ITALY.

Birth-place of modern art and literature, dowered with the fatal heritage of beauty, Italy, in the varied passages of her career among the nations, has been as remarkable for the vice and sensuality of her children as she has been eminent for their talents and acquirements.

The heart of the historical student thrills with respectful sympathy over the sorrows and ennobling virtues of her patriots in all ages, or his intellect is captivated with enthusiastic admiration and reverence in considering the monuments of resplendent genius given to mankind by her sons. Let him turn the page, and his soul recoils in disgust and deepest horror from the narrative of corruption the most abandoned, ambition the most unscrupulous, lust the most abominable, crime the most tremendous, to which the history of the world scarcely offers a parallel, and which brands the perpetrators with the execration of all succeeding generations.

The most glorious era of the Italian republics immediately preceded their downfall. Like shining lights, they perished by their own effulgence. The mutual jealousies of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Lucca, and the numerous independent cities and states, stirred up in them a “noble and emulous rage” to excel each other in the encouragement they gave to art and letters, and the mighty works produced by their respective citizens. But the same sentiment also roused them to deadlier feuds, and the common field of national patriotism being shut up, they exhausted themselves and each other by desperately-protracted struggles and incredible sacrifices of blood and treasure. Thus they paved the way to the introduction of the foreigner and the mercenary, who completed their ruin; until, in place of the small but illustrious republics which formed a diadem of brightest gems, arose a system of petty tyrants, who plunged the country into misery and degradation. These, in turn, were swept away by the strong arm of a despotism which has never since relaxed its grasp of this loveliest country of the earth.

No influence played a more important part in bringing about this catastrophe than that of the court of Rome. By the intrigues of the Roman pontiffs the mutual jealousies of the states were exacerbated and their quarrels fomented. While these results were caused by the political actions of the popes and their advisers, the worst effects were produced upon public manners and morals by their example. The abuses which had established themselves among the Roman hierarchy were the natural consequences of long and undisturbed enjoyment by the clergy of their vast immunities and privileges. The demoralization and dissoluteness which thus existed, and which spread its poison throughout the civilized world, but especially throughout Italy, are attested to posterity by all contemporary writers.

The enormous iniquity which distinguished such men as John XXII., Sextus IV., or Alexander VI., is notorious to all. Although the character of communities is not to be inferred from the actions of exceptional prodigies, either of virtue or vice, it is evident that the system which could place monsters like these in the august positions they filled must have been rotten to the core. The worth of a Leo X. or a Clement VII. consisted in the absence of the grosser vices rather than in any positive excellence, and the encouragement given by such men to objectionable practices did more to confirm a laxity of morals than the odious and unpardonable offenses of their predecessors.

Some of the political profligacy of the court of Rome, and, through its example, of the other Italian courts, was owing to the system which had sprung up of each pope providing for his family. The term nepote (nephew) was in common use as expressing the relationship which existed between the pope and the individuals selected for advancement. The priests of all denominations had nephews and nieces to provide for, and the abuses covered by the term were objects of the keenest satire. In fact, Innocent VIII. thus provided for eight openly avowed sons and daughters.[215] The pseudo-avuncular obligations of Sextus IV. were also well known. Other popes, whose sins were not in this particular direction, having no sons, adopted a bona fide nephew, and one or two, feeling the want of ties of kindred or family relationship, actually adopted strangers. In one instance, the Donna Olimpia, a niece by marriage, and “a lady of ability and a manly spirit,” took the place of a nephew in the court of Innocent X., without any imputation on the character of either pope or niece.[216]

The effect produced by this example in high places, particularly upon the clergy, and through them on the community, can be imagined. By a decree of the Church in the eleventh session of the Lateran Council it appears that the clergy were accustomed to live in a state of public concubinage, nay, more, to allow others to do so for money paid to them by permission. Dante, in one of his daring flights, compares the papal court to Babylon, and declares it a place deprived of virtue and shame. In the nineteenth canto of the Inferno, Dante, visiting hell, finds Nicholas III. there waiting the arrival of Boniface, who again is to be succeeded by Clement.

The Reformation compelled some attention to morals among the clergy, and for a time an earnest endeavor was made at a purification of the Church. This was one of the chief labors of the famous Council of Trent. That council certainly did repress the abuses among the general clergy, but the law-makers were law-breakers. They could not touch the cardinals, archbishops, or the Pope himself, and thus little radical change was effected among the chief dignitaries.[217]

There are not wanting writers who acquit the Italian national character of blame in the matter, attributing the general corruption partly to the frightful example of foreign invaders. The invasion of Charles VIII., himself a dissolute monarch, with the universal licentiousness of the French troops, did undoubtedly contribute largely to ruin the morals of the people at large, but, to use the words of Machiavelli, “If the papal court were removed to Switzerland, the simplest and most religious people of Europe would, in an incredibly short time, have become utterly depraved by the vicious example of the Italian priesthood.”[218]

The ecclesiastics did not confine themselves to licentiousness of conduct. The clerical writers are charged with a taste for that lowest practice of debased minds, obscenity, in which particular they exceed the lay writers. Roscoe, an accomplished Italian scholar and a man not given to railing, maintains this allegation.[219] This reminds us of Pope’s lines:

“Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of decency is want of sense.”

For the limited range of our present subject, history, so profuse of illustration of war, bloodshed, and the personal adventures of men noteworthy by their position or character, is exceedingly chary of materials. In the case of Italy the testimony as to the morals of men in high places is superabundant, and these and the legislative enactments of the period will furnish some of the information of which we are in search.

In the fifteenth century, Charles VIII., in his wars to gain Naples from the Spaniards, drew down unspeakable miseries upon the wretched Italians. His armies are reputed to have indulged in every excess of unbridled license and rapine; and it was during the siege of Naples that the venereal disease is said to have first made its appearance, although the particulars given of this malady in Chapter IX., under the head of France, show that syphilis existed in Naples two or three years before the siege. As generally happens with new diseases, whether from fear or ignorance of the means to control them, it was represented that the affliction was of a malignity never since known. Its frightful ravages and disgusting character impressed the minds of men with a belief that it was a new scourge, sent specially as a punishment for the debauchery and prostitution of the period, each party retorting on the other the charge of having introduced it, and styling it Morbo-Gallico or Mal de Naples, according to the nation to which they belonged. No class seems to have been exempt from it. Sextus della Rovere, nephew of Sextus IV., one of the wealthiest and most dissolute ecclesiastics of the age, was “rotten from his middle to the soles of his feet.”[220] Even the haughty and majestic Julius II. would not expose his feet to the obeisance of the faithful, because they were discolored by the Morbus Gallicus:[221] Leo, his accomplished and munificent successor, was said to have owed his elevation to the fact that he was in such a depraved state of body as to render necessary a surgical operation in the Consistorium while the election was proceeding, the cardinals selecting the most sickly candidate for the papal tiara.[222] An unequivocal allusion to the pontiff’s pursuits is found in an honorary inscription to Leo X. on his entrance into Florence, of which he was a native.

Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora: tempora Mavos
Olim habuit; nunc sua tempora Pallas habet:
Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypra semper erit.
Formerly Venus reigned supreme, then Mars, now Pallas:
Mars was, Pallas now is, Venus shall always be.

Cardinals were not ashamed to contend openly for the favors of celebrated courtesans, and Charles VIII., when on his march to Naples, was provided by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice, his liberal entertainers, with the most beautiful women that could be procured.[223] Charles, indeed, is by some authors asserted to have been actually the first who introduced the venereal disease into Italy.

An eccentric trophy of public license is to be found in the poem of Fracastoro, a physician and accomplished writer—a really elegant production under the title of Syphilis. The argument of it is drawn from the sufferings of Syphilus, a shepherd who has been punished by Apollo with a malignant disease for impiety. In this work the author introduces the reader to the inner regions of the earth; to the mines, minerals, and attendant sprites, and explains the discovery of mercury, and its beneficent and healing influences on the invalid, who, once cured, is enjoined to pay his vows to Diana.

In 1520, that turbulent and reprobate artist Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography (one of the most spirited representations of national manners extant) gives an account of a syphilitic disease which he contracted from a courtesan. He says little of the mode of cure, but it is evident from the above that the use of mercury was known at a very early period after public attention was generally directed to the disorder.

The excesses of this iron age were not limited to ordinary licentiousness; crimes against nature seem to have been prevalent, and are even alleged to have been a source of revenue. In a collection of papal lives which has fallen under our notice, but which is not very particular in giving its authorities,[224] we find it stated that a memorial was presented to Sextus IV. by certain individuals of the family of the Cardinal of St. Lucia for an indulgence to commit sodomy, and that the Pope wrote at the bottom of it the usual “Fiat.”

The case of Beatrice Cenci is better attested. Every one recollects the accumulated horrors of the story. The father, hating his children, his wife, all mankind, introduces prostitutes to his house, and debauches his daughter Beatrice by force. Through the instrumentality of a bishop she procures him to be murdered, and, with her step-mother, was executed for the crime, the Pope refusing to show any mercy. The Count Cenci had been addicted to unnatural offenses, and had thrice compounded with the papal government for his crimes by paying an enormous sum of money, and the narrator says that the acrimony of the Pope toward the wretched daughter was for having cut off a profitable source of revenue.

In Naples, the laws on the subject of prostitution were extremely severe. Previous to the thirteenth century, every procuress endeavoring to corrupt innocent females was punished, like an adulteress, by mutilation of her nose. The mother who prostituted her daughter suffered this punishment until King Frederick absolved such women as trafficked with their children from the pressure of want. The same prince, however, decreed against all who were found guilty of preparing drugs or inflammatory liquors to aid in their designs upon virtuous females, death in case of injuries resulting from their acts, and imprisonment when no serious harm was effected. These laws proved insufficient for their purpose, and toward the end of the fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples. Ruffiani multiplied in its streets, procuring by force or corruption multitudes of victims to fill the taverns and brothels of the city. Penalties of extreme severity were proclaimed against them. The Ruffiani were ordered to quit the kingdom, and prostitutes were prohibited from harboring such persons among them. Any woman who disobeyed was condemned to be burned in the forehead with an iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.

Under King Roger a charge of seduction was never taken, but William, the successor of that prince, punished with death the crime of rape. The victim, however, was required to prove that she had shrieked aloud, and that she had preferred her complaint within eight days, or that she had been detained by force. When once a woman had prostituted herself, she had no right to refuse to yield her person to any one.

In Naples, prostitutes, in spite of the law passed to confine brothels to particular quarters, established themselves in the most beautiful streets of the city in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant clamor, congregated a horde of thieves, profligates, and vagabonds of every kind, until the chief quarter became uninhabitable. In 1577 they were ordered to quit the street of Catalana within eight days, under pain of the scourge for the women, the galleys for such of the proprietors as were commoners, while simple banishment was declared against the nobles.

One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470, to protect unfortunate women against the cupidity, the extortions, and the frauds of tavern-keepers and others. Men were in the habit of going into places of amusement with single girls, contracting a heavy debt, and then leaving their victims to pay. These were then given the choice of a disgraceful whipping or an engagement in the house. They often consented, and spent the remainder of their days in dependence on their creditors, without ability to liberate themselves. By the new law, masters of taverns were forbidden to give credit to prostitutes for more than a certain sum, and this only to supply them with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If they exceeded this amount they had no means of legal recovery.

The most remarkable feature in Neapolitan legislation on this subject was the establishment at an unknown, but early date, of the Court of Prostitutes. This tribunal, which sat at Naples, had its peculiar constitution, and had jurisdiction over all cases connected with prostitution, blasphemy, and some other infamous offenses. Toward the end of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary power, and was prolific of abuses. It practiced all kinds of exaction and violence, every species of partiality and injustice, and even presumed to promulgate edicts of its own. The judges flung into prison numbers of young girls, whom they compelled to buy their liberty with money, and sometimes even dared to seize women who, though of lax conduct, could not be included in the professional class. This was discovered, and led to a reform of the court in 1589. Its powers were strictly defined, and its form of procedure placed under regulation, while the avenues to corruption were narrowed. The institution existed for nearly a hundred years after this.

In Rome, in the eleventh century, a brothel and a church stood side by side, and five hundred years after, under the pontificate of Paul II., prostitutes were numerous. Statutes were enacted, and many precautions taken, which prove the grossness of manners at that epoch. One convicted of selling a girl to infamy was heavily fined, and if he did not pay within ten days had one foot cut off. The nobility and common people alike indulged habitually in all kinds of excess. Tortures, floggings, brandings, banishment, were inflicted on some to terrify others, but with very incomplete success. To carry off and detain a prostitute against her will was punished by amputation of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging, or exile. The rich, however, invariably bought immunity for themselves.

Among the most extraordinary acts of legislation on this subject was the bull of Clement II., who desired to endow the Church with the surplus gains of the brothel. Every person guilty of prostitution was forced, when disposing of her property, either at death or during life, to assign half of it to a convent. This regulation was easily eluded, and proved utterly inefficacious. A tribunal was also established having jurisdiction over brothels, upon which a tax was laid, continuing in existence until the middle of the sixteenth century. Efforts were made to confine this class of dwellings to a particular quarter, but without success.

In some of the Italian states, as in Lombardy, men were forbidden to give prostitutes an asylum. They were prohibited from appearing among honest citizens, and were prevented from purchasing clothes or food, and from borrowing money by the hire of their persons.

After a time, however, a system of licensed brothels, in imitation of the institutions founded at Toulouse and Montpellier, was introduced into parts of Italy, and the brothels became very numerous. There was one at Mantua, and Venice was a very sink of prostitution. In 1421, the government enlisted women in this service to guard the virtue of the other classes. A matron was placed over them, who governed them, received their gains, and made a monthly division of profit. The names of several women, the most notorious and beautiful of the Venetian courtesans, are preserved by Nicolo Daglioni. A very small sum was paid them by their patrons.

The laws regulating prostitution and prostitutes seem to have had a wonderful similarity throughout Europe. Among other enactments were those regulating clothing, which were at one time promulgated in every state. Some of these were sumptuary, and merely prohibited the wearing of fashionable attire. Others directed particular costumes as a badge of the prostitute’s calling, and to distinguish them in public from well-conducted women. At Mantua, prostitutes, when they appeared in the streets, were ordered to cover the rest of their clothes with a short white cloak, and wear a badge on their breast. At Bergamo the cloak was yellow; in Parma, white; in Milan, at first black woolen cloth, and then black silk. If disobedient, they might be fined; and in case of a second offense, whipped; and any one might strip off the garment of a girl illegally attired.

In the Duchy of Asola, in Piedmont, a regulation was established that a mother could disinherit her daughter for leading a vicious life, but she lost this privilege if it was proved that she had connived at her immorality. The father had equal authority, but with one curious limitation. When, says the law, a father has sought to marry his daughter, and has endowed her sufficiently, if she refuses to marry and becomes a prostitute, he may cut her off; but if he have opposed her marriage until she has reached the age of twenty-five, and she then become a libertine, he can not refuse to bequeath her his property; and the woman, on every opportunity to marry, is bound to present herself before her father and demand his consent. If he refused it, he was not allowed to punish her in cases where, at the age of thirty, she became a harlot.

The efforts to root out prostitution from houses and neighborhoods in Italy had, as elsewhere, the result of driving loose women to places of public resort. The baths were regularly frequented in every city in the Peninsula (hence the use of the word bagnio, as expressive of a disreputable place), so that there was scarcely a bath-keeper who was not also a brothel-keeper.

In Avignon, which, in consequence of the schism of the popes, may be considered a second Rome, a statute of the Church, in 1441, interdicted to the priests and clergy the use of certain baths, notorious as brothels. The license of prostitution was soon taken away in Avignon. The residence of the popes in that city had attracted a concourse of strangers from all parts of the globe, and brothels sprung up at the doors of the churches, and close to the papal residence and bishops’ palaces. They brought so much scandal on the community that an edict was passed driving prostitutes out of the city.

In endeavoring to investigate the condition of prostitution in modern Italy, our inquiries and researches have been almost profitless, from the dearth of reliable statistical information as to any part of that most interesting country. In the fine arts, and in certain departments of abstract science, the republic of letters can show numerous records of Italy’s state and progress. In all that tells of the people, their condition, their relations to each other, and their rulers, the statements of writers, both native and foreign, are so contradictory, so imbued with party passions and prejudices, or so flippantly careless and inaccurate, that we must peruse them with constant suspicion. At the same time, official documents are so sparingly given to the world that it is hopeless to fall back upon them.[225]

It is customary to think and speak of Italy, like Germany, as a whole. In reality, however, a wide difference prevails among the inhabitants of Piedmont, Tuscany, and Austrian Italy, the Papal States, and Naples. Rome, though not the political capital of Italy, must be considered the capital, in virtue of her papal court, her past traditions, and her large concourse of foreigners. But even her manners scarcely give the tone to the remainder of the country.

In Rome, prostitution is tolerated, though not legally permitted. There are no statistics from which the number of prostitutes can be calculated. At one time there were said to be five thousand of these unfortunates in the city; but this estimate is only another sample of the carelessness which is to be observed in writers on this subject. Under Paul IV. there were only fifty thousand inhabitants; forty years after they had increased to one hundred thousand. Public prostitutes are now as rarely seen in the streets of Rome as in those of other Italian cities. It is said, also, that there are scarcely any public brothels.[226] There is a law that a woman guilty of adultery shall be imprisoned for three months, but Italian usages are averse to legal proceedings; the scandal is offensive to society; besides, the courts require positive proof of the offense. With regard to seduction, the laws are equally stringent; but such cases, when brought to notice, are usually compromised by permission of the authorities, either by payment of a sum of money, or by marriage. Syphilis is always of considerable extent in Rome, and the venereal ward in San Jacomo is always full.[227] After the siege of Rome by the French in 1849, the disease was frightfully prevalent.

In 1798 there were thirty thousand poor, or about one fifth of the population of Rome, upon the lists of the curates of the several parishes. Under the administration of the French, up to 1814, the proportion had been diminished to one ninth. Since that period it has been on the increase.

There are in Rome nineteen hospitals for the treatment of the sick. In eight public hospitals the average number of patients daily is about fourteen hundred, who cost nineteen cents each per day. There are fourteen semi-convents where young girls are gratuitously received and educated, receiving a small dowry when they leave to marry or become nuns. The Hospital of St. Roch is for pregnant women.[228]

The Albergo dei Poveri at Naples is the finest poor-house in Italy. It accommodates upward of three thousand paupers of both sexes, and is provided with workshops and schools, so as to afford suitable employment and instruction. Notwithstanding this model establishment, and numerous others, whose annual revenues amount to nearly two millions and a half of dollars, Naples is infested with a large mendicant population in addition to the numbers accommodated in the poor-houses. The Lazaroni are a class peculiar to the place. Many of them utterly refuse to work, and prefer to subsist on the smallest coin of the kingdom which they can gain by begging. They bask in the sun all day, sleep on the ground or on the steps at night, and starve with the utmost complacency. An Epicurean might find in this abnegation of the cares of life a sound practical philosophy. That such a class is in the highest degree obnoxious to society must be apparent to every one. In the famous rising of Cardinal Ruffo, at the time of the French occupation in 1805, the Lazaroni perpetrated the most frightful excesses, and are said to have been relied on by the imbecile Bourbon government as their chief friends and supporters against the dangers of French Republicanism. Modern progress has drawn even Naples and the Lazaroni within its magic circle, and an accomplished traveler expresses doubts of their alleged unconquerable laziness, for he has seen them work, wear clothes, sleep at home, earn money when they had a chance, and conduct themselves very much like other people.[229] Perhaps, as with the Irish, a want of fair remuneration may be at the root of their idleness.

A singular institution of Italian society is the Cicisbeo, or Cavaliere Servente. This is a distant male relative, or friend, who invariably attends a married lady on all occasions of her appearance in public. He pays her all conceivable attentions, and performs even the most servile offices; carries her fan, her parasol, or her lapdog. We are not aware that any foreigner has been able to settle this anomaly of social life to his satisfaction. The Italians themselves sometimes maintain that there is no immorality or impropriety in the arrangement—that it is a matter of etiquette, in which the heart is in no way concerned. The husband is perfectly cognizant of it, and the appearance of the cicisbeo with the lady is more de regle than that of her husband. Originally, there can be very little question that the institution was of an amorous character, and the parties met privately at the Casini, where certain apartments were specially dedicated to the use of the ladies and their cavalieri.[230] With the French occupation of 1800 the custom became the subject of immoderate raillery and satire, and there is reason to believe it has been but partially revived.

In place, however, of the cicisbeo or cavaliere servente, whose services and attentions were a form of society, it is, we fear, undeniable that more intimate though less avowed relations exist between many Italian ladies and other men than their husbands. That there are numerous and admirable exceptions to the rule, if it be a rule, we freely admit; but, unless the concurrent testimony of all writers and travelers in Italy be absolutely false, and either basely slanderous or culpably careless, the marriage vow can only be regarded as a cloak for a license that is inadmissible to the unmarried woman.The testimony of a profligate man is rarely to be taken against women; and though the witness be a lord and a poet, we do not know that this should make a difference were the case one of mere abuse. Coupled, however, as the inculpation is with extenuatory remarks, we think Lord Byron’s observations valuable. In a letter to Mr. Murray, the celebrated London publisher (February 21, 1820), he says:

“You ask me for a volume of manners in Italy. Perhaps I am in the case to know more of them than most Englishmen. * * * * * I have lived in their houses, and in the heart of their families, sometimes merely as Amico di Casa, and sometimes as Amico di Cuore of the Dama, and in neither case do I feel justified in making a book of them. Their moral is not your moral; their life is not your life; you would not understand it; it is not English, nor French, nor German, which you would all understand. * * * * * I know not how to make you comprehend a people who are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their characters and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions and passions which are at once sudden and durable. * * * * * I should know something of the matter, having had a pretty general experience among their women, from the fisherman’s wife up to the Nobil Dama whom I serve. * * * * * They are extremely tenacious, and jealous as furies, not permitting their lovers even to marry if they can help it, and keeping them always to them in public as in private. * * * * * The reason is, that they marry for their parents and love for themselves. They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honor, while they pay the husband as a tradesman. You hear a person’s character, male or female, canvassed, not as depending on their conduct to their husbands or wives, but to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto I don’t know that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted. It is to be observed, that while they do all this, the greatest outward respect is to be paid to the husbands, not only by the ladies, but by their serventi, particularly if the husband serve no one himself (which is not often the case, however), so that you would often suppose them relations, the servente making the figure of one adopted in the family. Sometimes the ladies run a little restive, and elope, or divide, or make a scene, but this is at the starting, generally when they know no better, or when they fall in love with a foreigner, or some such anomaly, and is always reckoned unnecessary and extravagant.”