subject to no one king or commonwealth. For though she holds here her
seat, and exerts her temporal authority, she has never yet gained
strength and courage to seize upon the entire country, or make herself
supreme; yet never has been so weak that when in fear of losing her
temporal dominion, she could not call in some foreign potentate to aid
her against any Italian State by which she was overmatched. Of which we
find many instances, both in early times, as when by the intervention
of Charles the Great she drove the Lombards, who had made themselves
masters of nearly the whole country, out of Italy; and also in recent
times, as when, with the help of France, she first stripped the
Venetians of their territories, and then, with the help of the Swiss,
expelled the French.

The Church, therefore, never being powerful enough herself to take
possession of the entire country, while, at the same time, preventing
any one else from doing so, has made it impossible to bring Italy under
one head; and has been the cause of her always living subject to many
princes or rulers, by whom she has been brought to such division and
weakness as to have become a prey, not to Barbarian kings only, but to
any who have thought fit to attack her. For this, I say, we Italians
have none to thank but the Church. And were any man powerful enough to
transplant the Court of Rome, with all the authority it now wields over
the rest of Italy, into the territories of the Swiss (the only people
who at this day, both as regards religion and military discipline, live
like the ancients,) he would have clear proof of the truth of what I
affirm, and would find that the corrupt manners of that Court had, in
a little while, wrought greater mischief in these territories than any
other disaster which could ever befall them.