Even their apparently gratuitous
cruelty had commonly a purpose, if it were only to strike terror. The
barbarities of the House of Aragon, as we have seen, were mainly due to
fear and to the desire for vengeance. The thirst for blood on its own
account, the devilish delight in destruction, is most clearly
exemplified in the case of the Spaniard Cesare Borgia, whose cruelties
were certainly out of all proportion to the end which he had in view.
In Sigismondo Malatesta, tyrant of Rimini, the same disinterested love
of evil may also be detected. It is not only the Court of Rome, but the
verdict of history, which convicts him of murder, rape, adultery,
incest, sacrilege, perjury and treason, committed not once but often.
The most shocking crime of all--the unnatural attempt on his own son
Roberto, who frustrated it with his drawn dagger--may have been the
result not merely of moral corruption, but perhaps of some magical or
astrological superstition. The same conjecture has been made to account
for the rape of the Bishop of Fano by Pierluigi Farnese of Parma, son
of Paul III.
If we now attempt to sum up the principal features in the Italian
character of that time, as we know it from a study of the life of the
upper classes, we shall obtain something like the following result. The
fundamental vice of this character was at the same time a condition of
its greatness, namely, excessive individualism.
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