Servile in its conception, it sufficed to bridle and benumb a race of serfs, but not to soften or to purify their brutal instincts.[179] In this chapter I shall not attempt a general survey of Italian society.[180] I shall content myself with supplying materials for the formation of a judgment by narrating some of the most remarkable domestic tragedies of the second half of the sixteenth century, choosing those only which rest upon well-sifted documentary evidence, and which bring the social conditions of the country into strong relief.

Before engaging in these historical romances, it will be well to preface them with a few general remarks upon the state of manners they will illustrate.
The first thing which strikes a student of Italy between 1530 and 1600 is that crimes of violence, committed by private individuals for personal ends, continued steadily upon the increase.[181] [Footnote 179: The last section of Loyola's _Exercitia_ is an epitome of post-Tridentine Catholicism, though penned before the opening of the Council.

In its last paragraph it inculcates the fear of God: 'neque porro is timor solum, quem filialem appellamus, qui pius est ac sanctus maxime; verum etiam alter, servilis dictus' (_Inst.Soc.Jesu_, vol.iv.
p.

173).] [Footnote 180: An interesting survey of this wider kind has been attempted by U.A.Canello for the whole sixteenth century in his _Storia della Lett.It.nel Secolo XVI_.

(Milano: Vallardi, 1880).