[Footnote 52:  See Mocenigo, op. cit. p. 35; Aretino’s Dialogo della Corte di Roma; and the private history of the Farnesi.]

[Footnote 53:  Giov.  Carraro and Lor.  Priuli, op. cit. pp. 275, 306.]

Such being the social conditions of Rome, it is not surprising to learn that during the reign of so harsh a Pontiff as Paul IV., the population sank to a number estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000.  It rose rapidly to 70,000, and touched 80,000 in the reign of Pius IV.  Afterwards it gradually ascended to 90,000, and during the popular pontificate of Gregory XIII. it is said to have reached the high figure of 140,000.  These calculations are based upon the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, and can be considered as impartial, although they may not be statistically exact.[54]

What rendered Roman society rotten to the core was universal pecuniary corruption.  In Rome nothing could be had without payment; but men with money in their purse obtained whatever they desired.  The office of the Datatario alone brought from ten to fourteen thousand crowns a month into the Papal treasury in 1560.[55] This large sum accrued from the composition of benefices and the sale of vacant offices.  The Camera Apostolica, or Chamber of Justice, was no less venal.  A price was set on every crime, for which its punishment could be commuted into cash-payment.  Even so severe a Pope as Paul IV. committed to his nephew, by published and printed edict, the privilege of compounding with criminals by fines.[56] One consequence of this vile system, rightly called by the Venetian envoy ’the very strangest that could be witnessed or heard of in such matters,’ was that wealthy sinners indulged their appetites at the expense of their families, and that innocent people became the prey of sharpers and informers.[57] Rome had organized a vast system of chantage.

[Footnote 54:  Alberi, vol. x. pp. 35, 83, 277.]

[Footnote 55:  Mocenigo’s computation, op. cit. p. 29.]

[Footnote 56:  Ibid. p. 31.]

[Footnote 57:  The true history of the Cenci, as written by Bertolotti, throws light upon these points.] Another consequence was that acts of violence were frightfully common.  Men could be hired to commit murders at sums varying from ten to four scudi; and on the death of Paul IV., when anarchy prevailed for a short while in Rome, an eye-witness asserts that several hundred assassinations were committed within the walls in a few days.[58]

[Footnote 58:  Mocenigo, op. cit. p. 38.]