the vacillation and irresolution of
Clement's state-policy.

[2] See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome, _St. Fior._ ii.

[3] So Luigi Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome
relates.

It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor seriously thought of
putting an end to the State of the Church. His councilors advised him to
restore the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make Rome again
the seat of Empire.[1] But to have done this would have been impossible
under the political conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face
of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, therefore, cost Rome
the miseries of the sack; but they were speedily superseded by the
determination to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial
authority in Italy. Florence was given as a make-peace offering to the
contemptible Medici; and it remains the worst shame of Clement that he
used the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for the enslavement of
his mother-city.

[1] See the authorities in Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp.
569, 575.

Internally, the Papal State had learned by its misfortunes the necessity
of a reform. Sadoleto, writing in the September of that memorable year
to Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome have satisfied the
wrath of God, and that the way was now open for an amelioration of
manners and laws.[1] No force of arms could prevent the Holy City from
returning to a better life, and proving that the Christian priesthood
was not a mere mockery and sham.[2] In truth the Counter-Reformation may
be said to date historically from 1527.

[1] It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of
Rome was a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the godless
city. Without quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the
Bishop of Fossombrone, one of whose letters gives a really
awful picture of Roman profligacy (_Opere di M.G. Guidiccioni_,
Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we find abundant testimony to this
persuasion regarding the intolerible vice of Rome, even in men
devoid of moral conscience. Aretino (_La Cortegiana_, end of
Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: 'Io mic redeva che il castigo, che
l' ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, l'avesse fatta
migliore, et e piu scellerata che mai.' Bandello (_Novelle_,
Parte ii. xxxvii.) alluding to the sack, remarks in a
parenthesis, 'benche i peccati di quella citta merita