Among these appalling figures we may first notice certain of the 'Condottieri,' such as Braccio da Montone, Tiberto Brandolino, and that Werner von Urslingen whose silver hauberk bore the inscription: 'The enemy of God, of pity and of mercy.' This class of men offers us some of the earliest instances of criminals deliberately repudiating every moral restraint.Yet we shall be more reserved in our judgement of them when we remember that the worst part of their guilt--in the estimate of those who record it-- lay in their defiance of spiritual threats and penalties, and that to this fact is due that air of horror with which they are represented as surrounded.In the case of Braccio, the hatred of the Church went so far that he was infuriated at the sight of monks at their psalms, and had them thrown down from the top of a tower; but at the same time 'he was loyal to his soldiers and a great general.' As a rule, the crimes of the 'Condottieri' were committed for the sake of some definite advantage, and must be attributed to a position in which men could not fail to be demoralized.Even their apparently gratuitous cruelty had commonly a purpose, if it were only to strike terror.The barbarities of the House of Aragon, as we have seen, were mainly due to fear and to the desire for vengeance.The thirst for blood on its own account, the devilish delight in destruction, is most clearly exemplified in the case of the Spaniard Cesare Borgia, whose cruelties were certainly out of all proportion to the end which he had in view.
In Sigismondo Malatesta, tyrant of Rimini, the same disinterested love of evil may also be detected.It is not only the Court of Rome, but the verdict of history, which convicts him of murder, rape, adultery, incest, sacrilege, perjury and treason, committed not once but often.
The most shocking crime of all--the unnatural attempt on his own son Roberto, who frustrated it with his drawn dagger--may have been the result not merely of moral corruption, but perhaps of some magical or astrological superstition.The same conjecture has been made to account for the rape of the Bishop of Fano by Pierluigi Farnese of Parma, son of Paul III.
If we now attempt to sum up the principal features in the Italian character of that time, as we know it from a study of the life of the upper classes, we shall obtain something like the following result.The fundamental vice of this character was at the same time a condition of its greatness, namely, excessive individualism.The individual first inwardly casts off the authority of a State which, as a fact, is in most cases tyrannical and illegitimate, and what he thinks and does is, rightly or wrongly, now called treason.The sight of victorious egotism in others drives him to defend his own right by his own arm.And, while thinking to restore his inward equilibrium, he falls, through the vengeance which he executes, into the hands of the powers of darkness.
His love, too, turns mostly for satisfaction to another individuality equally developed, namely, to his neighbor's wife.In face of all objective facts, of laws and restraints of whatever kind, he retains the feeling of his own sovereignty, and in each single instance forms his decision independently, according as honour or interest, passion or calculation, revenge or renunciation, gain the upper hand in his own mind.
If therefore egotism in its wider as well as narrower sense is the root and fountain of all evil, the more highly developed Italian was for this reason more inclined to wickedness than the members of other nations of that time.
But this individual development did not through any fault of his own, but rather through necessity.It did not come upon him alone, but also, and chiefly, by means of Italian culture, upon the other nations of Europe, and has constituted since then the higher atmosphere which they breathe.In itself it is neither good nor bad, but necessary; within it has grown up a modern standard of good and evil-- a sense of moral responsibility--which is essentially different from that which was familiar to the Middle Ages.
But the Italian of the Renaissance had to bear the first mighty surging of a new age.Through his gifts and his passions, he has become the most characteristic representative of all the heights and all the depths of his time.By the side of profound corruption appeared human personalities of the noblest harmony, and an artistic splendor which shed upon the life of man a lustre which neither antiquity nor medievalism could or would bestow upon it.
Religion in Daily Life The morality of a people stands in the closest connection with its consciousness of God, that is to say, with its firmer or weaker faith in the divine government of the world, whether this faith looks on the world as destined to happiness or to misery and speedy destruction.The infidelity then prevalent in Italy is notorious, and whoever takes the trouble to look about for proofs, will find them by the hundred.Our present task, here as elsewhere, is to separate and discriminate;refraining from an absolute and final verdict.
