ey desired. The office of the
Datatario alone brought from ten to fourteen thousand crowns a month
into the Papal treasury in 1560.[55] This large sum accrued from the
composition of benefices and the sale of vacant offices. The Camera
Apostolica, or Chamber of Justice, was no less venal. A price was set on
every crime, for which its punishment could be commuted into
cash-payment. Even so severe a Pope as Paul IV. committed to his nephew,
by published and printed edict, the privilege of compounding with
criminals by fines.[56] One consequence of this vile system, rightly
called by the Venetian envoy 'the very strangest that could be witnessed
or heard of in such matters,' was that wealthy sinners indulged their
appetites at the expense of their families, and that innocent people
became the prey of sharpers and informers.[57] Rome had organized a vast
system of _chantage_.

[Footnote 54: Alberi, vol. x. pp. 35, 83, 277.]

[Footnote 55: Mocenigo's computation, _op. cit._ p. 29.]

[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ p. 31.]

[Footnote 57: The true history of the Cenci, as written by Bertolotti,
throws light upon these points.] Another consequence was that acts of
violence were frightfully common. Men could be hired to commit murders
at sums varying from ten to four scudi; and on the death of Paul IV.,
when anarchy prevailed for a short while in Rome, an eye-witness asserts
that several hundred assassinations were committed within the walls in a
few days.[58]

[Footnote 58: Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 38.]

It was not to be expected that a population so corrupt, accustomed for
generations to fatten upon the venality and vices of the hierarchy,
should welcome those radical reforms which were the best fruits of the
Tridentine Council. They specially disliked the decrees which enforced
the residence of prelates and the limitation of benefices held by a
single ecclesiastic. These regulations implied the withdrawal of wealthy
patrons from Rome, together with an incalculable reduction in the amount
of foreign money spent there. Nor were the measures for abolishing a
simoniacal sale of offices, and the growing demand for decency in the
administration of justice, less unpopular. The one struck at the root of
private speculation in lucrative posts, and deprived the Court of
revenues which had to be replaced by taxes. The other destroyed the arts
of informers, checked lawlessness and license in the rich, and had the
same lamentable effect of im