alth, and the suffering of the lower
classes from pirates, bandits and tax-gatherers. These conditions were
sufficient to demoralize a people. And mediaeval Catholicism, restored
by edict, enforced by the Inquisition, propagated by Jesuits, was not of
the fine enthusiastic quality to counteract them. Servile in its
conception, it sufficed to bridle and benumb a race of serfs, but not
to soften or to purify their brutal instincts.[179]

In this chapter I shall not attempt a general survey of Italian
society.[180] I shall content myself with supplying materials for the
formation of a judgment by narrating some of the most remarkable
domestic tragedies of the second half of the sixteenth century, choosing
those only which rest upon well-sifted documentary evidence, and which
bring the social conditions of the country into strong relief. Before
engaging in these historical romances, it will be well to preface them
with a few general remarks upon the state of manners they will
illustrate.

The first thing which strikes a student of Italy between 1530 and 1600
is that crimes of violence, committed by private individuals for
personal ends, continued steadily upon the increase.[181]

[Footnote 179: The last section of Loyola's _Exercitia_ is an epitome of
post-Tridentine Catholicism, though penned before the opening of the
Council. In its last paragraph it inculcates the fear of God: 'neque
porro is timor solum, quem filialem appellamus, qui pius est ac sanctus
maxime; verum etiam alter, servilis dictus' (_Inst. Soc. Jesu_, vol. iv.
p. 173).]

[Footnote 180: An interesting survey of this wider kind has been
attempted by U.A. Canello for the whole sixteenth century in his _Storia
della Lett. It. nel Secolo XVI_. (Milano: Vallardi, 1880). He tries to
demonstrate that, in the sphere of private life, Italian society
gradually refined the brutal lusts of the Middle Ages, and passed
through fornication to a true conception of woman as man's companion in
the family. The theme is bold; and the author seems to have based it
upon too slight acquaintance with the real conditions of the Middle
Ages.]

[Footnote 181: Galluzzi, in his _Storia del Granducato di Toscana_, vol.
iv. p. 34, estimates the murders committed in Florence alone during the
eighteen months which followed the death of Cosimo I., at 186.]

Compared with the later Middle Ages, compared with the Renaissance, this
period is distinguished by extraordinary ferocity of t