Except, therefore, for the sufferings and the humiliations inflicted on her people; except for their servitude beneath the most degrading forms of ecclesiastical and temporal tyranny; except for the annihilation of their beautiful Renaissance culture; except for the depression of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the enfeeblement of political energy and domestic morality; except for the loathsome domination of hypocrites and persecutors and informers; except for the Jesuitical encouragement of every secret vice and every servile superstition which might emasculate the race and render it subservient to authority;--except for these appalling evils, we have no right perhaps to deplore the settlement of Italy by Charles V.in 1530, or the course of subsequent events.

For it is tolerably certain that some such leveling down as then commenced was needed to bring the constituent States of Italy into accord; and it is indubitable, as I have had occasion to point out, that the political force which eventually introduced Italy into the European system of federated nations, was determined in its character, if not created, then.

None the less, the history of this period (1530-1600) in Italy is a prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heart-rending tragedy.
It is the tragic history of the eldest and most beautiful, the noblest and most venerable, the freest and most gifted of Europe's daughters, delivered over to the devilry that issued from the most incompetent and arrogantly stupid of the European sisterhood, and to the cruelty, inspired by panic, of an impious theocracy.

When we use these terms to designate the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation, it is not that we forget how many of those Popes were men of blameless private life and serious views for Catholic Christendom.

When we use these terms to designate the Spanish race in the sixteenth century, it is not that we are ignorant of Spanish chivalry and colonizing enterprise, of Spanish romance, or of the fact that Spain produced great painters, great dramatists, and one great novelist in the brief period of her glory.