In Italy itself there was a certain number of instructed and
even uninstructed people whose national vanity was flattered by the
Italian character of the Papacy; the personal interests of very many
depended on its having and retaining this character; and vast masses of
the people still believed in the virtue of the Papal blessing and
consecration; among them notorious transgressors like Vitelozzo
Vitelli, who still prayed to be absolved by Alexander VI, when the
Pope's son had him strangled. But all these grounds of sympathy put
together would not have sufficed to save the Papacy from its enemies,
had the latter been really in earnest, and had they known how to take
advantage of the envy and hatred with which the institution was
regarded.
And at the very time when the prospect of help from without was so
small, the most dangerous symptoms appeared within the Papacy itself.
Living as it now did, and acting in the spirit of the secular Italian
principalities, it was compelled to go through the same dark
experiences as they; but its own exceptional nature gave a peculiar
color to the shadows.
As far as the city of Rome itself is concerned, small account was taken
of its internal agitations, so many were the Popes who had returned
after being expelled by popular tumult, and so greatly did the presence
of the Curia minister to the interests of the Roman people.
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