offences was his argument against the efficacy of magic, and how, centuries afterward, Cornelius Agrippa, Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a multitude of other investigators and thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and death, for similar views.( 275) (275) For an account of Bacon's treatise, De Nullitate Magiae, see Hoefer.