In this chapter I shall not attempt a general survey of Italian society.[180] I shall content myself with supplying materials for the formation of a judgment by narrating some of the most remarkable domestic tragedies of the second half of the sixteenth century, choosing those only which rest upon well-sifted documentary evidence, and which bring the social conditions of the country into strong relief.  Before engaging in these historical romances, it will be well to preface them with a few general remarks upon the state of manners they will illustrate.

The first thing which strikes a student of Italy between 1530 and 1600 is that crimes of violence, committed by private individuals for personal ends, continued steadily upon the increase.[181]

[Footnote 179:  The last section of Loyola’s Exercitia is an epitome of post-Tridentine Catholicism, though penned before the opening of the Council.  In its last paragraph it inculcates the fear of God:  ’neque porro is timor solum, quem filialem appellamus, qui pius est ac sanctus maxime; verum etiam alter, servilis dictus’ (Inst.  Soc.  Jesu, vol. iv. p. 173).]

[Footnote 180:  An interesting survey of this wider kind has been attempted by U.A.  Canello for the whole sixteenth century in his Storia della Lett.  It. nel Secolo XVI. (Milano:  Vallardi, 1880).  He tries to demonstrate that, in the sphere of private life, Italian society gradually refined the brutal lusts of the Middle Ages, and passed through fornication to a true conception of woman as man’s companion in the family.  The theme is bold; and the author seems to have based it upon too slight acquaintance with the real conditions of the Middle Ages.]

[Footnote 181:  Galluzzi, in his Storia del Granducato di Toscana, vol. iv. p. 34, estimates the murders committed in Florence alone during the eighteen months which followed the death of Cosimo I., at 186.]

Compared with the later Middle Ages, compared with the Renaissance, this period is distinguished by extraordinary ferocity of temper and by an almost unparalleled facility of bloodshed.[182]

[Footnote 182:  In drawing up these paragraphs I am greatly indebted to a vigorous passage by Signor Salvatore Bonghi in his Storia di Lucrezia Buonvisi, pp. 7-9, of which I have made free use, translating his words when they served my purpose, and interpolating such further details as might render the picture more complete.]

The broad political and religious contests which had torn the country in the first years of the sixteenth century, were pacified.  Foreign armies had ceased to dispute the provinces of Italy.  The victorious powers of Spain, the Church, and the protected principalities, seemed secure in the possession of their gains.  But those international quarrels which kept the nation in unrest through a long period of municipal wars, ending in the horrors of successive invasions, were