demanded an asylum.  Feudal nobles prided themselves on protecting refugees within their fiefs and castles.  There were innumerable petty domains left, which carried privileges of signorial courts and local justice.  Cardinals, ambassadors, and powerful princes claimed immunity from common jurisdiction in their palaces, the courts and basements of which soon became the resort of escaped criminals.  No extradition treaties subsisted between the several and numerous states into which Italy was then divided, so that it was only necessary to cross a frontier in order to gain safety from the law.  The position of an outlaw in that case was tolerably secure, except against private vengeance or the cupidity of professional cut-throats, who gained an honest livelihood by murdering bandits with a good price on their heads.  Condemned for the most part in their absence, these homicides entered a recognized and not dishonorable class.  They were tolerated, received, and even favored by neighboring princes, who generally had some grudge against the state from which the outlaws fled.  After obtaining letters of safe-conduct and protection, they enrolled themselves in the militia of their adopted country, while the worst of them became spies or secret agents of police.  No government seems to have regarded crimes of violence with severity, provided these had been committed on a foreign soil.  Murders for the sake of robbery or rape were indeed esteemed ignoble.  But a man who had killed an avowed enemy, or had shed blood in the heat of a quarrel, or had avenged his honor by the assassination of a sister convicted of light love, only established a reputation for bravery, which stood him in good stead.  He was likely to make a stout soldier, and he had done nothing socially discreditable.  On the contrary, if he had been useful in ridding the world of an outlaw some prince wished to kill, this murder made him a hero.  In addition to the blood-money, he not unfrequently received lucrative office, or a pension for life.

A very curious state of things resulted from these customs.  States depended, in large measure, for the execution of their judicial sentences in cases of manslaughter and treason, upon foreign murderers and traitors.  Towns were full of outlaws, each with a price upon his head, mutually suspicious, individually desirous of killing some fellow-criminal and thereby enriching his own treasury.  If he were successful, he received a fair sum of money, with privileges and immunities from the state which had advertised the outlaw; and not unfrequently he obtained the further right of releasing one or more bandits from penalties of death or prison.  It may be imagined at what cross-purposes the outlaws dwelt together, with crimes in many states accumulated on their shoulders; and what peril might ensue to society should they combine together, as indeed they tried to do in Bedmar’s conspiracy against Venice.  Meanwhile, the states kept this floating population of criminals in check