  Jacobi renewed his political polemic in 1782, this time on the occasion of the publication by the historian Johann von Müller of a pamphlet entitled The Travels of the  Popes,[9]  in which, contrary to current ‘enlightened’ views, a positive revaluation of the role of the Popes in the Middles Ages was offered.  Jacobi responded with a pamphlet of his own (Jacobi,  1782)[10] in which he defended Müller’s position — not because he had any sympathy for Catholicism, or because he was opposed to secularism, but because he thought that the Popes’ spiritual despotism was much to be preferred to the secular, allegedly enlightened, despotism of the princes.