added in conclusion that the whole story rests upon the
testimony of Inquisitorial archives, and that the real method of Giacomo
Centini's apparent madness yet remains to be investigated. The few facts
that we know about him, from his behavior on the scaffold and a letter
he wrote his wife, prejudice me in his favor.

Enough, and more than enough, perhaps, has been collected in this
chapter, to throw light upon the manners of Italians during the
Counter-Reformation. It would have been easy to repeat the story of the
Countess of Cellant and her murdered lovers, or of the Duchess of Amalfi
strangled by her brothers for a marriage below her station. The
massacres committed by the Raspanti in Ravenna would furnish a whole
series of illustrative crimes. From the deeds of Alfonso Piccolomini,
Sciarra and Fabrizio Colonna details sufficient to fill a volume with
records of atrocious savagery could be drawn. The single episode of
Elena Campireali, who plighted her troth to a bandit, became Abbess of
the Convent at Castro, intrigued with a bishop, and killed herself for
shame on the return of her first lover, would epitomize in one drama all
the principal features of this social discord. The dreadful tale of the
Baron of Montebello might be told again, who assaulted the castle of the
Marquis of Pratidattolo, and, by the connivance of a sister whom he
subsequently married, murdered the Marquis with his mother, children,
and relatives. The hunted life of Alessandro Antelminelli, pursued
through all the States of Europe by assassins, could be used to
exemplify the miseries of proscribed exiles. But what is the use of
multiplying instances, when every pedigree in Litta, every chronicle of
the time, every history of the most insignificant township, swarms with
evidence to the same purpose? We need not adopt the opinion that society
had greatly altered for the worse. We must rather decide that mediaeval
ferocity survived throughout the whole of that period which witnessed
the Catholic Revival, and that the piety which distinguished it was not
influential in curbing vehement passions.

The conclusions to be drawn from the facts before us seem to be in
general these. The link between government and governed in Italy had
snapped. The social bond was broken, and the constituents that form a
nation were pursuing divers aims. On the one hand stood Popes and
princes, founding their claims to absolute authority upon titles that
had slight r