Christian.

[Sidenote: Superstition.]

'Owing to the evil ensample of the Papal Court,' writes Machiavelli,
'Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow infinite
troubles and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so its absence
implies the contrary. To the Church and priests of Rome we owe another
even greater disaster which is the cause of her ruin. I mean that the
Church has maintained, and still maintains Italy divided.' The Papacy is
too weak to unite and rule, but strong enough to prevent others doing
so, and is always ready to call in the foreigner to crush all Italians
to the foreigner's profit, and Guicciardini, a high Papal officer,
commenting on this, adds, 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the
Roman Court, but that more abuse should not be merited, seeing it is an
infamy, and example of all the shames and scandals of the world.' The
lesser clergy, the monks, the nuns followed, with anxious fidelity, the
footsteps of their shepherds. There was hardly a tonsure in Italy which
covered more than thoughts and hopes of lust and avarice. Religion and
morals which God had joined together, were set by man a thousand leagues
asunder. Yet religion still sat upon the alabaster throne of Peter, and
in the filthy straw of the meanest Calabrian confessional. And still
deeper remained a blind devoted superstition. Vitellozzo Vitelli, as
Machiavelli tells us, while being strangled by Cæesar Borgia's assassin,
implored his murderer to procure for him the absolution of that
murderer's father. Gianpaolo Baglioni, who reigned by parricide and
lived in incest, was severely blamed by the Florentines for not killing
Pope Julius II. when the latter was his guest at Perugia. And when
Gabrino Fondato, the tyrant of Cremona, was on the scaffold, his only
regret was that when he had taken his guests, the Pope and Emperor, to