young men.  But when Italy sank into the sloth of pacification after the settlement of Charles V. at Bologna in 1530, when there were no longer condottieri to levy troops in rival armies, when political parties ceased in the cities, the old humors broke out again under the aspect of private and personal feuds.  Though the names of Guelf and Ghibelline had lost their meaning, these factions reappeared, and divided Milan, the towns of Romagna, the villages of the Campagna.  In the place of condottieri arose brigand chiefs, who, like Piccolomini and Sciarra, placed themselves at the head of regiments, and swept the country on marauding expeditions.  Instead of exiles, driven by victorious parties in the state to seek precarious living on a foreign soil, bandits, proscribed for acts of violence, abounded.  Thus the habits which had been created through centuries of political ferment, subsisted when the nation was at rest in servitude, assuming baser and more selfish forms of ferocity.  The end of the sixteenth century witnessed the final degeneration and corruption of a mediaeval state of warfare, which the Renaissance had checked, but which the miseries of foreign invasions had resuscitated by brutalizing the population, and which now threatened to disintegrate society in aimless anarchy and private lawlessness.

It must not be imagined that governments and magistracies were slack in their pursuit of criminals.  Repressive statutes, proclamations of outlawry, and elaborate prosecutions succeeded one another with unwearied conscientiousness.  The revenues of states were taxed to furnish blood-money and to support spies.  Large sums were invariably offered for the capture or assassination of escaped delinquents; and woe to the wretches who became involved in criminal proceedings!  Witnesses were tortured with infernal cruelty.  Convicted culprits suffered horrible agonies before their death, or were condemned to languish out a miserable life in pestilential dungeons.  But the very inhumanity of this judicial method, without mercy for the innocent, from whom evidence could be extorted, and frequently inequitable in the punishments assigned to criminals of varying degrees of guilt, taught the people to defy justice, and encouraged them in brutality.  They found it more tolerable to join the bands of brigands who preyed upon their fields and villages, than to assist rulers who governed so unequally and cruelly.  We know, for instance, that a robber chief, Marianazzo, refused the Pope’s pardon, alleging that the profession of brigandage was more lucrative and offered greater security of life than any trade within the walls of Rome.  Thus the bandits of that generation occupied the specious attitude of opposition to oppressive governments.  There were, moreover, many favorable chances for a homicide.  The Church was jealous of her rights of sanctuary.  Whatever may have been her zeal for orthodoxy, she showed herself an indulgent mother to culprits who