by influences hostile to the
earlier Renaissance. Italy underwent a metamorphosis, prescribed by the
Papacy and enforced by Spanish rule. In the process of this
transformation the people submitted to rigid ecclesiastical discipline,
and adopted, without assimilating, the customs of a foreign troop of
despots.

At first sight we may wonder that the race which had shone with such
incomparable luster from Dante to Ariosto, and which had done so much to
create modern culture for Europe, should so quietly have accepted a
retrogressive revolution. Yet, when we look closer, this is not
surprising. The Italians were fatigued with creation, bewildered by the
complexity of their discoveries, uncertain as to the immediate course
before them. The Renaissance had been mainly the work of a select few.
It had transformed society without permeating the masses of the people.
Was it strange that the majority should reflect that, after all, the old
ways are the best? This led them to approve the Catholic Revival. Was it
strange that, after long distracting aimless wars, they should hail
peace at any price? This lent popular sanction to the Spanish hegemony,
in spite of its obvious drawbacks.

These may be reckoned the main conditions which gave a peculiar but not
easily definable complexion of languor, melancholy, and dwindling
vitality to nearly every manifestation of Italian genius in the second
half of the sixteenth century, and which well nigh sterilized that
genius during the two succeeding centuries. In common with the rest of
Europe, and in consequence of an inevitable alteration of their mental
bias, they had lost the blithe spontaneity of the Renaissance. But they
were at the same time suffering from grievous exhaustion, humiliated by
the tyranny of foreign despotism, and terrorized by ecclesiastical
intolerance. In their case, therefore, a sort of moral and intellectual
atrophy becomes gradually more and more perceptible. The clear artistic
sense of rightness and of beauty yields to doubtful taste. The frank
audacity of the Renaissance is superseded by cringing timidity,
lumbering dulness, somnolent and stagnant acquiescence in accepted
formulae. At first the best minds of the nation fret and rebel, and meet
with the dungeon or the stake as the reward of contumacy. In the end
everybody seems to be indifferent, satisfied with vacuity, enamored of
insipidity. The brightest episode in this dreary period is the emergence
of modern