Critical and Historical Essays, vol 1 | Page 6

how often he had employed the keys of the
Church to release himself from the most sacred engagements, and its
wealth to pamper his mistresses and nephews. The doctrines and rites
of the established religion they treated with decent reverence. But
though they still called themselves Catholics, they had ceased to be
Papists. Those spiritual arms which carried terror into the palaces and
camps of the proudest sovereigns excited only contempt in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Vatican. Alexander, when he
commanded our Henry the Second to submit to the lash before the
tomb of a rebellious subject, was himself an exile. The Romans
apprehending that he entertained designs against their liberties, had
driven him from their city; and though he solemnly promised to confine
himself for the future to his spiritual functions, they still refused to
readmit him.
In every other part of Europe, a large and powerful privileged class
trampled on the people and defied the Government. But in the most
flourishing parts of Italy, the feudal nobles were reduced to
comparative insignificance. In some districts they took shelter under
the protection of the powerful commonwealths which they were unable

to oppose, and gradually sank into the mass of burghers. In other places
they possessed great influence; but it was an influence widely different
from that which was exercised by the aristocracy of any Transalpine
kingdom. They were not petty princes, but eminent citizens. Instead of
strengthening their fastnesses among the mountains, they embellished
their palaces in the market-place. The state of society in the Neapolitan
dominions, and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical State, more nearly
resembled that which existed in the great monarchies of Europe. But
the Governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, through all their
revolutions, preserved a different character. A people, when assembled
in a town, is far more formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over
a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Caesars found it
necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at
the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than
once besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him
the most humiliating concessions. The Sultans have often been
compelled to propitiate the furious rabble of Constantinople with the
head of an unpopular Vizier. From the same cause there was a certain
tinge of democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies of Northern
Italy.
Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, revisited Italy; and with
liberty came commerce and empire, science and taste, all the comforts
and all the ornaments of life. The Crusades, from which the inhabitants
of other countries gained nothing but relics and wounds, brought to the
rising commonwealths of the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas a large
increase of wealth, dominion, and knowledge. The moral and
geographical position of those commonwealths enabled them to profit
alike by the barbarism of the West and by the civilisation of the East.
Italian ships covered every sea. Italian factories rose on every shore.
The tables of Italian moneychangers were set in every city.
Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. The operations of the
commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful
inventions. We doubt whether any country of Europe, our own
excepted, have at the present time reached so high a point of wealth and
civilisation as some parts of Italy had attained four hundred years ago.
Historians rarely descend to those details from which alone the real
state of a community can be collected. Hence posterity is too often

deceived by the vague hyperboles of poets and rhetoricians, who
mistake the splendour of a court for the happiness of a people.
Fortunately, John Villani has given us an ample and precise account of
the state of Florence in the early part of the fourteenth century. The
revenue of the Republic amounted to three hundred thousand florins; a
sum which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals, was at
least equivalent to six hundred thousand pounds sterling; a larger sum
than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded annually to
Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two hundred
factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually produced
sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand florins; a sum fully
equal in exchangeable value to two millions and a half of our money.
Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty banks
conducted the commercial operations, not of Florence only but of all
Europe. The transactions of these establishments were sometimes of a
magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the Barings
and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward the Third of
England upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the
mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of the present day, and
when the value of