ssero
esser castigati.' After adducing two such witnesses, it would
weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, both of whom
expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of Papal
Rome.

[2] Compare _Lettere de' Princ._ ii. 77; Cardinal Cajetanus,
and other testimonies quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii.
pp. 568, 578.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHURCH AND MORALITY.

Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of
Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of
the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of
the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and
the Convents--Superstitious Respect for Relics--Separation between
Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the
Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the
Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct
Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the
Church--Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad
Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The
Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic
Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General
Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism.

The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral
weakness throughout Italy. This makes the history of the Popes of the
Renaissance important precisely in those details which formed the
subject of the preceding chapter. Morality and religion suffered an
almost complete separation in the fifteenth century. The chiefs of the
Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and
the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the
justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy living, and ungodliness
to the whole nation.

The contradiction between the spiritual pretensions of the Popes and
their actual worldliness was not so glaring to the men of the
Renaissance, accustomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly,
as it is to us. Nor would it be scientific to imagine that any Italian
in that age judged by moral standards similar to ours. AEsthetic
propriety rather than strict conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even
of the best, and it is wonderful to observe with what artless simplicity
the worst sinners believed they might make peace in