f art and humanism into the stage of rationalism and science,
the Church used its authority to bring back the middle ages and to
repress national impulses. It made common cause with Spain for a common
object--the maintenance of Italy in a state of political and
intellectual bondage, and the subjugation of such provinces in Europe as
had not been irretrievably lost to the Catholic cause. The Italians, as
a nation, remained passive, but not altogether unwilling or unapproving
spectators of the drama which was being enacted under Papal leadership
beyond their boundaries. Once again their activity was merged in that of
Rome--in the action of that State which had first secured for them the
Empire of the habitable globe, and next the spiritual hegemony of the
Western races, and from the predominance of which they had partially
disengaged themselves during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It
was the Papacy's sense of its own danger as a cosmopolitan institution,
combined with the crushing superiority of Spain in the peninsula, which
determined this phase of Italian history.

The Catholic Revival, like the Renaissance, may in a certain sense be
viewed as a product of Italian genius. This is sufficiently proved by
the diplomatic history of the Tridentine Council, and by the dedication
of the Jesuits to Papal service. It must, however, be remembered that
while the Renaissance emanated from the race at large, from its
confederation of independent republics and tyrannies, the Catholic
Revival emanated from that portion of the race which is called Rome,
from the ecclesiastical hierarchy imbued with world-wide ambitions in
which national interests were drowned. There is nothing more interesting
to the biographer of the Italians than the complicated correlation in
which they have always stood to the cosmopolitan organism of Rome,
itself Italian. In their antique days of greatness Rome subdued them,
and by their native legions won the overlordship of the world. After the
downfall of the Empire the Church continued Roman traditions in an
altered form, but it found itself unable to dispense with the foreign
assistance of Franks and Germans. The price now paid by Italy for
spiritual headship in Europe was subjection to Teutonic suzerains and
perpetual intriguing interference in her affairs. During the Avignonian
captivity and the Great Schism, Italy developed intellectual and
confederative unity, imposing her laws of culture and of