ribed.
In fact, at no other time were men ever so busy as then with "good
works," or so fussy about church ritual. Everybody was anxious not to be
a heretic. At the same time the whole mediaeeval system was falling to
pieces, and the inventions and discoveries were disproving all received
and approved ideas about the world and welfare in it. Gross sensuality
and carnal lust got possession of society, and the church system was an
independent system of balancing accounts with the other world. The
theater declined into obscenity and coarseness, and the popular pulpit
was hardly better.[600] The learned world was returning to classical
paganism. The popes had their children in the Vatican and publicly
married them there. Under Sextus IV the courtesans at Rome paid a tax
which produced 20,000 ducats per annum. Prelates owned brothels.
Innocent VIII tried to stop the scandal. In 1490 his vicar published an
edict against all concubinage, but the pope forced him to recall it
because all ecclesiastics had concubines. There were 6800 public
meretrices at Rome besides private ones and concubines. Concubinage was
really tolerated, subject to the payment of an amercement.[601] The
proceedings under Alexander VI were only the culmination of the license
taken by men who were irresponsible masters of the world, and who showed
the insanity of despotism just as the Roman emperors did.[602] The
church had broken down under the reaction of its own efforts to rule the
world. It had made moral hypocrisy and religious humbug characteristic
of Christians, for he who indulges in sensual vice and balances it off
by ritual devices is morally subject to the deepest corruption of
character. The church system had corrupted the mores by adding casuistry
and dialectic smartness to the devices for regulating conduct and
satisfying interests. The men of the Renaissance, especially in Italy,
acted always from passionate motives and went to great excess. Their
only system of conduct was success in what they wanted to do, and so
they were often heroes of crime. Yet they all conformed to church ritual
and discipline.

+264.+ A great undertaking like the suppression of dissent by force and
cruelty cannot be carried out in a great group of states without local
differentiation and variation. To close the story, it is worth while to
notice these variations in England, Spain, and Venice.

+265. Torture in England.+ The Inquisition cannot be said to have