[Footnote 178:  Expelled from Venice in 1606, from Bohemia in 1618, from Naples and the Netherlands in 1622, from Russia in 1676, from Portugal in 1759, from Spain in 1767, from France in 1764.  Suppressed by the Bull of Clement XIV. in 1773.  Restored in 1814, as an instrument against the Revolution.]

Great psychological and pathological interest, attaches to the study of the Jesuit order.  To withhold our admiration from the zeal, energy, self-devotion and constructive ability of its founders, would be impossible.  Equally futile would it be to affect indifference before the sinister spectacle of so world-embracing an organism, persistently maintained in action for an anti-social end.  There is something Roman in the colossal proportions of Loyola’s idea, something Roman in the durability of the structure which perpetuates it.  Yet the philosopher cannot but agree with the vulgar in his final judgment on the odiousness of these sacerdotal despots, these unflinching foes not merely to the heroes of the human intellect, and to the champions of right conduct, but also to the very angels of Christianity.  That the Jesuits should claim to have been founded by Him who preached the Sermon on the Mount, that they should flaunt their motto, A.M.D.G., in the sight of Him who spake from Sinai, is one of those practical paradoxes in which the history of decrepit religions abounds.

CHAPTER V.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS:  PART I.

How did the Catholic Revival affect Italian Society?—­Difficulty of Answering this Question—­Frequency of Private Crimes of Violence—­Homicides and Bandits—­Savage Criminal Justice—­Paid Assassins—­Toleration of Outlaws—­Honorable Murder—­Example of the Lucchese Army—­State of the Convents—­The History of Virginia de Leyva—­Lucrezia Buonvisi—­The True Tale of the Cenci—­The Brothers of the House of Massimo—­Vittoria Accoramboni—­The Duchess of Palliano—­Wife-Murders—­The Family of Medici.

We are naturally led to inquire what discernible effect the Catholic Revival and the Counter-Reformation had upon the manners and morals of the Italians as a nation.  Much has been said about the contrast between intellectual refinement and almost savage license which marked the Renaissance.  Yet it can with justice be maintained that, while ferocity and brutal sensuality survived from the Middle Ages, humanism, by means of the new ideal it introduced, tended to civilize and educate the race.  Now, however, the Church was stifling culture and attempting to restore that ecclesiastical conception of human life which the Renaissance had superseded.  Did then her resuscitated Catholicism succeed in permeating the Italians with the spirit of Christ and of the Gospel?  Were the nobles more quiet in their demeanor, less quarrelsome and haughty, more law-abiding and less given to acts of violence, than they had been in the previous period?  Were the people more contented and less torn by factions, happier in their homes, less abandoned to the insanities of baleful superstitions?