It is the opinion of some Italian critics that Italian demoralization
began with the reaction against Luther, when the Jesuits rose to
supreme power in the Church and gathered the whole education of the
young into the hands of the priests. Cesare Cantu, whose book on
_Parini ed il suo Secolo_ may be read with pleasure and instruction by
such as like to know more fully the time of which I speak, was of this
mind; he became before his death a leader of the clerical party in
Italy, and may be supposed to be without unfriendly prejudice. He
alleges that the priestly education made the Italians _literati_
rather than citizens; Latinists, poets, instead of good magistrates,
workers, fathers of families; it cultivated the memory at the expense
of the judgment, the fancy at the cost of the reason, and made them
selfish, polished, false; it left a boy "apathetic, irresolute,
thoughtless, pusillanimous; he flattered his superiors and hated his
fellows, in each of whom he dreaded a spy." He knew the beautiful and
loved the grandiose; his pride of family and ancestry was inordinately
pampered. What other training he had was in the graces and
accomplishments; he was thoroughly instructed in so much of warlike
exercise as enabled him to handle a rapier perfectly and to conduct or
fight a duel with punctilio.
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