wisest statements regarding the men and events in Europe at their
time. All were noted for skill; but the most skillful were kept
on duty at Rome. There was the source of danger. The Doges,
Senators, and controlling Councilors had, as a rule, served in
these embassies, and they had formed lucid judgments as to
Italian courts in general and as to the Roman Court in
particular. No men had known the Popes and the Curia more
thoroughly. They had seen Innocent VIII. buy the papacy for
money. They had been at the Vatican when Alexander VI. had won
renown as a secret murderer. They had seen, close at hand, the
merciless cruelty of Julius II. They had carefully noted the
crimes of Sixtus IV., which culminated in the assassination of
Julian de' Medici beneath the dome of Florence at the moment the
Host was uplifted. They had sat near Leo X. while he enjoyed the
obscenities of the Calandria and the Mandragora,--plays which, in
the most corrupt of modern cities, would, in our day, be stopped
by the police. No wonder that, in one of their dispatches, they
speak of Rome as "the cloaca of the world."[1]


[1] For Sixtus IV. and his career, with the tragedy in the
Cathedral of Florence see Villari's Life of Machiavelli, English
Edition, vol. ii. pp. 341, 342. For the passages in the
dispatches referred to, vide ibid. vol. i. p. 198.


Naturally, then, while their religion showed itself in wonderful
monuments of every sort, their practical sense was shown by a
steady opposition to papal encroachments.