§ 67. THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM. G13
hibition of the theatre by the Church, this pontiff opened the playhouse on the Capitol. A few years later he witnessed the performance of Ariosto's comedy the Suppositi. The scenery had been painted by Raphael. The spectators numbered 2,000, Leo looking on from a box with an eye-glass in his hand. The plot centres around a girl's seduction by her father's servant. One of the first of the cardinals to open his palace to theatrical representations was Raffaele Riario.
Intellectual freedom in Italy assumed the form of unrestrained indulgence of the sensual nature. In condemning tlie virginity extolled by the Church, Beccadelli pronounced it a sin against nature. Nature is good, and he urged men to break down the law by mixing with nuns.^ The hetceroe were of greater service to mankind than monastic recluses. Illegitimacy, as has already been said, was no bar to high position in the state or the Church, ^neas Sylvius declared that most of the rulers in Italy had been born out of wedlock,^ and when, as pope, he arrived in Ferrara, 1459, he was met by eight princes, not a single one of them the child of legitimate marriage. The appearance of the Gallic disease in Italy at the close of the 15th century may have made men cautious; the rumor went that Julius II., who did not cross his legs at public service on a certain festival, was one of its victims.^ Aretino wrote that the times were so debauched that cousins and kinsfolk of both sexes, brothers and sisters, mingled together without number and without a shadow of conscientious scruple.*
What else could be expected than the poisoning of all grades of society when, at the central court of Christendom, the fountain was so corrupt. The revels in the Vatican under Alexander VI. and the levity of the court of Leo X. furnished a spectacle which the most virtuous principles could
1 Non est nefas se virginihus sanctimonialihus immiscere. Pastor, I. 21.
2 Frederick III., Ilgeu's trsl., II. 135 sqq.
3 Burckhardt-Geiger, II. 161, 313 sqq. Synionds, II. 477. The mal franzese is said to have appeared in Naples in 1495. It spread lilce wildfire. During the Crusades the syphilitic disease, so ran the belief, was spread in the East through the French.
* Cortigiana, as quoted by Synionds, Ital. Lit., II. 191.
G14 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1617.
scarcely be expected to resist. Did not a harlequin monk on one occasion furnish the mirth at Leo's table by his extraordinary voracity in swallowing a pigeon whole, and consuming forty eggs and twenty capons in succession ! Innocent VIII. 's son was married to a daughter of the house of the Medici, and Alexander's son was married into the royal family of France and his daughter Lucrezia into the scarcely less proud family of Este. Sixtus IV. taxed and thereby legalized houses of prostitution for the increase of the revenues of the curia. The 0,800 public prostitutes in Rome in 1490, if we accept Infessura's figures, were an enormous number in proportion to the population. This Roman diarist says that scarcely a priest was to be found in Rome who did not keep a concubine " for the glory of God and the Christian religion." All parts of Italy and Spain contributed to the number of courtesans. They lived in greater splendor in Rome than the hetaira3 in Athens, and bore classical names, such as Diana, Lucrezia, Camilla, Giulia, Costanza, Imperia, Beatrice. They were accompanied on their promenades and walks to church by poets, counts and prelates, but usually concluded their gilded misery in hospitals after their beauty had faded away.^
The almost nameless vice of the ancient world also found its way into Italy, and Humanists and sons of popes like the son of Paul III., Pierluigi Farnese, if not popes themselves, were charged with pederasty. In his 7tli satire, Ariosto, d. 1533, went so far as to say it was the vice of almost all the Humanists. For being addicted to it, a Venetian ambassador lost his position, and the charge was brought against the Venetian annalist, Sanuto. Politian, Valla and Aretino and the academicians of Rome had the same accusation laid at their door. The Avorst cannot be told, so abhorrent to the prime instincts of humanity do the crimes against morality seem. No wonder that Symonds speaks of " an enervation of Italian society in worse than heatlien vices." 2
^ Reuraont, III., Pt. II. 461 sqq. ; Gregorovius, viii, 300 sqq. ; Burckhardt-Geiger, II. 3.31-330.
^ liev. of Learning, 407 ; Geiger, II. 170 ; Excursus II., 348 sqq. ; Pastor, III. 101 sqq. ; Voigt, II. 471 ; Gregorovius, viii, 308, says: "we should inspire