oth served and despised has been left us by
the Florentine statesman and historian [Sidenote: Guiccidardini,
1483-1540] Guiccidardini: "So much evil cannot be said of the Roman
curia," he wrote, "that more does not deserve to be said of it, for it
is an infamy, an example of all the shame and wickedness of the world."
He might have been supposed to be ready to support any enemy of such an
institution, but what does he say?

No man dislikes more than do I the ambition, avarice
and effeminacy of the priests, not only because these
vices are hateful in themselves but because they are
especially unbecoming to men who have vowed a life
dependent upon God. . . . Nevertheless, my employment
with several popes has forced me to desire their greatness
for my own advantage. But for this consideration I
should have loved Luther like myself, not to free myself
from the silly laws of Christianity as commonly understood,
but to put this gang of criminals under restraint,
so that they might live either without vices or without power.

From this precious text we learn much of the inner history of
contemporary Italy. As far as the Italian mind was liberated in
religion it was atheistic, as far as it was reforming it went no
further than rejection of the hierarchy. The enemies to be dreaded by
Rome were, as the poet Luigi Alamanni wrote, [Sidenote: Alamanni,
1495-1556] not Luther and Germany, but her own sloth, drunkenness,
avarice, ambition, sensuality and gluttony.

The great spiritual factor that defeated Protestantism in Italy was not
Catholicism but the Renaissance. [Sidenote: Renaissance vs.
Reformation] Deeply imbued with the tincture of classical learning,
naturally speculative and tolerant, the Italian mind had already
advanced, in its best representatives, far beyond the intellectual
stage of the Reformers. The hostility of the Renaissance to the
Reformation was a deep and subtle antithesis of the interests of this
world {374} and of the next. It is notable that whereas some
philosophical minds, like that of the brilliant Olympia Morata, who had
once been completely skeptical, later came under the influence of
Luther, there was not one artist of the first rank, not one of the
greatest poets, that seems to have been in the least attracted by him.
A few minor poets, like Folengo, [Sidenote: Folengo, 1491-1544] showed
traces of his influence, but Ariosto and Tasso were bitterly hostile.
[Sidenot