spiritual privileges; commercial traffic in ecclesiastical emoluments;
hypocrisy and cruelty studied as fine arts; theft and perjury reduced to
system--these are the ordinary scandals which beset the Papacy. Yet the
Pope is still a holy being. His foot is kissed by thousands. His curse
and blessing carry death and life. He rises from the bed of harlots to
unlock or bolt the gates of heaven and purgatory. In the midst of crime
he believes himself to be the representative of Christ on earth. These
anomalies, glaring as they seem to us, and obvious as they might be to
deeper thinkers like Machiavelli or Savonarola, did not shock the mass
of men who witnessed them. The Renaissance was so dazzling by its
brilliancy, so confusing by its rapid changes, that moral distinctions
were obliterated in a blaze of splendor, an outburst of new life, a
carnival of liberated energies. The corruption of Italy was only equaled
by its culture. Its immorality was matched by its enthusiasm. It was
not the decay of an old age dying, so much as the fermentation of a new
age coming into life, that bred the monstrous paradoxes of the fifteenth
and the sixteenth centuries. The contrast between mediæval Christianity
and renascent Paganism--the sharp conflict of two adverse principles,
destined to fuse their forces and to recompose the modern world--made
the Renaissance what it was in Italy. Nowhere is the first effervescence
of these elements so well displayed as in the history of those Pontiffs
who, after striving in the Middle Ages to suppress humanity beneath a
cowl, are now the chief actors in the comedy of Aphrodite and Priapus
raising their foreheads once more to the light of day.

The struggle carried on between the Popes of the thirteenth century and
the House of Hohenstauffen ended in the elevation of the Princes of
Anjou to the throne of Naples--the most pernicious of all the evils
inflicted by the Papal power on Italy. Then followed the French tyranny,
under which Boniface VIII. expired at Anagni. Benedict XI. was poisoned