RenRom0003-Says
Who?
Who said
this about Rome in the High Renaissance?
Can
you identify the source of this description?
"An
extraordinary enthusiasm for antiquity had set in, combined with
boundless
freedom of opinion, with a laxity of morals which has ever since given
scandal
to believers and unbelievers alike, and with a festal magnificence
recalling
the days and nights of Nero's "golden house".
The half-century which ends in
the sack of Rome by Lutheran soldiers, however dazzling from a scenic
point of
view, cannot be dwelt on with satisfaction by any Catholic, even when
we have
discounted the enormous falsehoods long current in historians who
accepted
satires and party statements at their own value.
Churchmen in high places were constantly unmindful of
truth, justice, purity, self-denial; many had lost all sense of
Christian
ideals; not a few were deeply stained by pagan vices.
The temper of ecclesiastics like Bembo
and Bibbiena, shown forth in the comedies
of this
latter cardinal as they were acted before the Roman Court and imitated
far and
wide, is to us not less incomprehensible than disedifying. The earlier years of ®neas Sylvius, the
whole career
of Rodrigo Borgia, the life of Farnese, himself as well as the Curia,
these all
exhibit the union of subtlety, vigour, and
other
worldly qualities, which leaves us in dumb and sorrowful amazement. Julius II fought and intrigued
like a mere secular prince; Leo X, although certainly not an
unbeliever, was
frivolous in the extreme; Clement VII drew on himself the contempt as
well as
the hatred of all who had dealings with him, by his crooked ways and
cowardly
subterfuges which led to the taking and pillage of Rome."
It is part of the Catholic
Church's description of itself in the
Catholic Encyclopedia, and It can be found on the Internet at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12765b.htm.
________________________________________________
Barry, W. (1911). The
Renaissance. In The
Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Retrieved
March 4, 2010 from New Advent:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12765b.htm