at Trent in 1562—­Subsequent History of the Council—­It closes with a complete Papal Triumph in 1563—­Place of Pius IV. in History—­Pius V.—­The Inquisitor Pope—­Population of Rome—­Social Corruption—­Sale of Offices and Justice—­Tridentine Reforms depress Wealth—­Ascetic Purity of Manners becomes fashionable—–­ Piety—­The Catholic Reaction generates the Counter-Reformation—­Battle of Lepanto—­Gregory XIII.—­His Relatives—­Policy of Enriching the Church at Expense of the Barons—­Brigandage in States of the Church—­Sixtus V.—­His Stern Justice—­Rigid Economy—­Great Public Works—­Taxation—­The City of Rome assumes its present form—­Nepotism in the Counter-Reformation Period—­Various Estimates of the Wealth accumulated by Papal Nephews—­Rise of Princely Roman Families.

It is not easy to define the intellectual and moral changes which passed over Italy in the period of the Counter-Reformation[7]; it is still less easy to refer those changes to distinct causes.  Yet some analysis tending toward such definition is demanded from a writer who has undertaken to treat of Italian culture and manners between the years 1530 and 1600.

In the last chapter I attempted to describe the depth of servitude to which the States of Italy were severally reduced at the end of the wars between France and Spain.  The desolation of the country, the loss of national independence, and the dominance of an alien race, can be counted among the most important of those influences which produced the changes in question.  Whatever opinions we may hold regarding the connection between political autonomy and mental vigor in a people, it can hardly be disputed that a sudden and universal extinction of liberty must be injurious to arts and studies that have grown up under free institutions.

But there were other causes at work.  Among these a prominent place should be given to an alteration in the intellectual interests of the Italians themselves.  The original impulses of the Renaissance, in scholarship, painting, sculpture, architecture, and vernacular poetry, had been exhausted.

[Footnote 7:  I may here state that I intend to use this term Counter-Reformation to denote the reform of the Catholic Church, which was stimulated by the German Reformation, and which, when the Council of Trent had fixed the dogmas and discipline of Latin Christianity, enabled the Papacy to assume a militant policy in Europe, whereby it regained a large portion of the provinces, that had previously lapsed to Lutheran and Calvinistic dissent.]

Humanism, after recovering the classics and forming a new ideal of culture, was sinking into pedantry and academic erudition.  Painting and sculpture, having culminated in the great work of Michelangelo, tended toward a kind of empty mannerism.  Architecture settled down into the types fixed by Palladio and Barozzi.  Poetry seemed to have reached its highest point of development in Ariosto.  The main motives