To ensure obedience to this statute would have been impossible without the co-operation of the Jesuits.

They were, however, diffused throughout the nations of North, East, South, and West.

When an Italian arrived, the Jesuit Fathers paid him a visit, and unless they received satisfactory answers with regard to his license of travel and his willingness to accept their spiritual direction, these serfs of Rome sent a delation to the central Holy Office, upon the ground of which the Inquisitors of his province instituted an action against him in his absence.

Merchants, who neglected these rules, found themselves exposed to serious impediments in their trading operations, and to the peril of prosecution involving confiscation of property at home.

Sarpi, who composed a vigorous critique of this abuse, points out what injury was done to commerce by the system.[156] We may still further censure it as an intolerable interference with the liberty of the individual; as an odious exercise of spiritual tyranny on the part of an ambitious ecclesiastical power which aimed at nothing less than universal domination.
[Footnote 155: Any correspondence with heretics was accounted sufficient to implicate an Italian in the charge of heresy.