We must further reckon the division between cultured and uncultured people, which humanism had effected, and which subsisted after the benefits conferred by humanism had been withdrawn from the race.

The retirement of the commercial aristocracy from trade, and their assumption of princely indolence in this period of political stagnation, was another factor of importance.

But the truest cause of Italian retrogression towards barbarism must finally be discerned in the sharp check given to intellectual evolution by the repressive forces of the Counter-Reformation.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
INDEX.
A ACADEMIES, Italian, the flourishing time of, i.

52.
ACCIAIUOLI, Roberto, i.

33.
ACCOLTI, Benedetto, conspirator against Pius IV., i.