Italian religion had become the art of plundering the people.
For more than a thousand years the sovereign pontiffs had been rulers of the city.

True, it had witnessed many scenes of devastation for which they were not responsible; but they were responsible for this, that they had never made any vigorous, any persistent effort for its material, its moral improvement.

Instead of being in these respects an exemplar for the imitation of the world, it became an exemplar of a condition that ought to be shunned.

Things steadily went on from bad to worse, until at the epoch of the Reformation no pious stranger could visit it without being shocked.
The papacy, repudiating science as absolutely incompatible with its pretensions, had in later years addressed itself to the encouragement of art.

But music and painting, though they may be exquisite adornments of life, contain no living force that can develop a weak nation into a strong one; nothing that can permanently assure the material well-being or happiness of communities; and hence at the time of the Reformation, to one who thoughtfully considered her condition, Rome had lost all living energy.