inction of that town and the disfranchisement
of its inhabitants in favor of the conquerors.

Florence at this epoch still called itself a republic; and of all
Italian commonwealths it was by far the most democratic. Its history,
unlike that of Venice, had been the history of continual and brusque
changes, resulting in the destruction of the old nobility, in the
equalization of the burghers, and in the formation of a new aristocracy
of wealth. From this class of _bourgeois_ nobles sprang the Medici, who,
by careful manipulation of the State machinery, by the creation of a
powerful party devoted to their interests, by flattery of the people, by
corruption, by taxation, and by constant scheming, raised themselves to
the first place in the commonwealth, and became its virtual masters. In
the year 1492, Lorenzo de Medici, the most remarkable chief of this
despotic family, died, bequeathing his supremacy in the republic to a
son of marked incompetence.

Since the pontificate of Nicholas V. the See of Rome had entered upon a
new period of existence. The popes no longer dreaded to reside in Rome,
but were bent upon making the metropolis of Christendom both splendid as
a seat of art and learning, and also potent as the capital of a secular
kingdom. Though their fiefs in Romagna and the March were still held but
loosely, though their provinces swarmed with petty despots who defied
the papal authority, and though the princely Roman houses of Colonna and
Orsini were still strong enough to terrorize the Holy Father in the
Vatican, it was now clear that the Papal See must in the end get the
better of its adversaries, and consolidate itself into a first-rate
power. The internal spirit of the papacy, at this time, corresponded to
its external policy. It was thoroughly secularized by a series of
worldly and vicious pontiffs, who had clean forgotten what their title,
Vicar of Christ, implied. They consistently used their religious
prestige to enforce their secular authority, while by their temporal
power they caused their religious claims to be respected. Corrupt and
shameless, they indulged themselves in every vice, openly acknowledged
their children, and turned Italy upside down in order to establish
favorites and bastards in the principalities they seized as spoils of
war.

The kingdom of Naples differed from any other state of Italy. Subject
continually to foreign rulers since the decay of the Greek Empire,
governed in succession