priest is (p. 31) ’il venerabile lupo.’  The members of religious orders are (p. 534) ’ministri de satanasso ... soldati del gran diavolo:  (p. 25) ’piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meta buoni, che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza bruttissima macchia.’  It is perilous to hold any communication with them (p. 39):  ’Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, e omini di mala sorte conversare si vedeno.’  Their sins against nature (p. 65), the secret marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), the ‘fetide cioache oi monache,’ choked with the fruits of infanticide (p. 81), not to mention their avarice (p. 55) and gross impiety (p. 52), are described with a naked sincerity that bears upon its face the stamp of truth.

[3] A famous passage from Agrippa (De Vanitate Scientiarum) deserves a place here.  After alluding to Sixtus IV, he says that many state officers ’in civitatibus suis lupanaria construunt foventque, non nihil ex meretricio questu etiam aerario suo accumulantes emolumenti; quod quidem in Italia non rarum est, ubi etiam Romana scorta in singulas hebdomadas Julium pendent Pontifici, qui census annuus nonnunquam viginti millia ducatos excedit, adeoque Ecclesiae procerum id munus est, ut una cum Ecclesiarum proventibus etiam lenociniorum numerent mercedem.  Sic enim ego illos supputantes aliquando audivi:  Habet, inquientes, ille duo beneficia, unum curaturn aureorum viginti, alterum prioratum ducatorum quadraginta, el tres putanas in burdello, quae reddunt singulis hebdomadibus Julios Viginti.’

[4] Very few ecclesiastics of high rank escaped the contagion of Roman society.  It was fashionable for men like Bembo and La Casa to form connections with women of the demi-monde and to recognize their children, whose legitimation they frequently procured.  The Capitoli of the burlesque poets show that this laxity of conduct was pardonable, when compared with other laughingly avowed and all but universal indulgences.  Once more, compare Guidiccioni’s letter to M. Giamb.  Bernardi Opp. vol. i. p. 102.

Some of the contempt and hatred expressed by the Italian satirists for the two great orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic may perhaps be due to an ancient grudge against them as a Papal police founded in the interests of orthodoxy.  But the chief point aimed at is the mixture of hypocrisy with immorality, which rendered them odious to all classes of society.  At the same time the Franciscans embraced among their lay brethren nearly all the population of Italy, and to die in the habit of the order was thought the safest way of cheating the devil of his due.  Corruption had gone so far and deep that it was universally recognized and treated with the sarcasm of levity.  It roused no sincere reaction, and stimulated no persistent indignation.  Every one acknowledged it; yet every one continued to live indolently according to the fashion of his forefathers, acting up to Ovid’s maxim—­