The popular legends present an awful picture of the
savagery into which this brave and energetic people had relapsed. We
are told, for instance, of a nobleman at Ravenna who had got all his
enemies together in a tower, and might have burned them; instead of
which he let them out, embraced them, and entertained them sumptuously;
whereupon shame drove them mad, and they conspired against him. Pious
and saintly monks exhorted unceasingly to reconciliation, but they can
scarcely have done more than restrain to a certain extent the feuds
already established; their influence hardly prevents the growth of new
ones. The novelists sometimes describe to this effect of religion--how
sentiments of generosity and forgiveness were suddenly awakened, and
then again paralysed by the force of what had once been done and could
never be un. done. The Pope himself was not always lucky as a
peacemaker. Pope Paul II desired that the quarrel between Antonio
Caffarello and the family of Alberino should cease, and ordered
Giovanni Alberino and Antonio Caffarello to come before him bade them
kiss one another, and threatened them with a fine of 2,000 ducats if
they renewed this strife, and two days after Antonio was stabbed by the
same Giacomo Alberino, son of Giovanni, who had wounded him once
before; and the Pope was full of anger, and confiscated the goods of
Alberino, and destroyed his houses, and banished father and son from
Rome.
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