in Italy, that great limbique of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devill, and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himself, and become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonnesse.’

    [2] The Repentance of Robert Greene, quoted in the memoir to
    Dyce’s edition of his Dramatic Works.

    [3] See chapter v.

With reference to carnal vice, it cannot be denied that the corruption of Italy was shameful.  Putting aside the profligacy of the convents, the City of Rome in 1490 is reported to have held as many as 6,800 public prostitutes, besides those who practiced their trade under the cloak of concubinage.[1] These women were accompanied by confederate ruffians, ready to stab, poison, and extort money; thus violence and lust went hand in hand, and to this profligate lower stratum of society may be ascribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered Rome under Innocent VIII. almost uninhabitable.  Venice, praised for its piety by De Comines,[2] was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth.  Tom Coryat, the eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor and refinement displayed by the demi-monde of the lagoons, and Marston describes Venice as a school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine played professor.[3] Of the state of morals in Florence Savonarola’s sermons give the best picture.

[1] Infessura, p. 1997.  He adds:  ’Consideratur modo qualiter vivatur Romae ubi caput fidei est.’  From what Parent Duchatelet (Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, p. 27) has noted concerning the tendency to exaggerate the numbers of prostitutes in any given town, we have every reason to regard the estimate of Infessura as excessive.  In Paris, in 1854, there were only 4,206 registered ‘filles publiques,’ when the population of the city numbered 1,500,000 persons; while those who exercised their calling clandestinely were variously computed at 20,000 or 40,000 and upwards to 60,000.  Accurate statistics relating to the population of any Italian city in the fifteenth century do not, unfortunately, exist.

[2] Memoirs, lib. vii.  ’C’est la plus triomphante cite que j’ai jamais vue, et qui plus fait d’honneur a ambassadeurs et etrangers, et qui plus sagement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus solemnellement faict.’ The prostitutes of Venice were computed to number 11,654 so far back as the end of the 14th century.  See Filiasi, quoted by Mutinelli in his Annali urbani di Venezia.

    [3] Satires, ii.