Church yet learned to regard the liberalism of the Renaissance with
suspicion. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Papal States
had become a recognized kingdom; while the Popes of this later epoch
were endeavoring by means of the inquisition and the educational orders
to check the free spirit of Italy.

The history of Italy has at all times been closely bound up with that of
the Papacy; but at no period has this been more the case than during
these eighty years of Papal worldliness, ambition, depotism, and
profligacy, which are also marked by the irruption of the European
nations into Italy and by the secession of the Teutonic races from the
Latin Church. In this short space of time a succession of Popes filled
the Holy Chair with such dramatic propriety--displaying a pride so
regal, a cynicism so unblushing, so selfish a cupidity, and a policy so
suicidal as to favor the belief that they had been placed there in the
providence of God to warn the world against Babylon. At the same time
the history of the Papal Court reveals with peculiar vividness the
contradictions of Renaissance morality and manners. We find in the Popes
of this period what has been already noticed in the despots--learning,
the patronage of of the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the
refinements of polite culture, alternating and not unfrequently combined
with barbarous ferocity of temper and with savage and coarse tastes. On
the one side we observe a Pagan dissoluteness which would have
scandalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on the other, a seeming
zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. The Vicar of Christ is at one time
worshiped as a god by princes seeking absolution for sins or liberation
from burdensome engagements; at another he is trampled under foot, in
his capacity of sovereign, by the same potentates. Undisguised
sensuality; fraud cynical and unabashed; policy marching to its end by
murders, treasons, interdicts, and imprisonments; the open sale of