Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2

rds, they
were assuredly not those which had brought Italy into the first rank of
European nations. The events of a single century proved that, far from
being able to govern other peoples, Spain was incapable of
self-government on any rational principle. Whatever may have been the
policy thrust upon the chief of Latin Christianity in the desperate
struggle with militant rationalism, the repressive measures which it
felt bound to adopt were eminently pernicious to a race like the
Italians, who showed no disposition for religious regeneration, and who
were yet submitted to the tyranny of ecclesiastical discipline and
intellectual intolerance at every point.

The settlement made by Charles V. in 1530, and the various changes which
took place in the duchies between that date and the end of the century,
had then the effect of rendering the Papacy and Spain omnipotent in
Italy. These kindred autocrats were joined in firm alliance, except
during the brief period of Paul IV.'s French policy, which ended in the
Pope's complete discomfiture by Alva in 1557. They used their aggregated
forces for the riveting of spiritual, political, and social chains upon
the modern world. What they only partially effected in Europe at large,
by means of S. Bartholomew massacres, exterminations of Jews in Toledo
and of Mussulmans in Granada, holocausts of victims in the Low
Countries, wars against French Huguenots and German Lutherans, naval
expeditions and plots against the state of England, assassinations of
heretic princes, and occasional burning of free thinkers, they achieved
with plenary success in Italy. The center of the peninsula, from Ferrara
to Terracina, lay at the discretion of the Pope. The Two Sicilies,
Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, were absolute dependencies of the
Spanish crown. Tuscany was linked by ties of interest, and by the
stronger bonds of terrorism, to Spain. The insignificant principalities
of Mantua, Modena, Parma could not do otherwise than submit to the same
predominant authorit

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

Kąty Rybackie noclegi wpis