The desire of the Popes to form a temporal dominion was also injurious to Italy.[7] Not strong enough to unite the Peninsula under their own sway, they were determined to prevent its union under any other hands. In this attempt to reconcile their interests as head of the Church with those of a temporal prince, they were ever ready to barter away their country’s liberties. They had more than once before this summoned the foreigner to their aid, and, if they were not responsible for the first invasion of the French, they went far to make the foreign dominion permanent. The extremity of the Peninsula formed the kingdom of Naples, now in the hands of Ferrante I. (1458-1494), illegitimate son of Alfonso the Magnanimous, of Aragon; while Sicily and Sardinia belonged, with Aragon, to the legitimate branch represented just now by Ferdinand the Catholic (1479-1516). Always the most disturbed of the Italian states, Naples had in 1485 been the scene of a baronial revolt against the tyranny of Ferrante. The King, indeed, by cunning and ability had triumphed, but his faithlessness and inhuman cruelties had made him most unpopular, and his rule most insecure. He died in January 1494, to be succeeded by his son Alfonso II. (1494-1495), who, according to the French chronicler Commines, though not so dangerous, was a worse man than his father, since ‘never was any prince more bloody, wicked, inhuman, lascivious, or gluttonous than he.’ | Rivalry of these states. The rivalry of these five states, mutually repellent, yet unable to establish complete independence, was to cause the ruin of Italy. Too equally balanced to allow of the supremacy of one, too jealous of each other and too divergent in the character of their peoples and the form of their governments to unite in a federal bond, they lost all sense of common national interest. The existence of numerous petty states between their frontiers, which could only hope to survive by dexterous intrigue, excited their cupidity and thickened the thread of treacherous diplomacy which was now to call the foreigner into Italy. | Intellectual activity and moral degradation of the | Italians. But if the quarrels of these Italian rulers led to the first invasion, and subsequently prevented any permanent coalition, the condition of the people of Italy destroyed all hope of successful resistance. In reading the social history of Italy during the fifteenth century two lessons are forced upon us: first, the fatal effect of the loss of liberty, and of political faction on the moral fibre of a people; secondly, the danger of luxury, and of devotion to art and literature, if not chastened by the religious spirit.