Corruption of the Church—­Degradation and Division of Italy—­Opinions of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples—­Incapacity of the Italians for thorough Reformation—­The Worldliness and Culture of the Renaissance—­Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and the Convents—­Superstitious Respect for Relics—­Separation between Religion and Morality—­Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the Popes—­Gianpaolo Baglioni—­Religious Sentiments of the Tyrannicides—­Pietro Paolo Boscoli—­Tenacity of Religions—­The direct Interest of the Italians in Rome—­Reverence for the Sacraments of the Church—­Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality—­Bad Faith and Sensuality—­The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice—­The Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature—­Domestic Murders—­Sense of Honor in Italy—­Onore and Onesta—­General Refinement—­Good Qualities of the People—­Religious Revivalism.

The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral weakness throughout Italy.  This makes the history of the Popes of the Renaissance important precisely in those details which formed the subject of the preceding chapter.  Morality and religion suffered an almost complete separation in the fifteenth century.  The chiefs of the Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy living, and ungodliness to the whole nation.

The contradiction between the spiritual pretensions of the Popes and their actual worldliness was not so glaring to the men of the Renaissance, accustomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly, as it is to us.  Nor would it be scientific to imagine that any Italian in that age judged by moral standards similar to ours.  AEsthetic propriety rather than strict conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even of the best, and it is wonderful to observe with what artless simplicity the worst sinners believed they might make peace in time of need with heaven.  Yet there were not wanting profound thinkers who traced the national decay of the Italians to the corruption of the Church.  Among these Machiavelli stands foremost.  In a celebrated passage of the Discorsi,[1] after treating the whole subject of the connection between good government and religion, he breaks forth into this fiery criticism of the Papacy:  ’Had the religion of Christianity been preserved according to the ordinances of its founder, the states and commonwealths of Christendom would have been far more united and far happier than they are.  Nor is it possible to form a better estimate of its decay than by observing that, in proportion as we approach nearer to the Roman Church, the head of this religion, we find less piety prevail among the nations.  Considering the primitive constitution of that Church, and noting how diverse are its present customs, we are forced to judge that